Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

100 Killed in Sudan and Dozens of Bodies Are Pulled From Nile, Opposition Says

Burning tires used as a barricade in the capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday. Demonstrators have demanded that the country’s Transitional Military Council hand over power to civilians.Credit...Reuters

Two days after a violent crackdown by Sudan’s security forces on pro-democracy protesters in the capital, a doctors’ organization that has helped organize protests reported that more than 100 people had been killed and hundreds more injured.

The doctors’ group said on Wednesday afternoon that 40 bodies had been pulled from the Nile, reportedly by paramilitary groups, after the attack. Earlier on Wednesday, the doctors group said 101 people had been killed, including those recovered from the river, and 326 injured.

If confirmed, the toll would make the attack the deadliest by security forces on the protesters since April, when the dictator who ruled Sudan for 30 years was toppled by his generals. In the aftermath of the raid, residents reported rapes and robberies at the hands of paramilitary forces, and said that internet and cellphone networks had been restricted or cut off.

[Sudan ousted a brutal dictator. His successor was his enforcer.]

After the coup, the generals of Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country, formed a Transitional Military Council to rule — to protesters’ dismay — and tense negotiations began. The protesters continued to demand a transition to civilian control. The generals resisted, but they continued to talk about potential compromises.

Then, in early June, the talks collapsed and members of Sudan’s security forces fired on a major protest camp outside the military’s headquarters in the capital, Khartoum.

Here is how Sudan, after three decades in the grip of one man, became caught in a crisis between civilian revolutionaries, hardened generals and a fractious network of paramilitary groups and militias.

Image
Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan’s leader for 30 years, arriving at Parliament on April 1.Credit...Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

During his long reign, former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, 75, outwitted rivals, survived civil wars and famine, presided over a decade-long oil boom and created a network of security forces and militias that some likened to a spider web.

He also became a pariah in the West, accused of supporting terrorism — Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s — and orchestrating a genocidal purge in the Darfur region that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Since 2009, the International Criminal Court has tried to arrest him for Darfur atrocities, and Western countries have used sanctions and diplomacy to shun Sudan for decades.

Oil revenue, which had grown Sudan’s middle classes, began to run dry. Mr. al-Bashir ended fuel and wheat subsidies last year, compounding slow-boiling frustrations over corruption and economic mismanagement, and protests against him erupted around the country.

And though there were periodic clashes with the authorities, often with tear gas and sometimes with live bullets and confrontations between rival security forces, the protests continued for months.

Image
Alaa Salah, a Sudanese woman, was propelled to internet fame after images of her speaking at an protest went viral.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Reflecting the way that Sudan’s middle class has disintegrated in recent years, doctors and other professionals played a central role in organizing the protests, which set up a huge sit-in outside the military’s headquarters in the capital, Khartoum.

The doctors helped transform what started as protests over bread prices into a coherent movement, calling for civilian rule. They also documented the fatal wounds of some protesters and established clinics to treat others for gunshot wounds, the effects of tear gas and other injuries.

As the protesters held on, their prominence grew around the world. The image of a young Sudanese protester, Alaa Salah, went viral, as did stories of courage and romance among the demonstrations, which sometimes took on the character of a summer festival — itself rare in Sudan’s conservative society. The generation gap had consequences at the highest levels of power, too: The son of one of Sudan’s most powerful generals urged his father to help topple the president.

On April 11, the military did just that, unseating Mr. al-Bashir, who was confined to a prison in the capital.

Image
A train carrying demonstrators to the sit-in at Sudan’s military headquarters in Khartoum on April 23.Credit...Bryan Denton for The New York Times

The euphoria of protesters soured, however, as they realized that generals had taken over in a Transitional Military Council. The protesters decided to continue, circulating a taunt online: “It fell once, it can fall again!”

Faced with the protesters’ outrage, the defense minister stepped down only days after taking power. (Another general replaced him.)

Weeks of delicate negotiations followed, and amid the uneasy talks — with protesters signaling their approval and disapproval of various candidates put forward by the military — a carnival atmosphere took hold at the main protest site in Khartoum.

Wary of the protest movement’s similarities to the Arab Spring uprisings that spread across the Middle East in 2011, powerful Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, stepped in to support Sudan’s military. (Under Mr. al-Bashir, Sudan had recruited young Darfuris to fight in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.)

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pledged a $3 billion aid package, and Egypt — where the military ultimately took over after a revolution — provided diplomatic support for Sudan’s generals.

On June 3, days after talks collapsed between the protesters and generals, Sudan’s security forces stormed a major protest camp in Khartoum. Dozens were killed and hundreds wounded, according to protest organizers. Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the military council’s head, announced that elections would be held within nine months.

It remains unclear which parts of Sudan’s fractious military and security establishment were driving the crackdown. The United States Embassy in Khartoum blamed the Transitional Military Council led by General al-Burhan, but videos and eyewitness accounts pointed to the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary unit drawn from the janjaweed militias that carried out atrocities in Darfur in the 2000s.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT