---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:25 PM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] More on Sudanese "coup" To: Group <[email protected]>
I was hoping to travel to Khartoum myself this week, but needless to say I did not get a visa! A colleague in Khartoum tells me that the coup is "in the newspapers more than in the discussions of the people. Seems like the people are busy with their own, and they are happy whether it is true or otherwise because in both cases it weakens [the NCP]. But anyway, the official process of handling it is very soft comparing it to other previous attempts. This remark, perhaps, made it appear to many as a pretext to get rid of some of their internal opposers." John BEGIN 1. Another coup in Sudan : the politics of temptation By Magdi El Gizouli November 27, 2012 — The contradictions ravaging the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM) matured in the folds of its 8th General Conference into an antagonism between loyalists and dissidents, an antagonism that the state attempted to resolve by means of a purge. Media coverage tended to portray the first as ‘hardliners’ and the second as ‘reformers’, a mystification compounded by the drama of the foiled coup plot which landed Salah Gosh, Sudan’s former spy chief, and Brigadier General Mohamed Ibrahim Abd al-Jalil, the ‘emir of the mujahideen’ better known to his admirers as ‘Wad Ibrahim’, and their associates in detention. Instead of reaping the benefits of their political investment in reform rhetoric, meagre as they may appear, the dissident ‘Saihoon’ of the SIM and National Congress Party (NCP), a pregnant Arabic term that translates in this context roughly into ‘God-seeking wanderers’, were tempted by the presence of combat-hardened officers and paramilitary ‘jihadists’ in their midst to try their luck at a putsch, the routine folly of the notoriously self-indulgent and vicissitudinous Sudanese petty bourgeoisie. In the late hours of 21 November operatives of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) arrested their former chief Salah Gosh and his alleged associates, among them the celebrated Wad Ibrahim, a man who once commanded the President’s guard, the former commander of the Sudanese-Chadian Border Force Fath al-Raheem Abdalla Suleiman, and the senior military intelligence officer Adil al-Tayeb. Fingers were instinctively directed at Ghazi Salah al-Din, assistant to the President and leader of the NCP’s parliamentary caucus, as the suspected poster boy of the coup plot. Ghazi was the Saihoon’s revered candidate for the leadership of the SIM. He withdrew from the competition once it became clear that the loyalist camp had engineered a safe majority to drown the immediate demands of the Saihoon in the General Conference. The ‘democratic’ exercise did not satisfy the Saihoon’s ambitions. They accused the SIM leadership of swarming the conference with rustics from the provinces who did not know better, the standard argument raised by elite Islamists against the transformation of the SIM under the NCP from a closely-knit vanguard of predominantly petit bourgeoisie composition to a mass ‘tareeqa’ with little in the way of entry requirements and wide exit door. In defeat, the Saihoon announced themselves an inner-party platform of the NCP. They issued a statement under the name of the ‘NCP – Reform Platform’ pleading President Bashir to release the detainees. The Saihoon fulminated against the Minister of Defence, Abd al-Rahim Mohamed Hussein, asking for his immediate dismissal. The Minister, said the statement, was responsible for the poor performance of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Popular Defence Forces (PDF) in the Sudanese war zones and directly to blame for the failure of the army to respond to repeated Israeli attacks on the country. “We remain in expectation of the decisions you will make. Be assured that they [the detained officers] all love, adore, and respect you [President Bashir] but your minister of defence has left them with no other option,” concluded the statement addressing President Bashir. The Minister, complained the Reform Platform, forced the chief of military intelligence and other senior officers into retirement because they offered their advice and counsel, and is currently “creating problems with the commander of the Armoured Corps”. The demand for ‘reform’ with a popular and national scope unravelled to read like the imploring of a jealous lover anguished by an unforeseen spell of neglect. Indeed, the Saihoon could only remember their immediate effendiya concerns, positions in the SAF hierarchy in this case, when surprised by the counter-intrigue of the state apparatus. While Sudanese commoners went on with their daily lives recording the coup attempt as another instance in the long tale of petit bourgeoisie squabbles over control of the state, star dissidents of the historic Islamic Movement came out in defence of the ‘reform’ putschists. Abd al-Wahab El-Affendi, a Westminster University scholar and coordinator of its ‘Democracy and Islam Programme’, praised ‘Wad Ibrahim’ to the holy heavens. Wad Ibrahim is more popular in the officer corps than the Minister of Defence, he wrote. This is a man who still lives in a humble government-owned house, and does not possess a house of his own, a man unstained by corruption, he added. The same could have been said about President Bashir before he assumed office of course. To the great mass of the Sudanese the state-sponsored life-style of Wad Ibrahim, a salary and a government house and car and possibly government-funded Hajj, is the object of revolutionary envy, one severe enough as to ignite the rebellions that he excelled in combating over the years of his career in the SAF. El-Affendi, as if by instruction, attempted in a terribly twisted argument to make the claim that Salah Gosh, a Sudanese Yagoda if any, was arrested together with the ‘noble’ officers led by Wad Ibrahim, in order to taint their “good reputation”. He then went on to make the argument for a “move by the army”, i.e. a coup, as the less costly route to effecting democratic change in the country. Either way, he concluded, whether an initiative of the army supported by the people or a popular movement supported by the army, the countdown of the regime has