South Sudan News Agency

While the world's limited attention to Africa momentarily focuses on the popular uprising in Khartoum and other areas of Sudan, the regime continues to deny true humanitarian access to Blue Nile and South Kordofan.  Khartoum's recent, highly conditional signing of the "Tripartite Agreement" changes nothing on the ground.

By Eric Reeves

June 30, 2012 (SSNA) -- Today, the 23rd anniversary of the military coup that brought the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party to power, international attention has understandably focused on the widespread civilian uprising that began almost two weeks ago in (northern) Sudan.  Reports suggest that more than 1,000 people were arrested for protesting yesterday (June 29) after evening prayers; hundreds more were injured; and many have disappeared into Khartoum's infamous "ghost houses."  Today is to be the occasion for even larger protests.  Most significant has been the geographic diversity of the protests (http://www.radiodabanga.org/node/32601/). Since the regime has shut down much of the Internet and blocked mobile phone service, information coming out of Sudan is patchy at best.  Wire services and the websites of Girifna and #SudanRevolts are providing very few updates. 

What is clear is that this is the most serious challenge to NIF/NCP power in many years, and yet international actors of consequence seem content to take a neutral, indeed agnostic view of developments.  There have been the obligatory condemnations of "excessive use of force" by the security forces, but such condemnations mean nothing to this regime---no more than the condemnations of aerial bombardments of civilians and humanitarian targets, atrocity crimes that have been perpetrated for many years with impunity.

At the same time, the NIF/NCP is (unsurprisingly) trying to change the subject as much as possible, and this is the explanation for several recent actions.  Most conspicuously, in an effort to diminish what international criticism might be forthcoming as the uprising continues, the regime has nominally committed to the so-called Tripartite Agreement on humanitarian access proposed by the Arab League, the African Union, and the UN in early February of this year.  This agreement was to have allowed humanitarian access to civilians in need and at risk in all parts of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, whether under the regime's control or that of the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLA/M-N). Although the proposal was accepted in short order (February 9) by the SPLA/M-N, Khartoum balked and repeatedly put off a decision, claiming it needed more time to "study" the proposal.

Now, five months later, as the rainy season has begun in earnest and transportation is impossible in many areas, the regime has agreed---or so it says, and so it is being reported in a number of quarters. This is dangerously naïve, as even the diffident and excessively cautious Valerie Amos, UN humanitarian chief, declared emphatically yesterday (UN News Centre, June 29, 2012):

"'While the Sudanese Government announced its acceptance of the Tripartite Proposal of the African Union (AU), the Arab League and the UN for the delivery of humanitarian assistance in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, the Government has laid out operational conditions that do not allow for the delivery of assistance by neutral parties in SPLM-N-controlled areas,' Ms. Amos noted."

"'I therefore continue to call on the Government of Sudan to deliver on its stated commitment: that assistance can reach all Sudanese people in need,' Ms. Amos said, reiterating the UN's commitment to work with all parties to 'find an acceptable solution for the immediate delivery of assistance to all people in need.'" (all emphases added)

The head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) could not have been more explicit:

"…the Government has laid out operational conditions that do not allow for the delivery of assistance by neutral parties in SPLM-N-controlled areas."

It is the assistance by neutral relief agencies in rebel-held areas of Blue Nile and South Kordofan that is of course the central point of the Tripartite Agreement.  In fact, the conditions laid out by Khartoumare such that nothing changes on the ground, except insofar as the regime chooses to permit:

"….based on the nine principles as mentioned below on the distribution of humanitarian aid to be carried out by the Sudanese Red Crescent (SRC) and any other NGOs approved by the Government of Sudan and observed by World Food Program  (WFP) and the implementation modalities to be agreed upon." (Khartoum's statement from Addis Ababa, June 27, 2012)

Giving Khartoum the power of "approval" for specific humanitarian organizations would be an appalling mistake.  One need only look at the fate of these organizations in Darfur over almost a decade---including the recent suspension of activities by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in North Darfur.  Facing relentless obstruction and harassment by Khartoum's Humanitarian Affairs Commission (HAC), MSF felt itself without recourse:

"MSF said hurdles to procedures like getting permits and shipping in medical supplies forced it to suspend most of its medical activities in the Jebel Si area, a conflict area in North Darfur state, where it is the only healthcare provider. 'With the reduction of our activities in Jebel Si, more than 100,000 people in the region are left entirely without healthcare,' Alberto Cristina, MSF’s operational manager for Sudan, said in the statement." (Reuters [Khartoum], May 22, 2012)

This is but one of countless examples.

