Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War

by Paul Moorcraft

  It’s often said that countries get the governments they deserve. The Sudanese, for all their good personal qualities, have not been blessed by good governance. The lasting British legacy was not democracy, but a relatively efficient army. Sudan fell into the African trap of a big man leading a big army. The country also inherited almost intractable sectarian politics, firstly the Umma and DUP, both anachronistic feudal family operations; then the Brotherhood/NIF/NCP muscled in. They all tended to put party before national interest. This was also true of the south, as the current civil war tragically illustrates. Nobody could really answer the perennial question – what is Sudanese? The wrong answer for so long was Islamic inclusivity; that was bound to cause endless war and continuous growth of the diaspora abroad.

  It could be argued that Omar al-Bashir – despite being an Islamist and a strongman with a big army – broke the mould. Finally, he cut the Gordian knot of sharia by allowing self-government and religious freedom in the south and the option of independence. And, unlike President Numeiri, he stuck to his word. Al-Bashir faced constantly the risk of defenestration from his own party. Critics will say he had no choice, that he was dragged kicking and screaming to the CPA final deal. Al-Bashir did not regard the CPA as a defeat, however. ‘We did not sign it after we had been broken,’ he said. ‘We signed it while we were at the peak of our victories.’ That might be an overstatement, but the oil money was paying for a more modern army, which was not defeated. Obviously the battlefield played a part, but al-Bashir genuinely was sick of the killing in the south. He told me this repeatedly. In my view, al-Bashir was playing a straight bat. Andrew Natsios, the American special envoy to Sudan, was a relentless critic of the al-Bashir government, but he said, ‘In my dealings with Bashir, he has been straightforward and never misled me.’ I share that opinion. That is why I believe that the president took great risks for peace. And, for once in Khartoum’s black history of governance, put country before party.

  In my conversations with him, it was clear that the president felt that he was a wronged and misunderstood man. Perhaps he will be judged by history rather than the ICC. And history’s verdict may be that Omar al-Bashir sincerely tried to keep his vast quarrelsome country together. He was doomed to fail almost regardless of what he did, although maintaining Islamicization in the south was bound to inflame tensions. Ultimately, he was guided by his faith and patriotism, even if they sometimes tugged in different directions. Perhaps Sudan was simply unworkable in the borders inherited from the British. It was al-Bashir’s bad luck or misguided sense of destiny that he chose to lead an ungovernable country, at probably an ungovernable time. His father cautioned him against a political career because he thought Sudan was impossible to rule. Omar al-Bashir’s father may have been correct.

  Appendix

  A Short Guide to the Internal Armed Forces Fighting in Sudan’s Civil Wars

  This is a rough guide as Sudan has always tended to be a statistics-free zone. As a regular force, the northern-led army was more standard. The insurgents formed a sometimes competing mosaic of irregular forces and militias that switched sides, although during the course of the civil war the SPLA became the dominant southern player. When the south became independent in 2011, in effect the army became the government. The sizes and equipment also varied widely according to the flow of the conflict, deliveries of foreign weapons and battlefield attrition. Also, from 2005 to 2011 the northern and southern armies set up joint forces, although this was often a theoretical paper exercise. In 2011, on independence, the south set up its own army and spent far more on weapons than welfare. Some of the new imported equipment was destroyed in the civil war that began in 2013. It would be useful to provide an order of battle (orbat) at a set date, for example, 2005, the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or southern independence in 2011. Because of the shifting patterns of the wars and sometimes inaccurate official or non-existing statistics, I will provide a general summary of the structures that operated in the period from 2003 to 2013.

