The Creeping Coup

On the surface, the story of Sudan’s war is about two generals vying for power. But it’s also about a vast web of international interests involving the U. S., China, Russia, and the UAE. Today on the show, the story of how things in Sudan got to this point, and the effects of the conflict around the world. This episode originally ran in 2024 and has been updated. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hey, it's Run. A quick note before we get started. We first released this episode last summer when the war in Sudan had just entered its second year. Since then, the war has only intensified and the conflict is once again in the news. Parts of the country are facing famine and non-Arab civilians in Darfur are being killed on a scale that some warn is a genocide. So we wanted to bring you this episode again with some updates that will go deep into the origins of this conflict and the ripple effects it has around the world.

• 0:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  What's the last sort of memory that you have of Sudan before you left?

• 0:59Speaker 02

  The sea. The last thing I saw of Sudan was the sea.

• 1:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  On April 15th, 2023, Holud Chayad woke up expecting the day to be like any other.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  It was just a normal Saturday, suddenly turned into a sort of a nightmarish scenario.

• 1:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  She was living in Khartoum, Sudan's capital.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  And immediately we heard that there were shots being fired in the southern part of Khartoum.

• 1:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  The shots grew closer and closer to her home.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  The airport, right at the center of town where I was living, had very quickly become the epicenter of the conflict.

• 1:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  Roads became impassable. Families couldn't reach each other.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  The fighting has already killed nearly 100 civilians since it began Saturday. Hundreds more are injured.

• 2:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  It was chaos.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Those first few days of the war were gut-wrenching and absolutely horrific to go through.

• 2:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  Khalid and her family decided they needed to leave the country. But airports were shut down and land routes were becoming more and more dangerous. So they looked to the sea for a way out.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  The last thing I saw of Sudan was the sea.

• 2:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  Khalid is one of over 4 million people who have fled Sudan since war broke out in 2023, a brutal conflict in which the WHO estimates at least 40,000 people have been killed and possibly many more. That conflict has made Sudan home to the world's largest internal displacement crisis, over 11 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom have had to leave their homes since the war began.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  There have been stories of sexual assault, sexual slavery, looting, home invasions.

• 3:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  Sudan is also home to the world's largest hunger crisis, with millions facing extreme hunger and millions more at risk.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  And without, I think, the requisite global attention, the situation there will get infinitely worse.

• 3:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  Khalid runs a think tank formerly based in Khartoum called Confluence Advisory that focuses on three policy areas: peace and security, economy, and governance. She says we should all be paying more attention to Sudan, not only because of the very serious humanitarian crisis, but also because what happens in Sudan doesn't stay in Sudan, especially when it comes to the Red Sea, the sea Khalid and her family escaped on.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Now, the sea has become quite an important political football.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Sudan borders the Red Sea, which sits between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It connects Europe to the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal, through which nearly 15% of world trade, including oil and natural gas exports, along with 30% of global container shipping, passes, which means any disruption to that trade route could, for example, spell disaster for Europe's energy grid. It could also mean further instability in the Middle East and Africa.

• 4:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  Sudan is in northeast Africa, just above Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Chad lies to the west, Egypt to the north. The Nile River, which you might associate with Egypt, also runs through Sudan. In fact, the two main branches of the Nile meet in Khartoum. So Sudan is a prime location for international trade.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Which brings us back to the conflict today. On the surface, this is a story about two warring military generals who are vying for power over Sudan, the latest in a long cycle of power struggles that have plagued the country for decades.

• 5:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  But it's also a story with a vast web of international interests, a story tied to the US war on terror, China's global rise, the UAE's economic and political pursuits, and Russia's war in Ukraine. I'm Rande Abdelfattah.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  And I'm Ramtin Arablouei. Coming up, we'll turn back the clock more than a century to untangle the complex web that put Sudan on the path to war and one of the biggest humanitarian crises in the world.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  Hi, this is Molly Noble calling from Inverness, California. You're listening to Throughline from NPR.

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• 6:59Speaker 09

  Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back.

• 7:01Speaker 08

  It sure does, Casey. And what a time. The world is talking about AI and what's going on in Silicon Valley. And we are here with a new show to tell you all about it.

• 7:10Speaker 09

  That's right, Kevin. On our new show, Machine Gods, twice a week, we'll be bringing you the biggest news in tech and bring you unmatched access to the real titans of this industry.

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• 7:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  Part one, Between the River and the Sea.

• 7:33Speaker 10

  The Nile is the great melody that recurs throughout the whole opera. It is the life of the lands through which it flows. It is the cause of the war, the means by which we fight, the end at which we aim. Imagination should paint the river through every page in the story.

