Today, Explained - Sudan’s coup

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

After a bloody fight for democracy, Sudan is sliding back into the hands of the military. CNN’s Nima Elbagir says a successful military coup could have dire consequences for democracies around the world. Today’s show was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It was two years ago that we last talked about Sudan on the show. At that point, months of civil disobedience and protests led to the military ousting the country's dictator of nearly 30 years, Omar al-Bashir. I declare, being the Minister of Defense and the Chairman of the Committee, to get rid of this regime and to arrest the head of the regime in a safe place.

The military took over, but with the promise of future civilian rule. They even included civilians in the process. But the Sudanese people were hesitant to trust the military because these were some of the same people who had spilled blood in the streets during those protests two years ago. The June 3rd massacre in which the military tortured, raped and ultimately killed more than a hundred peaceful protesters. Civilians were shot at close range by men in uniform. Commander Mohammed Hamdan, known as Hemeti, who is the leader of the

rapid support forces, a paramilitary force that has its origin in the Janjaweet, who committed mass atrocities in the west of the country in Darfur. The BBC has spoken to two men who say they are serving RSF officers and admit to having participated in the attack. Then you also had the former inspector general, now head of the Sudanese armed forces, General Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan. You had what we call in Arabic the shadow brigades, which are as scary as they sound, essentially kind of black ops operatives as part of the intelligence services. This is Nema Al-Baghir. She's a senior international correspondent for CNN.

Just this cabal of armed forces who didn't want the country to transition past a point of their ability to continue to benefit and make money and rule. And then last week, just as the military was slated to begin the transition to civilian control, they confirmed they weren't to be trusted. We dissolve the Sovereign Council and the Cabinet and we put an end to the mayor's jobs and undersecretaries and the state governors. We'll revise everything.

They rounded up the Prime Minister and his wife. Many of the senior aides in the prime minister's cabinet, a lot of the key civilian leadership, many of whom we believe have been tortured and detained, and a lot of people are still missing. How does the public respond to this coup? The public had already taken to the streets before, days before that, you know, firing a warning shot that basically we will not accept. Sudan will not accept military

rulers again. I think it's important to remember that Sudan has really only had very brief periods of democracy since independence. I'm from Sudan. I was talking to my mother about it and she remembers being 14 and in high school in Khartoum going out on her first anti-military rule demonstration. And she was 14 and it's extraordinary that she's now in her seventies. And this is the third attempt or fourth attempt in her lifetime to gain basic freedoms. And I think what makes this even more incredible is that most of the generation that are leading these demonstrations that are so absolutely unrelenting in their belief that they will never again be ruled by the military are the children of al-Bashir. They're the children of

this dictatorship. They have never known democracy. I mean, I'm 43 years old, and I remember a brief three years of democracy from when I was about seven till 11 or 12, three years of democracy. So this is a generation that has no concept of democracy. And yet they're the ones out on the streets risking their lives for it. What's life like in Sudan right now? Life in Sudan has been incredibly difficult for months now. The economy has been in a free fall collapse. There had been, when we were there in August, we could really see that there had been an increased presence of soldiers and military personnel on the streets.

It's been very, very tense for a while now. Friends and family that I've been speaking to back home and our team on the ground there say that it is that but so much worse now. People are really concerned about their ability to bring in the daily necessities to their homes. You know, people were queuing for hours for fuel. But that sense of volatility that at any moment anything could happen because of the huge presence of armed forces on the street. Just this sense of volatility and vulnerability. I think other than people who've grown up under an occupation, I think those of us who grew up under dictatorship have an experience of that sense of humiliation where any time you walk out on the street, you are incredibly vulnerable to the whims of a man in uniform. And for a while there, during this transitional period, that had gone away. And now those that we're speaking to on the ground say that that

sense of second and third class citizenship in your own country, that if somebody took a gun to your head and fired, there would be no consequences. That feeling has returned. But all the same people are in the streets. How's the military responding? The soldiers clearly think that by their standards, they have been quite restrained. I don't know if you would call hundreds of people injured and, you know, a dozen or so killed just over the weekend, over one day's demonstration on Saturday, restrained. But they believe that by their standards, they have been restrained. And I think what's been quite disappointing for a lot of Sudanese watching from home is to hear the UN or the US say that, well, you know, we were watching, we're happy to see that there was some form of restraint.

