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Tag: Sudan

  • Time is running out for Sudan

    Time is running out for Sudan

    • By William Lambers

    At this very moment we have a chance to save Sudan, but time is running out as the clock dangerously inches toward famine. Lives are on the line in the African nation as food shortages worsen because of a civil war. The only hope for war victims in Sudan is a strong response from the international community.

    War-torn regions of Sudan, including Darfur and Kordofan, are on the brink of famine. But lack of access and funding has prevented food supplies from being positioned for the emergency response.

    The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) and other humanitarian agencies need our support to get the famine response fully in action throughout Sudan.

    “Only a few weeks remain to stock up food supplies in parts of Darfur and Kordofan before the rainy season starts and many roads become impassible. Farmers also need to safely reach their farmlands to plant ahead of the rains,” said WFP’s Deputy Executive Director, Carl Skau, following a recent mission to Sudan.

    Relief agencies also need to get food into place in neighboring Chad and South Sudan, two countries suffering hunger that are taking in refugees from the conflict.

    Sudan has been devastated by a civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the past year. Farmland has been destroyed by the fighting. Sudan has been sliding toward famine with each passing day.

    There are 18 million people suffering from severe levels of hunger in Sudan. The WFP further warns “At least 5 million people in Sudan are on the brink of starvation…… A preliminary WFP analysis has identified 41 hunger hot spots that are high-risk of slipping into famine (IPC5) in the coming month, most of them in … areas where conflict is raging including in the Darfur and Kordofan region and Khartoum.”

    Save the Children says “In the first 105 days of 2024, the amount of money raised for the humanitarian crisis in Sudan is less than a fifth of what was pledged in just two days to rebuild the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.”

    Clearly, the world could be doing more to save Sudan. But many people are probably unaware of the crisis as very little media attention is given to Sudan.

    Read Also: Threat of disintegration in Sudan

    Governments and the public can help by donating to charities in Sudan including WFP, UNICEF, Save the Children, CARE, Mercy Corps, Catholic Relief Services and others.

    It’s vital you write your elected officials about getting food aid to Sudan. It is important existing food aid programs get mobilized to quickly respond to Sudan’s crisis, before it’s too late.

    You can urge your elected officials to make peace in Sudan a priority, as diplomacy is critical to getting a cease fire and improving humanitarian access.

    Sudan once had a factory that produced lifesaving food for malnourished children. That factory was burned to the ground during this tragic war.

    Children are starving to death in Sudan as the war drags on. The world needs to pay more attention to Sudan to help them build peace and prevent famine. You can play a role as an advocate for Sudan so they are not forgotten. We can still prevent famine.

    • This article was first published in www.thegazette.com
  • 157 Nigerian soldiers set for deployment on peacekeeping in Sudan

    157 Nigerian soldiers set for deployment on peacekeeping in Sudan

    As 157 officers and soldiers of the Nigerian Army completed pre-deployment training and set for a peacekeeping mission in Abiye, South Sudan, the Army authority has warned them to avoid acts like s3xual exploitation and drug trafficking, capable of bringing Nigeria to disrepute.

    Nigerian Army’s Chief of Operation, Major-General Boniface Sinjen, gave the warning while addressing the troops at the graduation ceremony from their pre-deployment training at the Martin Luther Agwai International Leadership and Peacekeeping Centre (MLAILPKC), Jaji, Kaduna state.

    The troops, who are of the Nigerian Company 2 to the United Nations Interim Security Force in Abyei (NIGCOY 2 UNISFA), consisted of 15 officers and 142 soldiers.

    Maj.-General Sinjen, while reminding the troops to always be guided by the rules of engagement while observing human rights and respecting diversity in the operating environment, told them to shun acts such as sexual exploitation, drug trafficking and other mission misconducts capable of tarnishing the image of Nigeria.

    The Chief of Operations said the contingent’s graduation demonstrated the commitment and capacity of the Armed Forces of Nigeria to deploy quality peacekeepers as part of its contributions to global peace and security. 

