Sudan:

A Political Marketplace
Framework Analysis
ALEX DE WAALOCCASIONAL PAPER
NO. 19
AUGUST 2019
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OVERVIEW: Sudan’s PredicamentThis paper provides a succinct analysis of Sudan as a political marketplace. It assumes a working knowledge of the basic
principles of the political marketplace framework (PMF). It
does not offer a policy recommendation, but rather a framework for analyzing the Sudanese predicament so as to understand the implications of different courses of action.
The basic predicament facing Sudan’s rulers today—irrespectiveof whether they are soldiers, paramilitaries, civilian technocrats
or civilian politicians—is that they have neither the material resources nor the skills and reputation to manage a political marketplace based on mercenarized paramilitarism and crony capitalism, but also do not have the means to transform it.

The alliance of forces supporting the Declaration of Freedom andChange (hereafter FFC), along with some army generals in the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), and the majority of African and western
nations, aspire for a transition to an institutionalized and democratic state. According to the PMF analysis that is not in prospect.
The leadership of the Transitional Military Council (TMC), namely
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy (and real powerbroker) Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo ‘Hemedti’, along with their‘Arab troika’ backers (Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), appear toaspire to a strong military government that can impose order andstability. According to the PMF, that is also not in prospect.

The PMF posits that the immediate options for Sudan lie within arange of ways in which the political marketplace can be organized:
functional centralized kleptocracy; collusive or rivalrous oligopoly; or deregulated free competition (or a hybrid of these). The political entrepreneur who has the clearest grasp of these dynamics
is, without doubt, Gen. Hemedti. However, the political businessstrategy pursued by Hemedti (and others) faces major challenges
which indicate it is likely to be unsustainable in the medium term.

This strategy depends upon extracting rents from macro-economic distortions (especially a monetary policyof a dual exchange rate and domestic inflation), that is in direct contradiction with Sudan’s macro-economic
stabilization. Such stabilization is a minimum condition for democracy or institutionalized authoritarianism.
Even with stabilization, however, much would need to be done to make institutionalized politics and economics the master, rather than the servant, of the monetized transactional politics of the political market.

The analysis briefly covers the critical junctures in the emergence of a mature political marketplace from1972-2011, in which public office, political loyalties, and political services became commoditized. It traces
the booms and busts of Sudanese political finance, the emergence of a fragmented security arena, and thedifferent configurations of competition in the political marketplace. During the 1999-2011 period, Sudan’s
political economy consolidated around a rentier crony capitalist system, reliant on oil revenues. At the centre
it functioned as a centralized kleptocracy and in the ‘far peripheries’ (southern Sudan, Darfur and the ‘twoareas’) as a competitive political marketplace. Key to the regime’s consolidation was the incorporation of the‘near peripheries’ (the provinces within a day’s drive of Khartoum) where people could share the material
benefits of the oil boom, in the form of salaried employment, and a boom in construction and consumer
commodities. A secondary effect of the boom was the growth of a national business sector less dependent onaccess to political power: not all Sudanese capitalism is of the crony variety. Some of these businesses subsequently provided financial support to the democracy movement.
Following the separation of South Sudan and the loss of oil revenue, the regime pursued new strategies for financing state operations and politics, but each involved major trade-offs. Artisanal gold was exploited for export, at the dual cost of inflation and empowering the paramilitaries that controlled the gold mines. Rentingout military services to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (‘state mercenarism’) generated powerful
rivals within the centre. Leasing agricultural land and increasing tax revenue squeezed the constituencies
that had benefited from the oil boom era, especially those in the ‘near periphery’.

By 2018-19, Sudan’s political marketplace no longer had material means needed to sustain the model of acentralized kleptocracy. President Omar al-Bashir had considerable political skill but his political budget was
fast dwindling, and with it his ability to reconcile the competing demands of different claimants. With a shift
in the sources of political finance towards gold and state mercenarism, the system had become a collusive
oligopoly masquerading as centralized authoritarianism.
The popular uprising was a protest against the ‘rule of thieves’, comprising a coalition of the former subalternbeneficiaries of the oil boom and ‘payroll peace’, who had been shortchanged after 2011, plus the professional classes in Khartoum and their children. It drew on a well-established repertoire of Sudanese civic protest,
adapted to the current circumstances.
The military takeover in April was (after a brief wobble) the restoration of a similar political market, except
with a new political business manager (Gen. Hemedti). Although it has received an injection of cash (from
Saudi Arabia and the UAE) and political energy (Hemedti is hyperactive and has smart political market skills),
it is a less viable arrangement than that of the ousted Pres. al-Bashir. This is because Hemedti lacks the reputational assets of his predecessor, his coalition (domestic and regional) is narrower, and his takeover does not
remedy the macroeconomic crisis. Hemedti’s brazen political marketplace transactions will soon face steeply
discounted returns as his payouts buy less loyalty. His takeover is thus likely to represent an acceleration of
the trend towards an unregulated and violent political marketplace.

The dominant discourse today is military versus civilian rule, authoritarianism or democracy. This is relevant
insofar as civilian, democratic rule has legitimacy that military rule does not. However, agreement between
the TMC and the FFC on the composition and institutions of government do not affect these fundamentals of
Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

2the political economy or the political marketplace. A premise of the PMF is that the politics of formal institutions is subordinate to transactional politics. According to the PMF, what will determine political outcomes
will be the material factors driving politics, namely the organizational structures of the political firms contesting for power, the resources that can be traded for political allegiance, and the skill of those making thedeals. A key concept here is the security arena: the plethora of military and security units, most of them formally associated with the state, but each of which has considerable political, financial and command autonomy. In the vocabulary of the PMF, the three overall alternatives are: (a) a functional, centrally-coordinatedkleptocracy; (b) an oligopoly which could be either collusive or rivalrous, or both; or (c) an unregulated andcompetitive market which is likely to entail a high level of violence. The second variant of option (b)—rivalrous oligopoly—runs a constant risk of lapsing into option (c). The third alternative could also be characterized as paramilitary governance.
Sudan has experienced variations of these permutations before, in both center and periphery, and an examination of Sudan’s historical political economy allows for a deeper understanding of how the dynamics of thepolitical marketplace are likely to play out.

Origin of Sudan’s Political Marketplace

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Sudan’s political economy was dominated by four contending political-economic blocs:
two sectarian parties based respectively on the interests of the business class in trade and agriculture; organized labour anchored in the railway, irrigated farming and the state bureaucracy; and an emergent informal
sector tied to the rise of private financial services (Islamic banking).1 At that time, Sudan’s politics was institutionalized and fiercely ideological. The north-central parts of Sudan had the deserved reputation of a developmental state with well-run bureaucratic institutions, symbolized by the Gezira Board which administered
the largest irrigated farm in the world, which incubated both an effendiya class of technocrats and organizedlabour.2 The country’s peripheries were governed on the basis of the ‘native administration’ system of adapted provincial aristocracy, which nurtured neo-patrimonialism. The tribal aristocracy emerged as a class in its
own right,3 while the bourgeoisie of the provinces were drawn from Khartoum and the adjoining riverain areas, and, having made their profits in the provinces, invested them in the centre.4 The inner peripheries (theNile north of Khartoum, Gezira and the Blue Nile, the Gedaref mechanized farms, northern Kordofan) were
gradually drawn into the capitalist economic relations of the center, based on the industrial organization oflabour in the railways and the commercial farming sector.5 The furthest peripheries (southern Sudan, Darfur,
the Nuba Mountains) were ‘closed districts’, at best labour reserves and at worst territories administeredwith the utmost economy.
Table 1: ‘Old Sudan’ political economy, 1950s-1970s
Economic Sector

Power Base

Politics

Agriculture

Provincial aristocracy& landowners

Conservative Umma Party
sectarianParliamentary

Organized labour andstate bureaucracy

Urban, military

Secular,some radical

Revolutionary-transitional

Trade

1
2
3
4
5

Informal sector andfinance

Provincial aristocracy& business
Diffused

Niblock 1987; Woodward 1990.
Barnet and Abdelkarim 1991; Young 2017.
Ahmed 2002.
Mahmoud 1984.
Alsikainga 1996, 2002.

