Sudan’s islamists plot post war return to power by supporting rising military

Sudan’s islamists plot post war return to power by supporting rising military

The chief of a prominent Islamist party says there can be a hybrid governing structure with the Army retaining sovereign control ‘until all threats are removed’, while elections could give the party a role in the government; document shows the Islamist movement supports the Army in its campaign.

The Islamist movement toppled in Sudan’s uprising in 2019 could support an extended period of army rule as it eyes a political comeback after deploying fighters in the country’s war, according to some of its leading members.

In his first media interview in years, Ahmed Haroun, chairman of the former ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and one of four Sudanese wanted by the International Criminal Court, told Reuters that he foresaw the army staying in politics after the war, and that elections could provide a route back to power for his party and the Islamist movement connected to it.

More than two years of war between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has caused waves of ethnic killings, famine and massive displacement, drawing in foreign powers and creating what the United Nations calls the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

Army leaders and former regime loyalists have played down their relationship, wary of the unpopularity of ousted ex-leader Omar al-Bashir and his NCP allies. But the army’s recent advances have allowed the Islamist movement to entertain a return to a national role, according to accounts from seven of the movement’s members and six military and government sources.

The NCP is rooted in Sudan’s Islamist movement. The movement’s resurgence could cement the reversal of Sudan’s pro-democracy uprising that began in late 2018.

In a sign of the trend, several Islamists and their allies have been appointed since last month to the cabinet of Kamil Idris, the technocratic new prime minister named in May by the army.

In response to a request for comment from Reuters, a representative for Sudan’s army leadership said, “some Islamist leaders may want to use the war to return to power, but we say categorically that the army does not ally or coordinatewith any political party and does not allow any party to interfere.”

‘Army in politics’

Mr. Haroun, speaking to Reuters from a hideaway, said the NCP foresaw a hybrid governing structure in which the army retained sovereign control “until all threats are removed”, while elections brought in civilians to run the government.

“We have taken a strategic decision to not return to power other than by the ballot box after the war,” Mr. Haroun, a Bashir ally, said in the interview in late April.

A senior army officer suggested that a transitional period run exclusively by the army prior to elections “would not be brief.”

Islamist factions had established deep roots in Sudan’s ruling apparatus and in the army during Bashir’s three decades in power. When army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who became head of Sudan’s ruling council shortly after Bashir’s overthrow in 2019, staged a coup two years later, he drew on their support.

The RSF participated in the coup but was suspicious of the Islamists, and as the RSF and the army moved to protect their interests ahead of another planned transition, tensions erupted into warfare.

The RSF quickly seized most of the capital, Khartoum, and made other advances, before the army started to claw back ground, extending its control over eastern and central Sudan.

An NCP document shared with Reuters by a senior Islamist official point to a major role for Islamist networks since early on in the fighting. In the document, Islamist operatives lay out their activities to party leaders, taking credit for directly contributing between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters to the army’s war effort over the first year of the conflict.

They also take credit for training hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians who answered an army call for public mobilisation, of whom more than 70,000 joined operations..

The military sources put estimates of fighters directly linked to the NCP at about 5,000.

Mr. Haroun said he doubted the veracity of the document seen by Reuters and claims of thousands of NCP-linked troops fighting alongside the army.