Six months later, the deep state of Sudan continues to be strong

On April 11, following a four-month popular uprising, Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir was removed from office by a coup d'etat organized by military officers who then formed a council. transition military (TMC).

Bashir went away, but the fate of all the security agencies and parallel militias, patronage systems and corrupt parastatal associations that flourished under his regime remained unclear.

A devastating return

Much has been speculated about the ability of the revolution to uproot Bashir's "deep Islamic state". At the beginning of June, Islamists themselves seemed ill at ease.

The TMC was avoiding its main supporter of the Gulf, Qatar, and had purged its three most prominent Islamist members, under pressure from opposition forces, Forces for Freedom and Change.

However, on 3 June, the deep state began a devastating return, as the Bashir regime's Rapid Support Force militias massacred more than 100 protesters gathered in the army headquarters to demand a change. .

There has been much speculation about the ability of the revolution to uproot Bashir's "deep Islamic state".

One could learn from the attempt to dissolve the "deep state" of former Sudanese President Jafa Nimeiri, following the intifada of 1985. Under the pressure of the National Alliance of Opposition and Demonstrators in the Street, the TMC of the day under Siwar al-Dahab – who was leading the dismissal of Nimeiri in 1985 – was quick to dismantle the ruling party , the Sudan Socialist Union (SSU), and the closely related security service, the State Security Organization (SSO).

The regime's attachment to socialist ideology has long since weakened and, in 1985, SSU was largely composed of opportunists, Nimeiri loyalists and Islamists reconciled with the regime in 1977.

Without any ideological weight, the SSU and the SSO were therefore easy to dismantle and, under the transitional and subsequent parliamentary regimes, the powers of the dissolved SSO were granted to the regular police.

The old & deep state & # 39;

However, the majority of those who served in the former "deep state" were neither incarcerated nor reconciled with the new parliamentary regime. As a result, an Islamic movement with sufficient financial resources was able to capitalize on its resentment and buy its loyalty to the coup d'etat led by Hasan al-Turabi and Omar al-Bashir in 1989.

This process probably began in 1985 when Bashir himself sat on committees responsible for dissolving the SSO and capturing his intelligence networks. Ahmad Ibn Auf, the intimate confidant of Bashir, whose hand-up on 11 April 2019 was so vehemently rejected by the public, was himself one of the police officers dismissed in 1985 and dismissed by the Regime of Salvation in 1989.

The majority of those who served in the former "deep state" were neither incarcerated nor reconciled with the new parliamentary regime

Turabi, the ideological architect of the Regime of Salvation, sought to create a parallel set of governmental institutions to pursue his "project of civilization" while disguising the Islamist character of the regime.

Combining ideological pride with ultra-pragmatism as he could alone, he integrated a number of opportunists from the old military regime into these new institutions, including former SSO officers like al-Fatih Irwa, recently became executive director Sudan's leading telecommunications companies.

Irwa is certainly not a convinced Islamist – under Nimeiri's regime, he had worked with the CIA to fly Ethiopian Jews to Israel as part of "Operation Moses".

The Islamists themselves captured a "deep state" created in the name of another ideology in the 1980s. Now their own deep state is being re-used. Many years in power have led to a loosening of links between the Islamist movement and the state.

Arab nationalism

In 2016, the International Crisis Group hinted that Sudan was moving away from Islamism to adopt an "internationalized Arab nationalism" intended to appeal to regional anti-Islamist hegemonies such as the 39, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Bashir marginalized the Islamist personalities of the National Congress Party and empowered the Janjawid militias who had helped his deadly counter-insurgency in Darfur by incorporating them into the military and the National Intelligence and Security Services (RSF) via forces. rapid support (RSF).

Their ability to exploit the booming gold mining industry in Darfur has allowed RSF and their commander, former Janjaweed militia leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka "Hemeti", to gain access to the corrupt network of businesses in Darfur. heart of this deep state.

The Janjaweed militia, as we now see, are very different from the People's Defense Force (PDF) militias, which were originally created by the regime in 1989 to fight the People's Army. of liberation of Sudan.

The ideology that inspired their creation was a vision of Arab identity based on race. In the Darfur conflict, they fought against the former commander of the People's Defense Force, Khalil Ibrahim. Once integrated into the rapid support forces, they fought on behalf of Saudi Arabia against Houthi Islamists in Yemen.

And it was the RSF under Hemeti that was the main military support for the rise of Abdel-Fattah Burhan – who oversaw the Sudanese forces operating in Yemen – and the TMC.

The anti-Islamist axis

Since the rise of the TMC, people close to the anti-Islamist Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian axis have sought to take control of the deep state. Abu Bakr Mustafa, who replaced Salah Gosh as head of the National Intelligence and Security Services, maintains close ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, having held diplomatic posts in both countries.

As the rapid support forces grew stronger, the TMC agreed with the Liberation and Change opposition forces that the People's Defense Forces would be integrated into the regular army and their accounts at the Central Bank of Sudan. would be suspended.

Given the ideological nature of the original coup that brought Bashir to power in 1989, it is not surprising that popular anger as much during the revolution was directed against Islamism as against the state as such. The TMC and the opposition politicians have been aware of this.

The Forces of Freedom and Change seemed happy to advocate for a policy of attack against Islamists, rather than against the deep state as a whole. Many opposition alliance politicians have themselves headed to the Emirates after the uprising, including rebel leaders in hopes of an emirati mediation between the TMC and the l & # 39; opposition.

The prominent rebel leader, Yasir Arman, observed during a visit to Dubai that any discussion of division between his allies and Hemeti was a "fabrication by elements of the old regime". He later wrote that Burhan and Hemeti, having no connection with Islam, were potential "allies" of the Forces of Freedom and Change. He encouraged the Sudanese revolutionaries to express their anger against three Islamist generals of the TMC, who were subsequently removed from office.

Unfortunately, his pragmatic efforts haunted him when Hemeti's forces slaughtered the protesters on June 3, and the TMC then forcibly returned Arman himself to southern Sudan.

The Islamists may have been hit hard, but the deep state is still strong.

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