Party

Conservative Unionist Parties
sectarian
Islamist

Communist Party,‘modern forces’

Muslim Brothers et seq.

Preferred Form of Government

Parliamentary

Islamist oligarchy

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

3This bifurcation in administrative geography was reflected in the parallel tracks whereby the political arena
became marketized: through grand corruption and political finance at the centre, through counter-insurgency and pacification in the periphery.

Sudanese nationalism was a curious three-fold hybrid: the ‘modern forces’ of the effendiya class of statebureaucrats, professionals and army officers; the unionized working class drawn from railway workers andtenants of the irrigated sector; and the patrician leaders of sectarian parties. The Muslim Brothers arrived toolate to claim the nationalist mantle and also found that the sectarian parties had long resisted the secularization of politics.6 The Islamists’ central project was Islamic law: completing decolonization through unifying
the laws that governed the state and society.7

The marketization of politics began in the 1970s, when President Jaafar Nimeiri turned to the newly oil-rich
Gulf states and western donors for loans for development projects. These were notoriously poorly monitored, leading to major corruption, both for personal material gain and for buying influence.8 This accelerated
with the 1977 ‘National Reconciliation’ in which the Muslim Brothers returned to Sudan along with Islamicbanks which were avowedly political in their lending practices (supporting emergent economic sectors using
Islamic financial instruments with the explicit aim of building an Islamist constituency).9 Marketized politics
penetrated the army with the establishment of the Military Economic Board in 1982 (an extension of military
ownership over the commercial sector, which served as a massive bribe to the officer corps to buy their political quiescence—which failed to fulfill both those objectives but nonetheless marked the commercializationof the military).10
The 1970s reconstruction of southern Sudan became a vehicle for grand corruption also. With the outbreakof renewed civil war in 1983, the marketization of politics accelerated with the use of militias as regime proxies, for both reasons of political expedience and because of crippling budgetary constraints.

Economic mismanagement meant that by 1985, Pres. Nimeiri was unable to fund his avaricious kleptocraticmachine. He was overthrown in a non-violent popular uprising, driven by a coalition of the trade unions andthe effendiya and professionals, with the army and Islamists standing aside. In the late 1980s, Prime Minister
Sadiq al-Mahdi was unable to govern, because there was no dominant political constituency at the centre, themoney he spent did not buy allegiance (no-one had confidence in his longevity) and as a civilian ruler he did
not have the option of repression in the capital. Counter-insurgency in southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains was principally pursued by renting the services of irregular militia, which conducted operations handin-glove with a military-commercial complex eager to acquire land for commercial agriculture and cheap
labour from people displaced by war or land seizures, whose labour could often be exploited at sub-subsistence rates because of humanitarian aid.11 Darfur was essentially ungoverned, a cockpit in which Libyan andChadian forces fought a proxy war, and the local authorities armed themselves in response.
After taking power in the 1989 coup, the military-Islamist duopoly of Pres. Omar al-Bashir and Sheikh Hassan
al-Turabi violently repressed opposition, dismantling the trade unions and professional associations, purging
the officer corps of non-Islamists, while also undermining the economic basis of the sectarian parties andthe provincial aristocracy. The military-Islamists thereby succeeded in keeping down the price of politics. In
order to run the country on a minimal budget, the regime established an elaborate network of parallel financ6 Woodward 1990; El-Affendi 1991, 2013.
7 Ibrahim 2008.
8 Kameir and Karsany 1985; Khalid 1985; de Waal 2015.
9 Stiansen 2004.
10 Brown 1992.
11 Duffield 1991.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

4ing, including further proliferating paramilitaries. Among other things this included embracing transnational
Islamic charities (which also functioned as commercial businesses, government service providers, security
companies and terrorist networks, to establish a parallel state structure).12 Counter-insurgency in southern
Sudan was more thoroughly monetized. It was a remarkable system, which created fertile conditions for athoroughly marketized political arena.13
Figure 1: Critical Junctures in the Sudanese political marketplace

Figure 1 provides aschematization of thecritical junctures inthe evolution of the
Sudanese
political
marketplace.

There are no good data for political budgets, but overall spending provides an indication of the overall size ofpolitical spending. There is a cycle of boom and bust.

yy Spending increased in the 1970s, based on borrowing, allowing Pres. Nimeiri to implement his agreement with the southern rebels in 1972 and make a deal the northern opposition in 1977; this stalledin the early 1980s leading to a crunch in 1984-85 and his overthrow.
yy In the democratic period, 1986-89, the government spent liberally but ineffectively; there was a budget crunch in 1988-89 which was followed by a coup.
yy In the 1990s, government spending was extremely low, although most political finance was channeled through parallel mechanisms (Islamic organizations and military industries), and repression
was used to keep politics inexpensive.
yy The period 1999-2011 was the oil boom which made possible agreements in the south and east andaccommodation with the civil opposition. The exclusion of al-Turabi made these agreements possible
but also helped drive the Darfur war.
yy Since 2011, following the separation of South Sudan, and the associated collapse of oil revenues, budgets have stagnated, making new peace agreements and political inclusion far more difficult. Three
new sectors emerged, each providing some employment but even more political finance: artisanalgold; foreign military deployment; and smuggling.

Table 2: The Marketization of Sudanese Politics 1970s-2018
PeriodEconomic
Political Finance
Characteristics

Economic Beneficiaries

Political Beneficiaries

1972-77

Debt-led boom

State borrowing

Crony capitalists

Modern forces

1983-99

Severe crisis

Islamic banks, pillage

Informal sector, security
sectorIslamists and paramilitaries

1978-83
2000-11
2012-18
12
13

CrisisOil-led boom
CrisisPrivatization, Islamicbanks

Oil and associated contracting

Gold, state mercenarism

de Waal and Abdelsalam 2004.
de Waal 2015.

Informal sector, finance

Security actors and crony
capitalists

Paramilitaries, smugglers

Islamists

State, army and ruling party

Paramilitaries, Arab states, andtheir clients

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

5Figure 2 shows total government spending during the period 1970-2015, using World Bank data with peaceagreements (green arrows) and regime changes (red arrows) marked.
Figure 2: Sudan Government spending 1970-2011

Evolution of Sudan’s Political Marketplace
This section provides a schematic overview of how the political marketplace has developed in each period.
It uses three tools:
yy A summary political economy of the period.

yy A brief description of what happened on the basis of the political marketplace framework.

yy A representation of Sudan’s placement and movement according to the three basic forms in whicha political marketplace can be organized (‘centralized authoritarian kleptocracy’; ‘oligopoly’—
either collusive or rivalrous—and ‘free market’).

Sudan’s political marketplace is segmented: there is a central market based on Khartoum and the adjoining
areas, and a provincial market. The focus is on central politics and the ‘near peripheries’, though the war in
Darfur will also be considered (not least because it provides the power base and model for Hemedti’s rise).
The marketplace in southern Sudan/South Sudan will be mentioned only in passing as it is less relevant to
Sudan today.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

6Table 3: 1972-1989: Sudan becomes a Political Marketplace
Level of analysis

Account

Political economy

The ‘Old Sudan’ political economy of parties based on agriculture, trade and organized labour
was replaced with a succession of rentierist systems, based on (successively): borrowing; privatization; Islamic finance and pillage; protracted economic crisis wiped out organized labour
and the effendiya class.

