‘He often works late, but doesn’t bring work home. He wants to come home with a “clear soul”.’
And she lauded the president’s humour. Some of it would be a situational quip, sometimes a formal joke. ‘He tells a joke every day.’
I was too polite to ask the wife whether her husband managed a new joke every day.
I have never met the president’s older first wife. I did ask for a meeting, but I was told she was unwell. She officially runs a major NGO, as does Madame Widad – although of course it is a very different NGO.
Omar al-Bashir also raised the children of his older brother Ahmed, after he died. Then he brought up the three daughters of his younger brother, Mohamed Hassan, who is almost the spitting image of the president, ‘albeit much better looking’, Hassan would tell me – regularly. Mohamed Hassan was working in the UAE, and his daughters were studying in Khartoum. I interviewed or spent considerable time with the three very attractive nieces; all were highly independent, modern young women. They complained about their uncle’s strictness, but said that ‘Umo’ – Uncle Omar – was very loving and supportive.
I asked one highly-educated niece whether she thought her uncle should not stand again. No, she said. ‘He should have got out at the top – after Naivasha [after the signing of the successful peace talks with the south in January 2005].’
Returning to domestic matters, the nieces said he is ‘really a morning person’. They would cook his breakfast personally, a sort of porridge called foul. This Sudanese speciality looks but does not taste foul. They did not like the pressure of being in the first family. Nor did they ask for favours in school and college; rather they felt they had to do even better to overcompensate for any allegations of favouritism. One niece confessed that when she travelled she tended to avoid using the surname ‘al-Bashir’ so she could behave as a normal citizen.
It is deeply ironic, not to say hypocritical, that all the president’s younger family members, the stepchildren, the nephews and nieces and their spouses, all speak excellent if American-accented English. All have had first-class private-school and university education in Sudan, the Gulf and the UK. This point is significant: they were well educated, usually in English. Yet the first thing the Islamic revolutionaries did after 1989 was to Arabize and Islamize the schools and universities. Although universities multiplied, standards dropped. A whole generation of Sudanese high achievers lost out on a good education, not least in the international language of English. The president’s brother, Mohamed Hassan, did admit to me that it was the president’s biggest mistake: ‘The changes in the educational system – he should have kept English.’
The president is undoubtedly a dedicated family man who insisted that his greatest influence was his father. Omar’s father, Hassan – although illiterate – encouraged his sons’ education. Initially he could not write, but taught himself to read by endlessly scanning newspapers. Later the autodidact collected a small library of books in his home. Hassan continued to be the dominant influence on his son Omar, right up until his death in 1986. He cautioned his son in 1983 and 1984 not to engage in politics while in the army. He was so concerned about the dangers that he urged his son to resign his commission. Had he not died when he did, perhaps the son may not have led the 1989 coup. Al-Bashir senior seemed a formidable sort of fellow. I watched a long family video of him recorded in the early 1980s. Despite his somewhat uneducated northern accent, he spoke very fluently, confidently and directly to the camera; at length in a strong voice. Obviously the son, the future president, learned rhetorical gifts from his father.
Sarasir was and is a very political village. During my visit to the school, mosque and family homes, the locals and al-Bashir’s extended family engaged in heated debate about current affairs. As in much of Sudan, everyone is an amateur politician.
I recalled a recent conversation with a senior intelligence officer in a narrow dusty lane in central Khartoum. A poorly dressed elderly woman was selling glasses of tea from a small tray. ‘There are twenty million politicians in this country. See that tea lady there,’ the officer said, pointing. ‘She would have strong political opinions and she would share them.’
I thought: True, they are quite free to chat on the streets or in cafes, but far less free in the newspapers.
* * * *
Omar al-Bashir’s family moved to Khartoum North, to a small pink-painted house opposite a hostel for mentally ill people. It was at this home that I had arranged to meet some of the leader’s secondary schoolmates and a handful of his teachers, now long in the tooth, but alert. Omar attended a government-run school in Khartoum North.
