Sudan, counter-revolution to the Egyptian | Internationale

Unfortunately for Sudan and the Sudanese, their northern neighbor, Egypt, has always conditioned the country's contemporary history. And now that it is clear that the counter-revolution is running, the worst predictions are met: the Monday mbadacre of peaceful protesters camped in front of the army headquarters in Khartoum, followed by the announcement made by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander-in-chief of the Transitional Military Council (CMT), called for the holding of elections within nine months. Democracy under military control, this is the proposal of the CMT to the requirements of a civil transition of the Alliance for Freedom and Change, which brings together the democratic forces.

As was the case in Egypt in the summer of 2013, the army in charge of the long-awaited transition has first cleared the rebels the public space and then they announced without blushing that they broke with the democratic transition agreements. And of course, they impose their own road map, in which are not lacking a la carte and resounding statements calling for stability and denouncing foreign interference. All this happened four days after a general strike paralyzed the country and showed the mobilization capacity of the opposition forces.

We must understand that the issue has started to get out of control in the eyes of the WCL. Their leaders, Al Burhan and Muhammad Hamdan Dagolo, the ghost general who is preparing to become Sudan's future strongman, toured the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in May. . At the end of April, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were providing $ 3 billion in aid to the country, a partner of the military coalition for the war in Yemen. The Sudanese had little doubt about the intentions of the CMT and thus persisted in the occupation of squares and streets and in mbadive civil protests.

Hemetti, so called Dagolo, is also at the head of the Rapid Intervention Force, a militia parallel to the regular army, and presents himself as a seasoned peacekeeper at the country's borders, including Darfur. A few weeks after the ousting of Omar al Bashir on April 11, and considering the demands of the protesters, he said: "My patience with politics has a limit." This deep state army, which has good relations with Islamist groups opposed to the democratic demands of the opposition alliance, is the strategist of terror as a means to end the protests. Coercion and fear have worked well in the far reaches of this huge country, but it remains to be seen whether the strategy in cities works with the same ease. Khartoum, Port Sudan and Omdurman are mythical names in the history of the Sudanese resistance … just ask the British and the Egyptians.

Luz Gómez She is professor of Arabic Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid. His last book is Between sharia and jihad. An intellectual history of Islamism (Fall of water, 2018).