Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War

by Paul Moorcraft

  Although al-Bashir’s underground political work in the army had roused the interest of the state security organs and military intelligence, especially under the paranoid Numeiri, the new military supremo was not known to the general public. When he made his first broadcast to the nation immediately after the coup, al-Bashir’s mother was travelling from Medeni to Khartoum on a public bus which stopped because of a street crowd, roused by the putsch. In her astonishment at finding out the new leader’s name, she told some of those around her that it was her son who had led the coup. Few believed her at the time. Except for one brother, informed a few hours before, al-Bashir had not risked his family’s safety by confiding in them; just in case it all went wrong. He had reckoned that his chance of success was 50-50, despite the years of planning.

  The leading northern politicians, including Sadiq al-Mahdi, were locked up. Al-Bashir also cleaned out potential opponents in the army by also accommodating over 100 officers in Khartoum’s Kobar prison. More military purges soon followed, amid rumours of a counter coup. So far, so obvious. Then a very unusual component of the coup occurred: al-Bashir sent his spiritual patron to Kobar as well. Al-Turabi was given time to pack a suitable case, not least containing the Imam’s beloved books. He was given a very comfortable minimum-security cell, although al-Bashir made the point that the other political leaders were also well-treated. ‘It was the Sudanese way,’ he insisted. The junta apparently wanted to show its even-handedness to all political leaders. Perhaps the designers of the coup wanted it to look like a normal nationalist military coup to save the country from inevitably incompetent politicians. And perhaps they wanted to smuggle in an Islamist revolution without upsetting the Egyptians or the West. A born teacher, al-Turabi spent his few months in comfortable confinement lecturing fellow inmates on the new Islamic state he would soon create. This was not fantasy for, when he was released, all the new military leaders, led by al-Bashir, took the bayaa oath of allegiance to him, a practice inaugurated by the Prophet himself. At the time al-Bashir said he was proud to follow al-Turabi’s instructions – ‘without hesitation’.

  Not only the new military boss and his fellow-travelling officers, but a section of a whole generation of intellectuals was prepared to venerate the temporary jailbird as the architect and imam of the Islamist revolution. The (brief) jail term was oddly prophetic, for al-Turabi was to spend a lot of time in prison or under house arrest in the next twenty-five years, and not of his own volition. Al-Turabi created the revolution that was later captured by his co-plotter, al-Bashir. The spiritual leader then spent years undermining the military president, and working with the many enemies of the regime abroad and in the south. In many other countries he would have been executed for treason, but somehow the spell that al-Turabi cast over a generation of students, military officers and politicians was still potent, despite their subsequent disillusionment with him. Over the years I have asked hundreds of former acolytes of al-Turabi, some in power in Sudan and others in exile in the West, about this paradox. Very few would directly castigate him, not out of fear but out of lingering respect. The most they would say was, in essence: ‘He was/is a great imam, but a bad politician.’

  If Sudanese history is a tragedy, then Shakespeare’s Macbeth is perhaps an analogy. From 1990 to 1996 al-Turabi fashioned and led the revolution; from 1996 to the coup within a coup in 1999 his star waned. Thereafter, even when in prison or under house arrest, al-Turabi hovered like Banquo’s ghost over the Sudanese polity. His power was sometimes exaggerated and he later became a convenient straw man for the regime, but much of his influence was real, formidable and malevolent, for example his intercession with Khartoum’s enemies, especially in Darfur and the SPLA. It was fitting for a man committed to a universal faith that he appeared to be everywhere, lurking just beyond the horizon, if not behind the curtain, when peace deals were suddenly derailed. The story of northern Sudan’s recent political life cannot be understood without appreciating the initial duopoly of power: the Hassan-Omar double act. In the beginning it was clear who was pulling the strings, but after a year or two, the power shifted to a more balanced diarchy, then in a few years the military took back the reins, and al-Bashir became the undisputed leader. How this happened and how it affected the civil war dominated the first decade of the al-Bashir presidency.

  Within weeks of the June revolution, it became clear that this was not just a bunch of disgruntled middle-ranking officers, unhappy with Sadiq al-Mahdi’s floundering war strategy. A core of officers inhabited a defined Islamist programme, devised by al-Turabi. The remnants of secular influence, especially unions and other political parties, were banned. Nearly all senior army and police officers not sympathetic to the Islamists were ousted. Most newspapers were closed and the state radio and television closely supervised. The surviving media made it clear that the RCC government was committed to orthodox Islam, Islamic law, and also Islamic dress for men and, especially, women.

