He said:
Oil does allow us extra revenues which permit some modernization, but if we modernize we are accused of militarism. This is a dilemma for us. But we have to be concerned with modernization because there are nine countries around us and we need helicopters, for example, to guard the pipelines.
In purely military terms, the Sudanese army had performed relatively well by African standards. Their equipment was often poorly maintained, but their generals managed to conduct, simultaneously, regular, semi-conventional and counter-insurgency wars over many years. Their battle-hardened neighbours had on occasion provided brigade-level fully armoured forces to support the SPLA. Despite the mismanaged economy and the manic zeal of the al-Turabi project, the army had done well to survive the SPLA advances, and the regular predictions of Western military experts that the army would collapse. True, the PDF took many of the casualties and the militias often did much of the fighting. The main reason for the survival of the army, and the ability to sustain the southern war, was partly due to the increasing oil income, but also the determined military leadership of al-Bashir, while General Bakri kept a lid on dissidents within the army and without. Major civilian demonstrations had broken out, for example in September 1994 when Khartoum University students led thousands of people to protest about food price inflation. Other riots about the cost of living spread throughout the north. More anti-government disturbances protesting about electricity and water shortages followed. The Islamist militias, as well as the army and police, had to work hard to contain the protests. Bakri purged the security services and quietly displaced civilian National Islamic Front influence. This, in effect, removed the al-Tuirabi factor from the security and armed services.
The army had had enough of al-Turabi. Despite its increase in personnel, the secret services were run ragged monitoring all the foreign Islamists whom al-Turabi had invited in. Some of them displayed good tradecraft in countersurveillance, such as Hezbollah, for example. A rule of thumb in surveillance work in the West is, if a priority subject is being observed, that three shifts comprising, ideally, a total of fifty people are required, especially if the target is streetwise. And the time taken to monitor equipment, audio and video, as well as street and car squads, can be enormous. It is almost possible to feel sorry for the Sudanese Mukhabarat as they tried to keep tabs on thousands of trained radicals, some of whom were not communicating in Arabic.
One of them had been egregiously removed: Carlos the Jackal, aka Illich Ramirez Sanchez, who was not an obvious part of the Islamic renaissance. He was a hard-drinking and womanizing Venezuelan Marxist, who had led a very exotic life of revolutionary (often pro-Palestinian) violence, sometimes funded by the KGB and the East German Stasi. In a deal which involved financial inducements, and possibly an arms deal, the French secret service was allowed to abduct him from Khartoum on the night of 13 August 1994. He was recuperating in a villa after a minor testicular operation. The principle of the ‘sale’ of Carlos – especially the obvious implications for the demands to remove Osama – split the army/security matrix and the NIF led by al-Turabi. The botched assassination attempt on Mubarak and the local and international blowback tore at the frayed sinews of the NIF/security nexus.
Al-Bashir determined to remove Osama bin Laden. He could not simply hand over the Saudi to the Americans – that would create a storm in the Arab world. The Saudi government was asked to ‘invite’ bin Laden to come home. If the Saudis chose to hand him over to the Americans, that was their business. Claiming that bin Laden was no longer a Saudi citizen, the Saudis refused to play ball. Realizing that his own reputation was on the line if his guest ended up in American hands, al-Turabi used his connections to arrange a safe haven in Afghanistan.
The removal of bin Laden, while appeasing the Americans, did not improve the pariah status of Sudan. The UN Human Rights Commission, as well as individual NGO reports, condemned Sudan for extensive human rights abuses. Khartoum decided that the domestic base of the regime needed to be shored up. Al-Turabi’s elaborate and dysfunctional system of local and regional shuras was transformed into a partly elected new national assembly in early 1996. Al-Turabi contrived to be elected for the assembly – after two impressive rival candidates mysteriously withdrew – and then organized his further election as speaker of the national assembly. The traditional party leaders were mostly in exile, but Sadiq al-Mahdi, in Khartoum, called the new assembly a farce. By making himself just another (senior) politician, al-Turabi had extricated himself from the secure Islamic carapace of revered theologian. Now the ‘Islamic Pope’, as detractors dubbed him, could be attacked by other politicians without the risk of being seen as anti-Islamic.