And I think that's the big, that's going to be the real crunch, is that the US wants to force through a mediation. And they believe that the, you know, the least violent, the least destabilizing way to force through a resolution is to allow for some semblance of military presence in whatever infrastructure of rule is agreed upon. And that's just not acceptable to the Sudanese out on the streets. Now, it may be acceptable in the future. They may decide ultimately, after however long this impasse lasts for, that they may accept some kind of version of that. But for right now, it's not acceptable. And the only barometer that matters is the barometer of the streets.

But weirdly, the military still says it's going to hold elections in the next few years. Its goal is still supposedly civilian control, which seems like a funny way to go about it, right? Resting control from civilians to give it back to civilians. Why coup when you don't have to? Because if the civilian leadership had been able to finally finish this investigation into the June 3rd massacre, their rule would have been untenable. How do you as the United States or the European Union or the UK, how do you deal with them as political candidates? Most of those in positions of leadership, possibly not General Erbuhan, he's a career soldier, but definitely Commander Hemeti thinks of himself as a potential president or prime minister for

Sudan, however it turns out. So how do you then switch out of your uniform to become a civilian politician if there is credible information that you opened fire on civilians on June 3rd. I think that's their biggest fear, is that they weren't going to get any immunity. And because the civilian government, the Sovereign Council, voted to agree to allow President Omar al-Bashir to be transferred to The Hague for the genocide charge against him, which would have been unthinkable even five years ago. All of these soldiers are thinking, well, I know what I did. So without immunity, I'm incredibly vulnerable. And they knew that before the civilian leadership took over, that was their last little chance to try and negotiate for immunity.

The people of Sudan have decided that they are willing to die for democracy. On a more pragmatic note, the U.S. has, for the last four years under the Trump administration, seen its influence wane globally because of its isolationism. And President Biden promised not only that human rights are back in the U.S.'s foreign policy, but also that the U.S. would be extending itself to reassert its influence. The generals in Sudan lied to the U.S. envoy and told him they had no intention of carrying out a coup. If they get away with that, that sends a message to everyone else around the world that you can do what you want,

and America will not stand by the side of the people on the streets. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Thank you. finance teams' unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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With iGaming Ontario The thing about the military coup in Sudan, it's actually far from the only one to happen this year in Africa. No, unfortunately, we're seeing what we might call democratic regression or a series of military coups take place across the region. Alden Young is a UCLA historian and the author of Transforming Sudan. He says there's at least a half dozen other countries in the region whose democracies are backsliding. We just saw Chad had a military transition.

Rebels are threatening to advance on Chad's capital, and the military has taken over the government following the death of President Idris Deby. And this was co-signed in a really strange way by President Macron of France and the United States didn't make much objection. And we've seen military takeovers in Niger. Overnight, an attempt to overthrow the government was thwarted. And in Mali? Dressed in full military regalia,

the man who led Mali's second coup in nine months is officially sworn in as president. And a coup in Guinea. On this mobile phone video, the 83-year-old president appears disheveled. He's being detained by the country's special forces. Men meant to protect him now hold him in custody. And in Ethiopia, which for a long time was one of the bright spots in the Horn of Africa,

we've seen a brutal civil war and we've seen authoritarian consolidation under the Nobel Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed. Many opposition parties are also boycotting the election because leading members have been jailed. They accuse the government of rolling back many of Abiy Ahmed's initial reforms. We've also seen a non-democratic transition in Tunisia. My first decision is the freezing of the functions of parliament. Are there sort of parallels to draw here?

Are there common threads? Or are all these situations sort of particular to each individual country? I mean, there's always differences in each country, some local characteristics. But all of these countries suffer from dominant military structures, military and security apparatuses that have been supported by the United States and other countries in the fight against terrorism. The United States has given tons of military aid to the Ethiopian armed forces in order to fight al-Shabaab in Somalia. Similarly, in Niger and Mali, we've seen international efforts from France and the United States to combat al-Qaeda and the Maghreb. And there's been, you know, a huge investment in the military in both of those countries. And similarly, in Chad, France has played a huge role

in arming the Judean army to fight against terrorism and the Sahel, to fight against migrants. So the through line is that in the nameel, to fight against migrants. So the through line is that in the name of counterterrorism or keeping migrants out of Europe, Western countries have propped up military leadership at the expense of democracy. Yeah, I mean, one of the problems is that while the United States in particular advocates democracy often with its civilian programs, at the same time, it's using its military and intelligence programs to prop up the armed wing of many of these regimes. And so

