Sudan’s divided rebels, youth and opposition parties
A split opposition offers citizens little hope for change in this turbulent country
In June 2012 and September 2013, young Sudanese took to the streets in in several cities, including Khartoum, the capital, and Omdurman, the nation’s commercial hub.. They threw rocks at police and set up makeshift barriers in back alleys. Burning tyres sent columns of smoke twisting into the sky. The partial and then full removal of fuel subsidies, which sent prices soaring, fuelled these riots. In many, demonstrators called for the removal of President Omar al-Bashir and his regime, which they blamed for years of war and the growing economic crisis that followed the secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011.
In power since 1989, Mr Bashir is Sudan’s longest-serving leader. His 25-year rule has been one of the most divisive periods in the country’s turbulent history. Millions of Sudanese oppose him and his National Congress Party (NCP). In theory, this should strengthen formal political avenues for dissent: opposition parties. Instead, they grow weaker and less relevant each year.
Opposition parties did not organise the 2012 and 2013 demonstrations. The protests ignited spontaneously or were organised by youth protest groups. One of the reasons Mr Bashir and the NCP have survived so long is that many Sudanese are unwilling to take risks for opposition parties because they are not convinced these parties would run the country any better than the ruling party.
The history of independent Sudan’s political parties explains this reluctance. For decades after the country raised its flag in 1956, different iterations of two sectarian forces dominated Sudanese politics: the National Umma Party (NUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The NUP’s support is largely drawn from the Ansar, an Islamic sect. Its leader, Sadiq al-Mahdi, is both imam of the Ansarand the NUP leader. Like many of the Sudanese elite, he has been around for decades, starting as prime minister in the late 1960s. The DUP, which originally wanted Sudan to form a union with Egypt, is based on a similar model. Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani is both the imam of the Khatmiyyasect and the DUP head.
These parties have been in and out of government since 1956, often as part of unstable coalitions in the democratic interludes between periods of military rule. Many progressive Sudanese have objected to the lack of democracy within these parties and their quasi-feudal relationship with their largely rural support base. Those looking for alternative politics were once largely split into two currents: the communists and the Islamists. The former have dwindled in significance, following domestic repression and the end of the cold war. The latter grew in strength, from a base in the universities, and under the leadership of hardline ideologue Hassan al-Turabi. The Islamists convinced President Jaafar Numeiri to introduce sharia or Islamic law in 1983, exacerbating the conflict with the largely non-Muslim southern Sudan.
When Mr Bashir seized power in 1989, he was under the de facto control of Mr Turabi, as explored in “A History of Modern Sudan” by Robert Collins.For a decade Mr Turabi’s Islamists, backed by Mr Bashir’s military might, pursued a radical course. They banned opposition parties and dismantled the powerful trade union movement. Many Sudanese fled into exile. In 1999 Mr Bashir won a power struggle with Mr Turabi, which led to a new sort of political opposition in Sudan: disaffected Islamists. Mr Turabi formed his Popular Congress Party (PCP)in 1999. (In late 2013, a veteran NCP Islamist, Ghazi Salaheddin, dismayed by the brutal suppression of the September protests, formed his own Reform Now party, also along Islamist lines.)
By then, Mr Mirghani and the DUP had entered into a coalition government with Mr Bashir’s NCP. Ahead of the 2010 elections, most of the other opposition parties were grouped in a loose coalition, the National Consensus Forces (NCF). Since those elections, which Mr Bashir won comfortably, the NCF leaders have routinely made declarations about “taking to the streets”, a call for popular protests to bring about regime change. Their threats have been empty. Popular protests have been either spontaneous or led by amorphous youth groups like Sudan Change Now and Girifna (“We are fed up” in Arabic).
The relative failure of the NCF and the old opposition parties to mobilise Sudanese opposition is a result of at least four factors. First, it is extremely difficult to operate as an opposition party in Sudan. The government does not allow public demonstrations or rallies without permission, and permission is never granted. Sudanese opposition leaders also get little access to state media, which is still the way most of their countrymen access news. Security forces often arrest critical voices too: the NUP’s Mr Mahdi spent a month in jail in mid-2014 after he criticised alleged atrocities committed by Sudanese military forces in Darfur.
Second, many Sudanese simply do not believe the Sudanese opposition would be better than the government. The same figures have been in charge of the opposition parties for decades, and were not particularly successful at earlier stints running the country. Mr Mahdi’s second period as prime minister, from 1986-1989, is remembered for political instability and economic chaos. Many now wonder whether the ageing luminaries Mr Mahdi or Mr Mirghani have anything new to add. Both are critical of the regime in public but have ties to the government: both have sons who accepted high-profile posts within Mr Bashir’s administration. “Sadiq [al-Mahdi] is with the government, then against it; you cannot trust him,” says one young man in Khartoum who asked to be known only as Ahmed. “And Ghazi [Salaheddin] and Turabi were with Bashir for so long, they’re just the same as him.”
Third, the opposition parties are divided, despite the impression the NCF tries to portray through its joint statements. The DUP was enticed to join the government’s coalition, in return for a few ministerial posts. In January 2014, President Bashir set up a consultative process, called the National Dialogue. It has further split the opposition. Mr Salaheddin called it “dead” after Mr Mahdi’s arrest in May, which caused the NUP to pull out.
Fourth, opposition in Sudan has often been military in nature. Khartoum is still fighting civil wars against rebels in Darfur in the east, the Nuba Mountains in the south-west, and the Blue Nile state in the south-east. The more radical opponents of Mr Bashir’s regime, in particular from these conflict areas, believe the rebels are more likely to bring about change than Khartoum’s neutered opposition politics. The leaders of the unarmed opposition parties, many outside the capital complain, are drawn from the same Khartoum elite that has dominated politics for decades.
In August 2014, the NUP’s Mr Mahdi signed the Paris Declaration with a loose coalition of rebel groups known as the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF). This agreement was “a breakthrough for a peaceful political settlement in Sudan”, Mr Mahdi told Africa in Fact. It calls for an end to the civil wars and the creation of a fairer Sudan based on recognition of its diverse population. The NUP and the SRF also promised to boycott the elections scheduled for April 2015 unless they were organised by a transitional government.
This alliance, between the armed opposition and the most prominent leader of the unarmed opposition, scared the ruling NCP. Mr Mahdi’s daughter Mariam was detained for a month after she returned to Khartoum from France, and Mr Mahdi has not returned home.
So far the other opposition parties have not followed in the NUP’s footsteps, from a mixture of fear and their own distrust of the rebels. The most effective opposition to Mr Bashir is likely to be an alliance between all his antagonists—the rebels, opposition parties and youth groups. But they, like their country, are deeply divided.
