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--:-- Reem Abbas: Before we get to the show, a note about the Quip electric toothbrush. All of a sudden, the thing just costs $25 at getquip.com slash explained. The first set of refills comes for free. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram, and this is Today Explained. I'm joined today by Reem Abbas in Khartoum, Sudan.
--:-- Reem Abbas: I'm on McNamara Avenue in downtown Khartoum. It's very quiet. Life is not normal. I mean, you just don't have the same buzz in Khartoum anymore, like people driving around, you know, busy traffic jams. You just don't have that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's going on in Sudan right now, Reem? What's happened since we last spoke?
--:-- Reem Abbas: Bashir was ousted on the 11th of April. Tanks rolling through the capital, cheered on by protesters, demanding that President Omar al-Bashir steps down. Since then, a body called the Transitional Military Council has been in power. And they don't want to hand over power to a civilian rule.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The protesters were saying the share is gone, but we want a civilian government so this country can, you know, get back on its feet, basically. The economy is in shambles. We still have conflict all over Sudan.
--:-- Reem Abbas: We have so many serious issues that we need to deal with. People have been at the sit-in in front of the army headquarters for two months, basically. And the Freedom and Change Coalition, which is the body that was leading this protest movement, they have been in negotiations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So two months into the sit-in, you know, people are at the sit-in, they're happy, you know, musicians are coming, artists are coming and painting murals and graffiti all over the sit-in. People are there, they're organizing, they're protesting.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So then the massacre happens on June 3rd. The unmistakable sound of gunfire, panic and chaos penetrate the streets of the Sudanese capital as Sudan's military leaders dispersed protesters from the months-old sit-in camp located outside the army headquarters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At least 40 bodies were dredged up from the Nile River in the aftermath of the carnage. The TMC, you know, and especially led by the Rapid Support Forces, they attacked the sit-in. And they attacked people, shooting live ammunition, using sexual violence, burning tents, and just basically committing horrific acts to dismantle the sit-in.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So since then, people are finding other tools to mobilize and organize, especially that we don't have internet. We don't have the same freedoms that we had during the last two months.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who exactly is in charge of the country right now? The TMC, the Transitional Military Council, right now the TMC is made up of the army, the Sudan Armed Forces, so members of the army, and the RSF, the Rapid Support Forces, which are a rebranded form of the Janjaweed that used to attack, basically, that attacked therefore.
--:-- Reem Abbas: The leader or the president of this committee, the Transitional Military Council, is Burhan, who is an army official, Abdul Fattah al-Burhan. And his deputy is known as Himeti, who is the leader of the RSF. But basically, Himeti is in charge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do we know about him? What's his background?
--:-- Reem Abbas: Brutal. Early on, he joined the Janjaweed and became one of the leaders. He started the rapid support forces, which are forces that were basically formed and resourced by the former president so they can fight the insurgencies in different places around Sudan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he's been around for a while, which means he has ties to former President Omar al-Bashir, who just appeared in the public eye yesterday for the first time since he was ousted in April.
--:-- Reem Abbas: Yes, so Bashir right now he is being charged for corruption charges. It's just related to money and the resources he has, which for me is like he was very corrupt, but also he has killed hundreds of thousands or he has orchestrated the killings in so many places around Sudan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I see it as a sham trial, as just kind of a symbolic trial, you know. I mean, I do have some sources did tell me that he is in prison, but, you know, obviously he came to, you know, he did not come in the prison car. He came in a nice, you know, four by four and, you know, he looks like he's enjoying his time in prison.
--:-- Reem Abbas: I mean, he's wearing this, you know, really nice, you know, jalapia and like the Sudanese turban, you know, very like clean. And I mean, this is not how, you know, the people I know who were basically in fabricated trials, this is not how they come to court.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think like this is just not how, you know, you look like when you go to a prison in Sudan, where basically they don't even give you food and your family has to bring food.
--:-- Reem Abbas: And I'm sure to people who've been following his rule for 30 years or even just these protests this year, it's kind of looking like he got off easy, that he's being charged on corruption and not war crimes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why corruption? There are a number of scenarios, OK? Part of it is like we're still collecting evidence against this. And this is what they're saying. And also because the judiciary system has been unstable.
--:-- Reem Abbas: But also, I think they wanted to charge him with something quickly just to tell people that, you know, we're doing something. We're doing our job. This man is facing justice.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But still for us, I mean, the fact that he's first charged with like, you know, corruption charges is just not a very good sign.
--:-- Reem Abbas: Is there a chance that he's not being prosecuted for more serious crimes because that could put the military in a position to also be on trial one day?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely, because, I mean, Burhan should be prosecuted. I mean, he's very much part of the Darfur conflict. Ahim al-Tid definitely needs to be prosecuted.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So I think also the whole system needs to be held accountable. And right now they're protecting themselves. And we do understand that justice takes time. It's a long process, especially in a country where you need the institutions to do so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But they're all covering their backs right now. So they know that if this starts, it will never stop.