  THE NORTH

  Sudanese Armed Forces

  Army

  The forces have been designated by a variety of names in the north and south. For ease of description, I shall call the northern forces the Sudanese Armed Forces. The modern structure originated in the Sudan Defence Force set up in 1925 (I have described this in more detail in the historical section of this book). Sudan developed its own forces after independence in 1956. The new state inherited an experienced and well-trained army from the British, but it was small, around 5,000 to 6,000 after it was reduced following the Second World War. It was volunteer, professional and apolitical. Years of coups and endless wars changed the nature of the army, as did the later introduction of conscription and the incorporation of ill-trained paramilitaries. The army roughly doubled in size in the decade following independence. By the end of the first round of the civil war in 1972, the army had reached about 50,000 to 60,000 men. When the second round began, conscription, militias and paramilitary forces further boosted its size. The regular army was still essentially a light infantry force, supported by specialized units.

  Most estimates, such as by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, put the northern armed forces at between 100,000 and 105,000 by the time of southern secession. This included 20,000 conscripts, liable from 18-30 to serve for two years. This estimate does not include militias and paramilitaries.

  The army was headquartered in Khartoum with six regional commands. Each command was supposed to be of divisional strength, but this was often a paper estimate. The 6th Division was based in El Fasher (the Western Command), for example, but it was usually at half-strength, 2,500 personnel. The commands were often drained of manpower to stem an operational disaster or two in the south. And sometimes the stationing and manpower were related to coup preparation or deterrence, especially for the 7th Armoured Division at Shajarah, south of Khartoum, and the Airborne Division based at Khartoum International Airport.

  The army officially had one armoured division and six divisions of infantry, supported by mechanized units. The Special Forces Battalion, with five companies, was based in Khartoum, both as a praetorian guard and as support to the special anti-terrorist unit that could deploy rapidly in the three towns. Special reconnaissance units and engineer brigades could also support SF operations. In addition the army relied on artillery and general engineering formations. The army also had a brigade of border guards in its complement.

  The army inherited the Sandhurst and Staff College training system from the British. A military college was established just outside Omdurman in 1948 and ran a two-year officer cadet programme, leading to a commission as second lieutenant. In the post-independence period about sixty graduated each year; this reached an average of around 150 in the 1980s. This could be much increased by political pressures – not so much the war, but foreign officers being inducted. Some sixty Ugandans were trained in 1982 after Idi Amin’s removal from power.

  The Sudanese started off with surplus British stock, for example the Saladin and Ferret armoured vehicles. The IISS reported that, in 2011, the army boasted 360 main battle and light tanks. Russia and Ukraine provided much of the early armour which had been upgraded. China replaced Soviet largesse and the latest Chinese Type 96 tanks were reputed to be in the Sudanese arsenal. In 2012, when South Sudanese armour penetrated the north near Heglig, a Chinese Type 96 was reported to have knocked out a Russian T-72 manned by the SPLA. The Sudanese were said to deploy over 400 armoured personnel carriers as well as seventy-five older Russian infantry fighting vehicles. Over 100 Egyptian versions of Russian armoured vehicles, including the Walid, were ordered in the 1980s – but nobody has recorded how many arrived or survived. Constant war and often poor servicing hollowed out the Sudanese inventory.

  The Sudanese had a standard array of towed and self-propelled artillery. They also deployed a psychologically devastating system, despite its age and inaccuracy: multiple rocket launchers, v
ariants of the Soviet 122mm BM-21, NATO codenamed Grad (meaning hail). Sudan also had a small range of surface-to air-missiles, including the Strela-2 and SA-7 Grail.

  Air Force

  The air force manpower complement was estimated to be 3,000, with eighty-four combat-capable aircraft. It had an official front-line strength of thirty-nine fighters, of which the majority were Russian-built MiG-29s types (Fulcrum in NATO reporting) as well as Chinese export variants of the Chengdu F-7s. A-5 Fantans were used for ground attack. The inventory also included Chinese/Pakistan-built Karakorums for training and as light attack aircraft. For transport, the air force used AN-26s, some of which were used as bombers – throwing out barrel bombs from the back. This has been castigated in the current civil war in Syria, and publicized with lots of video phones around; it was more hidden in Darfur (although I witnessed its effects in 2004). Four C-130 Hercules were also said to be in the air force.

