Tag Archives: Sudan

Egypt, Qatar, others add ground troops to Yemen mess

  By

Arsenal Bolt: Quick updates on the news stories we’re following.

arsenal-bolt-logo

The Economist – “A downward spiral”:

More troops have poured in since the [Sept. 4 2015] attack [on coalition troops]. Saudi Arabia dispatched more elite forces to join the 3,000-strong coalition force already on the ground, while Qatar, hitherto only participating in air operations, has sent 1,000 soldiers. Egypt, which has long warned of the folly of putting boots on the ground given its disastrous intervention in the 1960s, this week sent in 800 men. Sudanese troops are reportedly waiting to be shipped out of Khartoum. Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said his two sons will join the battle.
[…]
Quashing the Shia Houthis is nigh on impossible. Gulf officials and media talk bombastically of preparations to take back Sana’a from them and reinstall Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi as president (the Houthis drove him out of the country in March). But Yemen has long been treacherous territory for foreign invaders, and Gulf armies are relatively inexperienced.

Since committing ground troops in August, the coalition has taken control of Aden, the southern port city, and is advancing on Taiz. But it is struggling in Maarib, the gateway to Sana’a, where the extra troops, backed by armoured vehicles and missile launchers, are said to be massing. The fighting will only get harder since the Houthis’ remaining strongholds are in mountainous redoubts.

[…] a rising generation of young, ambitious Gulf royals appears unwilling to pare back their newfound military adventurism.

 
Related Reading: “Saudi Arabia and the US: More military misfires” — my August 13, 2015 op-ed with Stephan Richter for Al Jazeera English.

The “Burkina Faso effect” is still unclear

  By

Six months later, we are still no closer to a definitive answer on the question: “Burkina Faso’s Printemps Noir: A Black Spring or a fizzle?”

In other words, has the surprise popular/military ouster of Burkina Faso’s authoritarian president over a term limits dispute had any ripple effects across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa’s countries with long-serving leaders — many of whom are also currently trying to change their constitutions to seek additional terms? Will people be inspired to challenge attempts to revise term limits and nip their potential future strongmen’s careers in the bud?

A partial map of the years that Sub-Saharan African strongmen took office, in relation to Blaise Compaoré's 1987 coup in Burkina Faso. (Map labels by Arsenal For Democracy.)

A partial map of the years that Sub-Saharan African strongmen took office, in relation to Blaise Compaoré’s 1987 coup in Burkina Faso. (Map labels by Arsenal For Democracy.)

In Burundi this week we got perhaps the clearest parallel so far as a major military coup attempt was made against the president after weeks of increasingly bloody protests over his planned third term. It’s currently still too early to tell what the outcome of that uprising will be, since the army was divided over the decision to intervene in the political sphere.

Fighting raged in the capital last night. Reuters:

“The coup attempt failed, loyal forces are still controlling all strategic points,” said Army Chief of Staff General Prime Niyongabo in a statement broadcast on state radio.

A Reuters witness reported a journalist at the state broadcaster had said there was still heavy gunfire being heard around the state television and radio station in the capital on Thursday morning. Another Reuters witness said loud blasts were heard in the capital.

 
The Guardian:

Witnesses said rival factions of the armed forces, divided between supporters of the coup attempt and the president’s loyalists, were exchanging heavy machine gun and rocket fire around the state television and radio complex, which is held by the president’s supporters.

According to a pro-coup military source, the RTNB complex was attacked in the early hours of the morning after Burundi’s armed forces chief used state radio to announce that the coup had failed.

A journalist inside the complex confirmed heavy fighting raged through the early hours of the morning and after dawn, with heavy weapons including cannons and rockets being used.

 
Regardless of the outcome in Burundi, however, there is a bigger picture also still unresolved. Even beyond the “super-dicator” types — those who have ruled for 30-40 years and show no signs of budging or don’t even bother with real elections — there are almost a dozen wannabe-strongmen who are similarly trying to change the rules to contest semi-competitive elections and plan to coast to re-election on popularity or intimidation and join the ranks of the super-dictators.

The trends on the latter front appear to be quite unclear, with some countries and organizations showing positive signs and others making the same unfortunate decisions as we have just seen the president of Burundi undertake. An op-ed in Al Jazeera English summarized the state of play in the various countries with similar situations:

The forced resignation of Burkinabe President Blaise Campaore in October last year, following similar protests in Ougadougou is a case in point.

Perhaps that influenced President Thomas Yayi to accept the Benin constitutional court’s refusal to amend the constitution for a third term, and he has publicly stated that he will not seek re-election next year.
[…]
Meanwhile in the DRC there has already been strong opposition to President Joseph Kabila’s attempts to amend both the constitution and the electoral law, including from within his own party.
[…]
In other parts of the continent, the signals are mixed. In stark contrast to Burundi and DRC, in neighbouring Rwanda, two million people have petitioned parliament to amend the constitution in order to allow Paul Kagame to extend his rule for a third seven-year term in 2017.
[…]
Last month, Togo’s Faure Gnassingbe and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir were both re-elected as their countries’ leaders, despite high questionable track records and notwithstanding protests against Faure’s third-term bid and an opposition boycott of the poll in Sudan, where Bashir has been in power since 1989.
[…]
However, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) looks set to change such apathy this week, when it will table a new clause that would prohibit presidents of member countries from ruling for more than two terms. It is also said to be considering adopting a new legal regime that will make all ECOWAS decisions immediately applicable and binding on member states.

