Bashir’s Last Stand
For three days in
November 2016 (starting the 27th), Khartoum and other urban areas in
Sudan were ghost cities. Silent streets, empty if not entirely absent public
transportation vehicles, and closed shops were the normal scenes of the day
during the three days of the so-called Civil Disobedience.
Sudanese people
chose to follow a call for civil disobedience that went viral in social media following
the announcement of the latest economic measures. The unbearable increase in
the cost of living included a massive surge in the prices of some critical
items like food and medicines. The vast success and wide response to the first
call for the three-days public strike of November inspired another one. Social
groups called for another one day civil disobedience in the 19th of
December. This second call received public support from mostly the entire
political and syndicalistic spectrum in Sudan.
Mr. Jones of
Sudan and his Snowball
The enraged momentum
was slowly building up before the propagation of the disobedience’s call. Sudanese doctors went in a nationwide
strike that
continued in an interrupted manner during the months of October and November. on
the 27th of October 2016, Security Services (NISS) started detaining
doctors in the leadership of the strike. Doctors were demanding the government
to provide the basic life-saving equipment in public hospitals and to increase
its expenditure on the health sector and services which is very tiny (varies
between 2% to 4% of the annual budget compared to 70% of the budget directed to
sovereign, security, and defense sectors). This miniature expenditure is
preventing doctors of saving lives in emergency departments due to the lack of
basic equipment and drugs. The Central Committee of Doctors (CCD) raised an
attractive slogan for their demands; (For the Citizens) which appealed to
people and availed huge popularity and support for their movement.
Concurrently, on the
23ed of October, popular and political forces announced a public strike in
Algerif Shariq suburb of the Sudanese capital Khartoum. The citizens of this
eastern extension of the capital alienated themselves from all aspects of
government authority for three consecutive days. The area witnesses a
longstanding dispute between the government and the locals over land ownership.
The government is trying grab the traditionally owned, fertile agricultural
lands on the banks of the Nile from the local citizens and sell it to
investors.
On the third of
November, the Government of Sudan announced its new economic measures. The
measures included floating of the Sudanese Pound which led to a huge surge in
the prices of almost everything. The increase in the prices of medications and
drugs was the most notable. The cost of essential life-saving drugs went over
the roof with an average increase of 150%. The measures were announced against
a public pledge from
the government when passing 2016’s annual budget in the parliament of no
increase in prices during the year. This pledge had gone with wind long ago
before these latest measures as soon as the end of January 2016 witnessed a threefold increase
in the price of cooking gas.
Political forces strongly
opposed and criticized these measures publicly. The government responded by
launching a wave of detentions of political leaders. The list of detainees
included most of the leading staff of the Sudanese Congress Party and the
Secretariat of the National Consensus Forces alliance in addition to tens of
political activists. The detainees’ list continues to grow massively. Estimates
of their numbers reached over 200 in different areas of Sudan by the second
week of December.
However, several demonstrations
against the economic measures took place in Khartoum, Madani, Gadarif, Atbra
and other cities of Sudan. The impact of the measures on the pharmaceutical
products launched another trade-unionist response. Pharmacists and
pharmaceutical companies went on a one day strike objecting the new unbearable
prices of drugs. Over 200 pharmacies closed its doors on the 19th of
November, all over Sudan. The Pharmacists Association called to a public
meeting which was addressed by the State Minister of Health (Sumia Okud). The
minister tried to defend the economic measures by proposing alternatives for
poor classes. Many of the pharmacists including representative of the
pharmaceutical companies responded back, exposing the falsehood of her speech
with numbers from the current market. Later, the majority of the meeting attendees
walked out accusing the minister to be delusional. Yet, another hashtag demanding to restore subsidies to medications
went viral in social media and gained extensive coverage in Arabic and Middle
Eastern traditional media.
This political build-up was very close to the public mood. Calls for
resistance spread all over social media groups. On September 17th, Social
female group in Facebook called and conducted a symbolic protest in Africa
Street in the centre of Khartoum near the premises of the ruling National
Congress Party. The protest raised slogans against the increase of the prices.
Security forces attacked the protesting women with its usual brutality and
excessive violence. That treatment provoked people to join the protest. NISS
forces arrested tens of the protesters on that day. Wondering on how to deal
with this new type of social activists who have little if any political affiliations,
NISS handed them to the police who presented them to trials on charges of public
nuisance. Further demonstrations took place by secondary schools’ students all
over Khartoum North city of the capital in the 24th of November. NISS
reacted to that by raiding schools, arresting teachers and accusing them with sedition.
On the 23ed of November, a call for action started to take over the
social media platforms. A call for civil disobedience by staying homes and
boycotting works and business from the 27th to 29th of
November grew rapidly. On the 27th, the striving call translated to
reality. Streets were empty and shops were closed in most of the urban areas of
Sudan. It was obvious that the call reached an extra mile further than the
normal outreach of the internet. The word of mouth participated largely in
increasing the outreach of the call, reflecting another sign of the extent of
people’s frustration with the government.