I was inundated with polite platitudes:
‘He was a quiet boy, very disciplined.’
‘Very religious, or perhaps I should say traditionalist.’
‘Always knew he would become something.’
‘If you wanted a prefect, you would choose Omar.’
‘He was especially good at maths and English.’
I persisted, especially with a teacher who spoke excellent English and who had lived in my home town, Cardiff. He was disappointed that Omar did not go to university – something that perhaps continuously played on the president’s mind when he had to deal later with much better-educated people in his own party and urbane foreign politicians.
One of Omar’s classmates confessed that ‘when we were fourteen occasionally we would bunk off school and go to the cinema’. So, thankfully, young Omar was not a saint. More interestingly, I discovered from his teachers that around about age 15-16, Omar was kicked out of the Muslim Brotherhood for smoking. That fact has been left out of his official CV. But Omar had relatives in the movement and he was later allowed back in.
Al-Bashir was not lazy. He played a lot of sport, volleyball and squash as well as football. Although keen on sport, he did not possess an athletic or imposing build. Relatively short, at about five feet nine inches, he had to work on his fitness. He was also usually short of money. He worked in school holidays helping his father in his farm-work as well as with a local mechanic in his garage.
It was partly financial pressures that prompted his move into the army rather than university. Young Omar wanted to be a doctor (a career taken up by one of his brothers). His second choice was a soldier and his third a teacher. He completed his Cambridge Certificate and he joined the armed forces, initially – he hoped – to train as a pilot.
Recalling his uncles’ service in the imperial forces, the young Omar had also hoped to train in Britain. ‘I was going to study in the UK, but the UDI crisis stopped me,’ the president told me when we were reminiscing about his early life choices. He was referring to Rhodesia’s illegal declaration of independence in November 1965. Britain’s half-hearted reaction to the white rebels caused outrage in many African states.
He studied for two years at the Sudan Military Academy, and was commissioned as an officer in December 1966. The imperial connection was cemented by British Army instructors (who were later replaced by Russians). The cadet officers at the military academy were divided into three platoons, each with about 100 cadets. Omar al-Bashir was in the 3rd Platoon. I spoke to some of the president’s fellow cadets, who admitted that the ‘British had left many good principles’. Cadet al-Bashir responded well to the British-style discipline system, according to his fellow cadets. After commissioning, he was sent to Darfur, where he spent two years in all. For the young lieutenant it was a tough posting; first at Abokarinka, west of Nyala, as a rookie officer in charge of thirty-two men. In the desert and savannah terrain, his job was to contain the traditional tribal disputes.
A fellow cadet in the same cohort, later to become a general, told me, ‘He had the charisma of a commander from the start, and he was a decisionmaker, although he was a simple man, from a simple family. I have never seen him drink alcohol or smoke. He is a very religious man, but full of jokes.’ Privately, the general told me sotto voce that his old friend had been a great soldier, but the
ruling party had ‘poisoned his mind’.
A number of senior officers, some retired, commented on Omar al-Bashir’s personal physical fitness, leadership from the front in combat and popularity with his men. One general said ‘He showed good moral as well as military leadership.’ Another very senior officer told me, ‘The President still stands up when he meets his former military superiors – he is a real army man.’ Again – in private – some of his army comrades, still loyal to him, blame the ruling party for ‘capturing’ him. Some of his most loyal military and intelligence leaders supported an aborted palace coup in 2012, against the party, but not him, some would say. Nevertheless, the army remained a major part of his natural constituency throughout his long career, partly because of his inter-personal skills. He was seen as a natural leader, but who would consult carefully with his colleagues. Professor Ibrahim A. Ghandour, a big beast in the ruling National Congress Party, put it best, in his immaculate BBC English: ‘Nobody pushes the President around, but he is a man of Shura.’2
After his Darfur posting, Lieutenant al-Bashir underwent six months’ intensive paratrooper training to secure the coveted red beret. Then, for nine months, he studied at the Egyptian Military Academy in Cairo where he specialized in further paratrooper training. He was taught by Russian instructors and became a fully fledged paratroop officer in 1969. During his career, he completed sixteen jumps, though none were operational. He was promoted to captain in 1971.
