A year after the military coup, uncertainty hangs over Sudan

First modification: 10/26/2022 – 01:30

Thousands of Sudanese demonstrated this Tuesday, October 25, to denounce the situation in which their country finds itself, one year after the first anniversary of the coup d’état, and demand a civilian government, thus defying Internet cuts and a massive military deployment. .

The demonstrators marched shouting “Militaries to the barracks!” in the capital, Khartoum, and its suburbs, where all roads had been blocked.

While the repression has left 119 dead in a year, the Western foreign ministries had asked the military power on Monday not to fire on the crowd. A request that was visibly taken into account since, faced with a mobilization of a magnitude that had not been seen for months, no shots were fired.

However, one protester “died, hit by a military vehicle” in the Khartoum suburbs, pro-democracy doctors reported.

From dawn, both sides were active. The demonstrators had erected barricades to stop the advance of the security forces, while they had blocked bridges and avenues to prevent the demonstrators from going to the presidential palace where General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, author of the coup of the October 25, 2021.

That day, Burhan had broken all the commitments made two years earlier. The general had civilian leaders with whom he had agreed to share power arrested in 2019, after the army was forced to depose autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades.

After Burhan’s coup that abruptly ended Sudan’s democratic transition, protesters and activists from civil society and pro-democracy organizations have not stopped repeating the same slogan: “no negotiation or partnership with the coup plotters” and “return to a civil government.

“We have been protesting for a year and that has allowed us to contain the coup: it has not been able to obtain international or regional recognition,” a protester in Khartoum told the AFP news agency.

“This is the first time in history that we see a coup d’état not progress for a whole year,” said another protester, carrying a Sudanese flag on his shoulder.

A political and social crisis aggravated by the economic crisis

Since October 2021 and, more generally, since the popular uprising of 2019, Sudan has been swimming in uncertainty and no observer imagines that elections, promised for the summer of 2023, are possible. No political figure seems willing to join the civilian government. regularly announced by General Burhan, while international mediation fails to lead to an end to the stalemate.

For his part, Abdel-Fattah Burhan has failed to stabilize his country or consolidate his power. The general had attributed responsibility for the deterioration of the situation to the previous civilian government of Abdallah Hamdok that he overthrew, but today it is the military who are being challenged in the streets.

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Added to the political and social crisis is an economic crisis aggravated by the cessation of international aid. The cost of living has risen as a result of rising food and energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine, among other factors.

Last July, after several days of violent demonstrations, General Burhan declared that the army was ready to hand over power to a “government of competent people”. Since then, negotiations have been taking place with several representatives of the Forces for Freedom and Change, an alliance of parties that signed the power-sharing agreement with the army in 2019, under the sponsorship of the United States among others.

But until a compromise is reached, the situation in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating with floods, crop failures and conflicts over land and resources. The latest acts of violence in Blue Nile state have left more than 200 dead in five days of clashes between communities.

In the last year, tens of thousands of people have been displaced and at least 15 million Sudanese, a third of the 45 million Sudanese population, are affected by hunger. This is 50% more than a year ago, according to the World Food Program (WFP). The price of the minimum food basket has risen 137% in one year, forcing almost all households to “spend more than two-thirds of their income on food,” adds the WFP.

Following the coup, many supporters of deposed President Omar al-Bashir have been rehabilitated, released from jail or returned from exile. Several have regained their posts in the administration or are once again active on the political scene and are important allies for the leader of the junta.

But for most opponents of the coup, any new power-sharing deal with the junta would be seen as a betrayal. And even with the death of more than 119 protesters at the hands of the security forces in the last year, a new call to take to the streets has been launched.

Afp, local media