The overthrow of General Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan for 30 years, captured the attention of the international media and many commentators. What went almost unnoticed, however, was the end of an era that was significant for global political Islam.
This is understandable. The Omar al-Bashir known to modern television viewers and readers is a mad autocrat who managed to simultaneously have a reputation as an Islamist and, at the same time, fly to Bashar al-Assad to express his support for the destruction of the Islamist Syrian opposition and support the same actions of Vladimir Putin. Or proposing to create a military base in Sudan for Erdogan’s Turkey, in competition with Saudi Arabia, while selling its mercenaries to the latter for the war in Yemen. And so on and so on.
But there were other times when Bashir was not an aging dictator juggling his buyers, but rather a hope for global political Islam. Let us remind ourselves of what this is all about with an excerpt from an article published on our website: «In 1989, General Omar al-Bashir seized power in Sudan. Although he did so through a military coup, much of the social and political context for him was created by the religious leader Hassan al-Turabi, who followed Sudan’s charismatic tradition and founded the National Islamic Front in 1976.»
The alliance between Bashir and Turabi in the 1990s defined the nature of the new regime’s policies, both domestically in terms of Islamization and Sharia enforcement, and internationally. The Khartoum Conference (Islamic People’s and Arab Conference), established in Sudan in 1991, became a rallying point for Islamic movements from around the world, from the Muslim Brotherhood to the future al-Qaeda, then led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Sudan became a window of opportunity for al-Qaeda in Africa, given the policies aimed at making Sudan the leading Islamic power on the continent. Osama bin Laden, himself a businessman and member of one of the wealthiest Saudi families, invested tens of millions of dollars in Sudan’s economy and infrastructure development. But he was not alone — Turabi also benefited economically from cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Given the geography of the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia is a critical neighbor for Sudan.
The Sudanese worked closely with the Saudis, but the Iraq-Kuwait war and the subsequent U.S.-Gulf coalition fundamentally divided them. Sudan condemned the Saudis, effectively siding with Saddam Hussein. This position was adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood movement and led to conflicts between the Brotherhood and pro-Saudi Salafists worldwide that continue to this day.
Sudan began to become one of the red lines for the West, as it became increasingly embroiled in the bloody conflict with the Christian population of the south, some of which activists and journalists actively raised with human rights groups and used to put pressure on the country. After individuals associated with bin Laden bombed the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, and Zawahiri attempted to assassinate the Egyptian president while in Sudan in 1995, questions arose about the country’s ties to these groups. Turabi became a serious problem for the more pragmatic Bashir — he was gradually pushed out of power until his arrest in 1999. Bin Laden and Zawahiri were ordered to leave Sudan in 1996, but after spending a few years in the country, they managed to expand their network of supporters across Africa. In 1998, they carried out attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Africa thus became the first platform for what came to be known as «international Islamic terrorism.
So, before our very eyes, the person who was once associated with the dream of the emergence of a «Sunni Iran»-a global center of political Islam oriented toward Sunnis rather than Shiites like Iran-has ended his political life. Omar al-Bashir started this project together with Hassan al-Turabi, and he also put an end to it when the latter’s initiatives began to threaten the general president and the state he led, a pressure he could not withstand. What is the result?
On the one hand, Sudan managed to avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were transferred from Sudan. On the other hand, the suffocating effects of the sanctions imposed by the West caught up with Bashir after decades, leading to a socio-economic collapse that ultimately undermined his power.
Everyone will draw their own conclusions from this story. Some will say, following Machiavelli, that «war cannot be avoided, only postponed to the advantage of the enemy. Others will say that having won one’s war and fulfilled the purpose of being in power, one must know how to step down in time to make way for a new generation capable of solving new historical tasks.
Unlike Saddam Hussein or Mullah Omar, Bashir has actually managed to preserve Sudan as a Sharia state. Therefore, what is happening in Sudan now is not only the end of Sudan as a state, but also the end of the regime created by Omar al-Bashir, which essentially sacrificed itself to withstand the street protests. Something similar is happening in Algeria, where the military has sacrificed Bouteflika to preserve its regime.
But is such a reshuffle a solution to the problem, for either Sudan or Algeria? As the reaction of the demonstrators shows, not everyone is willing to accept the military’s retention of power and is demanding the political transformation of the country into a competitive multi-party system.
In Sudan, this energy of the Islamic street was once associated with the charismatic leader Hassan al-Turabi, whose alliance with the pragmatic military ruler Bashir gave dynamism and energy to his regime. However, there was an excess of energy that its carriers could not channel in a positive direction, either internally or externally. The result is already known — the revolutionary project was put on hold, stagnation set in, and now Bashir, who outlived his former ally Turabi, has also disappeared into political oblivion. Today, as Muslims, we are interested in whether and in what form the new generation of military and civilian leaders in Sudan can preserve the Islamic agenda in politics. Will it be associated with the political transformation of the country or, on the contrary, with the preservation of a military regime? Will Sudan be able to escape the crisis and stagnation it has experienced under Bashir’s rule and avoid becoming a pawn in the game of key regional players such as the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey?
At the very least, we would like to hope that in light of the analysis of the mistakes that have been made, something will emerge in this country that is oriented toward the Ummah as a whole and is not simply a third-rate nation-state.