Structure ofPres. Nimeiri needed funds to grease the wheels of his patronage machine and when he waspolitical firms and unable to secure these, his lieutenants defected. His successors (the Transitional Military
strategies
Council and PM Sadiq al Mahdi) resorted to increasingly desperate measures to secure funds
and keep the governing coalition intact, and failed to do so in the face of economic crisis, warleading to proliferation of militia, and a challenge from the Islamists, who had a highly-developed political-financial system.
Organization of
the marketplace

A functional, centralized kleptocracy was dismantled, replaced by an unstable, rivalrous
oligopoly with the key actors investing in paramilitaries. A free market in unregulated militia
emerged in the far peripheries (southern Sudan, Darfur, and the transitional areas).

Figure 3: Shifts in the Sudanese political market (1985-89)

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

7Table 4: 1989-1999: The Islamist-Military Duopoly
Level of analysis

Account

Political economy

Protracted economic crisis created niche economies of plunder; radical austerity measures
alongside Islamic finance began to revitalize small and medium enterprises in Khartoum andthe ‘near periphery’.

Structure of
The military and Islamists seized power with a division of labour (the army would secure thepolitical firms and regime, the Islamists would implement policy). Their aim was not a political marketplace but astrategies
revolutionary Islamist state. Their agenda was destabilized by the reckless overreach of the Islamists (declaring for Iraq in the 1990 Gulf War; backing jihadi groups that tried to assassinate
the Egyptian president in 1995); the regime also overreached in turning a favourable regionalalignment (friendly governments in Eritrea and Ethiopia) into an actively hostile coalition of‘frontline states’; the internal rivalries were heightened as al-Turabi demanded that the Islamist revolution should be consummated and the army step aside, while Pres. al-Bashir saw thethreat and first moved against the Islamist banks (accusing them of corruption) and then split
the Islamists, bringing key figures (Ali Osman Taha) into alignment with the military to expel
al-Turabi.
Organization of
the marketplace

A collusive oligopoly at the centre, became rivalrous in the later part of the decade when theprospect of massive financial resources became imminent; the regime initially used violent
repression to lower the cost of loyalty, and then innovated a complex mechanism of parallel
financing for various governance tasks including warfighting; the regime tolerated/promoted afree market in loyalties in the far peripheries.

Figure 4: Shifts in the Sudanese political market (1989-99)

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

8Table 5: 2000-2005: The Oil Boom and a Putative New Duopoly
Level of analysis

Account

Political economy

Return to rentierism, with a vast expansion of crony capitalism associated with oil, construction contracts, import-export trade, urban consumables, and private security. The benefits
extended across the spectrum of the northern Sudanese political, economic and social elite,
and included the ‘near periphery’.

Structure ofpolitical firms andstrategies

Organization of
the marketplace

Political spending and the economy were restructured around the oil boom that enabled a10-fold increase in government spending. Al-Bashir consolidated power in Khartoum, using
spending to bring most Islamists onside and to make a deal with the SPLM/A, thereby creating a new political settlement; however the expulsion of the al-Turabi faction alongside thecontinuing rivalry with the SPLM/A created the conditions for war in Darfur; the Troika-IGAD
coalition prioritized the resolution of the war in the south; Egyptian influence was reduced;
democratization was made secondary.

A centralized authoritarian kleptocracy at the centre with a massively expanding political budget allowing for strategic political inclusion, alongside rivalrous oligopoly in the far peripheries(both established, with SPLM/A, and new, with dissident Islamists such as JEM) which createdthe conditions for new entrants to the political market in Darfur. The CPA was envisaged as acollusive duopoly between NCP and SPLM.

Figure 5: Shifts in the Sudanese political market (2000-05)

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

9Table 6: The War in Darfur 2003-2010

This deserves a special analysis as it developed in a distinct manner, which has had far-reaching repercussions for thenational political marketplace.
Level of analysis

Account

Political economy

After 20 years of near-total economic stagnation, Darfur’s business class, students and subaltern bureaucrats demanded a share of national patrimony and state rents. Many were
Islamists. The counter-insurgent forces, initially organized on an ad hoc basis, became more
powerful than the official state actors, controlling key sectors of the economy (gold, trade) as
well as security.

Structure of
The war began with the convergence of local grievances, SPLM/A sponsorship of insurgents,
political firms and and the defection of Darfurian Islamists. This caught the regime by surprise and it underestistrategies
mated the political price to be paid; it overreacted to military threats and enlisted local proxies
that were extremely violent, but also demanded a high price for their loyalty. The government
then had to manage peace talks with the rebels, its costly, capable and ruthless proxies (whichmutinied en masse), neighbouring sponsors (Chad, Libya, SPLM/A) and the international
community. It adopted a retail strategy of micromanagement of disorder, unlike the wholesale
deal pursued for the south. Government-sponsored paramilitaries became the most powerfulactors in Darfur.
Organization of
the marketplace

The height of the war (2003-05) was two hostile coalitions (a violently rivalrous duopoly); thiswas followed by fragmentation on both sides as the market opened up, with multiple patrons
bidding and low barriers to entry by new start-ups (a ‘conflict gig economy’) from 2006-09;
followed by partial consolidation in 2009-10 with the Sudan-Chad agreement.

Figure 6: The Darfur political marketplace (2003-10)

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

10Table 7: 2005-2011 The CPA Interim Period
Level of analysis

Account

Political economy

The zenith of oil rents and crony capitalists, with the SPLM/A elites bought into the market.
It was a ‘payroll peace’ in which the numbers of civil servants, soldiers and paramilitaries on
the government payroll were massively expanded. Note that oil revenues centralize politicalfinance, and the CPA created a duopoly of control over oil revenue. The boom also generated
a business sector less dependent on cronyism, potentially the core of a future transition to a
non-rentier political economy.

Structure of political firms andstrategies

Organization of themarketplace

The death of Garang killed the putative NCP-SPLM/A deal that would create a New Sudan
as a well-managed duopoly; it also marginalized Ali Osman Taha and instead empowered
those in Khartoum and Juba dedicated to tactical transactional politics. Because of the war
in Darfur, Khartoum was unable to focus on a settlement with the SPLM/A that would ‘makeunity attractive’ (the stipulation of the CPA, which the Sudanese government interpreted as amassive payout to the southern elites). The Govt. of Southern Sudan under Salva Kiir spent its
patrimony on a vast expansion of the military payroll/patronage. There were two simultaneous arms-and-patronage races: between Khartoum and the SPLM/A over whether southern
Sudan will secede and on what terms; and between Khartoum and Chad/Libya over the question of who should dominate Darfur. Thus there was the ironic situation that the CPA ushered in a massive increase in military spending. Outspent by Southern Sudan, Pres. al-Bashir
decided to concede over separation. Al-Bashir could not afford to lose the 2010 elections andspent massively on the core NCP constituencies of the ‘near periphery’ and those on the state
payroll.

A collusive oligopoly collapsed before it was properly initiated; the rivalrous oligopoly meantthat political budgets were poured into a zero-sum arms-and-patronage race between rival
firms in Khartoum and Juba; Khartoum also had to contend with a highly competitive politicalmarketplace in Darfur (which it managed through sponsoring paramilitaries); while factional politics within Khartoum was also very expensive. Al-Bashir could manage this because
budgets continue to rise until 2008 and remain high until 2011. In the period 2010-11, Sudan
could also be characterized as two centralized, functional authoritarian kleptocracies.