• 7:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  It's 1898, and a young British officer and war correspondent named Winston Churchill is traveling on the Nile River in Sudan, publishing dispatches of all he's seeing in London's Morning Post newspaper. Long before he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led the Allied Powers in a war against the Nazis, Churchill made a name for himself as a writer with a book he wrote documenting an epic battle that took place in Sudan, one of the final battles in a two-decade war that had been inspired by a man known as... the Mahdi.

• 8:29Speaker 11

  I am the Mahdi, the expected one. And this is no boast.

• 8:35Speaker 12

  The Mahdi being this figure in Islamic cosmology who is like a messianic deliverer of Muslims from a kind of moral evil.

• 8:49Speaker 10

  The Mahdi proclaimed a holy war against the foreigners.

• 8:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  Muhammed Ahmed Ibn Abdullah, aka the Mahdi, was born in northern Sudan in 1843 and was the son of a shipbuilder. He claimed to be directly descended from the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam. On his travels through the Sudanese countryside, the Mahdi observed the frustration of many people there. He blamed Sudan's neighbor to the north, Egypt, then governed by the Ottoman Empire, and the British Crown, who would soon rule over the region.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Sudan had for centuries been a place of many identities.

• 9:31Speaker 12

  It's got dozens and dozens of ethnic groups. It's got Christians, Muslims. It has a very old Jewish community.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  But the arrival of the Mahdi signaled the dawn of a new era for Sudan, a decidedly Muslim one.

• 9:45Speaker 11

  He who does not believe will be purified with the sword.

• 9:52Speaker 12

  And so, the Mahdi and his army of Sudanese Islamic warriors went to war against Great Britain, which of course at the time was framing itself as this kind of shining beacon of Christian civilization. So why is Sudan important? Why was Churchill there? Why did Great Britain care about Sudan? Well, here's why. The Suez Canal.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  The Suez Canal was opened in 1869 and connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. This made trade between Europe and Asia much easier, shortening the trip by nearly 5,000 miles. And whoever controlled the waterways controlled the trade.

• 10:40Speaker 12

  Great Britain was very keen on keeping peace along the Nile at all costs.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  By the way, this is Christopher Townsall, Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington.

• 10:53Speaker 12

  Because if rebellion could happen in Sudan, what stopping it from it happening potentially to the north in Egypt and disrupting again this vital trade lifeline through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal? That concern still exists to this day.

• 11:13Speaker 10

  The result is at length achieved, and the flags of England and Egypt wait unchallenged over the Valley of the Nile.

• 11:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  In the battle along the Nile that Churchill both wrote about and participated in, the Mahdist army was decimated. Their swords were no match for Great Britain's machine guns. And after that, Sudan returned under the control of the British Crown in Egypt. Khartoum became its capital, and Churchill's book, The River War, was published in 1899. As for the Mahdi, his legacy would live on long after he was gone.

• 11:51Speaker 12

  For a century, from the 1880s until the 1980s, that name, Al Mahdi, was Sudanese political gold.

• 12:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  Then, in the 1980s, the Mahdi's great-grandson, Sadiq Al-Mahdi, who was serving as Prime Minister of Sudan.

• 12:09Speaker 12

  Was basically kicked out by Omar al-Bashir.

• 12:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  Omar al-Bashir would become one of Sudan's most notorious dictators.

• 12:19Speaker 12

  Omar al-Bashir is born during the colonial period in a small town in northern Sudan.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  In 1956, when he was 12 years old, the colonial period finally came to an end. A wave of decolonization was sweeping through the continent, and new nations were being formed. Sudan was one of them. Bashir joined this new nation's army as a young man.

• 12:50Speaker 12

  So he sees both action within Sudan and outside of Sudan.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  And while he was all forging a reputation for himself in the army, Sudan saw a number of military strongmen get overthrown.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Sudan's history is extremely cyclical. It's almost depressingly cyclical.

• 13:08Rund Abdelfatah?

  It was a cycle of revolutions, coups, and wars. And there were a lot of them. On average, there was a coup attempt every five years. But here's where things got tricky. Civilians seeking a more democratic system led the revolutions, but the military led the coups. That's because a precedent was set after the very first time civilians took to the streets in 1958.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  The fighting between the civilian groups, the political groups, was very difficult to resolve, and so they asked the military to step in.

• 13:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  Again, Khudud Khair.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  And really, I think that set the tone for a lot of the military's sort of sense that it must engage, that it must take over power.

• 13:53Rund Abdelfatah?

  These revolutions tended to bubble up around the same core issues: poverty, food scarcity, and regional, ethnic, and religious tensions.

• 14:03Speaker 12

  Sudan is a huge country, which means that hundreds of miles, you know, outside of Khartoum, going in either direction, you had people who were technically Sudanese by nationality, but were on the margins of political and economic power.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  The north, where Khartoum is, had pretty much all the political and economic power. When the British ruled over the region, they invested in developing the north, but pretty much nowhere else in Sudan. The north is where the Nile River converges, where most of the trade was happening, and northern elites, who were mainly Arab and Muslim, were given all the positions in the colonial government. This setup basically continued even after independence, a political divide that many people also saw as a cultural one.

