Omar Al-Bashir and Africa's Longest War Page 2

  2. General Charles Gordon was a religious crank who disobeyed explicit orders to evacuate British and Egyptian officials and troops from Khartoum in 1884.

  3. Gordon’s death made him a Victorian icon.

  4. General Horatio Herbert Kitchener defeated the Mahdists at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

  5. The leader of the Mahdists was Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abdullah. His tomb in Omdurman. (Picture credit: author)

  6. Contemporary picture of the governor’s palace where Gordon was killed. After independence it became the presidential palace. (Author)

  7. The command vehicle used by General Omar al-Bashir in the 1989 coup. (Author)

  8. Al-Bashir greets Sadiq al-Mahdi, the former premier, in early 2014. (Sudan government archives)

  9. The Sudanese President greets his old rival, Dr Hassan al-Turabi, during a reconciliation process in early 2014. (Government archives)

  10. Dr Hassan al-Turabi was more interested in international jihad rather than the details of domestic governance, but he was a highly gifted intellectual and spiritual leader.

  11. For the first years after the revolution of 1989, al-Bashir concentrated on military matters, but eventually he removed al-Turabi from power and became politically dominant by 1999.

  12. Bigwigs in the ruling National Congress Party, Dr Ibrahim A Ghandour (left) and Ali Othman Taha, who led Khartoum’s team during the peace talks with the south (2002-2005). (Tony Denton)

  13. The charismatic but authoritarian leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, Dr John Garang.

  14. Garang’s successor was Salva Kiir, who became the first president of independent South Sudan. (Irwin Armstrong)

  15. Riek Machar became Kiir’s deputy in the new republic, but rebelled against him in December 2013.

  16. In 1998 US President Clinton sent cruise missiles to destroy the Al-Shifa facility in Khartoum. (Author)

  17. In 1996 Riek Machar joined Khartoum as part of the ‘Peace from Within’ policy. In June 1996 government troops march as a part of a peace rally in Juba, the southern capital. (Author)

  18. Tribal dancer taking part in a peace rally in Torit, June 1996. (Author)

  19. Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) insurgents, near El Fasher, Darfur, 2004. (Author)

  20. SLA insurgents, Darfur, 2004. (Author)

  21. Cameraman Irwin Armstrong with SLA troops, 2004. (Author)

  22. Government counter-insurgency forces, Darfur, 2005. (Author)

  23. US aid for IDP camp near El Fasher, 2004. (Author)

  24. Mosque in Sarasir, the village where al-Bashir grew up. (Tony Denton)

  25. Diplomatic duties: al-Bashir at the 12th AU summit. (Government archives)

  26. Unlike most heads of state in Africa, al-Bashir is a patient and ready listener, even to Western journalists. (Tony Denton)

  27. Al-Bashir’s second wife, Widad Babiker omer. (Tony Denton)

  28. Mohammed Hassan, the President’s younger brother. (Tony Denton)

  29. Hadiya, the President’s mother. (Tony Denton)

  30. Al-Bashir is very much a family man, seen here with his second wife and stepdaughter, at his farm. (Tony Denton)

  31. The President doted on his youngest step-child, Amna. (Tony Denton)

  32. Al-Bashir accommodated his three nieces (the children of his brother, Mohammed Hassan) while they studied in Khartoum. (Tony Denton)

  33. Salva Kiir voting, in Juba, during the 2010 election. (Irwin Armstrong)

  34. SPLA policeman guarding a voting centre in Bentiu, April 2010. (Tony Denton)

  35. Author interviewing an election official near Juba during 2011 referendum. (Marty Stalker)

  36. In private, al-Bashir was usually a quiet considered man, but he took on another persona in front of crowds. (Government archives)

  37. The President at his farm in January 2014. He insisted he wanted to retire to take up farming full-time. (Tony Denton)

  38. The Sudanese are famously hospitable to foreigners. On the author’s first visit to the country, however, he was arrested by the Minister of Justice himself. On the last visit, nearly 20 years later, he enjoyed a late breakfast with the President at his farm, January 2014. (Tony Denton)

  Introduction

  Why President Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan is important

  Sudan occupied a pivotal, if initially largely accidental, role in British imperial history. For centuries it was a backwater ruled by the far-away Ottoman sultans. The 1869 opening of the Suez Canal, a lifeline to the British Raj, subsequently resulted in the de facto occupation of Egypt. Technically, Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but it was still a backwater. Its security was a concern to the British because it was the hinterland of Egypt and because of its precious Nile waters. It was also part of the pink corridor on the imperial map, which linked it to the settler colonies of Uganda and Kenya, and the long-held ambition of a Cape-to-Cairo railway.