In 1973 he returned to Egypt. ‘We were sent as an act of solidarity during the 1973 war. We were proud to go,’ said the president. He was part of a joint Sudanese-Egyptian special forces group, which was based forty miles from the Israeli front line, as a shield against the possibility of General Ariel Sharon’s advance formations pushing on into Cairo. Omar al-Bashir experienced intermittent shelling, but was not part of the SF units which crossed over the Suez Canal in hit-and-run ambushes on Israeli troops.
The young officer showed promise in liaising with foreign forces, because he was sent in 1975 to be a military attaché in the United Arab Emirates. It wasn’t all diplomacy: he did a tour of duty in 1976 with the Arab League peacekeeping force in Lebanon. He was promoted to major while serving there. He also spent time at the infantry school in Abu Dhabi. From 1979 to 1981 he was a garrison commander in Khartoum; in 1980 he had been made a lieutenant colonel. Next, he was promoted to be a commander of an armoured parachute brigade, a post he held until 1987. In 1981 he had been promoted to full colonel. During this period, he obtained, in 1981, a master’s degree in military science from the Sudanese Command and Staff College. In 1983 he achieved a second master’s in military science in Malaysia. He wrote his dissertation, in English, on counter-insurgency. (In 2011, he secured another master’s via part-time study at Al-Jazeera University in Medeni.)
Extensive combat experience was gained in the south of his own country. During his home postings, he spent a total of three years conducting counterinsurgency operations against the SPLA. Some of it was conducted from his role as garrison commander at Mayum, in the oil-rich southern Unity state. While there he became an expert in working with the pro-Khartoum Nuer militias, especially the ‘army’ formed around Paulino Matip Nhial. The future field marshal described the conditions as very tough, especially during the rainy season. Although privately he admitted that leading an armoured brigade was a career highpoint, he said, ‘During the war, there were no happy times.’
‘The people were suffering in the south. But we were also suffering from very bad conditions – we suffered from shortages of food, equipment and medicine. The SPLA would often attack when we were sleeping at night.’ Typically, al-Bashir would lead from the front, even on foot patrols of four or five days’ duration.
I asked the president whether he had been wounded in combat.
‘I had a lot of close calls, but, no, I was never wounded.’
Most presidents and military men with lots of combat experience tend not to underplay their pasts; al-Bashir seemed to be genuinely modest about his career achievements. He played it straight.
* * * *
A number of his toughest critics, including American envoys, accepted that, although Khartoum politicians had a reputation for deviousness, the president always played a straight bat, to use a cricketing analogy. I spoke to a number of senior journalists in Khartoum who knew the president well. One said that he had travelled a lot with al-Bashir abroad. ‘There is no pomp and circumstance – you feel you are travelling with a normal person. We share meals with him. Whenever he meets journalists he will ask about their families.’ Another commented on how the president would visit ordinary people’s homes and weddings, and always without guards.
If a journalist travels a lot with a president and goes to the same weddings, he is obviously an insider. So I spoke to another senior hack who had been on the inside of the government’s prisons a number of times. I asked the opposition writer about the alleged corruption in the al-Bashir family. He said that he ‘was sure the president was not personally corrupt’, but some of the people around him probably were.
So why doesn’t he stop them?
‘Fighting corruption is like fighting an octopus,’ said the independent journalist. ‘But a number of politicians have been prosecuted – two of the president’s relatives have been put in jail for bouncing a cheque.’
The anti-government journalist left a final thought with me as I shook hands to leave: ‘Without Bashir, there would have been three or four countries, not two.’