  The RCC was technically the state’s supreme body. Behind this façade stood a shura called portentously the ‘Council of the Defenders of the Revolution’ which met in secret after curfew. It comprised some zealous army officers, but it was dominated by NIF civilians. The Council, dubbed the ‘Committee of Forty’, was chaired by the energetic head of the NIF, Ali Othman Muhammed Taha. One close observer said his ‘low-key style, his child-like features and his apparent quiet demeanour’ encouraged many people to overlook his much tougher side. Taha had been at the same Khartoum North school as al-Bashir, although the future president was two years older. He had been al-Turabi’s personal assistant as well, and was for long a true believer. After disillusionment set in, Taha’s star rose alongside al-Bashir’s and he became a vice president, and later a chief fixer of the ‘final’ peace deal with the south in 2005.

  In January 2014, Taha was shifted sideways from real power and went into semi-retirement. He felt able to talk more frankly when I visited his plush government-owned house in Khartoum. I asked him when the Bashir-Turabi breakdown began. History usually suggests 1996 or sometimes even as late as 1999. Looking back, Taha said:

  The split started early in the nineteen-nineties – as early as ninety-one or ninety-two. Turabi wanted to be the kingmaker. We accepted that. The way he did it was the problem … It was all about political power, not religious ideology.

  The tough-minded Taha was clearly emotional when he described the events of two decades before. And he was still conflicted about al-Turabi, even though he said, ‘He has done so much damage to the president, the people and the country itself.’

  This was in the future. At the beginning of the revolution al-Turabi was seen by Islamists as the saviour of the country. But the new government had little popular support in the rural areas or in the towns among the more secular intelligentsia and commercial middle class. Not surprisingly, internal security became the RCC’s priority. The intelligence system had ossified under Mubarak al-Mahdi, the former prime minister’s cousin. The professional formal structure, later called the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), was revised along traditional lines. It was divided into an internal branch, similar to MI5 in the UK, and an external branch, not least to spy on exiled Sudanese, in the West and Middle East. The parallel here was Britain’s MI6. A third unit was set up to deal with military intelligence; that was not just to collate useful military data, at home and abroad, (cf the Defence Intelligence Staff in the UK), but also to monitor the constant rumblings inside the army. Alongside the full-time professional structure a new more informal Islamic system comprised a much bigger part-time army of students and young Islamists called the Amn al-Jabha. After the 1989 revolution that was the common term used when Sudanese whispered about security matters, although foreign experts still used the generic Arabic term of Mukhabarat or NISS. The Amn al-Jabha also cooperated closely with the numerous members of the Popular Defence Force that was originally set up at the end of the previous government, but was fully developed as an Islamist
military and intelligence organization, under the influence of al-Turabi. Much of the money to fund these Islamist organizations came from the Faisal Islamic Bank. Major General Bakri Hassan Saleh, a revolutionary zealot, was put in charge of the whole system. The secret services were to play a dominant role in ensuring the stability of the government for decades. Ironically, it usually managed to defang the coup potential of the army, but – reviving the age-old question, quis custodiet ipsos custodes – it proved to be the only state organ which could later seriously threaten the system erected by al-Bashir

  The internal branches of the Mukhabarat set about removing all potential opposition in the three towns and other urban centres. They also enforced Islamist standards. Female state employees were encouraged to go home and look after their families; those who were deemed absolutely necessary had to dress in conservative Islamic style. Many professionals, particularly doctors, lawyers and, by definition, journalists were imprisoned, usually without trial. The judiciary was also purged. Detention camps were set up. Foreign media reports listed the ‘disappearances’ and the torture meted out in the ‘Ghost Houses’ (so called because people were picked up at night, when the ghosts were about). Khartoum disputed these accounts, but the public floggings for manufacturing, owning or even drinking alcohol were publicized. Drug dealers were also executed publicly. Illegal dealing in foreign currency was punished, though with sanctions later and a purely cash economy it became almost a patriotic duty to deal in foreign currencies, especially US dollars, without which the economy would seize up. The draconian imposition of sharia law prompted an exodus of professionals, especially doctors and engineers, whose skills were valued throughout the Middle East.