it's often at war with itself and its two impulses. And counterterrorism for years, anti-migrant policies from the Europeans have often trumped their desires for democratization. And tell me more how this is affecting what we're seeing in Sudan right now. In Sudan, it's a really interesting case because the United States has never really been that close to the Sudanese armed forces. But at the same time, Gulf allies, particularly the United States allies in the region, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,

have given tons of aid to the military in Sudan. And they've been opposed to democratization throughout the region. And we saw them do similar things perhaps in Egypt in 2013 with theosed President Mohamed Morsi after just one year in office. And the United States and Sudan has had a similar issue where it's wanted to have stability in the region and it's wanted to increase, you know, maybe military cooperation. Some people have even said that the U.S. can normalize its relations with the military. We've seen visits from high-ranking military officers, and we've also seen the military play a vital role, particularly under the Trump administration, in helping to execute U.S. foreign policy goals, like the normalization with Israel. And so the United States has found it often comfortable to talk to military leaders,

even military leaders that they don't like, because they're centralized. We can do military to military communication. The United States has been one of the biggest backers of the civilian transition in Sudan that took place in 2019. But we haven't supported the civilians in quite the same way. So what does that mean for this military's chance of holding on to power? The Sudanese military finds itself in maybe a tougher position than some of the militaries in the region in the sense that it's kind of internationally isolated.

It doesn't seem like there was really strong international support for this coup. The United States has come out against it. The European Union's come out against it. China's come out against it. But at the end of the day, the military does have a strong chance of surviving because the military in Sudan has actually entered into an alliance with many of the larger rebel movements that it used to fight in its long civil war. It has the RSF as one of its militias. It also has SLA, another Darfurian militia,

and it has the Justice and Equality Movement, another militia from Darfur, supporting it. And unfortunately, this seems to be a coup that was driven in large part by the senior officer corps inside the military, who've come together in a kind of a consensus that maybe they didn't have in 2019 when they overthrew President Omar al-Bashir. So how are countries like the United States going to counter, you know, the military's seemingly strong position in Sudan? You know, we've seen Biden, we've seen Blinken, we've seen Feltman, the special envoy for the Greater Horn of Africa, calling for a return to transitional arrangement. General Burhan and the army, they betrayed the spirit of the 2019 revolution, and they betrayed the letter and the spirit of that constitutional document.

This was supposed to be a military-civilian partnership. The question, though, is whether or not the United States is willing to do anything besides cutting off some financial support to the country, maybe blocking some of the forgiveness of debt? Will it do anything long term to sort of tip the balance in the favor of the civilians? It didn't do very much in 2013 when Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power. It hasn't done that much about the Ethiopian civil war. It didn't do anything about Chad, Mali, or Niger. So the U.S. credibility, I think,

is not at the highest point vis-a-vis the military generals in Khartoum. And when we talk about doing more, what are we talking about? Are we talking about military intervention? No, I don't think military intervention is on the table. There's a question of whether or not there could be more sanctions,

whether or not we could pressure, particularly our allies in the Gulf states, to cut off funds to the military. I think that would be one of the biggest things that the United States could do. Pressure the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, and Egypt to also reduce ties with the Sudanese regime and maybe freeze the bank accounts of military leaders. But what do those countries want? Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc.? So this is a big question. I mean, for a while, for the last few years, we've seen Qatar and UAE particularly in a kind of competition for influence throughout the region. But we've seen UAE, like Russia, also investing a lot in the Red Sea ports along the coast of Sudan and trying to develop those ports. But more

importantly, they want stability and they have been opposed in kind of a broad way to democratic movements throughout the greater Middle East, particularly after the Arab Spring of 2011. And so in many ways, they've supported either a restoration of monarchies or restoration of military rule in countries throughout the region. If Sudan can somehow revive its democracy, do you think that could be a bright light for these other countries we've mentioned that are backsliding right now? Ethiopia, Chad, Tunisia. I think it would be a huge bright light for the rest of the region, right?

I think one of the scariest scenarios would be if Sudan falls back into either a military dictatorship or even worse, possibly civil war. On the other hand, Sudan can be a role model for the rest of the region. And thinking of ways in which post-colonial armed forces, which have largely existed outside of civilian control, and in some ways have seen themselves as constitutive of the state. If we can figure out how in Sudan to create civilian institutions that can control the military and security apparatus, I think that would be a model for figuring out how to do something similar in places like Chad, in Egypt, and in Ethiopia. Alden Young teaches in the Department of African American Studies

at the University of California in Los Angeles. He's the author of Transforming Sudan, Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation. I'm Sean Ramos for him. Our show today was produced by Halima Shah. It's Today Explained. Thank you.