The Limits of Power and the Recession of Hegemony: The Sudanese Islamic Movement 1949–2026 (5/12)

The Limits of Power and the Recession of Hegemony. The Sudanese Islamic Movement 1949–2026. Part 5 of 12: Why was Bashir chosen? Ibrahim Bersi. In the previous article, we concluded with the beginnings of the Islamic Movement's organized activity within the armed forces, and with Omar al-Bashir as one of the officers recruited into its military apparatus. But the man who joined the military cells established by the organization years before he joined became, in June 1989, the leader of the coup that brought it to power. Between the two events lies a history, some aspects of which remain mysterious, especially regarding the decision that made Bashir advance ahead of officers who were senior to him in organizational status and higher in military rank. How did this happen? And why was he chosen over others? The answer does not lie solely with the person of Bashir; the choice of the coup leader was part of broader arrangements related to the position of military personnel within the Islamic Movement and the nature of the relationship its political leadership wanted to establish with them after reaching power. Before delving into this matter, material that appeared during research led me to revisit a date I mentioned in the previous article, which I found needed some scrutiny. I had relied on 1981 as the year Bashir joined the organization's cells within the army, based on the testimonies of Ibrahim al-Sanousi and Hassan Osman Rizq. However, I found an older interview with al-Sanousi, published by "Al-Intibaha" newspaper on June 30, 2009, which links the beginning of his knowledge of and organizational relationship with Bashir to the period following his return from the Reconciliation in 1979. The phrasing of the interview does not allow for certainty that the joining itself occurred in that year, so I maintain 1981 as the most specific date in the testimonies I relied on, while recording this older account. Our knowledge of what happened later might tempt us to read those beginnings from their end, as if the officer who was recruited at that time carried with him from the start a mapped path to the palace. But the available testimonies do not allow for this conclusion. Bashir was one of the officers whom the movement saw benefit in having within its military organization, and he was not at that stage among the most prominent leaders of the organization or its most famous names. Between his joining the organization and the approach of the moment of the coup, the country itself was changing around him. In December 1988, Sudan witnessed widespread protests over economic conditions. The war in the South was draining the army, the economic crisis was increasing tension in the streets, and political forces were disputing the administration of the country. In February 1989, the Armed Forces memorandum to the government was issued, revealing the extent of anxiety within the military institution regarding the continuation of the war and the deterioration of political and economic conditions. Under these circumstances, Bashir was moving within a military institution under increasing pressure from all directions, while the Islamic Movement continued its secret arrangements to seize power. To understand what happened in choosing the coup leader, we must return to Osman Ahmed Hassan. Osman was one of the senior officers in the military organization, holding a higher rank than Bashir in the phase preceding the coup. Ibrahim al-Sanousi says, in a later testimony, that the choice of the leader of the movement was originally being conducted according to seniority and military hierarchy, and that Bashir was not the first choice, but he adds that "circumstances and procedures" led to his advancement over Osman Ahmed Hassan. However, this phrase, despite its importance, does not explain the nature of those circumstances or define the procedures that changed the order of the candidates. What happened between the two? Internal accounts state that Mohamed al-Hadi Mamoun al-Mardi had left the service, and that Mukhtar Mohamedin had died before the coup. Thus, Osman Ahmed Hassan, by virtue of his rank and position within the organization, became one of the most prominent candidates to lead the movement. Nevertheless, he was bypassed. We do not have, among the documents and testimonies I have reviewed, a published organizational decision that explains the reasons for bypassing Osman in a definitive manner. But some later accounts open a door to understanding what might have happened. A vision was attributed to Osman regarding the relationship between the military and the civilian leadership after the success of the coup. According to this vision, the officers would assume the administration of the executive authority, while the Islamic Movement would remain outside the direct administration of the state, providing political support and advice. This account gains special importance in light of a more specific testimony mentioned in Dr. Abdelrahim Omar Mohi al-Din's book "Al-Turabi and the Salvation: A Conflict of Identity and Desire," published in 2006, which included an interview with Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, in which the latter attributed the bypassing of Osman to two factors: the first is what he described as his personal anxiety, and the second is his vision of the relationship between the military and the movement after seizing power. According to his testimony, Osman Ahmed Hassan preferred that the military run the state and that the movement remain outside the direct executive authority, contenting itself with providing guidance and advice. Abdelrahim saw this vision as correct in principle but inappropriate in its timing. Two issues strike me in this testimony. The first is that the disagreement, according to this account, was not related only to military competence or organizational seniority, but extended to the nature of the authority that would be established after the success of the coup. The second is that Abdelrahim did not reject Osman's vision in principle, but objected to the timing of its implementation. Why was it not appropriate