• 14:59Speaker 12

  You had a lot of South Sudanese who felt like they were excluded from national power because Southern Sudan had a far deeper history with Christian missionaries, right?

• 15:15Speaker 04

  That feeling of marginalization in the south would haunt Sudan for years to come.

• 15:24Speaker 13

  The lack of attention paid to the south has festered, breaking out into an earlier rebellion and now a full-scale civil war. An estimated 2 million people face starvation in the southern Sudan war zone.

• 15:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  By the late 1980s, the north and south were deadlocked in a violent civil war, and the political turmoil of a cycle of coups hadn't led to many positive changes for the people of Sudan. Most were still very poor, and now the country was facing a terrible famine.

• 15:56Speaker 14

  Western relief officials estimate that civil war and famine have killed more than a quarter of a million people in Sudan this year.

• 16:03Speaker 15

  Food is here used as a weapon.

• 16:09Rund Abdelfatah?

  As for Ahmed al-Bashir.

• 16:11Speaker 12

  He begins to align himself with the National Islamic Front, a political organization and the National Islamic Front's chief ideological figure, Hassan al-Tarabi. Tarabi had a very fundamentalist kind of Islamic vision of what Sudan should be.

• 16:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  A vision of embedding a strict interpretation of Sharia law into Sudan's diverse society and institutions.

• 16:42Speaker 12

  And the National Islamic Front gets into a conflict with then-prime minister Sadiq al-Madi, who was in the process of trying to work with the South Sudanese to create a form of secular government within Sudan.

• 17:03Rund Abdelfatah?

  That proposal ran counter to everything Tarabi had been pushing for. So Tarabi decided Sadiq and Mehdi needed to go, and he chose Ahmed al-Bashir to be his replacement.

• 17:17Speaker 14

  A coup overnight in Sudan. The government led by Sadiq al-Madi was overthrown by military.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  On June 30, 1989, Ahmed al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front took over power.

• 17:30Speaker 12

  Some have said that Tarabi was the brains behind the coup and Bashir was the muscle.

• 17:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  At a rally soon after, Bashir showed up with a Quedan in one hand and an AK-47 in the other, vowing to, quote, "purge the enemies of the people and of the armed forces."

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Ahmed al-Bashir and the Islamists around him had what they called a civilizational project.

• 17:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  A civilizational project with the goal of making the North's Arab and Muslim identity the identity of all of Sudan. A decision Bashir knew would fan the flames of resistance outside Khartoum.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  And he realized very quickly that he had to coup-proof his regime.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  To coup-proof his regime, he immediately got rid of secular officials and politicians who'd served in Sadiq al-Mahdi's government.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  He effectively created a system where the Sudanese armed forces became very top-heavy. Only the loyalists made it to the top and were rewarded.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  And he and Turabi invited people into the country who shared their vision, including Osama bin Laden.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  Around this same time Bashir took power, Osama bin Laden had founded Al Qaeda.

• 18:49Speaker 16

  The United States has informed Sudan that it's been added to Washington's list of countries that sponsored terrorism.

• 18:55Speaker 17

  The designation makes Sudan ineligible for almost all USAID.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Sudan was under US sanctions from 1993 onwards, partially because of Umar al-Bashir's government's hosting of Osama bin Laden. And then later on in 1997, other sanctions were put in place by the US.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  With a deteriorating economy, an already poor Sudan became even poorer. And as life got harder for the average person, frustration grew with Bashir's civilization project. The cycle of coups seemed on the verge of repeating. To stay in power, Bashir would need to find some way to weather the storm.

• 19:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, Bashir finds a new protector.

• 19:47Speaker 18

  This is Philip from Woodbury, Minnesota, and you're listening to True Line from NBI.

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• 19:58Speaker 07

  This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the midterm elections are wrapping up, and millions of people have already voted. We're taking one final check of the electoral pulse with a new NPR PBS News Marist Poll. It shows Democrats still poised to make gains, but also with some warning signs for just how many. We'll explain on the NPR Politics Podcast.

• 20:22Speaker 09

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• 21:13Speaker 19

  Part two, The Oil Curse.

• 21:18Speaker 20

  A homesick sparrow perches on the hearth's window with longing eyes. It cranes out to glance at the houses, at the distant skies, waiting for a cheerful morning with promises laden to land like a turban on the shoulder of the homeland. With each cool in a dark abbey sweet lunch, the heavy-footed hunter besiege our songs. They agitate our ink pot, confiscate its internal peace. They poison the cheerful spring and place their muzzles on everything.