Sadiq al-Mahdi was hosting a wedding party in his own home’s luxuriant garden, and his brother in law, al-Turabi, was a guest. The Umma leader, assuming that his Muhhabarat tail was relaxing, slipped away from the garden and country to join the National Democratic Alliance, the opposition coalition in Asmara. Al-Mahdi also met with President Mubarak, still an implacable enemy of the Khartoum regime. General Bakri’s recent reforms of the security services could have led to some self-flagellation about al-Mahdi’s flight. It was strongly rumoured, however, that Khartoum had wanted to get rid of al-Mahdi, who would inevitably sow confusion and disarray in the NDA, which he obligingly did.
Khartoum lost a number of senior NIF officials and ministers, as well as top military officers, in a (genuine) air crash when an Antonov-26 went down in the Sobat River after overrunning the airport in February 1998. Al-Bashir used this opportunity to set up a new cabinet more to his own liking, although it still contained NIF supporters, as well as some from a breakaway faction of al-Mahdi’s Umma party. It also boasted a token southerner or two, including the persistent Lam Akol, head of the rump (of a rump) SPLA-United, as minister of transport. In May 1998 al-Bashir won a referendum to change the constitution which in effect legalized the 1989 revolution. This boosted the power of the presidency and finally accepted sharia as the sole source of law. Having secured his own base, and sidelined al-Turabi, the new government tried to improve its very tarnished image in the world, by allowing the old political parties to re-emerge after a decade of enforced hibernation.
Not to be outdone, al-Turabi reorganized the NIF into the National Congress Party. He also set about campaigning to boost the authority and influence of the position of speaker of the assembly. The plan was to use parliament and his party to limit the new powers of the presidency. Al-Bashir would become merely a titular head of state; real power would be back in the hands of the versatile and ambitious Imam. Al-Bashir moved to expand his domestic base by seeking reconciliation with the NDA, especially the man he had displaced, al-Mahdi. All the seized assets of the Umma party were returned. Al-Turabi upped the stakes by offering to meet al-Mahdi in Mecca. The schism between the two main Khartoum leaders could no longer be hidden – acerbic exchanges between them became public knowledge. Al-Turabi pushed hard to influence the election of the powerful state governors, as well as further trying to restrict presidential powers. The national assembly was due to vote on al-Turabi’s proposals on 14 December 1999. Two days before, about forty of al-Bashir’s closest allies, both in the old NIF and the army, met at the presidential palace at 5.00 pm. They debated until 4.00 am the next morning. A leading participant was Ali Othman Taha, whose legal skills were used to draft the decree to change the constitution and close the parliament.
Reminiscing years later, al-Bashir used a striking word to describe his action that morning. He told me he wanted to ‘freeze’ al-Turabi.
Al-Bashir sent his trusted armoured brigade to surround the assembly – a two-storey building that is reminiscent, ironically, of the Israeli Knesset. The president dissolved the assembly and sacked al-Turabi. In one of his regular radio talks, al-Bashir warned al-Turabi’s followers: ‘We are calling for freedom in Sudan, but those who think that freedom is a call to anarchy and abuse to the martyrs are under an illusion.’ A state of emergency
was declared, but elections were promised for the following year. Al-Bashir had finally broken the umbilical ties with his patron. From now on Omar al-Bashir was flying solo as the leader of Sudan.
The army welcomed the moves, not least because it resented the rival and erratic influence of the PDF and the NIF militias. Many of the more conservative Arab neighbouring states welcomed the fall of al-Turabi, especially Egypt. Al-Bashir assured President Mubarak that al-Turabi and his Islamist renaissance movement would not make a comeback. The political Imam was out of power, but was still capable of full-throated roars. In May 2000, on the al-Jazeera TV network, he urged the Sudanese to take to the streets and depose the military dictatorship. Thereupon he was banned from all political activity and removed as secretary general of the National Congress Party. So he organized a new party, the Popular National Congress (PNC) and used the party’s newspaper to attack al-Bashir.
On 20 Feb 2001, on behalf of his fledgling party, al-Turabi signed an agreement with the SPLA which promised the right of self-determination in the south in exchange for a joint opposition to al-Bashir. Why the famed Islamist should make a deal with his lifelong enemies, the unbelievers in the south, was hard to fathom, except for personal vengeance against his former ally, the president. This was more than a political mistake; it would be interpreted as treason by many in Khartoum, even outside the al-Bashir circle. Al-Turabi was incarcerated the next day. He was back in Kobar prison, and not in quite as capacious a cell as the last time. He faced charges of communicating with the enemy, some of his senior associates were arrested and al-Turabi’s PNC party was proscribed. Nevertheless, the Imam still had a lot of support The Mukhabarat worried about a ‘third force’ emerging from the militias, and the PDF. The PDF did not rise up, partly because the army had integrated them more closely. University students did protest on behalf of al-Turabi; this was a minor disturbance, but the army still feared an armed pro-al-Turabi insurrection. Al-Bashir gave a pep talk to a large gathering of the PDF personnel:
Sudanese youth are fighting in the war zone while other youths in the world are busy with discos and parties. We thank Allah we have prepared these youths as the future of Sudan. Allah Akbar.
The government needed to maintain some sort of unity in the face of the war in the south.
As a sop to avoid any further Islamist disturbances, al-Turabi was moved from Kobar prison to house arrest. His immediate power base had been disrupted but, despite regular bouts of house arrest and imprisonment, al-Turabi was to remain a thorn in the side of the president for the next decade. Al-Turabi was jailed for dealing with the SPLA/M, a necessary prerequisite to end the civil war, a step which al-Bashir took himself a year or so later. Al-Turabi, typically and perhaps prematurely, had acted as a lone wolf. He seemed unable to learn from his mistakes. He repeated the manoeuvre by making a deal with the main rebels in the western war, in Darfur. He went further than parleying with them: he was accused of arming and funding them. Al-Turabi was also accused of helping to organize a major incursion from Darfur of an armoured column which attacked Omdurman in May 2008. Presumably, the president had the self-restraint not to repeat, in Arabic, the famous line: ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Consolidation of power.
Freed from the ‘meddlesome priest’, Al-Bashir consolidated his position. In June 2000 the president had added ten senior military officers to the cabinet. State security and the direction of the south war was his priority. Now the new oil bonanza could pay for it.
In May 1999 the president had officially opened the new oil terminal just south of Port Sudan. This connected the 1,000-mile pipeline from the main Heglig installations and southern oilfields in Unity state. The system had been built by a consortium from China, Canada and Malaysia. The oil exports quickly pulled Sudan out of its hopeless debt situation (it had the world’s largest debts to the World Bank and IMF) and created a growth spurt for the next decade of 6 to 8 per cent of GDP. True, the wealth accumulated around the three towns, but some inevitably trickled down. Before the oil, car traffic was sparse in the capital, but soon the skyline changed and traffic jams became common.
The tale of oil was a complex one and, as with most similar African states, the black gold was a curse and a blessing. The original Chevron concessions had been sold because of the war, and the Chinese became the main players. They had been involved with Sudan since the 1970s; the symbolically large Friendship Hall, built in central Khartoum in that period, was used for all sorts of prominent government functions. Khartoum was always eager to court Beijing, not least as a counter to the hostile USA in the UN Security Council. Militarily, China became the chief arms supplier, so the oil deals were a natural accompaniment.
The president’s personal diplomacy had been central to oil development. The largest American exploration, via Chevron, had stopped development in 1984 after rebel attacks in the south. But Chevron did not give up completely until 1992. Despite the Chinese military ties, al-Bashir was drawn first to Malaysia. He paid a three-day state visit to Kuala Lumpur in June 1991 as the guest of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. The priority was an oil deal, though Petronas, the largest Malaysian oil company, was very wary, even though the two countries shared considerable political, religious and social links. One of the senior oil experts accompanying al-Bashir put it frankly: ‘We feel very close to Petronas, probably because of the skin colour and same names. My people feel at home with Malaysians.’1 But not sufficiently at home: Petronas dragged its feet for some years. Khartoum actively tried to play off China against Malaysia and later India.
Al-Bashir paid a successful state visit to China in September 1995 and he felt he had been very warmly received. President Jiang talked of pushing Sino-Sudanese relations to ‘greater heights’. But the security, financial and technical difficulties had already caused some delays. The Gulf states also took an interest in Sudan’s oil exploration. Political pressure eventually forced the Canadian oil company, Talisman, to quit Sudan, but the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) took up much of the slack, as later did India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Videsh (OVL).