    He noted: “Nigeria’s National Defence Policy remained the security and stability of Africa with specific emphasis on the West African Sub-Region, hence Nigeria will continue to seek global peace and security by contributing and participating in Peace Support Operations around the world.”

    Maj-General Sinjen said Nigeria had successfully participated in over 40 peacekeeping missions and deployed more than 100,000 peacekeepers since her first mission in the Congo in 1960.

    According to him, “All Nigerian peacekeepers alongside others from around the world have aided the course of humanity while helping nations in distress to restore peace and enthrone much desired development.

    “The UNISFA was established to restore peace and stability in Abyei after the demilitarization of Abyei in June 2011, making it an administrative town under the control of the United Nations.

    “Essentially, the mission is mandated to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence, protect the area from incursions by unauthorised elements and ensure security. The mission has also helped to restore peace and stability in Abyei through the professional conduct of the troops,” he said.

    Earlier, the Commandant of the MLAILPKC, Maj.-Gen. Ademola Adedoja said the unit commenced the 6-week pre-deployment training on 27 January 2024, explaining that, the training was to equip the earmarked unit with the requisite skills and knowledge to function effectively and efficiently in their deployment to Abyei. 

    Adedoja said as part of the training, the troops were taken through crosscutting issues like sexual exploitation and abuse, conflict-related sexual violence, conduct and discipline as well as protection of civilians, amongst others.

    The commandant said: “As the powerhouse of the West Africa sub-region, Nigeria has committed both human and material resources to the attainment of peace in the sub-region.

    Read Also: Sudan army General rules out Ramadan truce

    “This graduation is a testament to the capacity and capability of the MLAILPKC as a United Nations accredited Centre to train quality peacekeepers for deployment to multidimensional Peace Support Operations in fulfilment of her mandate.

    “The centre has within the last six weeks been able to train, retrain and refresh the troops on requisite knowledge and expertise to succeed in a Peace Support Operational environment. It is my fervent belief that these men are better informed and equipped to perform their roles in Abyei,” he said.

    The Commandant tasked the troops with carrying out their duties bearing in mind the multinational, as well as cultural and religious diversities of the operating environment which underscored the need for courtesy and respect for others.

  • Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive

    Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive

    About two months after heavy clashes around his home in Sudan’s capital drove Sherif Abdelmoneim to flee, soaring rent and food costs forced the 36-year-old and his family of six to return to a city where fighting still rages.

    “The states (outside Khartoum) are safe but the prices are expensive and rents are high, and we cannot continue with that,” Abdelmoneim said.

    He spoke by phone from Omdurman, a city adjoining Khartoum where he has rented a house in an area where he can still hear artillery fire but is no longer in the midst of clashes.

    Read Also: Agency to evacuate 37 Nigerians from Sudan

    The conflict has brought Sudan’s stagnant economy to its knees, blocking much trade and transport, as well as halting many salary payments, and causing vast damage to infrastructure.

    The country now has to draw on what meagre resources left to support an internally displaced population which, when those made homeless by previous conflict are included, reaches nearly 7.1 million, more than any other in the world.

  • Military, civilians reach power-sharing deal in Sudan

    Sudan’s ruling military council and a coalition of opposition and protest groups reached an agreement to share power during a transition period leading to elections, setting off street celebrations by thousands of people.

    The two sides, which have held talks in Khartoum for the past two days, agreed to “establish a sovereign council by rotation between the military and civilians for a period of three years or slightly more,” AU mediator Mohamed Hassan Lebatt said at a news conference.

    They also agreed to form an independent technocratic government and to launch a transparent, independent investigation into violent events in recent weeks.

    The two sides agreed to postpone the establishment of a legislative council. They had previously agreed that the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition would take two-thirds of a legislative council’s seats before security forces crushed a sit-in protest on June 3, killing dozens, and talks collapsed

    The streets of Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city across the Nile River, erupted in celebration when the news broke, a Reuters witness said.

    Thousands of people of all ages took to the streets, chanting “Civilian! Civilian! Civilian!”

    Young men banged drums, people honked their car horns and women carrying Sudanese flags ululated in jubilation.

