Recalling the Secret Wars of the 1990s
As President-elect Barack Obama puts together his administration, he will be seeking to avoid many of the errors of his predecessor. But he should also learn the lessons of the 1990s, when the last Democratic Administration first began to focus on Sudan, at that time in the context of terrorism and the war between Khartoum and the SPLA.
In 2001, I began writing a review of the foreign policy of the Sudan Government since the 1989 coup. My focus was mostly on Khartoum’s relations with its immediate neighbours, with whom it had been engaged in a series of secret wars for most of the previous twelve years, but U.S. policy was also in focus. After the September 11 attacks by al Qa’ida, I added some additional details on U.S. counter-terrorism policy. One reason for this was that after 9/11 there was an attempt to pin the blame for Usama bin Laden’s activities on Clinton’s Africa team””who, it was claimed, had passed over the chance to have him arrested. That was, I felt, unfair. In my judgement, the Sudan Government was not acting in good faith when it made the offer to hand him over, and at the time (1996), bin Laden was not a prime terrorist suspect in Khartoum.
The paper was later published in an edited volume, Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa. The pdf is available on this link: politics-of-destabilisation.
Looking back on this review seven years on, some different lessons emerge. The most important of these is that the governments with the power of changing the regime in Khartoum were the neighbours, acting in concert. The policy of the second Clinton Administration was to support those neighbours–regime change by proxy. But when Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war with each other in May 1998, the possibility of regime change slipped beyond grasp. However, by this time, America’s moral solidarity with the Southern Sudanese (especially in Congress) meant that the policy was still pursued.
Those who would like to draw the lesson that “pressure works” on Khartoum will have plenty of evidence in support of their claim from the story of the 1990s. But during those years, the pressure that worked was direct military pressure by the Ethiopians, Eritreans, Egyptians and Ugandans. In 1997 and 1998, for example, Ethiopia had entire tank battalions in Sudan and some of its most senior and experienced combat generals directing combined operations by the SPLA and units from the Ethiopian and Ugandan armies. Because this chapter in Sudanese history has not been properly written up, it is easy to overlook the importance of the immediate neighbourhood. In this context, it would not be correct to draw the inference that U.S. sanctions and condemnation brought about Khartoum’s policy changes on their own.
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I am left with difficult questions to answer. The first question is; Egypt knows very well that the coup of 1989 inSudan was the architecture of the Islamists only very late, then why did it not co-ordinate with others to change the regime in Khartoum? Egypt might have been seen by outsiders to support regime change in Sudan, but that was not true. It knew very well the weeknesses of the National Islamic Front and anticipated in advance what Egypt will gain by sitting put. Her anticipations came true when the Sudan Government tried to assasinate the Egyptian President in Ethiopia and failed. From there on the Egyptians got all they wanted from the regime of Al-Bashir when she was especiallly supported by the UN . Now Egypt plays a very importnat role in Sudan it never dreamt of in its history.
The second question is, if the USA adminstration wanted to topple the regime in Sudan it would not have lacked the means, why then it procastinated for so long to do so? The USA must have felt the same impulse as the Egyptians and that it will gain politically more by monitoring the behaviour of the Sudan Government than to jump for regime change. This factor paradoxically played into the hands of Al-Bashir by approaching China and Eastern Asian countries.
Bin Laden was not an important issue in the early years of the nineteen ninties and at that time the USA was not very much interested in Sudan as such. The SPLA on the other hand was left to prove to the US adminstration that it was not a communist movement in disguise. It was not the SPLM that provided the answer. The civil organisations within the USA manged to change the tide for the SPLM and exert pressure on the US adminstration and rally for political support. That support was for strenghening the SPLA to stand against the Sudan Armed Forces and not for regime change.
The third question was the role of neighbouring countries. Was it Sudan or its neighbours that was actually seeking regime change? Sudan was the one that was actively supporting regime change against most of its neighbours except Chad. The international community was left with brain paralysis of what to do about Sudan. That lapse gave breathing chances for Sudan to look for new alliances in eastern Asia and indeed found China waiting to play that important role. From thereon Sudan has become an enigma that defies all the odds. Its strenght was dependent on China. Its weekness now is its intrasingency and defiance of the international community. The indictment of Al-Bashir has unveiled its vulnerability and while trying to show that it doesn’t bother, its trepidations become clearer every day from the fiary speeches done by its President.
I agree with you Dr.El-faki. Sudan supplied Somalia with weapons to get rid of the American troops in early 1990s. Idris Debbi was made by the NIF government. Later they wanted to get rid of him the thing that led to the present day tensions between the two countries. A former SAF high rank officer told us that the Sudanese army trained Eritrian fighters in camps near the Ethiopian borders. Sudanese fighters and tanks attacked Ethiopia on behalf of Eriterian resistance. The national T.V. broadcasted the Eriterian independence celebrations. Then the same NIF government began to support the Eriterian Islamic resistance that fought against the Eriterian liberators. Eriterian government severed ties with the NIF government who addicted the game of regime change.
excellent post…