  The fleet included over thirty Mi-24 attack helicopters, codenamed Hind by NATO. This is one of the most deadly COIN weapons in the world (as I can personally attest from being on the receiving end, daily, in 1984 in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation). Sudan also deployed over twenty Mi-8 transport choppers.

  The two main air bases were at Khartoum International Airport and Wadi Sayyidna, north of Omdurman. The air force also freely used civilian airports, for example during operations in Darfur, mainly El Geneina, Nyala and El Fasher. Plane crashes were common, often because of accidents, caused by poor maintenance or pilot error rather than enemy action. Sometimes senior personnel were killed during VIP flights.

  The Navy

  Fighting with armoured steamers along the Nile had been a regular part of colonial history in the region. Shipbuilding in Khartoum had developed before independence. The British conducted naval operations initially from Suakin, with its charming if ruined old city built from coral. By the mid-1920s Britain had switched operations to Port Sudan, thirty miles away. Busy with policing on the Nile, the navy was slow to develop any kind of blue-water strategy to control its 530-mile coastline. The Iranians supplied two 70-ton coastal patrol craft and later some inshore craft. The 2011 naval complement was around 1,300. The two main bases were Port Sudan and Flamingo Bay on the Red Sea.

  Paramilitary

  Popular Defence Force (PDF)

  The standing force of the PDF was around 20,000, with perhaps 85,000 reservists. Set up in November 1989, it became a provisional military wing of the Islamist movement. This ‘paramilitary revolution’ was intended not only to create mujahedeen fighters in the holy war in the south, but to also galvanize a cultural revolution in the north. The whole nature of security systems was changed after 1989. With Islamist mobilization, the former authority of the army and police were diffused with the PDF, community forces and a wide array of tribal militias. Moreover, the Sudanese regular forces, hard-pressed in the south, needed a range of paramilitary auxiliaries to plug the many holes. If paramilitaries relieved overstretch in the rural areas, the PDF also served a vital function in the three towns: the highly politicized and ideologically committed PDF elite could act as a praetorian guard against the coup-prone military. Originally inspired by the spiritual campaigns of Hassan al-Turabi, after his political decline the PDF was placed under the direct authority of the president. The professional army, despite a number of purges which removed a third of the officer corps, often opposed the PDF, because of its sometimes poor combat record or simply because of the diffusion of scarce resources.

  The origins of militias preceded the 1989 revolution. The British had used them in Darfur, for example. An attack on the village of al-Gardud in Kordofan state in which sixty Missiriya Arabs were killed in July 1985 prompted the Umma party to later form a militia under Sadiq al-Mahdi’s premiership. This led to the arming of a number of Baqqara tribes by the state. Right from the start the line was blurred between pro-government and informal paramilitaries. The irregular murahileen militias were often armed by the state and came under state protection from legal persecution when militias sometimes ignored government directives by indulging in traditional pillage and cattle-raiding.

  After the 1989 coup, when the PDF was officially boosted, Khartoum set a target of 100,000 volunteers. TV appeals and propaganda in the schools and universities for volunteers did not always work. Technically, all youths between 16 and 30 could be conscripted or press-ganged. Students were sometimes given deferment and wealthy or politically powerful families sometimes bought exemptions. On the other hand, pour encourager les autres, some wealthy urbanite sons were conscripted as well as the jobless tribal levies.

  Resentment within the regular army continued as military offensives often included regular troops, PDF ‘volunteers’ and existing tribal militias. Also, individuals could choose to join military units as volunteer jihadists. All were deemed mujahedeen in the holy war and the tame media encouraged a cult of martyrdom, even though the regular army sometimes accused the PDF of being combat-averse. Nevertheless, thousands of PDF were killed, occasionally in their emulation of futile Iranian-style human-wave tactics against entrenched SPLM machine guns. An easy route to paradise perhaps, but demoralizing for regular professional soldiers who witnessed the PDF sent ahead as cannon fodder.