for the military to run the state while keeping the civilian leadership of the movement outside the direct executive authority? And did the political leadership see that the success of the coup required, in its early years, closer organizational supervision with more influence on the decision? I do not treat this testimony as a final explanation for bypassing Osman Ahmed Hassan. It is a later testimony from one of the participants in preparing for the coup, and I have not found a contemporary organizational document that confirms that the mentioned disagreement was the decisive reason for his exclusion. Also, what was attributed to Osman needs to be compared with what he said himself about that phase. Seizing power is one thing, and agreeing on who holds the decision within it is another. It might be possible to execute a coup with full agreement on the hour of action and the distribution of tasks, while disagreement remains regarding the relationship between the officers and the organization to which they belong. But bypassing Osman, even if its reasons are proven, does not alone explain the choice of Bashir. Excluding one of the candidates does not necessarily mean that the officer who replaced him was the only option available. Here another question arises: who made the decision, and what criteria favored Bashir over others? Some accounts suggest that the movement's "Special Bureau" was what settled the matter, while another account gives Ali Osman Mohamed Taha an influential role, and a third account places Hassan al-Turabi in the position of the one with the final say. The "Special Bureau," in these accounts, refers to one of the circles of secret work related to preparing for the coup, but the limits of its jurisdiction and its relationship to other levels of leadership require more precise historical calibration. However, these statements do not match in their details, and some were issued long years after the coup, in political circumstances where the relationships of those providing testimony to one another had changed. The matter is further complicated by the fact that Ibrahim al-Sanousi himself spoke of the distribution of responsibilities within the leadership and denied that there was a single committee solely responsible for all coup arrangements. Therefore, searching for one person who made the decision, at a specific moment, may not reflect the nature of organizational work as these testimonies describe it. The available testimonies do not allow for a resolution of this issue, but they leave the question of selection criteria open. Bashir was not the only officer with military experience, nor was he the senior in the organization, nor the highest in rank among the names linked to the preparation for the coup. Perhaps considerations related to his position within the army, his field experience, his military connections, or the nature of his relationship with the civilian leadership favored him. Perhaps these factors combined with others. While Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein's testimony points to the possibility that Osman's stance on managing authority may have contributed to his being bypassed, it does not provide evidence that Bashir was chosen because he was more accepting of the influence of the civilian leadership. We do not know, from the testimonies we have examined, whether this issue was even raised when weighing him against the rest of the officers. Even the timing of Bashir's return from the South in the final weeks before June 30 is not consistent in the published accounts. This is an issue I will return to when discussing the final days that preceded the coup, when the sequence of moves and decisions becomes more important for understanding what happened. What is noteworthy at this stage is that the disagreement attributed to Osman, if proven true, reveals an early question regarding the position of the military in relation to the political organization after reaching power. This question would return, under different circumstances, after ten years. In December 1999, Bashir dissolved parliament and declared a state of emergency, and the rift ended with Hassan al-Turabi leaving the center of power. However, it is not accurate to read the choice of Bashir in 1989 as an intentional prelude to what happened in 1999. During those years, the positions of people and their interests changed, and Bashir came to rely on the power of the state and its institutions, after having been one of the officers working within the movement's military organization. What the comparison between the two moments reveals is that the relationship between the political organization and the military authority remained a matter subject to disagreement, and that reaching power changed the power balances between the parties that participated in establishing it. On the morning of June 30, 1989, Bashir appeared before the Sudanese as the leader of a military coup, presenting itself as an attempt to save the country from its political and economic crisis. At the same time, Hassan al-Turabi was imprisoned with a number of party leaders, in an arrangement that helped hide the organizational link between the coup and the Islamic Movement in its early days. The exact reasons that made Bashir advance ahead of Osman Ahmed Hassan and other officers remained far from being settled, despite the differences and different perceptions about managing authority revealed by later testimonies. Perhaps the importance of these testimonies is that they allow us to approach the nature of the relationship between the political leadership and the military organization in the years that preceded the coup, without giving us a final answer to all the details of the decision. In addition to working within the armed forces, the Islamic Movement had begun years earlier to build another activity for collecting information, securing the organization, and protecting its secret work. That activity did not begin with the establishment of the Salvation state, nor with the security agencies that the Sudanese knew after June 30. It had an older history, which is what we will cover in the sixth part of this series: "The Security Apparatus Before It Tightened Its Grip."