• 22:03Speaker 20

  What a pleasant Dream Davis figure in the eyes of each mother, but they can't manage to silence us. Never.

• 22:14Rund Abdelfatah?

  These are the words of Mahdiob Sharif, known to many in Sudan as "the people's poet." Since Sudan's independence in 1956, he witnessed the hope of each revolution fade with each passing coup. And time after time, he took up the pen to express his frustration. The jail cell became his second home, a consequence of his vocal dissent. When Omar al-Bashir came to power, Sharif quickly landed himself back in prison. He wrote this poem of the sparrow longing for a brighter day. It seemed like maybe another revolution was on the horizon in the country, like maybe the days of Bashir's rule were numbered.

• 22:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  But then Bashir hit the jackpot.

• 23:02Speaker 15

  Oil, central asset of the Sudanese economy, north and south.

• 23:09Speaker 15

  So the oil started to flow in in 1999.

• 23:14Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Ibrahim al-Bedawi. He's the managing director of the Economic Research Forum based in Cairo.

• 23:20Speaker 15

  The oil era from 2000 to 2011 changed the economy of Sudan very profoundly.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  Oil had actually been discovered in Sudan decades earlier. But until the turn of the century, no one had been able to figure out how to get to it because of the seemingly unending war raging between the north and south of Sudan.

• 23:45Speaker 15

  Most of the oil was actually at the border between north and south.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Chevron, an American company, initially attempted to get the oil in the 1970s, but eventually suspended drilling after several of their workers were killed by southern separatist rebels. They pulled out entirely in the 1990s after the change in Sudan's leadership.

• 24:08Speaker 15

  Omar al-Bashir regime came to power.

• 24:12Speaker 21

  In secret raids, whole villages have been burned, many left dead. Survivors claim these attacks are fueled by a modern-day gold rush in Sudan. They say the government is pursuing a bloody campaign to clear people from the oil fields.

• 24:28Speaker 15

  They were able actually to open discussions with the smaller companies in Malaysia and China.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  Companies that managed to unearth millions and millions of barrels of oil.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  And so Sudan went from being a very poor country coming out of the tail end of one of the biggest famines the continent had seen in decades, and the country under US sanctions, to a country of obscene wealth in the early 2000s.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  It was an exciting time. The economy was booming, and Sudanese people who had left the country behind looking for opportunities elsewhere began to return home.

• 25:08Rund Abdelfatah?

  It was exciting for Bashir too, because now he had the answer to his problem. He could pump money into his security apparatus and protect himself from any coups. And that's exactly what he did, like, a lot of money.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Consistently, the national budget of Sudan would have 70 to 80% of state revenues going towards the security sector.

• 25:33Speaker 15

  It became a source for fueling institutionalized corruption.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Wealth that really was not in any way, shape, or form distributed equally all to those who need it most in what is known as Sudan's periphery regions.

• 25:48Speaker 15

  And so it became like an oil curse.

• 25:53Speaker 12

  If we travel to Darfur in the early 2000s, a region to the very west, as large as the country of France. You have a land that was on the margins of economic power.

• 26:08Speaker 12

  And so while they are struggling for basic sustenance, they are aware that in Khartoum, you have people getting very rich. You see skyscrapers coming up in Khartoum. Darfur was not seeing that.

• 26:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  Some people in Darfur began to ask why. Unrest grew, and that presented an opportunity for Bashir's former mentor, Hassan and Turabi, who was quickly becoming one of his main political adversaries.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Just around the time of the oil boom in Sudan, Bashir and Turabi had a difference of opinion, and they parted ways.

• 26:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  That difference of opinion basically came down to this. Turabi was alienating their Arab allies, inviting Sunni extremist groups into the country, and strategizing against the interests of rulers in the region. Bashir was losing patience with Turabi's power plays. And when the oil money started flowing in, Bashir's north star shifted. He was down to do business as long as it ensured his power.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  So in 1999, Turabi was cast out of government and thrown in prison. When he got out a couple of years later, he was linked to rebellions in Darfur, an impoverished region on Sudan's western periphery with a large Arab Muslim presence and a strong tribal militia culture. There, he begins to incite people to rise up against Bashir.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  2002 and 2003, the beginnings of the armed resistance in Darfur against Bashir's rule.

• 27:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  To help put down the rebellion in Darfur, Bashir enlists two key men. You'll want to remember their names because they become really important to the story later on. The first was a top general in the Sudanese armed forces named Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, or as he's often called, Burhan. The other was an unexpected choice, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, or as most people know him, Hemeti.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Hemeti was a camel raider.

• 28:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hemeti was one of the leaders of an Arab militia group in Darfur called the Gingerweed.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Gingerweed means devils on horseback.

• 28:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  Devils on horseback.