Figure 7: The Khartoum-SPLA arms race

Figure 8: Shifts in the Sudanese political market(2005-10)

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

11Table 8: 2011-2018 Post-Separation Crisis
Level of analysis
Political economy

Structure of politicalfirms and strategies

Organization of themarketplace

Account
Sudan failed to transition to post-rentier political economy. This combined with the failure to agree andimplement a post-separation transitional financial arrangement with South Sudan, causing economiccrisis. This left the beneficiaries of the previous era discontented, notably the subaltern groups of the‘inner periphery’. The diversification of sources of revenue also fragmented and decentralized politicalfinance (notably from artisanal gold, deployment of military forces in Yemen, and smuggling). Those who
gained were those who controlled or provided political finance. Crony capitalists struggled; Khartoum
sought deals with South Sudan to increase oil-related revenues. The strategy of paying above-market pricefor gold (to disincentivize smuggling, so that the regime could monopolize the hard currency) by printing
Sudanese currency led to inflation which undermined the wellbeing of the general population, especiallythose dependent on salaries.

Oil revenues diminished, removing the principal source of political finance and driver of economic growth.
The main sources of political finance were: (a) artisanal gold mining; (b) the Yemen military deployment;(c) commercial investments (leasing land for agriculture); (d) smuggling; (e) payments from Middle Eastern patrons; and (f) (modest) revenue from pumping South Sudanese oil. Note that control over artisanalgold requires cutting deals with those who control the mines, which were predominantly in Darfur adjacent to major routes for smuggling vehicles and people to and from Chad and Libya. This hugely empowered the armed groups controlling these locations, leading to a power struggle among them, which waswon by Gen. Hemedti, who also gained from the Yemen deployment and emerged as the most dynamic
and well-resourced political entrepreneur. Pres. Bashir sought to coopt Hemedti rather than repress him.
Others strategically positioned to broker deals with Middle Eastern patrons also gained. Pres. al-Bashirstruggled to manage this reorganization of the political marketplace. He remained tactically adept but
could not capitalize on tactical successes. The democratic opposition enjoyed support from the non-crony
business sector.
Sudan in this period was a collusive oligopoly posing as a centralized authoritarian kleptocracy. Central
political funds were depleted and the staying power of its leader was fast dwindling, so that the credibilityof bargains was reducing. The limited functionality of the central business manager (Pres. al-Bashir) was
maintained because he benefited from (a) good tactical acumen and networks and (b) all key players’
tolerance for him as better than the alternatives, leading to more collusion than competition. New players
emerged, who tapped directly into the key new sources of political finance, namely gold and foreign military deployment.

Figure 9: Total Government spending 20102017

Figure 10: Shifts in the (northern) Sudanesepolitical market (2011-18)

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

12

Structure of the Political Marketplace from Secession to the Uprising
Sudan’s political marketplace in 2018 and early 2019 was a collusive oligopoly masquerading as a centralized
but fragile authoritarian kleptocracy. The central political business manager—Pres. al-Bashir—was becoming weaker because of his dwindling finance and shortening shelf-life. Those who gained (a few in absoluteterms, more in relative terms) from the reorganization of the political marketplace colluded to maintain
Pres. al-Bashir in office, for want of a better alternative. The far peripheries, including Darfur and also there-extension of Khartoum’s political patronage across the border into South Sudan, also had elements ofloosely-regulated open competition.
This section explores the key characteristics of this marketplace. It covers the changing political economy,
and specifically the roles of: oil (and relations with South Sudan), gold (and smuggling), mercenarism (andrelations with the Middle East), and crony capitalism. It turns to political finance, the security arena, and embeddedness in the wider region.

The Sudanese economy was in deepening crisis after 2012, and this was associated with substantial shifts inthe structure of the country’s political economy. The following subsections focus on the traumatic shift froman oil-based rentier economy to a gold-based one. Oil had been the basis for the boom of 1999-2011 and theassociated centralized rentier economy, which involved a massive ‘payroll peace’ that brought hundreds ofthousands into the civil service and military payrolls14; the subsequent diversified rentierism, based principally on gold and mercenarism, generated a markedly different political economy.
Oil and Relations with South Sudan

In the run-up to the secession of South Sudan, the IMF calculated that Sudan would face a budgetary gap ofjust over $9 billion during the three-and-a-half years it would take for the country to make an economic transition. Under the facilitation of the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel, Sudan and South Sudan
agreed that this cost would be divided into three equal parts. Sudan should implement austerity measures;South Sudan would provide $3.014 bn. in ‘transitional financial assistance’ (TFA); and the two governments
would make a joint approach to international donors for financial aid. None of this worked as planned. Khartoum only belatedly reduced subsidies and cut spending in 2013 (a major contributor to the street protestsof that year). More importantly, South Sudan obtained independence in July 2011 without agreement on theterms on which South Sudanese oil would be pumped to market through (northern) Sudan and on the termsof the TFA. Sudan began diverting South Sudanese oil to refinery and to ships for sale itself. In response, South
Sudan closed its entire oil production. The two countries went to war in April 2012. The war was settled,along with a deal for reopening South Sudanese oil production, the terms of use of the pipeline, and the TFA,
in September 2012. However, production only restarted in April 2013, at a fraction of its previous level, anddid not recover to pre-conflict levels by the time civil war erupted in South Sudan at the end of that year. No
joint approach was made to donors and there were consequently no efforts to lift financial sanctions on Sudan (they began to be lifted in 2017) or for Sudan to enter into debt forgiveness processes. Sudan quickly fellbehind on its interest payments to the IMF and World Bank, making it ineligible for further loans.
In 2012, the negotiations over restarting South Sudanese oil production and the reopening of the pipeline,
Sudanese generals took a tough line on the grounds that stopping oil would kill South Sudan, whereas it
would only harm (northern) Sudan. The crisis in South Sudan developed rapidly; in Sudan it took longer, but
the harm done was very substantial nonetheless.

From early 2013 onwards, the Sudan government was desperate for South Sudan to reopen its oil productionand export. This happened gradually over 2014-18, and provided revenue to the Sudanese treasury, includ14

World Bank 2007.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

13ing fees for the use of the pipeline and TFA payments based on the September 2012 agreement. The deal was
renegotiated in late 2014 after its first phase concluded: the deal was done directly between Khartoum andJuba without intermediaries and the details were not made public, indicating a likelihood of off-the-books
payments. However, the reduced production in South Sudan and the low price of oil meant that these payments were relatively limited. The production from Sudan’s own oilfield in Heglig barely covered domestic
consumption. Oil-based centralized rentierism was finished.
Gold and Smuggling

Gold was discovered in Darfur in 2012.15 It appeared as a godsend and soon became the country’s number
one source of hard currency, earning about $2.5 bn per year, about 40 percent of Sudan’s exports. But in fact
gold soon proved to be a curse. The gold is overwhelmingly artisanal (90 percent mined in about 800 small
mines by an estimated 200,000 small miners16); and the richest seams were discovered in Darfur in areas
controlled by Arab militia, especially Jebel Amir near Seraf Omra. The early winner in the contest to control
the Jebel Amir gold mines was Musa Hilal, commander of the Border Guards (former ‘Janjaweed’) who droveout the local Beni Hussein community in a battle in which more than 800 died.17 Hilal warned the central government to stay away. According to the UN Panel of Experts, Hilal earned $28 million annually from taxies andlevies on prospectors, $17 million from mines he owned, and $9 million through illegal exports.18 The total
income to Arab paramilitaries was estimated at $123 million. Over the following years, Khartoum armed Hilal’s rival, Gen. Hemedti, formalizing his paramilitaries as the Rapid Support Force (RSF). In November 2017,
Hemedti’s RSF defeated Hilal’s Border Guards, capturing Hilal and his senior commanders.19
Figure 11: Sudanese Crude Oil and Gold
Produced

Figure 12: Where is Sudan’s Gold?