    “This agreement opens the way for the formation of the institutions of the transitional authority, and we hope that this is the beginning of a new era,” said Omar al-Degair, a leader of the FFC.

    Read Also: ‘How Sudanese president fell’

    “We would like to reassure all political forces, armed movements and all those who participated in the change from young men and women … that this agreement will be comprehensive and will not exclude anyone,” said Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the Transitional Military Council.

    “We thank the African and Ethiopian mediators for their efforts and patience.

    “We also thank our brothers in the Forces for Freedom and Change for the good spirit,” said Dagalo, who heads the Rapid Support Forces accused by the FFC of crushing the sit-in.

    Opposition medics say more than 100 people were killed in the dispersal and subsequent violence. The government put the death toll at 62.

    (Reuters)

  • NLC wants global action against Sudan

    The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called for a global action against the military junta in Sudan to stop the ongoing carnage against defenceless citizens of the country.

    In a statement signed by Acting President, Comrade Najeem Yasin, the NLC said the action of the military junta was a betrayal of the people on whose back it rode to power and called on all persons of goodwill and the international community to take urgent decisive actions to call the junta to order and offer concrete measures for the protection of the lives of activists and the people of Sudan.

    The statement reads: “The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has watched with shock the massacre of over 100 pro-democracy activists and other persons by the military junta in Sudan. This blatant use of force against unarmed and defenseless civilians, which saw killings involving children and several injured persons over the sit-in by protesters to establish a democratic process in Sudan, is highly condemnable and should not be allowed to continue by the international community.

    Read Also: NLC seeks sanction against Morocco for occupying Western Sahara

    “It is instructive that the junta rode on the protests of pro-democratic forces that ousted former President Omar al-Bashir ostensibly to protect the protesters, only to turn its guns on them and the Sudanese population.

    “This is an unconscionable betrayal of the Sudanese people who had suffered untold hardship and violence in the hands al-Bashir’s Rapid Support Forces or Janjaweed which the junta had recently unleashed on pro-democracy activists.

    “While applauding the timely suspension of Sudan by the African Union (AU) and the intention of the UN to intervene in the political crisis, we call on all persons of goodwill and the international community to take urgent decisive actions to call the junta to order and offer concrete measures for the protection of the lives of activists and the people of Sudan.

    “The global community should unite to stop this carnage by the military before it escalates into more killings that would derail the momentum of the struggle to reestablish negotiations leading to civilian rule under an atmosphere of free and fair election”

     

     

  • Sudanese military to protesters: back off

    Sudan’s military government has told protesters to take down their roadblocks in the capital, Khartoum.

    Demonstrators have been manning barricades leading to the military HQ, which has been the focus of the protests that helped lead to the ousting of President Omar al-Bashir.

    On Sunday, protest leaders said they had ended contact with the military council that removed the president.

    They accused it of being composed of “remnants” of Mr Bashir’s regime.

    The military says it is committed to handing over power and will consider a joint military-civilian council.

    But it insisted that it was responsible for security in the country.

    “It can’t continue like this,” said the head of the military council, Lt Gen Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan.

    It was not clear if the protesters would respond to the call.

    “We will carry on manning the checkpoints as usual,” 23-year-old demonstrator Kawthar Hasaballah told AFP news agency.

    “No one, not even the military council, will remove us from our places.”

    Read also: From Sudan, lessons in power

    A mass sit-in outside the military HQ has been taking place since 6 April. Five days later Mr Bashir was overthrown and replaced by a military council that promised it would hand over power to civilians within two years.

    Leaders of the protest movement have suspended talks and co-operation with the military.

    There had been hopes that the talks would lead to civilian rule.

    A spokesman, Mohamed al-Amin, called the military council an extension of the old regime and said they no longer recognise it, adding that a civilian administration would be unveiled in the next couple of days.

  • Sudan: €6m cash found in home of ousted al-Bashir

    SUDAN’S ousted president Omar al-Bashir is being investigated for money laundering after large sums of foreign currency were found at his home.

    Military intelligence found €6m stuffed in suitcases, as well as $351,000. They also uncovered five million Sudanese pounds (£80,000).