  The Mahdi rebellion of the 1880s led to the major imperial embarrassment of General ‘Chinese’ Gordon’s death in Khartoum. To avenge this humiliation and, as ever, to deter the French, Sudan was reconquered a decade later. The British held sway until independence in 1956, although London ran Sudan with a fairly light touch. The colonialists concentrated on the Muslim-Arab triangle around Khartoum, regarded Darfur as a security problem, and dithered about the role of the Christiananimist south, which was inhabited largely by African tribes, ethnically and culturally distinct from the north. In 1956, the new Arab leaders ironically copied much of the political and economic practices of the departed British, although the tone in Khartoum was of course more Islamic.

  The Sudan civil service had been run efficiently by a well-bred core of ex-public school English mandarins. At independence the indigenous leaders acquired much of the best of the imperial heritage in law, governance and education. Sudan also inherited the Khartoum-centric view of the country. The peripheries remained largely underdeveloped, and this factor, as well as religion, partly caused the army mutiny in the south just before independence. Underdevelopment, poor governance and the not unconnected constant wars have characterized Sudan’s modern history. Brief periods of inefficient democratic rule were constantly interrupted by military coups. The main focus of this book is what followed the Islamist military putsch of 1989, led by the then Brigadier General Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir in tandem with Dr Hassan al-Turabi, the spiritual mentor of the revolution.

  This book concentrates on the al-Bashir period – at the time of writing, the same Field Marshal and President is still in power. Al-Bashir fought a long war in the south as a soldier and later national leader, but technically ended one stage of the conflict in a 2005 peace deal, by offering the right of secession to the southern rebels, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. South Sudan finally became independent in 2011. Another old conflict, however, had been fired up again in the west, in Darfur, in 2003. It was distinct, but related to the southern struggle. Rebellion also simmered in the east. Meanwhile, all of Sudan’s nine contiguous neighbours had stirred the pot, most notably the madcap supremo in Libya, the late and unlamented Colonel Gaddafi.

  Under al-Bashir, Sudan became a major oil exporter, and this sucked in international players hungry for mineral resources. China became the dominant influence, which helped to displace Western interests. Western economic sanctions also meant that Beijing had a freer hand. Osama bin Laden was a guest of al-Bashir’s government from 1991 to 1996, perhaps not the best way to win friends in the US. Sudan became listed as a terrorist state and was embroiled in the American ‘war on terror’ after the 9/11 abominations. Khartoum thought that, after Afghanistan and Iraq, it was to be next in line for regime-change treatment. The US stepped up its support for the southern rebels while American lobby groups, and Hollywood stars, became active in the anti-Khartoum movement after ‘genocide’ was declared in Darfur.

  Nevertheless, al-Bashir became an ally of the US, Britain, Norway and African states such as Kenya in finessing the Comprehensive P
eace Agreement signed at Naivasha, Kenya, in January 2005. Despite US sanctions, al-Bashir was hailed as a peacemaker. The media firestorm over the savagery, on various sides, in the Darfur war, however, led to the denunciation of al-Bashir as a war criminal, and indictments at the International Criminal Court. Sudan was once more considered a rogue state in much of the West, although the European Union dropped its sanctions.

  Al-Bashir’s team largely played according to the rules of the 2005 agreement, with an uneasy southern-northern government of national unity in Khartoum, reasonably free elections in 2010, and finally the referendum in 2011 in the south that led to an overwhelming vote for independence. With hindsight, imperial Britain should have grasped the nettle and allowed the south its separate existence after 1945. Many southern leaders, most notably the charismatic but autocratic leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), Colonel John Garang de Mabior, hoped to create a united Sudan with the democratic participation of the south, and west and east, of what was Africa’s biggest country. After Garang’s death, just after the signing of the 2005 deal, the southern leadership returned to the preferred option of independence.