--:-- Reem Abbas: Reem, I wonder, what's the sense you get from talking to people there? What are they most prioritizing right now? Is it that Bashir is formally prosecuted for his war crimes? Is it that the military stepped down? Is it that there's popular rule? What do people want right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People right now feel that the traditional military council does not want to hand over power to a civilian government. And they want a government to be formed. You know, I mean, we need a government. We need this country to move forward, you know, because right now, I mean, no cash in the bank. People are still, you know, like basic goods are still very expensive or unavailable.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So I think people are really struggling right now. And they also feel that many lives have been lost over the past few months. People have been on the streets for six months, you know, putting their lives at risk, facing gunfire on an almost daily basis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they want to see the fruits of what they have fought for. They feel that the fight is not over, but they want at least a positive step.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So what's standing in the way of that civilian rule? The military does not want to hand over power because the military has always been in power, like in Sudan. And they have a lot of resources and they have an infrastructure that they don't want to lose.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And also because many of them will be held accountable for the crimes that have been committed in Sudan in the past few decades. So they also don't want to be held accountable.
--:-- Reem Abbas: And also because they know that, I mean, at the end of the day, the plan is to have a transitional government for three to four years, but then to have elections and have a democracy. In their interest, they don't want to see a democratic civilian rule in Sudan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What about other countries? How are they weighing in on this?
--:-- Reem Abbas: African countries are, they have been in a way united, you know, behind the African Union. And the African Union wants to see a civilian government. You have the other alliance, the Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates alliance. They have interests, you know, and they have been in a way playing, I would say, a negative role.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, they want to sustain this military presence, OK? Because right now, most of the ground troops in Yemen are the, you know, troops from Sudan and specifically from the RSF.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So they like Hametti. He's their guy because they feel that he's supplying them with troops that are fighting this senseless war in Yemen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But right now, I feel that people are aware of this and they are communicating with the different sides. And they are very adamant that, you know, we want this process to be Sudan-led and we want this process to really take into consideration our interests.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Reem, people right now feel hopeful, right?
--:-- Reem Abbas: Definitely. Absolutely. Because losing hope, it means, I mean, this is what a lot of people are saying, it's basically treason to the victims who have fallen, to the martyrs we have lost along the way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a very emotional time, you know, especially when, you know, I mean, the streets are still, like we say, the streets are still stained with blood from the massacre that took place on June 3rd.
--:-- Reem Abbas: We've all lost people. The only way to go is just onwards and upwards because we have been fighting for so long and we have so much to lose.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One of the main slogans is like move forward because behind we only going to face execution Get down what air down
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Some time ago, a colleague of ours here today explained, Johnny Harris, who works with the video team. He got himself a Quip, and it caused a lot of consternation in his family because everyone else immediately wanted a Quip, his wife, his two sons.
--:-- Reem Abbas: So he went back to the Quip website, got some more Quips, and restored harmony to the Harris family. At the time, they didn't have kids' Quips, but now they do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The whole family can get refreshed with Quip, thanks to the new kids' Quip, which has the same two-minute timer and guiding pulses that everyone loves, but also kid-friendly features like a smaller brush head for a smaller kid's mouth, watermelon anti-cavity toothpaste, which quite frankly, I would snag if I had a kid who had that toothpaste, and rubber grip handles in colors the little ones will love.
--:-- Reem Abbas: What colors? I'm not sure yet, but you can go to getquip.com slash explained to find out, g-e-t-q-u-i-p dot com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At that website, you will also find the Quip starts at just $25 and your first refill pack is free.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: May Hassan, you study authoritarianism and teach kids about it at the University of Michigan. This military takeover in Sudan has been very bad for anyone hoping for this popular uprising to be fully realized.
--:-- May Hassan: As a political scientist, I think military takeovers are always bad in that it's not a democratic regime that's around. But I think there are situations in which military takeovers can be not horrible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We often think about something that's called a promissory coup. These tend to be when the military sees the situation in the country, sees that it's not really going in the best direction.
--:-- May Hassan: Thailand's military has taken control of the country's government. The head of the Thai army says the coup is necessary to restore order after six months of political turmoil.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe an elected leader even is taking on too much power. The Honduran military has ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya after he tried to carry out a non-binding referendum to extend his term in office.
--:-- May Hassan: Maybe the existing dictator is not abiding by whatever social contract is in that autocracy. And so sometimes the military actually comes in, does a promissory or a reset coup. And the point is to take over power, reset the country, reset politics, and then hand over power.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Algerians celebrate what looks like success after a wave of protests. For 20 years, the country has only seen one president. That era is about to end.
--:-- May Hassan: They'll often say this coup is intended to restart elections or to bring about an electoral transition. Was that the hope in Sudan that this would be a military reset, one of these promissory coups?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Answering that question is a bit tough because are you asking me as a Sudanese citizen? That's very hopeful and was very hopeful during that time or as a political scientist and someone who's supposed to kind of look at the situation a bit more rationally.
--:-- May Hassan: Because I remember on April 11th in my WhatsApp group with my family, we were sending around all of these messages. Bashir is down, Basha is gone. Seeing that, I was really hopeful about what Sudan was going to do in the future.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I almost had faith in these military leaders, that they were recognizing the suffering that Sudan's been through these past 30 years, and especially since 2011 when the economy started really going sour.
--:-- May Hassan: But at the same time, if someone has power and they're not really democratically elected, There aren't really strong checks and balances on them. You kind of have to take a step back and wonder, are they really going to give up power?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Was the two-year transition that the military proposed like an early red flag that this wasn't going to go very well? Because what did they need two years for? Bashir had like over 30, right?
--:-- May Hassan: So it was actually the opposite in that the military, the TMC, actually wanted a quicker transition. And the Sudanese Professionals Association and the other opposition groups, many of them instead were pushing for a longer transition.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is where experience from the rest of the Arab Spring countries comes into play, and especially thinking about Egypt, just north of Sudan.
--:-- May Hassan: You know, Sudan and Egypt are going to always be linked. The Nile runs through both Sudan and Egypt. And so we say in Arabic we drink the same water And so Sudan always looks at Egypt and what happening there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there with the transition period in part because the military led the transition and the transition there was really, really quick.
--:-- May Hassan: The Sudanese Professionals Association and other opposition groups were actually hoping for and pushing for a longer transition period just because we'd been under dictatorship for 30 years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Many civil society groups had collapsed. If we're thinking about how to build an opposition movement, actually how to build grassroots democracy, how to have real political parties, that's not something that can be built overnight.
--:-- May Hassan: And what are the parallels between Egypt's Arab Spring Revolution and this one that's happening right now in Sudan?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People in Sudan, the opposition, civil society, regular lay people definitely know how Egypt's revolution was so thwarted and don't want that to happen in Sudan.
--:-- May Hassan: And so I think that's one of the reasons why the opposition is so adamant that the transitional council is majority civilian and that the head of it is a civilian him or herself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Many people look to Egypt and look at Morsi's presidency. Mohamed Morsi, who actually died today while appearing in court, was, of course, Egypt's first democratically elected president after the Arab Spring, but he only lasted like a year before the military ousted him in a coup?
--:-- May Hassan: Yes. They think that it was hampered even before it started, that Morsi never really stood a chance at really being able to dismantle the military state, at being able to dismantle all of the institutions that Mubarak had put into place and give Egypt a real shot at democracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so many people want to put Sudan's hopefully future democratically elected leader in the best position to actually deal with corruption, to actually bring to justice all of these horrible people who have caused pain and suffering and death all across the country.
--:-- May Hassan: Well, since things didn't go very well in Egypt, is there a country Sudan can look at to emulate in this dire situation right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In a sense, Sudan can just look at itself from a few decades ago. So Sudan has been plagued by military rule pretty much since its founding, except there have been a few rays of hope.
--:-- May Hassan: And there have been some times when Sudan, when there were promissory coups, when there were some of these transitional coups that actually did lead to civilian rule for a few years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bashir was ousted on April 11th, and he was ousted after protests really ramped up on April 6th. And April 6th was a very important day, and it was a day that a lot of unions or the SPA, the opposition, knew that they could get people out to protest on because it was the 34th anniversary of when Sudan ousted their last dictator, this man named Nameri.
--:-- May Hassan: And what happened when he was ousted? Nameri left. The military stepped in and actually handed over power to civilian rule.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was this guy named Ad-Daheb. He was a military leader who led the transition. He was president of Sudan for like maybe a year. And then he gave up power and there were actual elections and there was actual civilian democratic rule before Bashir came in and the military did their thing again.
--:-- May Hassan: As someone who has studied this cycle in Sudan, do you feel like something here might be different? That the, I don't know, military ousting Bashir and the people continuing to protest the military might break this sort of cycle in the country?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think what might be different this time is Sudan's economic situation. Sudan's economy has been in free fall since pretty much 2011.
--:-- May Hassan: And it just, I feel like every time I go back or every time I, you know, text with my cousins, it just seems to be getting worse and worse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so people see the regime elites driving around in their really nice land cruisers. So you can just see the corruption everywhere and how it's so easy to blame the regime given how much they have and how little the rest of the population does.
--:-- May Hassan: I'm really hopeful that people are still going to continue protesting and continue backing the opposition until there's real change. Hopefully we'll see the rule of law return.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: May Hassan teaches comparative politics at the University of Michigan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Quip Electric Toothbrush is available on the internet at getquip.com slash explained. That is G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained. Their toothbrush starts at just $25. That's like one 3D movie. Hopefully not Avengers Endgame. Don't at me. Your first set of refills comes for free with the brush.