    A judicial source said the chief public prosecutor had ordered the former  president detained and quickly questioned in preparation to put him on trial.

    Bashir is being held inside the high-security Kobar prison in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. He was detained at a presidential residence prior to being put behind bars.

    The army sacked Bashir from office on April 11 following months of protests against his 30-year rule, which opponents say was riddled with mismanagement and brutality.

    He is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity, murder, extermination, torture and rape – among other crimes – in the Darfur region in the 2000s.

    An estimated 300,000 people died during a military campaign to end an insurgency there over a decade ago.

    During his decades in power, Bashir often played up his humble beginnings as the child of a poor farming family in a remote village.

  • The coup in Sudan

    •Soldiers do not need two years to restore democratic order

    EVEN as democracy wobbles in Africa, the continent must say a resounding NO to military incursion into politics. The military who have taken over power in Sudan must therefore retrace their steps, before it is too late. Without doubt, the calamitous impact of decades of jackboot politics has left the continent a laggard in world affairs. So, the effort by the Sudanese military to take advantage of the fall of Omar al-Bashir from power should be resisted by African and other world leaders.

    Agreed that Sudan could slip into anarchy if the vacuum created by the fall of al-Bashir is not filled, the military could use their influence to aide a transition to participatory democracy, instead of foisting autocracy. There are examples to copy. The Zimbabwean model easily comes to mind. There, the military stood in the gap as the country wriggled through the crisis created after the fall of Robert Mugabe. The Nigerian example saw Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar hand over to a civilian government after the death of the dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, in a matter of months. Less noble is the Egyptian model, but still better than a military regime.

    So, when the Sudanese military asks for a two-year transition, panic set in that they will use the two years to entrench themselves. Young Sudanese believe that the military were part of the country’s problem, as they created the bulwark of support that enabled al-Bashir’s dictatorship last for 30 years. So, they are right to reject the military regime taking advantage of the leadership vacuum to take over power. The world should support them to finish the fight once.

    Sudan needs a turning point, if it has to make progress. But it must watch out, to avoid the calamity that befell Europe around 1848, when a burgeoning revolution turned into a farce. It must not be like France in particular where a revolution in 1789 turned to existential nightmare until the return of another dictator in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. As things are, the gory years of al-Bashir regime will take decades to erase, so the Sudanese people must avoid slipping into a worse nightmare arising from leadership crisis. For the remaining and burgeoning dictators in Africa, the fall of al-Bashir should serve as a lesson. No single person owns a country, no matter how important such a person thinks he is. Instead of allowing democracy to flourish, leaders like Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda are equating themselves to the survival of the country. Regardless of their achievements as political leaders, they can never become synonymous with their country’s survival.

    Perhaps Africa is in a decade of fallen dictators? What started as a crisis in many North African countries, also claimed a scalp in Sub-Saharan Africa. We witnessed it in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Zimbabwe and now Sudan. Could it be a sign of the awakening for the African continent, and a warning to its callous leadership to mend their ways? No doubt, Africa has suffered in the hands of its leaders in the past 50 years and needs a new beginning.

    Of note, the major crisis facing the continent is that of internal security and a parlous economy. Tragically, both are feeding on each other. While poverty creates insecurity, insecurity engenders more poverty. The crisis in Sudan arose from a debilitating inflation, made worse by foreign exchange crisis. Now that the people have successfully ousted the Ancien Regime led by Omar al-Bashir, what appears a turning point for Sudan must be what the people have fought for, not a farce.

  • Sudan: End of El Bashir regime

    After days of street protest led by professionals particularly doctors and after close to 200 people had been shot, the army moved against President Omar Hassan el Bashir who has been in power for more than 30 years. Military rule in the Sudan is almost a permanent feature of the political life of the country.In 1953, an Anglo- Egyptian Agreement was signed to allow the Sudanese people through a Constituent Assembly determine their future. Until that time, Britain and Egypt maintained a condominium over the Sudan. As a result of the decision of the 1953 Constituent Assembly, a British type parliamentary democracy presided over the country until 1958 when a group of army officers headed by Lt. General Ibrahim Abdud established a military regime and dissolved all political parties. The regime remained in power until it was overthrown in 1964. There was then a short transitional period leading to the formation of a democratically elected government which lasted till 1969 when once again, a group of military officers led by Colonel Ja’farMuhammad al Numayri proclaimed a new revolution and outlawed all other political activities. He ruled the country with-iron hands until 1985 when, following days of street protests by students, Numayri who was on a visit to Washington was overthrown by his defence minister, General Abdel Rahman Swar al Dahab.Within a year, an elected government was installed and headed by Sadiq al Mahdi, Oxford-educated grandson of the 19th century Islamic revolutionary, Shaikh Muhammad Ahmed al Mahdi, who between 1881and 1898 established an Islamic state in the Sudan. Sadiq was head of the Umma party but there were other stakeholders in his coalition government. But having a feeling of ownership of the country because of his ancestry, he ran a corrupt faction-ridden and nepotistic administration until he was overthrown by Omar Hassan al Bashir in 1989 because among other reasons, his enforcement of sharia law put in place by Numayri and the debilitating war in South Sudan led by General Garang.  The war did not end until 2011 when the south seceded from the north after much suffering and international pressure on Omar Bashir. Omar Hassan al Bashir has been in power since 1989 until he was overthrown a few weeks ago.

    His regime has been marked by much wickedness and state terrorism which saw to his unleashing of armed Arab horsemen known as Janjaweed on the hapless and helpless people of Darfur in the west of the Sudan murdering about 400,000 people as estimated by the UN. This has led to his being accused of war crimes of crimes against humanity and genocide for which an international arrest warrant hangs over his head from the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The ferocity of the Sudanese campaign in Darfur brought the charge of racism against Omar Bashir because Darfur is largely inhabited by black people. However Sudan is inhabited by blacks as well but majority of them are Arabized blacks.

    Sudan has strong historical ties with Nigeria. Islam entered the northeast of Nigeria through the Sudan even though Malian Muslims were largely responsible for spreading Islam into Hausa land and Yorubaland but this was much later. The Seifawa Empire of Borno as far back as the 8th century had madrasas (students’ hostels) in the Sudan and Egypt for its students. These educational ties have remained throughout the colonial and post-colonial period not only for recruitment of teachers and medical personnel but also for Islamic and Arabic instructors.During the colonial period, many Nigerians went to Mecca as they had done before the advent of British imperialism on foot,donkeys and horses. Many settled in the Sudan either on their way or on return from the hajj.Many worked in the vast cotton plantations on irrigated Gezira plains. Today, Nigerians and their descendants variously known as “ fellatta” constitute substantial portion of the Sudanese population.In other words we share a similar worldview (Weltanschauugen) and similar problems of political instability, underdevelopment, insecurity and struggle between Islamic theocracy and commitment to secularity. It is therefore appropriate to watch development in the Sudan with special interest because of common ties of history, culture and consanguinity.

    Initially after the overthrow of Omar Bashir, General Awad Ibn Auf, the minister of defence stepped in and promised a transitional government of two years and vast consultations with stakeholders before installing a democratically elected government. He also declared curfew from dusk to dawn. The demonstrators simply ignored him saying what they wanted was not an interim military government but a government of civilians in which any previous office holders would be barred. He threatened to enforce the curfew and when he realized soldiers were no longer ready to fire on civilians, he gave up and left the headship of the military transition council to a new man Lt. General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. To placate the street demonstrators, he quickly removed the much hated chief of internal security who allegedly detained thousands of people torturing them in the process. Provincial administrators were removed and the jails were thrown open so that all political prisoners can come out. General Burhan however has stuck to the two year transitional military council imposed by his predecessor. But how long he will last without resort to terror and strong-armed tactics remains to be seen. In the meantime, the demonstrators have said they have seen the kind of tactics of army coming to power and stating they would stay in power for a short while but after consolidation they stay for ever as shown by Numayri and Omar Bashir. While this is true, the fear in many circles including the international community is that the world cannot afford the disintegration of another Arab country with the possibility of it being taken over by terrorists.