 

The war in Yemen has begun in earnest now

  By

After years of slowly building chaos, The Houthi force is moving against Aden, the government-in-the-south has fled the country, and — as of tonight — the Royal Saudi Air Force has launched an operation into Yemen under the GCC (or possibly the Arab League) at the request of the fallen government.

Flag of Yemen

Flag of Yemen

10 countries are participating in the operation already: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan are all said to be participating, with logistical and intelligence support from the United States.

The involvements of Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, and Sudan are very unexpected and indicate a much wider operation than anticipated. It also strongly suggests that Saudi Arabia was leaning heavily on every government in the Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, and South Asia to whom it has given a lot of money previously. Saudi Arabia is cashing in every favor for a blistering war against the quasi-Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, unlike with the rather lackadaisical coalition to support the United States against ISIS in Syria. Qatar, which sent no jets at all in the Syria campaign, sent 10 tonight.

Bahrain, which only participated minimally on the first day of the Syria raids, also sent 15 jets. Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy also “owes” Saudi Arabia for brutally suppressing their own Shia uprising in 2011 (during the Arab Spring) with GCC shock troops.

The UAE and Jordan also sent plenty of bombers over Yemen in the initial hours, in a marked contrast from their wavering in the Syria campaign.

This massive undertaking should, in my opinion, also be taken as a clear signal that Saudi Arabia firmly prioritizes the “threat” from Iran and Iranian proxies (which include the Houthis in Yemen but also 100,000 anti-ISIS fighters across Iraq and Hezbollah anti-ISIS units in western Syria) well above the threat from ISIS, despite tough talk on the latter some months ago.

Meanwhile, Iran has countless military advisers and trainers on the ground assisting the huge Iraqi campaign to re-take Tikrit from ISIS, has been providing close-air support and bombers against ISIS all over the Iraqi skies, and reportedly may even have 30,000 regular troops fighting in Iraq directly.

If I’m looking at the facts and figures, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League in general — the purported American allies — are doing far less to combat ISIS than Iran, even if you buy the theory that Iran’s support for Assad accidentally helped create ISIS in the first place.

This war in Yemen against the Houthis, which Saudi Arabia has been stirring up violently for years, seems essentially to be more of an indirect war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

And this doesn’t even begin to touch the actual al Qaeda presence in Yemen.

Sudan Info Minister: Omar al-Bashir deserves Nobel Peace Prize

  By

I realize there’s a long history of pretty undeserving and warmongering people winning the the Nobel Peace Prize but I’m pretty sure we’d really be redefining the word “Peace” entirely if the prize were given to Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, as has been hilariously/disturbingly proposed by his Minister of Information, according to Darfuri media outlet Radio Dabanga.

According to the Sudanese Minister of Information, President Omar Al Bashir is a man of peace who should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war between Khartoum and the southern Sudanese rebels in 2005.
[…]
“President Al Bashir is being threatened with an ICC [International Criminal Court] arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Darfur,” Information Minister Ahmed Bilal told James Butty of VOA News in an interview published today, “instead of being praised and encouraged for his efforts.”

Bilal said that Khartoum cares little about the ICC. “Let me tell you one thing: Our president is a man of peace. He stopped the longest war in Africa. Instead of giving him Nobel [Peace] Prize, he’s being called before the ICC. Instead praising him or encouraging him and saying that he’s doing good things to his neighbors, you are raising this talk of ICC problems.

 
You can read the VOA News interview with Minister Bilal here.

omar-al-bashirIn addition to Bashir’s genocide in Darfur, he is a past sponsor of global Sunni Islamic terrorism (including al Qaeda during the 1990s before their relocation to Afghanistan) and was a main instigating force and perpetuator of the Sudanese Civil War in the south, which he eventually ended under immense international pressure and UN involvement. Not exactly a shining force for world peace.

President Bashir was indicted in 2009 by the International Criminal Court for his activities in Darfur and has refused to face prosecution, unlike the president of nearby Kenya (who is currently standing trial on less serious charges for post-election violence). He is gearing up to campaign for yet another term as president after 25 years of rule. Fortunately, I doubt even the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is planning to consider Bashir any time soon … or ever.

Sudan & China arms appearing in Syria war

  By

This is astonishing: Sudan — an ally of Iran and China — is selling Sudanese-made and Chinese-made weapons to Qatar, the major supplier of rebel weapons in Syria for use against the Syrian government, which is strongly backed by Iran and China. The New York Times did some hyper-intensive journalistic digging to piece together the story:

Mr. Ahmad, the Sudanese presidential spokesman, suggested that if Sudan’s weapons were seen with Syria’s rebels, perhaps Libya had provided them.

Sudan, he said, has admitted sending arms during the 2011 war to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Libya’s new leaders have publicly thanked Sudan. Libya has since been a busy supplier of the weapons to rebels in Syria.

However, that would not explain the Sudanese-made 7.62×39-millimeter ammunition documented by The New York Times this year in rebel possession near the Syrian city of Idlib.

The ammunition, according to its stamped markings, was made in Sudan in 2012 — after the war in Libya had ended. It was used by Soquor al-Sham, an Islamist group that recognizes the Western-supported Syrian National Coalition’s military command.

When told that the newly produced Sudanese cartridges were photographed with Syrian rebels, Mr. Saad, the Sudanese military spokesman, was dismissive. “Pictures can be fabricated,” he said. “That is not evidence.”

 
Granted, it’s not so astonishing in the context that Sudan’s regime historically supports Sunni Islamist movements and also needs money badly after South Sudan got the oil fields in the divorce. But still. Crossing Iran & China is a big step for Omar al-Bashir.