In addition, the Arab paramilitaries gained a very substantial income from smuggling tens of thousands ofvehicles to and from Libya and Chad and trafficking people across the Sahara. Groups such as the RSF thatwere deployed to control smuggling and illicit migration, also benefitted from those activities.20 The RSF was
entrusted with disarmament campaigns in Darfur, which serve as a means of accumulating weapons and
15
16
17
18
19
20

Tubiana 2014.
Marwan 2015.
Radio Dabanga 2014.
UN Security Council 2016.
MacGregor 2017.
African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies, 2018; Tubiana, Warin and Saeneen, 2018.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

14

vehicles and taking control over key checkpoints and smuggling routes.21 Hemedti thus became the country’s
number one gold trader, smuggler and border guard, and thereafter, the RSF became the de facto militaryrulers of northern Darfur.

Elsewhere in Sudan, notably in the northern region, gold mining attracted large numbers of prospectors. Tensions with local people arose over attempts by the government to transfer artisanal concessions to foreigncompanies,22 and over the despoliation of the local ecology through pollution with mercury and arsenic.

The other major impact of gold was the macroeconomic strategy adopted to minimize smuggling. Artisanalgold is notoriously easy to smuggle, and the government needed to pay a premium in order to incentivize
traders to sell through official channels. The policy adopted was to require traders to sell the gold to theCentral Bank of Sudan, (CBOS) which then served as the exclusive exporter of gold. A study of the macroeconomics of gold in Sudan, by Ibrahim Elbadawi and Kabbashi Suliman23 observed, ‘The fact that the CBOS, not
the Ministry of Finance and National Economy, is the government agent in this market suggests that domestic
credit creation is likely to be the main source of financing the gold purchases.’24 The IMF found that resulting
CBOS foreign exchange losses amounted to 2.9% of GDP annually in 2012-17. Elbadawi and Suliman conclude, ‘the combination of increasing monetization of the fiscal deficit and purchases of gold through money
printing by the CBOS have not only been the main source of short-term macroeconomic instability but has
also undermined the competitiveness and diversification of exports in the medium to longer runs and worsened the external debt problem.’25
Nonetheless, from 2013 onwards, most of Sudan’s gold production does not appear in official figures for exports or gold reserves. The most credible explanation for this is officially-sanctioned off-the-books exports
by companies associated with the regime and the RSF.

The inflationary strategy also had a major socio-economic impact. First, it was a forced transfer of material
wealth, reducing the real incomes of those on fixed salaries (such as civil servants) and increasing those in
the gold mining and trading economy and others who had access to hard currency. Second, the resulting hyperinflation caused far-reaching economic distress including inability to afford basic foodstuffs. The main social groups that lost out were those that had gained in the oil boom and ‘payroll peace’ of the previous decade,and which had also been the core of support for the NCP during the 2010 election. Geographically this groupis concentrated in the ‘near periphery’ of towns within a day’s drive of Khartoum. This is where the protests
began in December 2018, focused initially on the high price of basic commodities, especially foodstuffs.
Mercenarism and Relations with the Middle East

Sudanese troops were deployed in Yemen from 2015, paid for by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In 2016, a contingent of the RSF was also deployed, under a separate agreement that bypassed the SAF command.26 The
SAF and RSF are deployed separately. Their total numbers are variously estimated at between 7,000-15,000,
and they comprise the largest number of ground troops serving with the coalition. The deals to deploy thetroops were both brokered by the head of Pres. al-Bashir’s office, Taha Hussein, and it is very likely that hetook a very substantial personal commission.27 The financial structure of the deals are quite different: the SAF
contingent is paid through regular army channels, while the RSF commanders received their troops’ salaries
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

Radio Dabanga 2018b.
Amin 2018.
Elbadawi and Suliman 2018.
Ibid p. 4.
Ibid p. 5.
Perry 2018.
Perry 2018.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

15

in hard currency, and they paid their troops in Sudanese pounds, providing them with substantial personal
profit. Additionally, Saudi and Emirati recruiters have cooperated with RSF commanders to hire individual
militiamen from Darfur, paying them the equivalent of $55,000 up front for five years’ service.28 Gen. Hemedti
was the single major beneficiary of this.
In July 2019, the first 1,000 men of a promised 4,000-strong contingent of the RSF were being deployed in
Libya to fight alongside Gen. Khalifa Haftar, supported by Egypt and the UAE.

Pres. al-Bashir tried to balance his ties in the Middle East, dealing equally with the two rival blocks. While
Saudi Arabia and the UAE paid for the Yemen deployment and also gave occasional one-off budgetary support
payments (e.g. in response to Sudan’s cutting diplomatic ties with Iran), Khartoum also kept ties open with
Qatar and Turkey. Both these countries provided direct investment, such as the Turkish rehabilitation of theport city of Suakin, associated with the construction of a naval facility.

A secondary source of foreign military income was private mercenarism in Libya, where all armed factions
were short of manpower and ready to hire Darfurians. This included formed units of Darfur rebel groups
such as the SLA-Minawi and units of the Arab militia.
Crony Capitalism

Sudan also tried to revive its old strategy of agriculture-based investment and growth. It made some progress.
Most of this consisted of land in the inner periphery leased to Arab investors, often dispossessing local farmers and herders. However, relatively little of the land leased was subsequently developed, in part because of
the extent to which local officials demanded bribes. The system of licensed corruption was gradually becoming self-defeating. Land-leasing also generated considerable local tensions, notably in the ‘near periphery’.29

The domestic business sector remained dominated by a hybrid of the Islamist corporations established in the
1977-99 period and the oil- and construction-related firms that developed after 1999, which however were
becoming increasingly squeezed. Sudanese businesses not associated with the crony capitalist networks also
struggled as the economy declined and then plunged into free-fall. Meanwhile, new businesses emerged outof the booming gold sector. The RSF’s ‘Special Operations Wing,’ headed by close relatives of Gen. Hemedti,
established the Al-Junaid Corporation which includes companies engaged in mining, housing, road construction, transportation and a host of other activities.30
Political Finance

Political finance reflects a country’s political economy, though inexactly—some of the mainstays of the economy, such as small-scale agriculture, are largely irrelevant to political finance, while relatively small transactions from foreign sponsors or banks can have a major impact on the political marketplace. The principal
sources of political finance lay in the areas of dramatic growth (gold and mercenarism) and the network ofcorruption around crony capitalism and the residual oil rentierism.
The main sources of political finance during this period were:

28
29
30

yy Gold, which was dominated by the Darfur Arabs and increasingly Hemedti and his RSF, with a smaller
element of crony capitalists.
yy Mercenarism, dominated by the RSF, and secondarily the brokers between Sudan’s security forces
Radio Dabanga 2018a.
Schwartzstein 2019.
PAX 2019.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

16and their Arab patrons, with a smaller element linked to non-state mercenarism in Libya.
yy Brokerage payments and commissions paid to Sudanese acting on behalf of Middle Eastern patrons.
These individuals are exclusively people well-placed within the security-political-commercial networks of Khartoum.
yy Smuggling and trafficking, bringing profits to the Darfur Arabs (on account of their geographical position) and the crony networks in Khartoum.
yy The (reduced) payments from South Sudan for the oil pipeline and TFA, and associated off-the-books
payments.
yy Corrupt dealings associated with foreign direct investments, especially in the agricultural sector, although these became less efficient as corruption consumed itself.