    The situation all around in the geopolitical area creates fear in the mind of those who care for stability. Southern Sudan which seceded in 2011 is still involved in fratricidal ethnic conflict. Ethiopia is still not stable and is still involved in campaign of military pacification particularly in Oromia among its largest ethnic group. Egypt to the north under General Muhammad al Sisi is not the model of stability and the country’s hold on Sinai to the north is tenuous and is infested by ISIS terrorists. Libya since the NATO-assisted murder of Muammar el Khadafihas ceased being a state of one government. There is an going campaign against the UN-recognized government by GeneralKhalifaHaftar based in Benghazi who is backed apparently by Egypt, France and Russia hoping that he may impose his will on the whole state as General Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El Sisi has successfully done in Egypt by putting the Islamic revolutionaries and brotherhoods to the sword. The situation in Algeria is not yet clear after AbdelazizBouteflika resigned as president and was succeeded by an army council that has set a date for election in July with the well-organized FIS (la FronteIslamiqueSalut) possibly winning and declaring Algeria a caliphate. In the meantime, the vast majority of Arab countries of Syria, Yemen and Iraq are in disarray and in disaster and the world cannot afford the suffering of the Arabs to continue and to spread to the Sudan. This is why the international community, including Saudi Arabia, the United States and Britain are engaged in helping Sudan to transfer power peacefully without making the mistakes of the so-called Arab Spring during which time, Islamic idealists were allowed to hijack genuine cry for freedom. Sudan once hosted Osama bin Laden and this still rankles in the minds of American leaders who inspite of the basket case of Sudan must, for geopolitical reasons, have interest in what becomes of the country.

    Unfortunately the political prognosis for the future of the country is not very good. It lost most of its oil wells to South Sudan after partition. There are still regional and ethnic fissiparous movements in the country. There is massive unemployment and salaries are just too poor to satisfy the well-organized professional and labour unions. It used to get substantial financial support from Saudi Arabia which is now no longer as generous as it used to be. The industrial sector is not well developed and the country is surrounded by predatory neighbours of Egypt and Ethiopia. Sudan’s options are not many outside the River Nile floods-dependent cotton-growing agriculture and textile manufacture. Without political stability, it is doubtful if the problems of the country will be solved and this political stability rests on sandy and fragile agricultural economy.

  • Sudan: Al-Bashir bites the dust

    Although I am neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, but I hold this belief that dictators and tyrants are sick minds. It doesn’t always seem obvious to most people, until it is too late. And this is usually because tyrants look and act like normal persons. Even when their acts begin to verge on the abnormal, many are wont to see it as casual or momentary eccentricity. For those of them who came into power by revolution or liberation struggles, their sick minds are more difficult to discern in the early stages, as they are widely celebrated as liberators and heroes who can do no wrong. But it is this sickness of the mind that make them to become so inebriated with power, to suffer grand delusions of their own invincibility and indispensability to their nations, thus metamorphosing from respected leaders into “maximum rulers” and tin-gods.

    To dictators and tyrants, power is such an intoxicating and addictive potion they cannot imagine or visualize themselves as being normal without it. At the height of power-drunkenness, dictators begin to see themselves as omnipotent gods, ultimate law-givers wielding the power of life and death, and who must be obeyed by all as a matter of duty. High-handedness, impunity, lawlessness, gross human rights abuses, and corruption, are the very hallmarks of dictatorial rule. Before you know it, they begin to act as if state power is actually their just entitlement, and thus lose sight of when to quit. It is not uncommon for dictators to perceive themselves as the state personified and to convert the national treasury into a personal piggybank. The late Nigerian tyrant, General Sani Abacha, reportedly helped himself to a big chunk of the national exchequer while he terrorized the nation.

