Sudan’s rulers: “The people are suffering”

A slightly edited version of this piece was published on Middle East Eye. 

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, Sudan’s second in command and for all practical purposes’ effective ruler, told a press conference at the Khartoum airport upon his return from a long visit to Moscow on 2 March 2022 that Sudan’s embassies abroad have not received any funding for the past eighteen months. The 46 years old Dagalo, dressed in a statesman’s fine suit and reading glasses between nose and hand, was exasperated by the terrible state of affairs under his rule, a situation he is finding harder and harder to manage. “The people are tired, the people are suffering, the people have reached a hopeless stage,” he told his audience. “We are a disgrace in the world, our students are stranded, our embassies have stopped working.”

More than four months have passed since the 25 October 2021 military coup that cut short Sudan’s once praised transitional period, a unique model in civilian-military partnership in the words of the former transitional prime minister Abdalla Hamdok. The former UN official was initially placed under house arrest, reinstated as prime minister under the terms of short-lived arrangement with the coup leaders a month later, resigned in January 2022 and is since believed to be in Dubai. 

Sudan’s recent coup is also unique in its own way, a co-habitation of military officers, militiamen, security officers and former rebels with no formal structure to bind them together or publicly identifiable decision-making process to mediate their conflicting interests. When Dagalo left Khartoum for Moscow on 23 February rumour had it that General Abd Al Fattah Al Burhan, the formal first in command and head of state, complained to Egyptian officials of the manoeuvring of his deputy and expressed concerns that Dagalo was plotting to overthrow him with the aid of foreign parties. A few days earlier Dagalo and his brother were warmly received by the UAE’s strongman Mohamed bin Zayed. The day his deputy flew to Moscow Al Burhan toured the Shajara military camp south of the capital Khartoum stressing that the army would only hand over power to a transparently elected government or on condition of a national consensus between all stakeholders. 

Manufacturing such consensus is the chosen department of Volker Perthes, head of the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS). This special mission was established by resolution of the UN Security Council in June 2020 with the stated aims of sorting out the country. UNITAMS was supposed to help the political transition and achieve all good things: progress towards democratic governance, protection and promotion of human rights, sustainable peace, mobilisation of economic and development assistance, coordination of human assistance and so on and so forth. 

During the short duration of the ‘model civilian-military partnership’ the mission was content with a rather low-key performance, mostly in the background. Its chief, Volker Perthes, has however a passion for the public eye and makes a point of speaking in Arabic and offering a continuous education of sorts in state-building. He called for instance in a long speech to the press on 16 June 2021 for timely implementation of the August 2020 Juba peace deals and deplored the chronic delay in the formation of the transitional parliament and the stalled reform of the security sector stressing the importance of the formation of a unified national army that abides by the constitution. 

With the 25 October coup UNITAMS effectively lost its raison d'être and Volker Perthes had to invent one as it were. He assumed the role of mediator at large, becoming over night the most engaged ‘politician’ in the country. The UNITAMS chief launched a series of ‘consultations on the political process in Sudan’ and invited political actors of all stripes and types barring the former ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to visit his headquarters in Khartoum and express their hearts desires. 

The 36 pages summary report of the Perthes consultations has just been made public. A statement released on 28 February 2022 said it represents a summary of “the opinions and areas of convergence and divergence heard by the mission during 110 consultation meetings with over 800 participants, one third of them women – from various parts of Sudan, as well as those contained in over 80 written submissions.” One immediate lesson from the Perthes consultations is the terribly narrow composition of the political class as such considering an estimated total population of over 46 million people. 

The report, to no surprise, is indeed a wish list. The outcomes, highlighted in boxes, are well phrased appeals to an imagined status quo ante that are hard to dispute in principle, essentially performative utterances in an objective void: demands for stopping the killing of protestors, lifting the state of emergency and guarantee of accountability; agreement on the need to modify the effectively defunct 2019 Constitutional Document; abhorrence at the dominant role of the military in political life; speculations about the size, mandate and composition of a future sovereignty council and cabinet of ministers; agreement on the urgency of forming a future transitional legislative council; complaints about the delays in implementation of the Juba peace deals; agreement on the need to create a unified professional non-partisan army; recognition of the fundamental link between women’s freedoms and democracy; agreement on the urgent need for accountability for past crimes and a process of transitional justice; need for a constitution-writing process and free and fair elections in a suitable environment with international guarantees; and a continuous role for the international community in support of Sudan’s transition. 

Based on the above the Perthes report suggested the following procedural approach: prioritisation of critical steps, inclusivity and national ownership, comprehensive solutions, and effective facilitation and accompaniment. What these items actually mean is anybody’s guess but their tenor is clinical rather than political, picked out of a management handbook. What the Perthes report fails to see or does not want to see are the brute facts of power. As these consultations proceeded, more than 80 mostly young women and men were killed on Khartoum’s streets in a routine of regular demonstrations against military rule.

In another space and time, the space of humble homes and the time of daily life, hunger is biting into every third belly in the country. 14.3 million people require humanitarian assistance including 10.9 million people who are food insecure. The scale of food insecurity in humanitarian jargon ranges from uncertainty regarding the ability to obtain food through poor food quality and skipping meals to having nothing to eat for a day. An average food basket consumes up to 70% of a household’s total expenditure. One out of three children is stunted, too short for age, as a consequence of malnutrition. The government, unable to fund its own embassies, has resorted to a blanket increase of taxes and dues including on health care, medicines, cooking gas and telecommunications besides the abolition of fuel, electricity and bread subsidies applauded by international donors. The 2022 budget aims at a 145% increase in tax revenues and a 140% increase in revenue from commodities and services, effectively snatching the little available food from hungry mouths. 

Sudan relies in feeding its cities considerably on Russian wheat. Just this January, Sudan, Egypt and Iran received together two thirds of Russia’s wheat exports. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, together the two countries account for 29% of the global exports of wheat, is likely to translate into supply disruptions, higher wheat prices and greater hunger in Khartoum’s shanties. Dagalo, the merchant, believes he can endure the harsh months ahead by auctioning off Sudan’s coastline to his Russian hosts or higher bidders. Perthes with his report concluded might be looking for a promotion.