• 28:33Speaker 22

  The first time Genjiwi came attack our village, they killed 16 people and burned the village completely. And they forced children and women to leave the village.

• 28:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  Brahman and Hemeti were both put in charge of restoring order in Darfur by any means necessary. And the violence quickly reached horrific levels. They especially targeted people from non-Arab ethnic groups. Before long, the international community took notice. You might remember the Save Darfur fundraisers.

• 29:12Speaker 23

  We are charging Al Basir with three counts of genocide,

• 29:18Speaker 23

  five of criminal and humanity, and two of war crimes.

• 29:22Speaker 12

  It is for Basir's crushing of the rebellion in Darfur in the early 2000s that he gets under the microscope of the International Criminal Court, right? Where he becomes the first incumbent head of state to be indicted for crimes against humanity.

• 29:47Speaker 12

  This is the 21st century's first instance of genocide. An estimated 300,000 people are killed, entire towns destroyed, massive instances of sexual violence, millions of refugees.

• 30:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  The International Criminal Court indictment casts Basir as a pariah on the world stage. But while it damaged Basir's reputation and Sudan's negotiating power with other countries, it didn't spell the end of Basir's rule.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  As Darfur received aid from international agencies, southern Sudan, which, remember, had been at war with the government in the north for decades, was gearing up for a historic vote to decide whether to secede and form its own nation. During the same time that a genocide had been taking place in Darfur, international mediators, including the US, sought a resolution on the ongoing war with the South. In 2005, the civil war finally came to an end. And in January of 2011, the people of southern Sudan went to the polls to determine their future.

• 31:01Speaker 24

  Schoolchildren were singing at the parade ground in a mood of excitement and expectation. This follows an overwhelming yes vote in January's referendum on independence.

• 31:18Speaker 12

  South Sudan becomes the world's newest nation in July of 2011. But here's the caveat.

• 31:27Speaker 12

  South Sudan sits on an ocean of oil.

• 31:30Speaker 15

  More than 75% of the oil was lost to the North.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  75% of all the oil was in South Sudan and now out of reach for the North. The oil that had fueled Basir's security apparatus, the oil that had fueled his war in Darfur, the oil that had helped him coup-proof his government.

• 31:52Speaker 15

  And so the state of Sudan in the North experienced what economists call a sudden stop.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  A sudden stop.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Basir recognized that he would need protection, not just from his enemies, but potentially from his allies too.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  But with money tight, he could no longer keep his security network as bloated as it had been.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  He would need a Praetorian guard to protect him.

• 32:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  A Praetorian guard, a personal bodyguard of sorts, someone outside of the Sudanese military. Because remember, the military had been behind every other coup in the past. So he needed someone who worked in the shadows, someone who had proven themselves already. So Basir calls up that militia leader who helped him carry out a genocide in Darfur, Hemeti.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  And in fact, he would call Hemeti, Hemaiti, which in Arabic means "my protection."

• 32:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  Suddenly, Hemeti found himself at the center of Sudan's web of power and the militia he commanded, the Genja weed, the so-called devils on horseback, were right there with him. And Bashir's like,

• 33:01Speaker 12

  Well, if I can basically subsume these Janjaweed from Darfur under my own purview, right? I can A, protect myself from the Sudanese army if ever the army, you know, wants to stage a coup. But it's also a kind of indirect way of keeping Darfur in his grip.

• 33:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  But in return, Hemeti wanted the Janjaweed to become an official part of Bashir's government. And he wanted control over some of the gold mines in Darfur and other parts of the country. Bashir agreed. And the Janjaweed got a new name.

• 33:41Speaker 12

  He establishes it as the Rapid Support Forces in 2013.

• 33:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Rapid Support Forces, RSF, a paramilitary group that would work separately from the official Sudanese military with its own power structure, its own trade networks, and its own leader, Hemeti.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  That really was one of the ways that Hemeti played the system and played Bashir effectively. Vastly enriched himself and brought himself into the center. Of course, gold was their primary revenue maker.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Gold can be found all over Sudan, including Darfur. And although it has been mined in Sudan for centuries, it was now critical that they find and sell more of it, fast, to fill the economic void left behind by oil. It was also the thing keeping Hemeti and his RSF loyal to Bashir.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  It's obviously quite a Napoleonic ride. It's quite an astronomical feat.

• 34:40Speaker 04

  But even then, with all those perks, Hemeti was keeping his options open.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  He quite clearly had political ambitions from the start.

• 34:49Speaker 25

  The economically struggling nation is emerging from decades of sanctions and isolation.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Opposition to Bashir was mounting in the ranks of the military and in the streets and villages of Sudan, where many people were struggling even to find bread to eat.