  A part of the sudden growth of the Sudanese diaspora consisted of politicians who had been released from confinement or who had fled to avoid jail. The displaced political parties, unions and professional organizations, all hostile to the 1989 coup, formed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) based in Asmara, the capital of the soon-to-be independent Eritrea, which had fallen out with Khartoum. The SPLM joined the NDA in 1990. The northern politicians still debated the tired questions about sharia law in the south and secession versus unity, but since the SPLM was the only NDA party with an army that could defeat the hated NIF government, the exiled northerners tried to fudge a compromise. Along with other dissident groups such as the Beja Congress, they agreed on the Asmara Accords (June 1995) to keep fighting until the NIF regime was overthrown. All the plans of frustrated exiles and guerrilla fighters were predicated on what they all assumed would be a temporary revolutionary regime in Khartoum. Nearly all the Western experts on Sudan also regularly predicted the imminent collapse of the al-Bashir government – for decades.

  Meanwhile in Khartoum the RCC and NIF rapidly took control of the military, the executive and also the judiciary. They wanted a total revolution. As Mussolini put it: ‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’ Al-Turabi wanted to create a theocracy where enlightened Islamic scholars meeting in a shura would reach a consensus on interpreting the divine will. The tough September Laws initiated by Numeiri were replaced by another harsh version of sharia throughout the country, thus obviating any hope of a deal in the south. NIF apologists argued that the absence of beheading, for example, ensured the new code was less harsh than Numeiri’s version. Sudan was becoming the first Sunni theocracy, Khartoum suggested. The West, especially the Americans, argued that Sudan was copying Iran, its bête noire. Khartoum’s defenders explained that Iran could never be a model. For example, they, as Sunnis, had no system of direct rule by the clergy, the Ayatollahs, as in the Shia approach, and insisted that they were applying a form of Islamic democracy.

  Nevertheless, if Iran was not a religious model, Khartoum sought security advice from its new friends in Tehran. In December 1991 the Iranian President, Ali Rafsanjani, visited Sudan for four days, along with 150 advisers, mainly security and military experts. This led to the permanent stationing in Khartoum of Hassan Azada, head in Lebanon of the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Later, Pasdaran specialists in artillery and logistics followed. The Iranian connection initially focused on assistance with the Popular Defence Force (for details, see Appendix). The PDF was intended to galvanize the whole of society, as well as bolster the overstretched army. Planned to number over 100,000 volunteers, the PDF’s elite would take a combat role in the south, and a counter-coup role in the three towns. Media and mosque campaigns emphasized the jihadist duty and the glories of martyrdom. Some middle-class youths, especially students, were not entirely convinced of the advantages of swapping their degrees for an early entry into paradise. Eager volunteers there were, however, especially as a PDF recommendation was often required for a job, continued study or even an overseas trip. (A certificate proving service in the army was also required for some state employment, including doctors.) Others were press-ganged into the PDF. Some PDF units – comprising genuine volunteers for combat – did perform well, although the initial training was just three months. Occasionally, the Iranian influence inspired futile human-wave attacks against astounded SPLA machine gunners in entrenched positions. The army was often opposed to fighting alongside the PDF volunteers because of their inexperience, and because so much money was being diverted to this ideological rather than military mission. The PDF worked better in the countryside, especially in the west, where residents were often well acquainted with small arms. Sometimes the PDF merged into tribal militias, with dangerous results later in Darfur. Nevertheless, even among the faithful in the three towns, the often coercive recruitment methods of the PDF proved unpopular. After al-Turabi’s star waned, the PDF was often seen as a political, not a religious or military, endeavour.