  When South Sudan emerged as Africa’s newest state in the summer of 2011, many outside observers hoped that the main fault-line and cause of Sudan’s wars could be resolved. Instead, the south – umbilically connected to the economy of the north – dissolved into ethnic civil war. By 2014 the traditional enemy, al-Bashir, was brought in by the southern president, Salva Kiir, to help forge peace, aided by the neighbouring states. By then, the southern war had emasculated the two countries’ oil supplies. South Sudan, already a failed state, slipped into famine and disaster. The north endured riots because of increases in food prices and other staples. A military-intelligence coup almost brought down al-Bashir. He had come to power in a putsch, but now survived one that aimed to topple him. By early 2014 al-Bashir’s family members were unanimous in pleading for him to step down. He had been in the army for over twenty-five years and President for twenty-five years. Many in the ruling National Congress Party wanted a new face, but the old guard felt al-Bashir should run again in the scheduled 2015 elections. If he were to step down what would be his national and international legacy?

  President Omar al-Bashir has been one of Africa’s and, arguably, Arabia’s most controversial leaders. He has been in power since 1989, and was the first sitting head of state to be issued with an arrest warrant, for war crimes, by the International Criminal Court. He has been a central personality in Islamic and African politics, as well as a love-to-hate figure for the US in the ‘war on terror’. With his 2014 headline role as peacemaker in the southern civil war and other regional conflicts, and Britain threatened with a war crimes indictment by the ICC, al-Bashir’s salience is now much greater.

  He is a field marshal who has fought and commanded in possibly the world’s longest conflict. No authoritative biography has been written on him. Nor has there been a comprehensive military history of Sudan. I have tried to do both and place al-Bashir in the context of the political and military struggles of his country. It is impossible to understand al-Bashir’s extended rule without some comprehension of what went before. I have dealt at length with the previous history of ungovernability in Sudan; otherwise, al-Bashir’s behaviour makes far less sense. This life and times (some would say crimes) is sometimes close-up and personal, with warts and all. The book covers the military background until independence. Then it dissects the long north-south civil war until al-Bashir’s Islamist military coup in 1989 that was supposed to end that enduring conflict. Thereafter, the story covers the wars in the east, south and west (in Darfur). International political and military intervention is also factored in.

  This book is based on in-depth one-on-one interviews with al-Bashir himself, and nearly all his family and close political, military and intelligence colleagues, plus my decades-long personal frontline experience of Sudan’s many struggles. During nearly twenty years of travels in Sudan, I have met many people; most obstructed me, but some became my friends. It is a paradox that, despite some bad times, mindless bureaucracy, censorship and occasional arrests, I believe the Sudanese reputation for hospitality is generally well-deserved. Khartoum, in the north, is still one of the safest cities in Africa. I was also privileged to receive many acts of kindness, trust and hospitality in the much poorer south, east and west; sometimes in the middle of the fighting. I was often entranced by the desert landscapes, the lushness of the deep south, the sunsets on the Nile, and the ancient history, the pyramids and the archaeological sites. This book is not all bullets and bang-bang.

  I have focused on the essence of al-Bashir’s life – as a soldier and Islamist. Religion and war have been largely toxic ingredients of the whole country’s history. The focus has necessarily been on the man who mainly shaped events, for better or worse, since 1989. I have also tried to reflect the voices of humble farmers or isolated teachers and dedicated doctors I met, as well as the many politicians and military officers. I have also listened carefully to the aid specialists, UN workers and local journalists who know the languages and cultures much better than I do.