Many factors played significant roles in the success of this three-day
general strike. The accumulation and build-up of the dissenting notion to the
government over the previous weeks was among the reasons of the quick positive
response to the call. The fear of the repetition of the 2013 massacre - in
which the governmental security forces killed over 200 peaceful protesters who
were demonstrating against similar economic measures announced by President
Bashir - was another factor. The call for the so-called civil disobedience
provided a safe alternative option for resistance. Ridiculously, earlier in
December after the second call to disobedience spread, President Bashir
challenged those who call for the disobedience and toppling his regime to come
out and meet (…his forces) in the streets, accusing them
of cowardness if they don’t, because they tried before and knew what will
happen to them, in refence to the September 2013 massacre.
Another factor of success was the decentralized manner of the call,
which is largely related to the passive nature of the action its self (Do
nothing and do not go out of your home). Everyone was a leader and every group
and area was a centre. The social media groups had polls for almost everything
related to this civil disobedience. Hashtags were voted for. Daily names of the
group were publicly discussed and voted for. Political debates reverberated in
the FaceBook
group that was formed to launch the call. Everyone in the
group that attracted over hundreds of thousands of members in less than a week
time expressed their opposing views to the government. Demands such as Bashir
resignation, stopping wars, dissolving the ruling party, and other demands were
discussed and expressed publicly. Information about the widespread corruption
was exchanged between the members of the group. Recognizably, the demand of
government withdrawing its latest measures was popularly rejected on the ground
that the problem is deeper than only these measures.
The huge success of the call re-established the public trust on the
strength of their collective action. On the other hand, the populist notion of
the call and its lack of organizational structure although facilitated the
quick spread, did prevent the formulation of specific, concrete, and rational
desired outcomes. Nevertheless, the 27th of November was a public
vote of No to Bashir’s regime and his government. The government can claim very
little legitimacy in representing the people of Sudan after that day, if any at
all.
The Civil Disobedience paved the way for further political momentum. In
the 30 of November, Political entities including National Consensus Forces
parties and the Civil Society Initiative delivered a well-articulated note to
the presidential palace demanding President Bashir to step down. In December, 1st,
The Sudan People Liberation Movement issued a statement reconfirming the
preannounced stoppage of all negotiation with the regime, calling for unified
center for the opposition and the stepping down of Bashir to open the window
for discussing transitional arrangements. Even the Popular Congress Party and
other progovernment parties that participated in Bashir’s National Dialogue
criticised the government’s latest economic measures. Let alone the abandoning
rat of the regime’s sinking ship, Ghazi Salah Eldin who took the opportunity to
play all the cards again – after his recent re-joining of the joke of the
National Dialogue- and saluted the
disobedience and those behind it without frankly supporting the call for
the next one.
It became obvious that any entity
that align its self with regime now is committing a political suicide. It was recognizable that the president spent
most of the time of these events outside the country in foreign visits. The
latest visit was during the days of the disobedience to the UAE in what seems a
failed attempt to attract foreign aid. About $2.1bn has been deposited in the
last two years to Sudan’s central bank by Saudi Arabia and other friendly
states after Sudan cut its diplomatic and security ties with Iran, but it
failed helping to improve the collapsing economy.
Economy 1.0.1:
You Can Not Run, You Can Not Hide
The government’s recurring austerity measures to stabilize the economy
seems to be just like Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills. No economic measures
could solve a crisis that is political in nature. Similar measures have been announced
in 2012, and 2013 (the latest fueled an uprising during which the government
killed over 200 protesters with evidence
established of shoot to kill orders in the streets in order to calm it down). With
an inflation rate that increases averagely by 40% a year since 2011 and just
about $800m of foreign exchange reserves left in the central bank according to
the IMF, Bashir’s regime is seriously crumbling this time.
The price of the political failures of Bashir’s regime is very
expensive. The direct cost of war in darfur alone is around 5 billion US
dollars a year. The war in the two areas is expected to be more
costly. the funding of the paraformal militias which guard Bashir’s reign is
taking place outside the accounting systems and formal financial structure of
the state, opening a large door for corruption and venality. The shortage in
funding the public and social services is increasing with the majority of
public funds directed to military and security sectors. However, the economic
crisis of the current Sudanese government seems to be deeper and more
structural in nature than the burden of wars alone.
The current Islamic
Government of Sudan silenced multiple waves of public demonstrations triggered
by the economic hardship with excessive force and violence since it came to
power. Following the 1989’s coup, the National Islamic Front (NIF) government
decided to take the Sudanese economy on the path of free market economy. In 1992,
the government formally adopted the Economic Liberalization Policy. A policy
aimed at treating the economic stagnation of the country by restricting the
role of the state to policy making and reducing the expenditure of the public
sector in social services sectors. Furthermore, the framework of this policy
also included an extensive program of sale and liquidation for the state-owned
institutions and companies. This led to severe reduction of the government
income because of the liquidation of the profitable state-owned investments. The
main reason behind selling these profitable investments was the wide spread of
the corruption practices that was protected by senior governmental officials.
The first years of
implementation of these policies took the country through very serious hardships.
Rapid rising of the actual inflation reached 166% by year 1996[i].
The value of the local currency showed similar deterioration. With the absence
of any foreign support, the burden of dept. continued to rise to reach reached
about $ 17 billion in 1996. The GDP showed low level of annual growth that
reached 1% in year 1994[ii].
The oil production
achieved a relative economic stability. This had a larger significant role
after the signing of the CPA that ended the long civil war in the South. The
bless of oil production came with its curse. Since the first shipment of
Sudanese oil exported in 30, September 1999, Sudan started to show the symptoms
of the “Dutch disease”: the overdependence on natural resources discovery that
leads to large increase in revenues associated with decline interest in
focusing or developing of other sectors. Sudan witnessed total decline in the
productive sectors, both industrial and agricultural with increase dependence
on Oil export revenues. Petroleum sector represented 80% of total national
export earnings in 2002, where formal financial reports showed a terrible
decline in the rest of the goods especially cotton and oilseeds.
long-term social
impacts resulted from these policies. The government expenditure did not put in
account any measures to ease the hardships of its policy on the general
population in the short or long terms. For example, 1998 annual budget
allocated only 18% to goods and services and 7% to development[iii].
Most of the budget was directed to security and defense sectors in addition to
the degenerative effect of the wide spread corruption in the absence of any
accountability measures. The revenues of oil production were not used to
support long-term improvements of the economy but it was rather used directly
to support the budget deficit resulting of increasing governmental spending and
import financing.
The independence of
South Sudan that come to effect on the 9th of July 2011, created a
new reality that exposed the structural and political crisis of the Sudanese
economy. Sudan lost about one third of its land and 25% of its population. Most
of the oil resources were in fields situated within the new country.
The loss of oil
revenues was a major cause of unpredictable directions of Sudanese economy post
2011. Sudanese government tried to replace Oil export with export of raw gold.
However, the progovernment militias control most of the gold mining fields.
Government is leaving this control to the militias in order to buy and maintain
their loyalty and continue using them in its extended civil wars. This
prevented any actual use of gold revenues to achieve real improvements in the
Sudanese economy. The burden of the debt is putting further hardship on the
economy. It reached $48.2bn, 86% of which was in arrears at the end of 2015.
This accounts to over 70% of Sudan’s GDP. It is important to recognize that the
principal debt was 16.1 billion, and the rest are interests and delayed
repayment penalties. The accelerated growing rate for these debts returns to four
basic factors;
· The rising of interest rates for the
debt.
· The exports decline.
· The spending of these debts on
non-productive projects.
· The wide spread corruption within the
government officials.
Conclusion
With the political
deadlock in the country, the current economic crisis seems to be the undoing of
Bashir’s regime. The accumulation of the public anger and unrest and the joining
of new social groups to the active resistance against the regime are signs of
the inevitability of change. The Khartoum Based National Dialogue proved to be
just another tool of power centralization in the hands of President Bashir. The
collapse of the AUHIP RoadMap agreement due the government’s stubbornness in
reaching humanitarian aid arrangement killed all hopes of reaching a peace deal
with the fighting rebels. The Government proclaimed victory and end of war in
Darfur is endangered by the fact that land ownership issues and militias
attacks on local farmers and IDPs continue to take place.
The scene is open to
many scenarios. The most dangerous scenario is an internal coup within the
regime. The ongoing friction between the army and Rapid Support Forces -that
strives to confirm its position as a legitimate and independent force- is a
major hazard. Any military move to grasp the power seat this time will be faced
with resistance from other institutionalised militarily forces.
With lack of other
options for the government, the only safe exit for the country is Bashir agreeing
to stepping down political arrangements for transitional period to take place.
However, the government might succeed to do some relieving cosmetic measures,
but it is doubtful to have long term impacts. The foreign powers who decide to
support these cosmetic measures will be opposing the expressed will of the
Sudanese people. Something that people do not forget easily. The international
community continue to make remarks about the fear of chaos in the country if
sudden change took place. These remarks ignore the fact that chaos is where
Bashir’s regime is leading us. Almost one third of the country is in a state of
active war while the cost of life in the rest of the country is becoming increasingly
unbearable. Let alone Sudanese people do have the right like the rest of the
people of the world to choose who run their country.
Bashir mentioned
before that he read Macbeth -actually his exact words were that he read for
Shakespeare and Macbeth but who could question the intellect of a tyrant? - it
might be time for him to recognize that Birnam Wood is actually moving this
time.
[i]
Almosharaf, Haitham Abdualaziz, and Fung Deng Tian. "The Causes of
Sudan’s Recent Economic Decline." Transport 37 (2014): 13-2.
[ii]
World Bank national accounts data, and OECD National Accounts data files.
[iii]
Ministry of finance and
National Economy ; 1998 budget
Comments
Post a Comment