|
|
 Nesrine Malik:Sudan is finally building up to its own Arab spring
|
Sudan is finally building up to its own Arab spring
With clashes in the centre of Khartoum and a rapidly rising death toll, inertia has turned to anger at Omar al-Bashir's regime
Share 324
inShare
1
Email
Nesrine Malik
Many said it wouldn't happen in Sudan. That the Arab spring would not reach the country; that Sudan was a country on the periphery of the Arab world and hence unlikely to witness any serious political transformation.
This view was entrenched by the fact that there had been at least two abortive attempts to overthrow the Sudanese government since the beginning of the Arab awakening. But protester turnout was always low and the majority of the population scoffed at demonstrators for being middle class, affluent and isolated from the realities on the ground. The copycat model of social media as an engine of the revolution did not have much traction. Every few months or so, there would be a flurry of articles and TV shows asking: is this Sudan's Arab spring? And yet it remained elusive.
But for the past week, there has been a third protest movement in Sudan. While the numbers remain small, two things stand out: the anger has crossed the class divide and, most distressingly, the number of protesters shot and killed by government security forces has been unprecedented. There have been too many deaths too close to home.
Sparked off by the lifting of subsidies, primarily from fuel, the current wave of anger in the country has been of a different tenor. The protests started on the poor margins of the capital city Khartoum and elsewhere, uncoordinated and sporadic. Those so disenfranchised and pushed to the brink by financial pressures fell off the bottom rung of the economic ladder and took to the streets.
More affluent Khartoumians initially turned their noses up and agreed with the government line that they were vandals, saboteurs and looters. The fact that there were incidents of mob violence supported this view. Then the government pulled the plug on the internet and the country fell under a blackout. When it came back online and the first pictures of the dead began to filter through on Twitter and Facebook, something had changed.
The clashes were now in the centre of the city, in the streets and university campuses. The death toll was rising at a rate never before witnessed. The Sudanese doctors' union estimated casualties on Monday at 210.
The impact on the public mood of seeing bodies lined up in the morgue and witnessing the burial of victims cannot be underestimated, and this could prove to be the turning point. Despite being the capital of a country beset by civil war and ethnic strife, Khartoum has been relatively isolated from scenes of bloodshed. Denial is giving way to anger and shock at the fatalities. This, coupled with economic despair, is beginning to dissipate the mass political apathy that for so long dominated.
Following the loss of the south and its oil fields when South Sudan seceded in 2011, the president, Omar al-Bashir, went on to colossally mismanage the economy. The Sudanese government is bankrupt in more ways than one. The coffers are empty, its upper ranks are ageing and atrophied, corruption is rife. There is a palpable feeling in the country that the ruling junta has run out of ground, teetering on the precipice and threatening to take the country with it.
So far the Sudanese government's safety has been built on inertia – the fact that there are no viable alternatives or opposition parties that can be expected to replace it – rather than active support for Bashir et al. The borders with the south are tense, and rebel groups in the peripheries regularly snap at the centre's heels. There still exists a view that Bashir's government is all that stands between stability and the barbarians at the gate, ready to storm the capital city and wreak vengeance for all the grievances inflicted by the Arab centre of power.
But with economic failure and bloodshed, it is increasingly a "stability" that is not worth settling for. Even if this is not the country's moment, it is certainly the build-up to it
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست