Princes who want to destroy any hope for Arab democracy

Why are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates backing military leaders who kill demonstrators?

This question was posed by Norway-based Palestinian activist, Iyad al-Baghdadi, the co-host of the podcast “Arab Tyrant Manual”. in his article for the ‘antiwar’ site titled: “Princes Who Want to Destroy Any Hope for Arab Democracy”.

Since the uprisings of 2011 in the Arab countries of North Africa and West Asia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have used their considerable resources to promote authoritarian governments run by military strongmen in the region. They helped crush Bahrain’s uprising, bankrolled a return to military dictatorship in Egypt, armed a rogue military leader in Libya and mismanaged a democratic transition in Yemen before launching a destructive war there.

A ghastly new chapter in the Saudi and the Emirati counterrevolution against democratic movements in the region is unfolding in Sudan, whose generals have unleashed terrible violence on supporters of democracy.

On the morning of June 3, Sudanese armed forces attacked sit-ins in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere, killing more than 100 people and injuring over 500. Even though the internet has been largely blocked, reports and videos have trickled out: bloodied protesters being carried away to makeshift first-aid stations; heartbreaking accounts of gang rapes of doctors; disfigured bodies of protesters pulled out of the Nile; protesters burned in their sit-in tents.

The two men ultimately responsible for the troops who committed these atrocities are Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, known as Hemeti, who are heading the Transitional Military Council that replaced the ousted longtime president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. General Hamdan leads the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary force created by rebranding the janjaweed militias that conducted the genocide in Darfur.

The crackdown came after weeks of negotiations between protest leaders and the military council reached an impasse. The protest leaders wanted the military to immediately hand over power to civilians; the council insisted on military rule until elections, promised to be held within nine months.

Protesters feared that elections under the military council would neither be free nor fair, but simply a cover to legitimize the appointment of a new military dictator — essentially repeating what happened in Egypt in 2014 when Field Marshal Abdel Fattah as-Sisi won by 97 percent. Sisi rose to power after the Egyptian Army killed up to 1,000 largely unarmed protesters at a sit-in at Rabaa Square in Cairo in 2013. Parallels to Egypt were not lost on the Sudanese protesters, who had been chanting, “Either victory or Egypt.”

Sudan’s democracy advocates also feared that the very forces that catapulted as-Sisi to power in Egypt would be pulling the strings in Sudan. Before and after the Rabaa massacre, Egypt received diplomatic support and billions of dollars of financial assistance from two wealthy Arab monarchies: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

General al-Burhan and General Hamdan have had a close working relationship with the Saudi and Emirati leadership since at least 2015, having been directly involved in the Saudi-led war on Yemen. General al-Burhan has been overseeing Sudan’s more than 10,000 ground troops in Yemen. These troops include thousands of militiamen from the Rapid Security Forces headed by General Hamdan.

On the same topic, Iran’s English language daily ‘Kayhan International’ wrote in its article titled, “Diabolical Arab Duo Destabilizing Sudan”: “Sudan is in flames, its people brutally suppressed for insisting on their civic rights to elect a legitimate government, its trigger-happy military rulers gunning down peaceful protestors, and its so-called brotherly Arab states whose oil riches lure hundreds of thousands of Sudanese to seek employment in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, seditiously and satanically manipulating the situation in the interests of the US and the Zionist regime.

“The crisis in Sudan is the result, on one hand of the naivety and lack of political awareness of its people, and on the other hand of the corruption of its greedy politicians, whose lust for wealth makes them bite the bait of the big billionaires of the Persian Gulf.

“General Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who during his 30 years in power since ousting the democratically elected civilian government of Prime Minister Sadeq al-Mahdi, had mostly pursued an anti-American policy by aligning himself with pseudo Islamic elements and indulging in massacres of the people of the south and of Darfur that resulted in UN sanctions on Sudan and his indictment as terrorist by the International Criminal Court, suddenly changed track in 2015 on receiving the “right price” from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to send thousands of troops to Yemen against the popular Ansarallah Movement.

“This presented Riyadh and Abu Dhabi with a golden opportunity to make inroads into his administration and to buy influence among his senior military officers, as part of the plot to pave the way for repeat of the Egyptian model in Sudan.”

The daily said: “It was too late for Bashir when he realized his folly of having trusted the rulers of these two regimes, and when he tried to assert his independence late last year by his surprise visit to Syria where President Bashar al-Assad personally received him at the airport, the US and its two chief West Asian clients, decided that it was time to get rid of him through their agents in the Sudanese army.

“It was repetition of the successful plot that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had carried out in Egypt to overthrow the elected Ikhwan-al-Muslimin-led government by first flattering and funding President Mohammad Morsi, and then stabbing him in the back through their hireling in the army, General Abdul-Fattah as-Sisi.

“Sudan now takes its orders from abroad, which means the protestors demanding civilian rule from the generals who rule it, will have to pay a heavy price.

“The civil disobedience movement that has been started was the right step by the awakened people, who now need to bring the different sectors of the society on the single platform of national unity, but they should be on guard against infiltrators on the payroll of their enemies bent upon turning Sudan into a second Egypt through brutal suppression of the masses.

“So what happened on June 3 seems to be a sampling of the sacrifices in store for the people of Sudan. The armed forces mercilessly attacked sit-ins in the capital, Khartoum, and in other cities, killing people and injuring over 500, in addition to gang raping doctors, disfiguring bodies of protesters, and burning tents erected by them on the streets and public squares.”

According to Kayhan International: “Fortunately, parallels to Egypt were not lost on the Sudanese protesters, who have been chanting, “Either victory or Egypt,” and warning the people of the seditious policies of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

“They rightly point out that the diabolical duo of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are responsible for destabilizing of the Arab/Muslim World from North Africa to West Asia, as is evident by takfiri terrorism in Syria and Iraq, the four-year war in Yemen, the selling out of Palestine to the Zionists, the brutal repression of the people of Bahrain, the civil war in Libya, and now the open alliance against the Islamic Republic of Iran with the US and Israel, the two sworn enemies of Islam and Muslims.

AS/SS