  Nevertheless, the Iranian influence and the style of PDF recruitment did contribute to the growing Islamist nature of the regime. Southerners and Christians were confirmed as second-class citizens. So were women. True, Sudan did not go in for the Afghan burkhas, or the princess-head-chopping and driving bans of the misogynistic Saudis. And part of the intended ‘clean up’ was genuinely trying to protect the honour (and property rights) of women. Prostitution, pornography and the use of the female form for commercial purposes were forbidden. The tobe, traditional flowing robes and head covering, though not necessarily the veil, were promoted. Al-Turabi preferred the more modern ibaya dress, more like a kaftan, and opposed the more restrictive tobe. He had liberal views on the role of women compared with most Islamic clerics. His wife, Wisal al-Mahdi, Sadiq’s sister, was a well-known (and charming) women’s leader, and a ‘feminist’ in the Sudanese context. I was a guest at the al-Turabi home, in the upmarket Riyadh suburb of Khartoum, for a small dinner, where she presided in her husband’s absence, unusually for a conservative society. Also, on another occasion, I interviewed her on the flat roof of her home, to discuss the issue of female genital mutilation about which she was vociferously liberal. Al-Turabi was influenced by his wife on the question of women’s rights, as Wisal confirmed to me. That might have explained why women, although second-or third-class citizens in Western terms, still had some of their rights protected, not least in (separate) education. The government continued to exhibit a fetish about women not wearing trousers, and was still threatening to flog those guilty of such sartorial infelicities decades after the al-Bashir regime was entrenched. The leitmotif of ‘immodest dress’, and the moral campaigns waged by the PDF in the urban areas, seemed odd to Westerners, especially in the face of a war which was being lost in the south.

  Al-Turabi was a man of many contradictions. In 1996, for example, I interviewed him in his office of parliamentary speaker. We talked about the topic du jour – slavery. He argued that the Americans were using the slavery and terrorism issues to undermine Islam and the Khartoum government. ‘The Americans know that the African-Americans are very sympathetic to Sudan,’ he claimed. ‘They want to persuade the African-Americans that US policy towards Sudan is alright because Suda
n is involved in slavery. There is absolutely no slavery in Sudan.’ We also talked about Osama bin Laden, who had lived almost next door to him in the Riyadh suburb. He stressed that the Saudi had been engaged purely in business matters, especially construction. Then the Imam talked about his studies in the US and France. One of the dicta that al-Turabi regularly trotted out to his acolytes about Islam versus the West was: ‘We know them better than they know us.’ Which was probably true. The Sorbonne-educated Imam was very clever and closely followed Western politics. Like many Islamists, he exhibited in private conversation a brooding belief in the appalling corruption of Western society and, like Lenin, an assurance of its inevitably self-destructive tendencies. On the other hand, al-Turabi rejoiced in his mastery of foreign languages and cultures. We did not discuss Sudan’s most famous novelist, Tayeb Saleh, but Saleh’s most famous work, Season of Migration to the North (1969) captured some of al-Turabi’s ambivalence towards the West, and especially its women. Saleh, who sought exile in London, and work with the BBC, saw his novel banned in Sudan, even though it has been described as ‘the most important Arabic novel of the twentieth century’. He was, however, rehabilitated in Khartoum and, when he died in 2009, a major literary award was named after him.

  Al-Bashir was less fixated with the cultural and social issues, and even with the installation of a theocracy. He left those matters to his better-educated Imam. After the coup, the general was utterly focused on reforming the army and winning the war in the south. As a soldier’s soldier, al-Bashir was determined to increase the size and efficiency of the armed forces. The Sudanese economy was still weak, however. The inherited annual defence budget was guesstimated at around $500 million, not including the enhanced internal security systems. Before the oil bonanza, the size of the army was increased by only ten per cent to around 65,000, although al-Bashir wanted to raise it to 78,000. It was still a volunteer force, and the unemployment levels were high enough to offer lots of recruits. As oil revenues came in, the army was pushed up to 100,000 and in 1998 conscription for the army was fully introduced from those aged 18 to 30. This was the first time conscription had been used for the forces. The size of the air force was doubled, although the combat strength improved only slightly because of poor maintenance, and the lack of foreign currency to purchase spares. The PDF, which drafted in tens of thousands, was a stop gap. A small professional army and a large militia force disturbed the army top brass, but the militia experience in the west and along the border had worked to an extent, so the army sought to improve the training and integration of the murahiliin, in their various guises, until funds arrived to train a large professional army that could defeat, not just contain, the southern rebels. The PDF never became as effective as their occasional mentors, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In the south they sometimes performed well, as in operations in Equatoria and Blue Nile, but they also ended up occasionally as cannon fodder. In the west, they reverted to banditry on occasions. And, for all the martyrs’ sacrifice, the PDF was not as potent as the Islamist revolutionaries had hoped. They were more successful in urban areas as a militia for the NIF in public order roles.