  Conflict resolution in Sudan is not just obviously important for the 40 million inhabitants of both countries; it is vital in respect of the turmoil in nearly all the neighbouring states: Libya, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt. Sudan’s problems are also linked to the ferment in the Maghreb and elsewhere in the Arab world, and it is connected to the incessant war in Somalia. Sudan’s ethnic and religious wars have infected Mali and Nigeria. The so-called ungovernable spaces of the Sahel and Sahara as well as the Horn are all potential breeding grounds for al-Qaeda and its franchises that have spread from the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and now much of northern Africa, from A-Z, Algeria to Zanzibar. More recently the black flag of jihad has flown defiantly in Syria and Iraq, threatening to spawn a bloody Shia-Sunni catastrophe throughout the Middle East and beyond. Whether Western intervention contains or incites jihad remains a moot point.

  I am writing this on the precise anniversary of the start of the First World War. This conflagration destroyed a number of empires, and in particular the Sublime Porte. It is no coincidence that the peripheries of the former Ottoman Empire are today the source of so much conflict or controversy – in Bosnia, Kurdistan and south Sudan, for example. More central Ottoman territories are also tearing up the straight-lined borders drawn up by the haughty cartographers of the British and French victors of the 1914-1918 war. It is surprising that so many artificial states have lasted so long. I expect many others to collapse, not least the Saudi pack of cards. So the far-flung Sudanese fragment of Istanbul’s long recessional needs to be understood in historical as well as contemporary context.

  This book tells the story of one man in one country – now become two, but Sudan’s fate also impacts on the whole continent of Africa, as well as on the vast shifts in the tectonic plates of the Islamic world. Some Arab analysts might portray al-Bashir as an Islamic visionary; Western reporters usually depict him as a traditional African strongman. In our conversations, al-Bashir described himself as a simple soldier who was dedicated to Islam and his country. The West has already condemned the Sudanese President and wants to drag him off to a court in The Hague, but many of his own countrymen and women might well pronounce differently, as they have in (admittedly flawed) elections. It was an unintended consequence of Western pressure that many northern Sudanese who disliked their president reacted as supportive patriots when he was indicted by the ICC.

  Sudan – now we must say two Sudans – is a stirring and tragic story that I have tried to tell in a way that is fair to all the many sides in the complex matrix. Yet, sadly, history keeps repeating itself in Sudan. Whether my interpretation can help, even just a little, to end the vicious circle of fighting, I do not know. I have simply done my best. The Sudanese, from north and south, and for that mat
ter east and west, all deserve better than endless war.

  Most people gave me a hard time in covering Sudan, but I would like to mention a few who made my many often arduous trips possible, tolerable and sometimes pleasant. Irwin Armstrong was an ever-patient cameraman and friend from the start. Later, Marty Stalker joined the film team. Lindsey Hilsum, a true ‘Sudanorak’, helped with refining my films for broadcast on the UK’s Channel Four News. Pieter Stapel was a Khartoum hotelier who often provided much-needed beverages after exhaustingly dry trips in the desert. Mohamed Salahuddin fixed many things in Khartoum. Uthayla Abdullah-Bray saved me from a series of disasters during the 2010 election observer mission that I tried to lead. Tony Denton also helped on that mission, as well as taking the excellent photographs of the President and his family in 2014, plus helping with the book’s design. Heidi Modro was a tower of strength for me at the UN headquarters in Khartoum and later in Juba; and I rarely praise big bureaucracies. Judy Larkin came on the 2010 observer mission and helped with the editing. James Barker checked historical facts. It almost goes without saying that the many mistakes, especially in the Arabic transliteration, are my own. Arabic scholars will no doubt correctly criticize my lack of standardization in translating names and places – I have generally used names more common in English or the system deployed by the BBC.

  Paul Moorcraft

  Surrey Hills

  England

  4 August 2014

  Chapter 1

  The Historical Background

  What is Sudan?

  Sudan derives its name from the Arabic bilad as-Sudan meaning ‘land of the blacks’ and historically referred to the wider region immediately south of the Sahara; so modern Sudan is just part of a region defined by Arabicspeaking North Africans. Separately, Sudd (or Sadd) is Arabic for ‘barrier’; this defines the largest swamp in the world, to be found in the south. The country also boasts the longest river in the world, the Nile; actually it is at least two rivers, mainly the Blue Nile, creamy brown from the mud of the Ethiopian highlands, and the paler White Nile, which merge at Khartoum, the capital of what was Africa’s biggest country until the secession of the south.