started. Well, when it took over power by the same putschist route in 1989 the National Islamic Front (NIF), the political cloak of the SIM at the time, traded the same alibi, ‘salvation’ by conspiracy. Petty bourgeoisie oscillation between the ‘path of the masses’ to use a preferred phrase of the late Abd al-Khalig Mahjoub, i.e. collective emancipatory action, and the fantasy of a swift short-cut to ‘genuine democracy’ led by a circle of ‘progressive’ officers could not be better illustrated. El-Affendi titled his piece “The army sides with the people (in advance)”. The author is a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He publishes regular opinion articles and analyses at hisblog Still Sudan. He can be reached at [email protected] http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article44665 END1 2. Sudan blocks three newspaper for "plot" coverage - journalists Mon Nov 26, 2012 12:03pm EST * Papers ran extensive articles on arrest of ex spy chief * Other Sudanese media restrained in coverage * Journalists regularly complain of restrictions KHARTOUM, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Sudanese security agents blocked the Monday editions of three newspapers that had covered the arrest of a former spy chief over an alleged plot, journalists said, a move that highlighted the sensitivity of the issue. Salah Gosh, former head of Sudan's powerful intelligence and security agency, was arrested with 12 others on Thursday on suspicion of plotting to "incite chaos" and "undermine stability" in the country, said authorities. Analysts outside Sudan said the arrests lifted the lid on divisions in Sudan's power structure and could be seen as a warning to people suspected of planning to challenge the authority of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Inside Sudan, media reported on the arrests but did not speculate on their significance, tending to stick to repeating government statements. Some of the most extensive domestic coverage was printed by daily newspapers Ahir Lahtha, al-Mashad Alan and al-Wefaq - all considered close to the government. They ran pictures of Gosh, articles about his background and Al-Wefaq quoted lawyers saying they wanted to defend him. Ahir Lahtha editor Mustafa Abu al-Azaim told Reuters agents arrived after midnight at the printing house and ordered staff not to distribute Monday's edition. "First they didn't give us a reason but then they said the ban was because of coverage of the sabotage plot," he said. Reporters at al-Wefaq and al-Mashad Alan also said agents had banned them from distributing their Monday print-runs. Sudanese journalists complain of frequent restrictions on press freedom, even though censorship was officially abolished in 2009. Security agents often confiscate entire editions after printing is finished to inflict losses on papers as a punishment for critical coverage, journalists say. The National Press Council, which is formally in charge of licensing newspapers but has little power, could not be reached for comment. Sudan ranked 170 out of 179 in a global press freedom index compiled by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Andrew Heavens) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/26/sudan-newspapers-idUSL5E8MQADJ20121126 END2 3. Sudanese official says some coup plotters “confessed” November 27, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – The state minister at the presidency of the republic in Sudan, Amin Hassan Omar, claimed on Tuesday that some of the plotters of the coup attempt allegedly foiled by intelligence authorities last week confessed to the charge. On 22 November, Sudan said it arrested 13 military and civilian individuals including ex-spy chief Salah Gosh and Brigadier-General Mohammed Ibrahim Abdul Galil of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on accusation of plotting a coup but some opposition groups and even affiliates of the regime cast doubts on the story saying it’s a charade designed to outcast reformists and pesky elements from the army. In an article he published on his Facebook page, Omer said that some of the elements involved in the coup had confessed. He also said that their plan was discovered because they shared it with certain political groups who can’t keep a secret. Sudan media minister Ahmad Bilal Osman said on Monday that two opposition members were also arrested in connection with the attempt but he did not identify them or their political affiliation. Omer denied that the plot was an indication of a power struggle within the NCP saying that those who plotted this attempt had deluded themselves into believing that they are reforms seekers. Meanwhile, President Omer Al-Bashir appeared at the Ministry of Defense on Tuesday following a new bout of rumors about his health situation and that he went to Saudi Arabia for further treatment. Defense minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussain told reporters that Al-Bashir received briefing on the coup plot and the progress of investigations with those arrested. Hussain said that Al-Bashir also received briefing on the security situation in the western region of Darfur and the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, where government forces have been fighting local insurgents since last year. In a related context, the leading member of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and former intelligence chief, Qutbi Al-Mahdi, said on Tuesday that investigations into the coup plot proved that there are no major opposition groups behind it. Al-Mahdi downplayed the scale of the attempt saying it was nothing but contacts and meetings that could have led to something in the future. His comment contradicts the official story which says that the attempt was a coup that was foiled at the Zero Hour. He also told reporters that the attempt was exaggerated and that the limited arrests aimed a preemptive move to ensure nothing will happen in the future. (ST) http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article44666 END3 ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan, South Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +211 919 695 362 (South Sudan mobile) +27 82 050 1235 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. 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