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Geopolitics

In Sudan, A Surprise About-Face Marks Death Of The Revolution

Ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was the face of the "stolen revolution". The fact that he accepted, out of the blue, to return at the same position, albeit on different footing, opens the door to the final legitimization of the coup.

Sudanese protesters holding signs and wearing Sudanese flag

Sudanese protesters demonstrating against the military regime in London on Nov. 20, 2021

Nesrine Malik

A little over a month ago, a military coup in Sudan ended a military-civilian partnership established after the 2019 revolution that removed President Omar al-Bashir after almost 30 years in power. The army arrested the Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and, along with several of his cabinet and other civil government officials, threw him in detention. In the weeks that followed, the Sudanese military and their partners in power, the Rapid Support Forces, moved quickly.

They reappointed a new government of “technocrats” (read “loyalists”), shut down internet services, and violently suppressed peaceful protests against the coup and its sabotaging of the 2019 revolution. During those weeks, Hamdok remained the symbol of the stolen revolution, betrayed by the military, detained illegally, unable to communicate with the people who demanded his return. In his figure, the moral authority of the counter-coup resided.



Until, for reasons that neither he nor anyone in his close circle has spelled out coherently, he decided last week to accept an offer to return as prime minister, but on a very different footing to that on which he stood before. Hamdok returns not as the head of a restored civilian government that has vanquished the treacherous army and ejected its allies in the security and paramilitary forces out of Sudanese politics for good. He returns as a coup launderer, a means through which the coup can be legitimized, and popular opposition to it pacified.

Not a moment's peace since the coup

It is clear what is in this for the army and its partners. The path of the coup was not as smooth as expected despite attempts to lubricate its way. What was a practical victory brought about by force, failed to garner any legitimacy or moral cover. Before the coup was executed, when it was clearly in the offing, the military and security forces attempted to astroturf a popular march demanding the army take over to restore economic stability.

They failed to organize anything of scale. Unable to pretend that the takeover was a response to a popular call, the army resorted to the claim that the coup was nothing of the kind, merely a “correction” of a situation beginning to go awry as a result of reckless behavior on the part of civilian members of government.

Rarely has a politician’s capital plummeted so quickly in such a short span of time.

This claim also fell flat, and it quickly became clear that neither the Sudanese people nor the international community had any intention of letting the coup pass. Street-level opposition, in particular, remained dogged, organized by local resistance committees at the street and community level, unfettered by shootings and detentions, uninterrupted by an internet blackout.

For the past four weeks, the new military government has not had a moment’s peace, as marches, protests and civil disobedience stretched and cohered into a chain of disruption. And so a third attempt to pacify the Sudanese people and buy some time for the new regime to bed in came in the form of agreeing with Hamdok to return as prime minister.

Sudanese military officers and politicians during the signing of a political declaration

Signing ceremony of a political declaration between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Abdalla Hamdok, reappointing the latter as prime minister.

Mohamed Khidir/Xinhua/ZUMA

Hamdock's wasted sacrifice

There is no kind reading of Hamdok’s motivations. Rarely has a politician’s capital plummeted so quickly in such a short span of time. Protestors immediately rejected what he views as a return, but what is essentially a reappointment to a new, toothless job. He has miscalculated epically in expecting that the Sudanese people were naive enough to believe that he would have some sway and power in the new military dictatorship, that his reappointment signifies some sort of concession.

His public statements and interviews since his release have been banal and out of step with the anger and urgency on the streets of a country where many are mourning those killed by his partners while he was in detention. Nor has he addressed the Sudanese people directly to assuage their concerns about how his return effectively co-signs the coup. He has framed his decision as one of pained pragmatism. His goal, he claims, is to stem the flow of blood on the streets, and stabilize a country at risk of falling apart.

The failure of Hamdok’s return to pacify the protestors means more will die.

So far, his alleged sacrifice seems to have been a wasted one. If anything, it has backfired. Protests and marches continue, their anger if anything, redoubled. Hamdok’s willingness to return to the political fold, however bitter he claims that pill was for him to swallow, has driven home an understanding that the conflict playing out since Bashir’s removal in 2019 is not between the military establishment and civilians, but a much deeper divide between the people and the class that their rulers, be they military or civilian, are drawn from.

That class has so far managed to constantly reconfigure itself in ways that maintain its grip on power, either through military-civilian alliances, or more recently, agreements with rebel leaders who increasingly run mini-sultanates in historically marginalized areas of Sudan. Either through oppression or co-option, these formations have succeeded in staving off popular protests. But the durability and integrity of these urban elite institutions is fraying; the army is weakened, under-resourced by a Bashir government that preferred to outsource its fighting to vigilante groups and militias. The civilian technocratic class, already small, concentrated in the capital, and terminally self-involved, finds itself at sea in a country that has for years now been governed by a large and ruthless deal-cutting establishment of security heads, rebel leaders and cartels enriched by the seizing and trading of much of Sudan’s lucrative natural resources.

Accepting the coup would be a mistake

These new dominant forces are broadly the forces behind last month’s coup. But the very diversity and number of these counterrevolutionary parties, their competing interests and latent suspicions — hangovers from when they were on opposite sides in various conflicts — renders their compact fragile. Their ability to stabilize the country by acting in unison is compromised.

Hamdok’s recruitment in this effort is transparent, and its immediate rejection a reflection of the fact that these ruses no longer have purchase amongst a Sudanese people who understand that their interests will never be served by, or trickle down from, those who seize power by force.

The bad news is that the failure of Hamdok’s return to pacify the protestors means more will die, as the people are locked in a confrontation with the army and security forces that only ends with either a massacre or the reversal of the coup. The former is more likely than the latter. The good news is that the very continuation of these confrontations suggests that the old models of politics, where a constantly repopulated cast of historically empowered political protagonists accumulates wealth and power at the expense of people’s lives and livelihoods, has finally been exposed and rejected.

The only way forward is that the ongoing handover to a new extractive class is interrupted. Accepting the coup may save lives, but prove fatal to Sudan itself.

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Economy

How A Xi Jinping Dinner In San Francisco May Have Sealed Mastercard's Arrival In China

The credit giant becomes only the second player after American Express to be allowed to set up a bank card-clearing RMB operation in mainland China.

Photo of a hand holding a phone displaying an Union Pay logo, with a Mastercard VISA logo in the background of the photo.

Mastercard has just been granted a bank card clearing license in China.

Liu Qianshan

-Analysis-

It appears that one of the biggest beneficiaries from Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to San Francisco was Mastercard.

The U.S. credit card giant has since secured eagerly anticipated approval to expand in China's massive financial sector, having finally obtained long sought approval from China's central bank and financial regulatory authorities to initiate a bank card business in China through its joint venture with its new Chinese partner.

For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.

Through a joint venture in China between Mastercard and China's NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, dubbed Mastercard NUCC, it has officially entered mainland China as an RMB currency clearing organization. It's only the second foreign business of its kind to do so following American Express in 2020.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the development is linked to Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting on Nov. 15 with U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco, part of a two-day visit that also included dinner that Xi had with U.S. business executives.

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