At a key moment, the West could have rescued Sudan. It didn’t

Rival armed forces fight each other in the streets of the capital. The United States announced the evacuation of all embassy personnel from the country, but it’s the civilian bystanders who bear the brunt of the fighting, lying dead on the streets or wounded in crowded hospitals. In the countryside, a long-festering insurgency flares up again.

Sudan is unravelling. Hopes just four years ago that the country was entering a new era, after a peaceful popular uprising that ousted the country’s long-time ruler, are already a distant memory.

The greatest tragedy is that the country of 46 million might have been able to avoid the current lawlessness and brutality. Perhaps if the international community had been more engaged, or if the generals and military men fighting for power had put their country’s wellbeing ahead of their own interests, or if Sudan’s civil institutions had been bolstered with more backbone, and its leaders given more support from outside powers.

But at a key juncture in the country’s trajectory, the West also failed Sudan, and the United States president at the time, Donald Trump, exploited the situation for his own political gain instead of supporting Sudan’s fragile democratic experiment. The West is not the sole or even the main author of Sudan’s despair, but it played a role in helping to bring about its current misery.

Sudan’s democracy movement has been struggling for years, but its latest attempt to emerge from decades of military rule began in December 2018, after an increase in the price of bread sparked protests. The grievances quickly escalated and protests spread, merging with a second wave of unrest, eight years after the Arab spring, that was sweeping through countries such as Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq, which had largely stayed on the sidelines of the 2010-11 revolts.

Like movements for democratic change in other Arab nations, Sudan’s uprising was led in part by idealistic, educated professionals – many of them fighting for change from inside the country, rather than in exile. Unlike in countries such as Syria or Libya, the activists never took up arms as they forced out long-time ruler Omar al-Bashir – a military strongman infamous as the first sitting head of state to be indicted on war-crimes charges – and agitated for civilian rule.

But the activists and civil society leaders had little political experience. Outflanked by the military, they were unable to establish democracy in Sudan, or even full civilian rule. A deal brokered by the African Union after Bashir’s April 2019 downfall established a transitional council of military figures and protest leaders that was meant to lead, eventually, to civilian government.

It was an uncomfortable arrangement from the start. Activists and civil society leaders were forced to share power with the same thugs who had been shooting their fellow citizens dead in the streets just weeks earlier, and who had been tossing them into jail for speaking their minds for decades.

Back then, many Sudan watchers warned that neither General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, an army man trained in Egypt and Jordan, nor Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, who oversaw a force that was built out of the genocidal janjaweed militias allegedly behind massacres in Darfur, was committed to civilian rule. They would only grant democratic concessions if they were forced to. Burhan became the real power in the country, with the security forces under his thumb.

Activists were suspicious that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia would try to use their influence, and their cash, to bar any genuine democracy that might serve as an inspiration in the Arab world. Egypt, too, had strong ties to Burhan, one of the military leaders now battling his erstwhile partner Hamdan (often referred to as Hemeti).

But in the weeks after Bashir’s ouster and the establishment of the civilian council, everything was fluid, spirits were high, and no one could predict for sure where the country was headed. The top concern was the stagnant economy. The US had lifted sanctions in 2017, but kept in place Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, which spooked businesses seeking to invest and blocked the flow of aid from international organisations.

It was at that key moment that the US, and the rest of the world’s leaders, failed Sudan. They could have showered the country with resources to alleviate the economic misery that drove people into the streets, and thereby given the civilians in the government a boost. Instead, throughout 2019 and 2020, they gave small tranches of aid for various development projects.

The US could have quickly removed the state-terror designation, which held up key financing that would have helped to stabilise Sudan and strengthen the hand of prime minister Abdalla Hamdok and his allies. Instead it held back for months, worried that removing the designation would offend the relatives of September 11 victims.

The transactional Trump administration, looking to score a foreign policy victory ahead of the 2020 election, eventually demanded that Sudan sign the Abraham Accords peace treaty with Israel before the country could be delisted, which would allow billions in IMF and World Bank funds to be released. In addition, Sudan was eventually forced to cough up $335m (£269m) in compensation for victims of terrorist attacks in 1998 and 2000 that were linked to the regime the country had just overthrown.

Sudan, a typical Muslim Arab nation with typically hostile attitudes toward Israel, swallowed its pride and signed the Abraham Accords on 6 January 2021. But a full 20 months had now passed since the popular uprising. In the interim, Sudan’s economy had been damaged further under the weight of global Covid restrictions, and by the continued corruption and mismanagement overseen by the generals and their cronies. Cynicism about democracy festered.

In October 2021, the military did what many Sudan experts had predicted it would. Burhan and Hemeti seized power. Enforcers placed Hamdok under house arrest.

It is no mystery why the military men refused to go back to their barracks. Civilian rule would restrict the generals’ ability to wage wars, open them to scrutiny for past atrocities, and threaten to expose their various business dealings.

Hamdok was eventually released, but he refused to sign humiliating terms that would continue to give Burhan de facto power for the foreseeable future. The same two generals now fighting each other, and killing civilians cowering in their homes, took charge.

Sudan’s democratic experiment was over. The Sudanese themselves are of course most to blame for its failure. Russia, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia meddled. But the West had a chance to do the right thing and help Sudan move from military to civilian rule, and to some semblance of democracy. It blew it.