The oil developments in the south brought desperately needed money to the Khartoum treasury, but it also excited international criticism because of actions by the army and militias, including the southern Bul Nuer militia of Paulino Matip. They were accused of a scorched-earth policy, driving away local tribespeople to ensure empty and secure oil fields. Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch kept up a barrage of condemnation about human rights abuses in areas adjacent to the fields. The drumbeat of media and NGO pressures deterred nearly all the remaining Western oil companies and left China, Malaysia and India as the dominant players. They seemed less vulnerable to the NGO lobbies.
Before the oil really started to flow in 1999, the economy was on its knees. Sudan’s chronic debt problems prompted its expulsion from the World Bank. Severe foreign currency shortages crippled the economy, which was ravaged by inflation. But even before the oil salvation, prices for cotton improved on the world market. Sugar exports boomed too. And one product was always exempt from US sanctions – gum arabic, which was extracted from a certain type of acacia tree which grew in the Sahel. As a prime ingredient of chewing gum and Coca Cola, no American government could be seen to deny these delights to its citizens.
Once oil reached 512,000 barrels per day, some of the Gulf states rushed to invest (Qatar was especially interested in agricultural developments). Money poured in for smart new hotels in Khartoum for visiting businessmen. The most impressive was the oval-shaped five-star Corinthia hotel opened in 2008, which locals dubbed ‘Gaddafi’s Egg’, because it was funded by the Libyans. Arab money helped to build the massive Merowe Dam, which was completed by the Chinese in 2008. Siemens constructed the necessary electricity grids to finally provide a reliable source of energy for the three towns. Sudan started building its own cars under licence. Coca Cola and Pepsi plants arrived. The governme
nt privatized its telecommunications giant, Sudatel, and its cell-phone partner, Mobitel, that soon transformed urban Sudanese into mobile-phone addicts. In 2004 Turkey erected the country’s first shopping mall in Khartoum, with glitzy shops and a supermarket, food hall and cinema complex. Sudanese planners were trying to turn Khartoum into a second Dubai.
Under al-Turabi, the country was accused of returning to the time of the Prophet (actually this was unfair, as he wanted to adjust Islam to the modern era and was hostile to the anti-modernism of Wahhabism). But al-Bashir and the ruling NCP party regarded modernization as a prime benefit of the revolution. Khartoum wags used to joke that al-Turabi wanted to lead the people to the mosque, but under al-Bashir they all went to the souk. The president and his advisers loved to list the new roads and universities, not mosques and madrassas. The changes of the more pragmatic al-Bashir’s attitude led to accusations that the theological superstructure of the regime was a mere façade. The president could not win. He was condemned for being a religious fanatic or damned for being irreligious. Yet the president wanted his legacy to be as a modernizer who built up Sudan’s infrastructure and created economic stability.
No matter how much money came into state coffers, it could not compensate for the true costs of war. The annual defence budget increased by a third from $424 million in 19995 to $580 million in 2000-01, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies. That was almost certainly an under-estimate as the regular defence budget did not include the costs of the PDF and security services. Moreover, even the tough-minded Indian investors and Beijing’s Central Committee were not totally immune to foreign political pressures, and certainly not the security concerns about the oilfields. Al-Bashir had to end the war in the south. Enough was enough. But could a fighting general be a peacemaker? Could an Islamist revolutionary achieve lasting peace with the unbelievers in the south? Perhaps, like Oliver Cromwell, the president had seen off his Levellers in the form of al-Turabi and his followers. There were other historical parallels for what al-Bashir was about to do. Only an impeccable right-wing and patriotic general such as Charles de Gaulle could have had the courage and kudos to give up on the long savage war in Algeria and grant independence. That was a close parallel. Politically, only Richard Nixon, an ardent cold war warrior, could have done the deal with the Communists in Beijing, and got away with it. Everything the army and religious conservatives had fought for since 1956 – sharia, unity of the state and victory over the ‘terrorism/mutiny/rebellion’ in the south – might be imperilled by a genuine peace process. Could President al-Bashir become a successful peacemaker?
Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War Page 19