* * * *
Omar al-Bashir developed an impressive military pedigree, but how did he become a political soldier? From schooldays he had been involved with the Islamic movement. His temporary postings with the Egyptian army must have influenced him with some of the Nasserist ethos which pervaded many Arab armies. But only so far in al-Bashir’s case, because Islamic tendencies would have precluded the modernizing, secular approach of military revolutions in neighbouring states. After 1977, and with Numeiri’s regime reconciling its differences with the Brotherhood, the Islamist movement began a conscious policy of infiltration of the armed forces. Despite attracting the attention of Numeiri’s Mukhabarat, al-Bashir managed to quietly work away at securing the influence of the Islamist movement in the army.
The British tradition of an apolitical army had been lost in Sudan. As Omar al-Bashir admitted to me, ‘The armed forces were involved in politics. There were various political movements within the army – Ba’athists, communists, Islamists … Remember that the communists in the army tried to stage a coup against Numeiri in 1971.’
After Numeiri was toppled in 1985, there were rumours that al-Bashir was involved in a possible coup attempt to bring into power the National Islamic Front, led by the charismatic and erudite preacher Hassan al-Turabi. To keep him away from the limelight in Khartoum, and safe from the immediate attentions of the secret police, sympathetic senior generals posted al-Bashir to active combat duties in the south. He performed well and was promoted to brigadier in 1988. He was on active duty until just before the coup of June 1989. The Islamist movement had chosen him as potential leader of their military wing.
Al-Bashir was a chosen one, but not initially the chosen military supremo. Partly because of chance, some of the plotters were removed. One was posted to Egypt, another was sent to an isolated southern posting. As Omar al-Bashir confided to me, ‘We thought we had a 50-50 chance of succeeding. Originally about 300 officers were involved, but many were moved.’ Some of the others were divided on the timing.
The core conspiracy was reduced to thirty officers, ranging from lieutenant to general. Al-Bashir did much of the careful preparation. As a commander of mobile armoured units he was in a key position. ‘I was the leader. It was one of the crucial points of my career. We had strong armoured backing, but it proved unnecessary and we did it from the inside. It was a success, and without any fighting or bloodshed.’
After the coup, al-Bashir became minister of defence. In 199
3 he became President of Sudan and later in his presidency was promoted to field marshal. Not bad for a farm boy. But he was an army man through and through. How would he sublimate his loyalty to the army to the demands of party politics? He had proved himself as a military leader, and had exhibited skills in underground politics, but how would he rate as a player on the national and international political stage?
Chapter 5
The Duopoly
On the night of 30 June 1989 Brigadier Omar al-Bashir led the coup with a small core officer component of just thirty. ‘The people were fed up with Sadiq al-Mahdi,’ al-Bashir told me straightforwardly. ‘We did it from the inside.’ His years in the paratrooper units around Khartoum meant that they followed his orders in efficiently capturing the strategic sites in the three towns. It was rapid and bloodless like the 1969 Numeiri military takeover. And for a while many Sudanese assumed that it was a coup like any other. It was not: al Bashir would still be in power more than twenty-five years later.
The military trappings were initially similar. The officers set up a Revolutionary Command Council, which echoed the Nasserite tradition. But this was by no means a secular putsch. It had been carefully planned with the National Islamic Front party. Its head in the constituent assembly, Ali Othman Muhammed Taha, had spent months joint-planning with al-Bashir as to precisely what the coup was intended to achieve. Al-Bashir’s radio and later TV address talked about al-Mahdi’s ‘failures of democratic government’. Few Sudanese expected an Islamist revolution to replace the very flawed democracy; a revolution fashioned by a visionary who had planned for this day for decades: Hassan al-Turabi. Al-Bashir worked behind the scenes to stabilize the army and concentrate on trying to claw back the military defeats of the previous government. Al-Turabi, however, was soon to hog the spotlight at home and abroad, via his incessant travelling. The military leader behind the coup kept a low public profile. This was not to be a cult-led revolution based on the Nasser model.
Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War Page 14