It is clear that political funds were (a) much reduced and (b) less centralized. Political funding to the armed
opposition (in the Two Areas and Darfur) was however even more reduced because of (a) the financial collapse of South Sudan, (b) regime change in Libya, and (c) the enduring security pact between Sudan and Chad.
The key political rivalries were within the Sudanese regime, not between the regime and provincial rebels.
The number one beneficiary of the new sources of political finance was Gen. Hemedti and the RSF. Other key
beneficiaries were the brokers with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, such as Taha Hussein and Salah Gosh (who were
bitter rivals).

Pres. al-Bashir was losing his financial patronage capacity. In addition, as the end of his term limit as president approached (scheduled for April 2020), the discount rate on any bargains he made increased: politicians could take his money and then defect with little cost. Al-Bashir’s political engine was running on fumes.
The Security Arena

Sudan’s security sector is properly described as a ‘security arena’, characterized by multiple armed organizations with independent or quasi-independent command, control and financing. This security arena has
emerged in stages since the 1980s and is dominated by forces initially mobilized on an ad hoc basis for counter-insurgency. It began with the use of proxy militia in the 1980s and the Islamists’ development of their own
dedicated security units, as a coup-proofing mechanism. Each counter-insurgency bred more of these forces.
While those in southern Sudan subsequently contributed to the rapacious political marketplace in South
Sudan, those in Darfur, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile contributed to the militarized political marketplacein Sudan. Al-Bashir’s security sector ‘reform’ consisted of formalizing paramilitaries, providing them withuniforms and salaries and giving officer rank to their leaders, and bringing them under the command andcontrol of the armed forces (usually military intelligence) or the intelligence service, or (in the case of theRSF) the president’s office.

Pres. al-Bashir also used classic coup-proofing mechanisms of multiplying security forces that are mutuallydistrustful. A decade ago, the biggest and most powerful of these was NISS, which grew to the extent that it
became a potential coup-maker itself. During the JEM attack on Khartoum in 2008, the NISS leadership used
its own armed forces to repulse the attack, keeping the Sudan Armed Forces out of the action. Among otherthings this indicated the military capacity of NISS. In 2009-10, NISS took the lead in organizing military actionin Chad, including mobilizing Arab paramilitaries as ground forces. However, by 2011 it became clear that thehead of NISS, Salah Gosh, was sufficiently powerful that he was a threat to the president, and he was sidelined
and then removed. Thereafter, NISS’s operational units were reduced in size and some of them were brought
under the command of SAF, and some of the paramilitaries under NISS control were put under SAF control.
The RSF subsequently emerged as al-Bashir’s favoured coup-proofing instrument—to the extent that theformer president referred to Gen. Hemedti as himayti, ‘my protector.’ The RSF was created out of Arab paraSudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

17militaries formerly part of the Border Guards, which had been coordinated by NISS during the Chadian operations. In 2013, the SAF high command rejected the proposal that it should be responsible for the RSF, which
was instead put under direct presidential control. Training facilities for the RSF were established in andaround Khartoum, giving it a presence in the capital.
The elements in Sudan’s security arena currently include:

yy Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). This is the largest and most expensive element in the security arena. Mostof its money comes from the state budget, but there are also military industries, producing arms andammunition, and involved in regular commerce. Much of the army spending is on high-end procurement (tanks, aircraft, etc.) and its infantry units have been short-changed.
yy Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF have become the de facto infantry of the army. Also funded
mostly through the state budget, the RSF also has parallel sources of revenue from gold, mercenarism, smuggling and other commercial activities. The core of the RSF is drawn from the Abbala(camel-herding) Rizeigat of northern Darfur. However, SAF officers have been assigned to it, and it
has recruited from elsewhere in Sudan and has absorbed at least one former rebel group, a splinterfaction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), led by Mohamedein Ismail Bachar ‘Orgajor’.31
yy National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS). Its operational capabilities are much reduced compared to ten years ago. It is thoroughly interpenetrated with the NCP, and has its own commercial
operations and external links (to many different Middle Eastern states) and thus parallel sources offinance. In July 2019, the TMC announced that the NISS would become the General Intelligence Service (GIS) without an operational arm.
yy Popular Defence Forces (PDF). This is an umbrella term for a range of militia and paramilitaries, including Islamist security units and tribal militia. Some PDF units have independent links to external
Islamist sponsors.
yy Other paramilitaries such as the Border Intelligence Units (Darfur), and the Central Reserve Police,
though these have mostly become subordinate actors. Their income is a mixture of government security budgets and self-financing.
yy Numerous irregular tribal militia, self-financing.
yy Opposition armed groups in Darfur and the Two Areas including the SLA-Abdel Wahid, SLA-Minawi,
JEM, other small SLA splinters, SPLA-North (Abdel Aziz al Hilu) and SPLA-North (Yasir Arman andMalik Agar). Some of these have external support (political and mercenary).

Under al-Bashir, the security arena was organized differently in different parts of Sudan. In the capital andthe near peripheries, the regime-sponsored security actors functioned as a collusive oligopoly, with rivalries
subsumed under common interests. In the far peripheries, the purportedly pro-government security actors
were much less disciplined, and their rivalries often came out into the open. Especially in Darfur, security
forces sometimes clashed among themselves. On many occasions, militia and paramilitaries mutinied andwent into armed opposition, making tactical alliances across the lines with rebels, usually demanding material rewards.
Payments to actors in the security arena are estimated to have consumed about 60 percent of government
spending in recent years. It is unlikely that this appetite for payoff will be reduced quickly.

In 2018-19, due to its military efficacy, the presence of its infantry units in Khartoum, and the high level ofdisposable political budget in the hands of its overall commander, Gen. Hemedti, the RSF became the mostpowerful security actor. The RSF took on most of the military functions of SAF.
31

Tubiana, Warin and Saeneen, 2018.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

18Regional Embeddedness
Political marketplaces in the Nile Valley, Sahel/Sahara, Horn of Africa and Red Sea do not respect state boundaries. In the early 1990s, Sudan’s political market activities extended across its borders into Chad, Uganda,
Ethiopia and Eritrea. Subsequently Sudan was subject to hostile political market engagement from Chad, Libya and Uganda, and after the separation of South Sudan, from South Sudan itself (briefly). After the disastrous
estrangement of Egypt and Saudi Arabia in 1990 and the attempted assassination of Pres. Husni Mubarak in
1995, Pres. al-Bashir became expert at navigating Middle Eastern politics. He was able to do this successfully
for many years principally because Egypt lost interest in sub-Saharan Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council
countries regarded Sudan as a minor security issue. Sudan became more important to the Middle Eastern
powers in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, on account of its role in the war in Libya, renewed Egyptian
interest in the Nile Valley, and the emergence of the Red Sea as a theatre of security contestation. Sudan iscurrently entangled in Middle Eastern political markets in a junior position.
Some of the current dimensions of the regional political market integration are:yy Saudi Arabia and the UAE are quintessential political market players, using money to secure personal
loyalties among members of the Sudanese elite (and others). Since April 2019, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE are the leading backers of Gen. Hemedti and have provided him with a political budget.
yy Qatar and Turkey also provide direct political sponsorship of individuals but also tend to deal with
the Muslim Brothers as an organization and use soft power (notably the media).
yy Egypt engages with the military and uses direct institutional military and intelligence cooperation. It
is cooperating with the UAE on Libya but has misgivings on the UAE and Saudi role in Sudan.
yy Sudan has a close collusion with Chad, covering a broad range of joint enterprises including engagement in Libya and CAR, and smuggling.
yy Sudan is a major player in the South Sudanese political marketplace. Khartoum’s position as a sponsor of South Sudanese armed factions was interrupted during the later CPA period, when the SPLA
possessed sufficient funds to corner the market, but resumed in earnest following Juba’s financial
collapse. The Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCISS) of
2018 was first and foremost a bargain between Sudan and Uganda. Salah Gosh was one of the engineers. One of the results was the elevation of Tut Yew Guatlak, adopted son of al-Bashir, from security
advisor to Pres. Salva Kiir, to chair of the National Pre-Transition Committee.

