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SUDAN COUP RANDOM THOUGHTS: When I spoke to a journalist about Sudan yesterday, I said the bottom line was "It's not over yet." I'm writing a piece with the thesis "the current (now old) junta is unstable" But even I didn't expect to see Ibn Auf removed so very quickly. (1)
I know it sounds obvious now that Ibn Auf has stepped down / been removed as President, but the early stages of a coup are a period of great flux, and this junta in particular is unstable since it incorporates the same rivals that acted as counterweights to each other before (2)
Bashir was able to stay in power for almost 30 years by "coup-proofing" his government. Among other things, he built the NISS and the RSF into counterweights for the regular armed forces, and set them against each other (3)
He did not expect they could work together to overthrow him, & probably would not have, except that NISS soldiers (allegedly) shot regular Army soldiers, risking a bigger conflict & pushing the different security organizations together to find a way out w/o further bloodshed (4)
But that doesn't mean that they were going to be able to coexist neatly. For one thing, the protesters wanted justice for the civilians who were shot. They had already taken over one intelligence building. There is no easy way to resolve this (5)
In the interests of full disclosure, I did not expect Ibn Auf to get pushed out. I know little about Sudanese politics, but based on my knowledge of other coups, I thought the Army would probably try to push out Gosh and replace him with a subordinate. I was wrong (6)
I don't know anything about Lt Gen Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. I don't know whose interests he represents either internally or externally. But my gut feeling is that the situation is still unstable. The bigger org split between Army/NISS will remain tense but also (7)
There is probably a sense of potential, for both protesters and military actors, and so it will be tempting for some to take advantage of this opportunity and "shoot their shot." It is very hard to know how this will end but my concern is with the civilians in the streets (8)
It is very important that no matter what happens in the game of musical thrones in Khartoum that the protesters in the streets around the country remain safe as they peacefully demonstrate. Normally, the USA would use its influence to encourage this (9)
But it seems that here, as elsewhere in the Middle East, the USA's policy is simply to let the Gulf countries and Egypt drive the process (10)
This is a mistake - both for US national interest narrowly construed and in terms of the values that the US Government once espoused and aspired to. I can't see the AU as having much influence and China/Egypt/Saudi/UAE are all uninterested in supporting protest/democracy (11)
At the same time, there is a silver lining in this instability. While it increases the chance that people may get hurt it also increases the likelihood that the different security actors decide to return to barracks rather than fight for power (12)
So hopefully, the challenges for an elite settlement give birth to greater liberalization and democracy in the country [13/FIN]
p.s. I know, it's really a bad idea to drop my thoughts on a breaking news story at 5PM on a Friday. I just had my head down until now and just came up for air.
