Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, the 76-year old, long-serving president of the Sudan was overthrown last year after he had been in power from 1989 to 2019 a period of thirty years.

During this period he wielded untrammelled power restrained only by the army and a sham of a political party called the National Congress. Before him was the interim prime minister-ship of Sadiq al Mahdi, the grandson of Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad ibn Abd Allah al Mahdi (1881-1898).

Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad founded a Mahdist state in the Sudan in 1885 after murdering the British General Charles George Gordon.

The British fought back, finally killing him in 1898 and then the Sudan came under an Anglo-Egyptian condominium from 1898 to 1956.

Omar Al Bashir shunted aside Sadiq al Mahdi in 1989. Before him was another long-serving military ruler Jafar Muhammad el Numeiry who ruled from 1969 to 1985 as part of so called “free officers movement”.

Numeiry survived more than 20 attempted coups and was once restored to power by troops of Muamar Gadhafi. The point to make is that since the Sudanese independence in 1956, the military has remained a permanent feature in the government of the country with occasional civilian rule provided by rival Sudanese politicians of either the Umma party of the Mahdist movement and other Muslims opposed to them.

Out of the 64 years of sovereign nationhood, the military has been in power for more than 50 years. During this period, the country has been wracked by racial/religious wars between the Muslim north and the largely Christian / animist South in which more than two million people were killed and five million displaced as well as fissiparous political tendencies between the northern Arabized Muslims and the black Muslims in Darfur.

Southern Sudan became independent on July 11, 2011 thus ending the longest civil war in Africa. In the meantime, the Khartoum regime launched a paramilitary force, many on horsebacks, the so-called Janjaweed against their compatriots in Darfur murdering more than 400,000 people mostly of Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur tribes and raping hundreds of thousands of women and female children and seizing their lands.

The USA in 2004 declared the massacres in Darfur genocide and crime against humanity. This Sudanese campaign was in retaliation against a secessionist liberation force which wanted people of Darfur to be recognized as a distinct people.

The rebellion in Darfur remains active with no end in sight. Sudan is a basket case whose economy has been further damaged by the secession of the oil rich Southern Sudan since 2011.

The Sudanese regimes, whether civilian or military, have oscillated between ideological socialists and Islamic fundamentalists depending on whichever could guarantee them hold on power.

Omar al Bashir has however held power until 2019 when there was a general rebellion of workers, students, professionals, particularly doctors and civil servants.

On the orders of General Omar al Bashir, the army unleashed murderous force on the civilian population, especially college students killing thousands of them. When it became clear that the young people could not be cowed, the higher command of the military moved against Omar al Bashir.

A transitional Military Council (TMC) took over power. In August 2019, the TMC and “Forces of Freedom and Change alliance” (FFC) signed a political agreement and a constitutional declaration legally defining a 39-month phase of transitional state institutions and procedures to return Sudan to civilian democracy.

In September the TMC formally transferred executive power to a mixed civilian-military collective head of state the so-called “Sovereignty Council of Sudan”, and to a civilian Prime Minister Abbdalla Hamdok and a mostly civilian cabinet and a female jurist, Nemat Abdulla Khair became Sudan’s first female Chief Justice.

There has been tremendous pressure on the Sudan by the West particularly the USA and by Saudi Arabia, its main financier in the past which has withheld financial assistance to the country until it met western demands.

The economy of the country relies mainly on agriculture particularly the production of cotton from the vast irrigated plains of Gezira plains, the largest irrigated agricultural scheme in the world, lying between the white and Blue Nile river .

The country also produces 80% of the world’s gum Arabic. It is trying to invest in the mining sector especially the mining of gold and it still has some oil but not enough to make serious economic impact.

The entire country is in the Sahara desert with consequent harsh climatic conditions making the country one of the poorest countries in the world.

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It has also been subjected to economic sanctions from the 1970s because of harbouring Al Qaeda terrorists including Osama bin Laden and others who attacked in 2000, the American ship, USS Cole in the Port of Aden in Yemen killing 17 American servicemen.

The Clinton administration was forced to bomb the country using long range Exocet missiles from ships on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The Sudan was declared a terrorist state with all the negative implications deriving from it.

The new regime in the Sudan after negotiations with the Trump administration has now decided to compensate for the damage to American property and loss of lives of his servicemen to the tune of $30 million. This is a huge amount for an impoverished country to cough out.

It is also now ready to surrender Omar Al Bashir, its long term former president, for trial in The Hague for genocide and crime against humanity committed, in Darfur and other places on his order.

A United Nations Commission in 2005 had reported that crimes were committed in Darfur by the Sudanese forces and had referred the case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

It now seems that chicken has come home to roost and that Omar al Bashir and his henchmen are going to answer for their crimes.

We do not know what the USA has promised the current government in Khartoum in exchange for their bending over backward to accommodate the American demands including ties with Israel.

Sudan is on the list of countries whose citizens are banned from coming to the United States. It may be this ban will be lifted as well as the designation of the country as a terrorist state.

There may also be promise of American investment and encouragement for the Gulf Arab states and Saudi Arabia to increase their aid to the country. The apparent rapprochement between the USA and the Sudan has wide-ranging ramifications.

It is a call to dictators particularly in Africa that oppressing their citizens and killing opposition members is not the internal affairs of their countries.

Brutal dictators will, no matter how long, be held accountable for their misdeeds. It began in the successor states of the old Yugoslavia, in Serbia and Croatia; then the Serb leaders in the ramshackle Bosnia and Herzegovina, then in Liberia, Chad, Cambodia and The Ivory Coast.

There is of course disquiet that only countries in the poorer parts of the world are subjected to criminal prosecution while in office or after leaving office.

While on the other hand powerful leaders of major powers are getting away with murder.

This is of course the kernel of international politics which is largely based on power relations. History is written from the perspectives of the victorious!

By Jide Osuntokun