• 35:05Speaker 25

  Inflation is at over 300% and there is a shortage of basic goods.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  Coming up, after nearly 30 years, the cycle finally repeats itself.

• 35:25Speaker 26

  This is David from Seattle, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 35:32Speaker 06

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 35:37Speaker 27

  On the latest episode of Sources and Methods, in Israel this week, an election with no clear winner. Next week, in the US, an election that could shift the balance of power in Washington. And in both countries, a defining issue for voters, the war in Iran. We look at where things could be headed in that conflict. Listen this week to Sources and Methods, the national security podcast from NPR.

• 36:00Speaker 28

  On a new episode of Your Turn with Allison Aubrey, two dream analysts explain the power of dreams as a guide for self-exploration.

• 36:09Speaker 29

  Sometimes dreams really contain the secret that we need to overcome difficulties, get unstuck, see a different way, and move forward.

• 36:18Speaker 28

  All this and more on Your Turn, available on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:24Speaker 30

  In the much-talked-about new movie, Wicker, Olivia Colman plays a woman who commissions a husband literally made of wicker. Yes, wicker. We'll tell you why the silly and bawdy new movie is also a nice cozy fall watch. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:47Rund Abdelfatah?

  Part Three, Blood Gold.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  The protests against Beshd started, unsurprisingly, in the peripheries.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  December 2018.

• 37:02Speaker 19

  The bread crisis sparked protests around the country when the government announced it planned to raise the price of a loaf from one to the knees pound to three.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  A bunch of schoolchildren who were protesting that their sandwiches at school were too expensive.

• 37:15Rund Abdelfatah?

  As they filed out of the cafeteria, they started to chant, "No to Hunger." They pounded on every classroom window they passed. And their ranks grew as they wound off the school campus and into the street. The government's response was swift and harsh.

• 37:32Speaker 19

  The government has been using live ammunition and tear gas to disperse the crowds.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  And very quickly, that caught the hearts and minds of many, many people.

• 37:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  The protests spread throughout the country. And eventually, it reached the capital, Khartoum.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  And at that point, there was no turning back.

• 37:51Rund Abdelfatah?

  The protests themselves were full of singing and dancing. People creating art, others finding love. A mood of possibility was in the air.

• 38:01Speaker 15

  The revolution was a major surprise for all of us, but also a source of pride that humbled my generation. We were really amazed about the courage and conviction of this rebellious youth.

• 38:20Speaker 31

  Demonstrators who've been met with live bullets and tear gas say they want President Omar al-Bashir's nearly 30-year reign to end. He says he's not going anywhere.

• 38:29Speaker 32

  The people have been patient for 30 years, and we don't care. We will continue, and we need a real government.

• 38:37Speaker 15

  At the beginning, things were very rosy, and the army switched loyalty to the public, declared that it's actually going to support the revolution.

• 38:50Speaker 33

  Today, Sudan's military announced that al-Bashir had been arrested.

• 38:53Speaker 12

  Hamati and General Burhan, as the kind of two most powerful military figures in the country, worked together to kick Bashir out.

• 39:05Speaker 33

  He seized power in a military coup 30 years ago, and today he was ousted by one.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  So effectively, Bashir's primary protector, his Batoryan guard, had been the one to lead the coup against him.

• 39:21Speaker 17

  I'm so happy I can't express it. A new Sudan will be built. It's really a beautiful thing. Our lives are going to be changed.

• 39:30Speaker 12

  I think if April 11, 2019, could be bottled up and sold throughout the world, it would be amazing.

• 39:39Speaker 34

  Everyone will now work for a better, united Sudan.

• 39:42Speaker 12

  So, in a word, hope.

• 39:54Speaker 15

  I arrived just one day earlier, before the massacre.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  Two months after the triumphant moment of Bashir's fall, Ibrahim El-Badawi came to Khartoum. He was there to support protesters staging a sit-in outside the army's headquarters, demanding that Burhan and Hameti cede power to a civilian-led government.

• 40:17Speaker 15

  There was heavy rains, so the person who was arranging for me to go called me to say, "Let us postpone it for tomorrow." And tomorrow, when that tragic event happened.

• 40:31Speaker 35

  A raid at dawn, where the protesters least expected it.

• 40:35Speaker 36

  We're being attacked by the riot police forces and the police.

• 40:42Speaker 15

  It was really very devastating for all of us, especially for those of us who came from abroad in order to celebrate with this use.

• 40:52Speaker 36

  We have been shot right in front of the army, and the army did nothing.

• 40:56Speaker 15

  There was a sense of despair, actually. And the whole country was just devastated.