It is important to note that financial-political patronage does not automatically translate into political control.
Sponsors such as the Arab countries usually lack detailed information about the activities of their supposedclients, and the rivalries among sponsors create space for the next rank of political actors to play politicalgames. Thus, the interests of Saudi Arabia and the UAE do not always align and on occasion they contradict
one another, and they often are (discreetly) in dispute with Egypt. For example, although Taha Hussein and
Salah Gosh both benefited, personally and politically, from Saudi and Emirati sponsorship, this did not makethem masters of Khartoum. In the post-al-Bashir power grab of 11 April 2019, Gosh lost out to Hemedti,
and Hemedti won the support of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and Gosh’s arch-rival Hussein was able to return to
Khartoum.

The 2019 Uprising and the Political Marketplace

There are many fascinating dimensions to the 2019 popular uprising in Sudan, including the scripts on which
it drew (previous ‘Khartoum springs’ and the ‘Arab spring’), the organization and discipline of the protesters,
the role of an ageing vanguard from the Sudan Communist Party, and tensions between the metropolitan
leadership of the alliance of forces that signed the Declaration of Freedom and Change (FFC) and the provincial leadership of armed groups. This section will not delve into these details but instead place the uprising
Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

19

in its political marketplace context. The uprising can be divided into the ‘resistance’ phase (from the firstprotests in December 2018 until the fall of Pres. al-Bashir on 11 April 2019) and the ‘contestation’ phase(since 11 April).
Structure of the Political Economy

The key consideration on this point is that Sudan’s political economy did not change during either the ‘resistance’ or ‘contestation’ phases. Despite widespread recognition of the problems of corruption, rentierism
and macroeconomic imbalances in Sudan and the pressing need to address the economic crisis, no significant
steps were taken.
Shortly after the fall of al-Bashir, Saudi Arabia and the UAE announced an economic assistance package of$3 bn., consisting of $500 million in immediate cash payments and $2.5 bn. in essential commodities (food,
fuel, medical supplies). The cash payment appears to have been a contribution to the political budget of Gen.
Hemedti which he has used to buy loyalty or at least acquiescence, for the short-term purpose of consolidating power. The commodity support may alleviate shortages but only over a short period.
In all other respects the existing political economic system has been left intact or strengthened. For example,
RSF forces appear to have tightened their hold on the gold trade and a contingent of RSF troops has been
deployed to Libya.
Organization of the Ruling Elite

In late 2018, Pres. al-Bashir was (according to one’s vocabulary): the conductor of an increasingly unharmonious orchestra: the ailing boss of a cabal of political-security chiefs who were becoming more and more
fractious; or the political business manager of an oligopoly that was shifting from collusive to rivalrous. AlBashir possessed the crucial reputational asset that he had a record of protecting members of the ruling elite,
which meant that every aspiring putchist regarded him as the second-best option--better than a ruthless rival
taking over.

The protests that began in December 2018 were driven by popular disgust at poverty, kleptocracy and cronyism, and the cynical brutality of a gerontocratic leadership. Such protests were forseeable. At least one in the
security cabal (Salah Gosh) tried to leverage the protests for his own power-grab. Others (some SAF officers,
Hemedti) waited out the protests, until the right moment. All hedged their bets on the working assumptionthat the protests would fade and Pres. al-Bashir would continue in power until the April 2020 elections.

There was a brief moment of confusion in the week of 10 April, when the members of the Higher Security
Committee (representing the key ministries and security institutions) agreed to remove Pres. al-Bashir andfor Vice President Ahmad Awad Ibn Auf to take power for a moment in which they could assess their options.
There were three possible outcomes on 11 April: (a) Ibn Auf would meet with the AFC leaders and form agovernment; (b) NISS director Salah Gosh would take power; and (c) Gen. Hemedti would take power. Gosh’s
biggest drawback was that he was held in universal suspicion—no-one could be sure of their personal security under him. Ibn Auf made the announcement of the removal of al-Bashir in order to signal to the establishment that all would be secure; he then handed over to al-Burhan and Hemedti because they would guarantee
his own security. The FFC leadership and Gosh missed their chance and Hemedti and al-Burhan became theleaders of the TMC.
Hemedti took the place of al-Bashir as the central political operator, using his control of money and violence.
He has acted as a political trader in a very overt manner, providing material rewards to political actors inreturn for cooperation or loyalty.
Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

20

yy An early example was the way in which Hemedti handled the challenge of the police, who were on
strike because they had not been paid. He took cash from the funds provided by the TMC’s Arab sponsors, met with the police commissioner, and gave them sufficient money to incentivize their return
to work.
yy Hemedti convened a conference of the Native Administration (tribal chiefs) and rewarded them withvehicles.
yy Hemedti has met with and provided resources to teachers and electricity workers.
yy There are indications that he has personally paid key members of the SAF high command.

In broad outline, Hemedti has replicated the system he inherited from al-Bashir and placed himself at thecentre. Thus he has inherited al-Bashir’s predicament, and although Hemedti has energy, tactical politicalacumen, and cash in hand, in the medium term his liabilities will become clear.

Hemedti’s political management differs from his predecessor in that his political-financial transactions are
more blatant and he does not possess the reputational assets or legitimacy (albeit vestigial) of al-Bashir. He
openly trades cash for loyalty, and cannot lay claim to any political programme, though he has made overtures to the armed groups in Darfur and Southern Kordofan, indicating that as the first western Sudanese torule the country for more than a century, he will represent the interests of the peripheries against the centre.
Hemedti has made alliances that exclude powerful domestic and regional forces; he has removed the Islamists and has openly aligned with the Arab troika (Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE) against Qatar and Turkey.
Socio-Economic Profile of the Uprising

The uprising began in the near periphery in towns such as Atbara, Damazin and Gedaref, spreading quickly
to the capital.32 It began among the socio-economic groups that had been drawn into the 2000-11 politicaldispensation through the material benefits of oil and the ‘payroll peace’, but who were suffering most fromthe economic crisis (i.e. the biggest losers in the restructuring of the political economy after 2011). The immediate spark was continuing rises in prices of essentials, so that there was a shortage of bread.33 From thestart its slogans targeted kleptocracy.34

The protests rapidly spread to Khartoum and took on a different socio-economic character. Leadershippassed to the Sudan Professionals Association. This was established in 2016 as a trade union alliance, initially to press for the rights of the professionals in these sectors and economic reform. These professions,along with university professors, have historically been at the heart of the modernizing effendiya. However,their position today is very different to in earlier decades, when such professionals were overwhelmingly ingovernment employments and could bring state administration to a halt. Their key allies in earlier uprisings,
notably railway workers, are now economically irrelevant. The SPA also lacks representation from other key
sectors: banking, telecoms, industries, and transport, and of course does not draw on the larger group ofpeople who are farmers, farmworkers, small traders, taxi drivers, artisans, gold miners, teachers and workers in the informal sector. Instead, the mobilizational capacity of the FFC relied heavily on networks of young
people using social media, such as Girifna (‘we have had enough’) and Change Now.
The FFC coalition is financially and logistically supported by elements in the Sudanese business community.
Along with the spirit of voluntarism this has underpinned the resilience of the protests. The viability of thecoalition and the structure of any government that it forms will be strongly influenced by the business classand its provision of political finance.
32
33
34

El Gizouli 2019a, b; Gillette 2019.
Vall 2019.
Guibert 2019.

Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

21

The FFC represented only one slice of the opposition. Those excluded from leadership and decision-making included the veteran civilian parties, fractions of the Islamists who had moved into opposition, and thearmed groups active in Darfur and the ‘two areas’ of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. After 11 April, in the‘contestation’ phase, the AFC leadership insisted that it alone represented the Sudanese people, and not only
marginalized these other parties but antagonized some of them. This decision is variously attributed to thelack of organizational structures within the AFC, and to dominant role of the Sudan Communist Party, which
wanted not to repeat what it saw as its mistakes in 1964-65 and 1969-71, when it engineered revolution but
failed to take power.
There are credible claims that NISS decided not to use its arsenal of tools to repress, divide and disorient theprotests, but instead to facilitate them with the aim of provoking a crisis in which Gosh could seize power.
Dynamics of the Security Arena

The RSF is the dominant actor in the security arena. Hemedti will presumably seek to refashion the security arena around this force, enhancing its capabilities, putting SAF in a subordinate position, folding NISS
functions into the RSF, and absorbing other paramilitaries and armed groups. He may also make use of mercenaries, especially for specialist functions that augment the RSF capacity. This is a logical extension of how
security sector ‘reform’ has been practiced under al-Bashir.

Others resent this dominance and the material advantages that go with it. That resentment will be amplified
if they are not paid or face reduced privileges. It follows that there is a risk of conflict among actors in the
security arena. This could take several different forms (not mutually exclusive):yy The RSF could seek to establish complete dominance, either eliminating its rivals by force or subordinating them through a show of force and an appeal to common interest. The demonstration of capability and ruthlessness need not be against other security actors but could be against third parties,
such as civilians or the Islamists.
yy A counter-coup by those excluded by the RSF. For example, units of SAF could challenge the RSF militarily in Khartoum, or a regional SAF command could mutiny and link up with others to challenge the
RSF at a provincial level.
yy A failed coup could lead to a civil war which lowers the barriers to entry to the political-military market, leading to a multiplication of armed groups.
yy Provincial security actors could establish territorial fiefdoms, simply because they are neglected in
the prioritization of payouts which go to those in the centre.
yy Hemedti could pursue a coup-proofing strategy by purging rivals from his inner circle, which runs therisk that those excluded will mobilize for provincial rebellion.
yy The RSF could itself split, along the lines of internal disputes among its commanders or their constituencies. (Hemedti’s rivalry with Musa Hilal is an example.)

Regional Factors

Middle Eastern regional powers tried to utilize the protests to advance their own agendas, and Pres. al-Bashir
appears to have seen those agendas as being the determining factor, rather than a minor element in whatdeveloped.

yy The Government of Egypt appears to have seen the protests through the lens of the Egyptian experience, and as more akin to the 2013 anti-Islamist demonstrations that provided an opportunity for thearmy to step in on the side of the people, than the 2011 uprising. Pres. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi supported
Pres. al-Bashir’s declaration of a state of emergency on 22 February, possibly as a means of deflecting
Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

22responsibility for the country’s crisis to the NCP and the Islamists. Egypt then congratulated Gen.
Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf on 11 April, rather prematurely as it turned out.
yy Saudi Arabia and the UAE appear to have seen the protests as an opportunity for their favored candidates to make bids for power. It is possible that some elements within NISS and even some paramilitaries were stoking the protests, or at least discreetly tolerating them, on the grounds that this would
pave the way for a takeover.
yy The Islamists were split: some remained in government, and others were in opposition, including
some supporting the protests. However, the Middle Eastern sponsors of the Muslim Brothers did not
find a credible political faction that they could support.

In the dynamics that followed the military takeover on 11-12 April, Middle Eastern transactional politics
were crucial. Saudi Arabia and the UAE extended important political and financial support to the TMC.
Figure 13: Shifts in the Sudanese political market (2019-)

The Next Stage for Sudan’s Political Marketplace?
The immediate political discussion in Sudan is focused on the question of democracy. Specifically, it is concerned with negotiations between the TMC and the FFC, over the composition of a sovereign council, cabinet
and legislature, and the timetable for democratization.
The political marketplace framework suggests that additional questions need to be asked and that the dynamics of the political marketplace will be the principal determinants of the future of the country.
During April 2019, Sudan moved from being a collusive oligopoly disguised as a weak, centralized authoritarian kleptocracy, to being a rivalrous oligopoly (during the 36 hours in which Gen. Ibn Auf was in power), backto where it was before, save with a different principal political business manager, and a narrower coalition.
Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis

23

The aspiration of the protesters and the FFC is for Sudan to exit the political marketplace altogether and to
become an institutionalized democratic state. They know that this is not possible immediately but nonetheless, the impressive triumph of organization represented by the protests, and the euphoria of their bloodlessrevolution, encourages them to aim high. However, there is no prospect of Sudan exiting the political marketplace under any realistic scenario.
Hemedti has a viable political business strategy based on control over the flows of political finance and divide-and-rule among his rivals and opponents, alongside targeted uses of force to demonstrate his ruthlessness. His transnational mercenary political-business venture has captured the state. However, Hemedti
cannot expect to gain the kind of reputation enjoyed by al-Bashir, at least in the short term, which means thatmany other members of the elite see his rule as time-limited, which in turn means that his payouts convert
into loyalty at a discount.
The possibility of an establishment counter-coup cannot be ruled out. Indeed, there appear to have been
attempts already by Islamists and generals to seize power back. If successful, these will not alter the fundamentals of the political economy, and would also risk fragmenting the political marketplace.

Hemedti’s method of governing does not address the structural challenges of the Sudanese political economy,notably its macroeconomic crisis. Indeed, his reliance on gold and mercenarism will worsen that structural
crisis, and short-term injections of money from Gulf sponsors are unlikely to be sufficient. The convergenceof such a challenge within the political arena and a deepening crisis in the political economy, could mean that
Sudan faces another critical juncture within a year or so, with possibly an attempt at large-scale repressionof the FFC and its constituency.

The most realistic alternative path to stability is through seeking a well-regulated collusive oligopoly of thepowerbrokers. This could be pursued by focused negotiations on the two principal spheres in which poweris transacted, namely the security arena and the economic sectors that generate political finance. Under sucha scenario, political negotiations would shift from an exclusive focus on the composition and powers of thesovereign council and executive, to the consensual governance of the security arena (by bringing all the security actors into an inclusive council) and the consensual regulation of political finance (by bringing all thosewith a stake in business and economic management into a council).
For Sudanese democrats, the picture is discouraging. However, it is critically important for democratic activists to analyze correctly the forces arraigned against them, and the structural crisis of the Sudanese political
economy. Such an analysis will help in identifying potential allies and potentially successful strategies forpromoting change. An open discussion about the nature of political power in Sudan today is a pre-requisite
for a successful movement for democracy. This analysis is presented as a contribution to that debate.

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This material was funded in part with UK aid fromthe UK government; however the views expressed do
not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official
policies.’

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