    General Omar Al-Bashir, the most ruthless, tyrannical ruler of Sudan, is the latest African dictator to bite the dust. It was only a few days before that the two-decade rule of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria was brought to an end by months of sustained popular protests across the country. The military high command moved swiftly against him when it became clear that no amount of intimidation or crackdown would make the people back down. The soldiers saw the futility of continuing to prop up an obsolescent regime headed by a vegetative leader. Ordinarily, President Bashir who had since December 2018 been facing relentless street protests against his 30-year dictatorship should have known that the time was up for him. Two simple reasons will suffice. First, Sudanese people were already fed up with him and wouldn’t settle for anything less than his exit from power. Second, another Arab-African despot had only a few days ago been forced out by “people power”. Only a demented dictator would not know from the experience of the Arab Spring that the success of the civil uprising in Algeria would have contagious effect on Sudan, that the Sudanese masses would draw oxygen and inspiration from the success of popular protests in Algeria.

    Al-Bashir’s 30-year rule was marked by mind-boggling bloodlettings. He prosecuted decades of civil war which eventually resulted in the excision of South Sudan from the country; he launched the most horrendous campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of the country through the arming of the so-called Janjaweed militias. For this he has been justly indicted for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) sitting in The Hague.

    Al-Bashir just didn’t get it! He was too inebriated with power to ever imagine he could bow to popular protests. His demented mind simply resorted to the default tactics of all tyrants…mass arrests and detention without trial, torture of protesters and anyone that caught the attention of his intelligence and security agencies, inexplicable disappearances, and other forms of massive crackdowns on the civilian population. He didn’t believe that brutal dictatorships have their expiry dates too.

    Since my graduate student days in Washington D.C. in the mid-1980s, I have watched and marvelled at the potency of “people power” and how it forced dictators to flee. My first example was the Philippines in 1986. I was glued to the television day after day for several weeks as civil protests spiralled to force President Ferdinand E. Marcos to flee the country after two decades of dictatorial rule. I was a visiting research fellow in the Netherlands in the year 2000 where I watched live on television the removal through courageous civil unrests of two separate dictators in the same month of November: Slobodan Milosevic, leader of the European country of Serbia and acclaimed “Butcher of the Balkans”, and General Robert Guei, the tormentor of Cote d’Ivoire, here in Africa.

    And then came the Arab Spring of early 2011, a campaign of civil unrest unwittingly ignited in Tunisia by Mohammed Bouazizi who set himself ablaze in public protest. Before anyone could say Jack Robinson, the ensuing wave of mass protests had consumed the corrupt dictatorship of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali who had to flee the country. Like a bush fire, it quickly swept through Egypt and Libya, consuming two hitherto immovable despots in its path: Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in Egypt, and Muammar Gaddafi, after 42 years in power in Libya. It seemed that the other remaining African despots had succeeded in consolidating their grip on power, at least until Robert Mugabe was toppled in the midst of mass protests by a not-so-military coup after 36 years in power in Zimbabwe. As if that was not surprising enough, the forced exit of two sight-tight Arab-African dictators in the same week. Is Africa rising?

    In most of the cases listed above (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe, and now Algeria and Sudan), sustained massive protests forced the armed forces in each country to take a stand: to be on the side of the people or continue to support murderous despots. For example, it was the Egyptian soldiers’ blunt refusal to open fire on civil protesters as ordered by the Mubarak regime that led to his eventual ouster. Similarly, Al-Bashir’s goose was cooked the moment officers of the armed forces started embracing civilians and refusing his orders to fire on them.

    Al-Bashir and his ilk are a bad advertisement for Africa in the 21st Century. I don’t know what fate awaits him out of power but I believe strongly that he should be brought to trial before the International Criminal Court for the war crimes and crimes against humanity he committed in South Sudan and Darfur. I do not share the sentimental claptrap that only African leaders are being brought before the ICC. For me, those who committed heinous atrocities against hapless African peoples should be brought to justice wherever possible. I vote for the ICC because these bloody tyrants may not be properly tried in their countries. It will be a warning to remaining African dinosaurs like Paul Biya and Yoweri Museveni that their comeuppance may not be far off, for in the final analysis, sovereignty belongs to the people. Al-Bashir has gone the way of all dictators, into the dung heap of infamy reserved for them. I congratulate the brave people of Sudan for liberating themselves from the clutches of an anachronistic dictatorship and chart a new course for their country.

     

    • Prof Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.