• 41:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  The Khartoum massacre in June 2019. Hameti's Rapid Support Forces opened fire on civilian protesters, killing more than 100. Many more were beaten, raped, and violently detained. And the military, led by Burhan, watched it all happen, right on its doorstep.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  This was the same military and the same RSF that had seemed so eager to support this democratic revolution a couple months earlier, to help the starving and impoverished and turn Bashir's 30-year-old rule over to the people. But now, Burhan and Hameti had turned on the Sudanese people.

• 41:49Speaker 15

  But then shortly after, this triggered massive outpouring of protests all over the country. And so it became so difficult for the military junta to maintain their grip on power. And so eventually, they were forced to negotiate with the leadership of the revolution.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  Ethiopia and the African Union stepped in to help Sudan set up a transitional government that would eventually hand off to a civilian-elected administration, finally bringing true democracy to Sudan. Both civilians and military officials were chosen to serve on the transition council. Burhan and Hemeti each had a seat at the table. Ibrahim El-Badawi was part of the prime minister's cabinet as Sudan's new Minister of Finance and Economic Planning.

• 42:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  Did you meet Hamadir El-Burhan?

• 42:44Speaker 15

  Oh, yeah, of course, of course, because as a Minister of Finance, we meet on a regular basis. And most of the time, I think we are in agreement about the importance of economic reforms and what have you.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  It helped that the US and other Western powers lifted sanctions on the country.

• 43:02Speaker 15

  Opportunities were open to Sudan, big time. Debt relief, political openness, and so on.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  At first, that seemed to work for Burhan and Hemeti.

• 43:12Speaker 15

  But I do think, though, that they were reluctant partners.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Reluctant partners who, in hindsight, he says, had never actually committed to the idea that the military would hand power back to civilians.

• 43:28Speaker 15

  They were probably waiting for the right time to renege on their commitment.

• 43:36Speaker 15

  Some Sudanese, they call it a creeping coup.

• 43:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 2021, with the country moving closer to the day when the military was supposed to hand control of the government off to civilians, Hamedhi and Burhan decided their time had come.

• 43:54Speaker 37

  Sudan was moving toward democracy, but then today, the military arrested the transitional government's leaders and put the acting prime minister under house arrest.

• 44:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  Burhan seized power. Hamedhi was his number two in command. And as Sudan's prospects got worse, Hamedhi's only got better.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  During that time, you know, he was able to increase his holdings and his assets by bubbling up the seized assets of the Islamists, of the Bashir regime. And it was then that his ambitions started to overtake what he was given.

• 44:28Rund Abdelfatah?

  Hamedhi had enriched himself through gold mining in Darfur and other regions of the country. And on a parallel track, Burhan was amassing his own wealth and power, using economic and military resources. But even as Burhan and Hamedhi appeared to be working together, the two men were on a collision course, because there was one big thing they couldn't agree on.

• 44:51Speaker 12

  And this was the future role of the Rapid Support Forces.

• 44:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  The paramilitary force Hamedhi still controlled.

• 45:00Speaker 12

  Whether the Rapid Support Forces would be incorporated sooner or later into the army. Burhan wanted it to be incorporated sooner, two years. Hamedhi wanted it to be 10 years. It would obviously kind of protect him longer.

• 45:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  Neither Burhan nor Hamedhi was willing to budge.

• 45:24Speaker 15

  And that would put the country on a path to this tragic war.

• 45:29Speaker 12

  What happens in April 2023 is the beginning of...

• 45:35Speaker 12

  The trauma and the hellscape.

• 45:39Speaker 17

  In Sudan, the promise of democracy seems to have come apart.

• 45:44Speaker 27

  For nearly a week, two rival military groups have been fighting to control the country in the streets of Khartoum.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  By the time the war started in April 15th of 2023, it was sort of the death knell to an already deteriorating state.

• 45:58Speaker 27

  It's killed hundreds of civilians, trapped many more in a war zone, and closed well over half of the city's hospitals.

• 46:05Speaker 12

  What we all around the world saw was street fighting in Khartoum itself. Planes on fire, jets flying over Khartoum.

• 46:17Speaker 15

  And then, once the fighting broke out, it could never be stopped.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Our experts all agreed that there are layers to this conflict, layers that make it inaccurate, or at least incomplete, to refer to it as a civil war. The first layer: power.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  This is a war between the heirs of Bashir, trying to inherit his power and resources. And they have been able to create alliances, both domestically and in the international space, that means that they are able to compete against each other in order to have absolute power in Sudan.

• 46:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  Which brings us to the next layer: international allies who have an interest in Sudan's resources. Access to the Red Sea is a big one for the US and China, too. Agricultural land for food production is of interest to various countries in the Arab Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And then, there's gold. Sudan is Africa's third-largest producer of the precious metal. And a lot of that gold goes to the UAE. The UAE has sent increasing supplies of weapons to support the RSF this year and protect its access to Sudan's gold, especially in the Darfur region. In March 2025, Sudan brought a genocide case against the UAE

• 47:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  to the International Court of Justice. The UAE denied the allegations, and the case was dismissed on a technicality over where the court has jurisdiction. The Sudanese government has since cut diplomatic ties with the UAE. Russia also has interest in Sudan.

