Sudan's Bashir May Face a Threat to Power If South Votes for Independence
Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir
Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg
Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir.
Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir. Photographer: Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg
Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir’s two-decade grip on power may be threatened if oil-rich Southern Sudan votes for independence this week.
Al-Bashir, who came to power in a 1989 coup, will take the blame for allowing the southern region to secede, depriving the north of control of almost 80 percent of its oil production, the third-biggest in sub-Saharan Africa, analysts including George W. Bush’s former envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, said. The crude is pumped mainly by China National Petroleum Corp., Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. and India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp.
“It could be that Bashir is not in power in six months,” Natsios, who is now a professor at Georgetown University, said in an interview from Washington. “Bashir is under serious threat from the more extreme elements in the north.”
A week-long referendum on independence entered its sixth day today. The result is set to be announced by Feb. 14, according to the commission that organized the vote. Southern Sudan’s independence, 54 years after the end of British rule in Sudan, would be declared in July.
“There is a shock now all over Sudan,” said Hassan al- Turabi, an Islamist opposition leader who helped al-Bashir seize power and was parliamentary speaker in the 1990s when Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden. In December 1999, Al-Bashir dismissed Turabi after he backed legislation to curb presidential powers.
Austerity
Sudan this month imposed import restrictions and austerity measures, including the partial lifting of fuel subsidies, to help government finances cope with the likely secession of the south. Oil provided 49 percent of government revenue in 2009, Auditor General al-Taher Abdel Qayoum Ibrahim told parliament in October.
Al-Bashir’s government and the authorities in the south currently split oil revenue from southern wells and have pledged to reach an agreement on future income sharing. Exports will still have to pass through pipelines in the north to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
While al-Bashir, 67, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of responsibility for genocide and war crimes in the western region of Darfur, a threat to his rule may undermine talks over the transition after the referendum, which was the centerpiece of a 2005 north-south peace accord, according to Natsios.
“If there is a coup, Turabi would take power, not Thomas Jefferson,” Natsios said. “I hope that’s not the case. Bashir signed the peace deal.”
Security Agencies
Fouad Hikmat, special adviser on Sudan at the Brussels- based International Crisis Group, said that while al-Bashir’s government may be able to put down opposition protests in the short term, “ruling through security agencies is not sustainable.”
The government’s immediate concern is that secession by Southern Sudan will provoke demands for self-determination in other regions, Turabi said.
“They’re frightened of the same thing happening to Darfur,” Turabi said in a Jan. 9 interview from Khartoum.
Violence in the region between government forces and the rebels as well as tribal clashes since 2003 have claimed about 300,000 lives, mainly through illness and starvation, and forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations. The Sudanese government puts the violence- related death toll at about 10,000.
Darfur Rebels
Natsios said government forces have stepped up raids on insurgents in Darfur to stop potential attacks on the capital by the Justice and Equality Movement, the biggest rebel group in Darfur, led by Khalil Ibrahim. JEM struck the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman in May 2008, sparking three days of street fighting until government forces repelled the insurgents.
“In Khartoum, they’re afraid Khalil will move on the government,” Natsios said. “They are trying to preclude another attack on the capital.”
Southern Sudan’s referendum is part of a U.S.-backed peace agreement that ended a war which lasted almost 50 years, except for a cease-fire from 1972 to 1983, between the Muslim north and the south, where Christianity and traditional religions dominate. About 2 million people died in the second phase of the conflict.
Foreign Conspiracy
The U.S. may remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism by July if the government accepts the results of Southern Sudan’s referendum on independence, U.S. special envoy Scott Gration said. The process may be completed by the July 9 declaration of the region’s independence if it votes to secede, he said.
“I am confident that if this referendum is judged to have fulfilled the will of the people, then the United States will fulfill its part of the bargain and continue with the removal from the state sponsors of terrorism,” Gration told reporters today in Khartoum.
Al-Bashir, who has pledged to respect the results of the referendum, has said foreign powers are trying to split up Sudan, Africa’s biggest country by area.
“He will always be seen as the man who allowed Sudan to split,” Sara Hassan, an analyst with IHS Global Insight, said in a telephone interview from London. “I think Bashir will be quite anxious and quite paranoid on what’s going to happen.”
If the south secedes, al-Bashir told Al Jazeera in a Jan. 7 interview, Islam will become Sudan’s state religion and Arabic its official language under a new constitution.
Al-Bashir won a five-year term in Sudan’s first multiparty election in 24 years in April, gaining 68 percent of the vote. Observers from the Atlanta-based Carter Center and the European Union said the elections failed to meet international standards.
Opposition Demands
A coalition of opposition groups known as the National Consensus Force has called for a national conference to write a new constitution following the referendum and the establishment of a transitional government to prepare for fresh elections if Southern Sudan becomes independent.
Al-Bashir has dismissed the opposition’s demands and called for broad-based government led by his National Congress Party.
If he doesn’t agree to their proposals, opposition forces will call for street protests, coalition spokesman Farouq Abu Eissa said.
“As there will be a new country in the south,” Eissa told a rally on Jan. 5 in Omdurman, “there will be a new country in the north as well.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Matt Richmond in Juba via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Sanders in London at psanders@bloomberg.net.
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