  The revolutionary government planned a paramilitary defence of the northern border lands, especially in Kordofan. Besides this Islamist ‘tribal belt’, 5,000 university students in the three towns were enrolled at the al-Qitaina PDF camp in March 1990. Although they did basic military training during the standard three months’ course, much of the induction consisted of interminable Islamic lectures on how to be worthy of a citizen army of mujahedeen; and to be alert to any civilian or especially regular army threat to the new government. Four coup attempts were rumoured in the first years of the revolution. The urban militia units were issued with smart Land Cruisers to patrol the three towns. Gradually, regular army units were moved out of the capital. Some officers were sacked or, if senior or influential enough, offered comfortable jobs in government-controlled businesses.

  Heavy mobilization of the PDF occurred during 1992 to 1997 to bolster the army trying to contend with the increased tempo of fighting in the south. A small volunteer elite PDF leadership was trained by pro-NIF officers to act along the lines of the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Some of these PDF personnel received advanced military training, including tank and artillery instruction. A second group was coercively conscripted – they included students, civil servants and recalcitrant army personnel – and sent for political indoctrination and re-education. The first two groups tended to be from urban areas. Their urban backgrounds often did not match the rigours required for southern bush combat. Technically, on the three-month courses, the PDF member could ask not to be sent into combat, especially students who had been forced to disrupt university courses. Another group of PDF was recruited from rural areas where the ghazi warrior tradition persisted. Some of these men needed no instruction on small arms, but were usually very keen indeed to get their hands on, and keep, modern automatic weapons. The PDF also recruited a national network of informers to safeguard the revolution.

  The PDF was intended to galvanize Islamist volunteers and indeed the whole of society, but by the mid-1990s high battlefield casualties led to low recruitment, foot-dragging and occasional rebellions in the PDF training camps. In April 1998, according to reports in Western media, hundreds of secondary-school-age conscripts broke out of the Eilafoun PDF camp, fifteen miles from Khartoum. A number of them were reportedly shot for mutiny; a few months later, another more successful and bloodless mass escape happened at the same camp, according to Sudanese media. Children of well-off professional classes in Khartoum were sometimes conspicuously conscripted and many of the student exemptions were rescinded. A recommendation from the PDF often became a prerequisite for state employment or permission to travel abroad. A certificate of service in the armed forces was also sometimes required for government employment, for
example in medicine. Technically, front-line combat was voluntary but the media, nightly on the TV, and at rallies and mosques played a key role in urging the Islamic obligation of jihad. A martyrdom cult was developed. By mid-1993 it was claimed that the PDF combat volunteers matched the size of the regular army in the south. The PDF were also active in ‘cleansing’ operations in rebellious regions such as the Nuba Mountains, where, in the period 1992-93, thousands of locals were killed, including Muslims who were declared apostates. Fourteen Nuba mosques were destroyed, damaged or looted, alleged Western reports.

  According to professional army officers, some tribal PDF elements were more interested in looting than fighting. Even eager urban volunteers often proved to be second-class soldiers. Poorly trained and sometimes indoctrinated for martyrdom, as well as enduring numerous examples of ‘friendly fire’, they occasionally marched into the entrenched gun-sights of astounded SPLA guerrillas. Moreover, the coercive recruitment and high casualties alienated many northern Sudanese, including conservative Islamists who did not share al-Turabi’s proselytizing programme.

  The waning of al-Turabi’s influence, the reaction to mass casualties and the anger in the army at the sometimes poor performance of the PDF led to a decline in the PDF and, by the end of the 1990s, a re-assertion of the primacy of the professional army. Although jihad was never abandoned, under President al-Bashir’s influence a more pragmatic approach was introduced. The army effectively took over the PDF during 1997. General Saleh Gosh, reporting directly to the president, took charge of all security and military organizations including the PDF. In 1998 compulsory military service in the professional army, from age 18, was introduced. The fall and then imprisonment of al-Turabi tended to confirm the general view in northern Sudan that the PDF was a political not religious cause. Despite calls for disbandment, the PDF morphed into tribal militias and its armed tribesmen were recruited into more deadly militias in Darfur, later called the Janjaweed.