• 47:59Speaker 12

  So as we know, Russia begins its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And after Russia's invasion, there are a bevy of sanctions levied against Russia, right?

• 48:15Rund Abdelfatah?

  More than 16,000 sanctions have been imposed on Russia since the war began, and Russia saw that coming. So it began to link its currency, the ruble, to gold. The idea was to shift the currency so the value of the ruble itself could become synonymous with that of gold. Thing is, that plan required a lot of gold. And that's where Sudan comes in.

• 48:41Speaker 12

  The Wagner Group has been documented to be responsible for basically securing the transfer of Sudanese gold to Russia in order to insulate it from the harmful effects of these Western sanctions.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  The Wagner Group, a state-funded private militia company in Russia, has been doing business with Hemeti and the RSF, who, remember, were given control of gold mines in Darfur and other parts of Sudan. And at the same time, the Russian government has been dealing with Burhan and the Sudanese army.

• 49:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  Wait, so both sides are getting military equipment from Russia?

• 49:23Speaker 12

  Yes, which sounds crazy, right?

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Russia has sort of figured out that there's actually very little incongruence in supporting both sides.

• 49:32Speaker 12

  Sudan has a multiple hundreds of miles long coast along the Red Sea.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Where Russia has been trying to establish a naval base.

• 49:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  There's one more layer to this conflict, and it's the most tragic one. Khalid Khair says both generals, Burhan and Hemeti, actually share a common enemy in this war: the people of Sudan and the dream of democracy many have held for decades.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  It is a war against civilians.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  And so while they are fighting each other, they're also fighting the civilians of Sudan, who they recognize as the true change agents in the country. And what's interesting about Sudan's history, that has such a long history of armed conflict, there's always been nonviolent action by a large proportion of different groups of Sudanese people that have brought down military dictatorships.

• 50:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  The spirit of resistance that brought down Bashir in 2019, that feeling of hope that Christopher Tounsel wishes we could have bottled up, that is the thing, he says, both Hemeti and Burhan are brutally attempting to erase.

• 50:47Speaker 12

  They have blocked points of exit for civilians who want to leave. They have blocked points of entry for humanitarian aid. They are creating conditions where civilians will die. It is civilians who are making Sudan the world's largest humanitarian crisis.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  I think one can acknowledge that Sudan's history of marginalization has led us to where we are in many ways.

• 51:21Speaker 12

  The story goes back to the late 1800s, the right of self-determination, to be sovereign, to be able to determine who and how you want to be in the world. I see this as yet another in a long wave of kind of struggles for democracy.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  It's now the rainy season in Sudan. When the rain hits hot, sandy earth and vegetation, there is this really a sort of aromatic smell. And it's so evocative of being in Sudan and it just doesn't smell the same anywhere else when it rains.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  There's a sense of

• 52:12Speaker 02

  loss for a lot of people in Sudan. And that sense of grief is one that accompanies almost every Sudanese person I know. And I really hope that we're able to retain, after all of this, that thing that really binds us, I think, as a people. It's not our ethnicities, it's not our religion, it's not the fact that we eat the same food or share similar cultures. I think it's the fact that we all, so many of us, have a hope that Sudan will be better. And that's something that's very difficult to extinguish in people.

• 52:53Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdelfatah.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  I'm Ramtin Arablouei. And you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 53:02Rund Abdelfatah?

  This episode was produced by me.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  And me, and?

• 53:06Speaker 17

  Lawrence Wu.

• 53:06Speaker 38

  Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Christina Kim.

• 53:11Speaker 17

  Devon Kadyama. Nick Neves.

• 53:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  Sarah Wyman.

• 53:14Speaker 38

  Ince. Kiana Paklewon. Rachel Horowitz. Lina Mohamed. Irene Noguchi.

• 53:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thank you to Lea Bilal and James Hyder for their voiceover work. And thanks to Ed Josita and African News.

• 53:29Speaker 04

  Thanks also to Hannah Baba, Tara Neal, Johannes Durkey, Reese Walter, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. The episode was mixed by Gilli Moon.

• 53:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes?

• 53:50Speaker 17

  Naveed Marvi. Sho Fujiwara.

• 53:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  Anya Mizani. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at [email protected]. Or leave us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, like this one from Xander on our recent episode, "Winter is Coming." Wow, this was a good one. Like a Dickens novel with its plot and characters, but factual. Thanks for gifting us the unseen through line. Thank you, Xander. And if you're listening, we want to hear from you. Leave us a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. You might even hear us read it right here on the show. Thanks so much for listening.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.