The regime laid out nine principles that must be respected if aid operations are to proceed, all of them either insisting on Khartoum's claim to national sovereignty or refusing to acknowledge the extent of the crisis (No. 4 below, for example, works to suggest that Khartoum has provided assistance to the most at-risk populations in Blue Nile and South Kordofan---this is a lie).

[1]  "To strictly adhere to the sovereignty of Sudan and the obligation of the Government of Sudan to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country as well as its right to maintain security and enforce the law…."

[4]  "To acknowledge what the Government has provided in terms of humanitarian aid to affected areas in both States.

[5]  "To affirm the sovereignty of the Government of Sudan in supervising humanitarian aid operations in all territories in Sudan.

[6] "To affirm the partnership between the Government and the (three) sponsoring parties in reviewing technical arrangements to resolve humanitarian problems in the affected areas."

[9]  "To endorse and implement, in both States, the laws, regulations and directives governing humanitarian work of the Government of Sudan."

And with Darfur clearly in mind, the regime insists on, "The need to agree on a definite time frame for humanitarian operations."  The possibility of peremptory expulsion of any organization working in the regions is preserved.

And given the central role Khartoum accords the Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS) in these "humanitarian operations," it is worth recalling the performance of the SRCS as the regime's humanitarian organization in Kadugli, South Kordofan, in June of last year.  It will never live down permitting Khartoum's security officials to pose in SRCS uniforms as 7,000 civilians disappeared after seeking UN assistance in Kadugli (Associated Press [Geneva], June 28, 2011):

"Earlier this month, the [7,000] civilians had featured prominently in UN aid agency reports. Agencies described how the civilians sought refuge at the camp because of fighting in Kadugli, and how they were provided with water, food, medical care and mosquito nets for several days. Then, on June 20, they disappeared. An internal UN report obtained by The Associated Press concluded Sudanese intelligence agents---some posing as Red Crescent workers---told the civilians to go to Kadugli for an address by the local governor and to receive humanitarian aid. The refugees were threatened with forced removal from the camp if they did not comply."

These 7,000 civilians have never been accounted for, even as there is now overwhelming evidence---satellite photography and interviews with eyewitnesses from Kadugli---that a number of very large mass graves have been dug in and around the town.  And the number of civilians who disappeared may be higher: the leaked UN human rights report on events in Kadugli in June 2011 notes:

§11   "By 8 June, the Protective Perimeter at UNMIS compound [in Kadugli] had received an influx of 6,000-7,000 IDPs seeking refuge from the on-going fighting, as approximately another 1,000 civilians fled Kadugli and moved north. According to aggregated calculations between UNMIS, UNHCR and OCHA, by 20 June, when IDPs started leaving the Protective Perimeter, an estimated 11,000 IDPs had sheltered there." (July 2011)

And in the end, the SRCS allowed itself to become complicit in the likely murder of all these people:

§54   "UNMIS Human Rights also observed a well known National Security agent wearing a Sudan Red Crescent reflective vest intimidating IDPs. When approached and questioned by UNMIS Human Rights the agent identified himself as a NSS agent and said he had received instructions from state-level authorities to move out IDPs from the UNMIS Protective Perimeter. IDPs interviewed said that they were informed by Sudan Red Crescent personnel that they must evacuate the [UN] Protective Perimeter by 16:00 and that they [the IDPs] feared the Central Reserve Police would evacuate them forcibly if they did not leave the premises."

And of course ultimately, the SRCR is completely subject to the authority of the Humanitarian Affairs Commission and thus the regime.  Again, the UN has never offered an accounting for these thousands of civilians seeking UN protection.

But even more telling is the clear ambition of Khartoum to starve the people of these two desperate regions as part of a genocidal counter-insurgency strategy.  As Human Rights Watch recently reported (May 4, 2012), on the basis of a mid-April 2012 assessment mission to South Kordofan:

"Human Rights Watch researchers went to the region in mid-April 2012 and interviewed victims and witnesses in three areas. They consistently described almost-daily aerial bombardment by government forces, the destruction of grain and water sources that are critical to their survival, arbitrary detentions, and sexual violence against women."

The people being attacked and whose food is being destroyed are all of the Nuba tribal group, the same ethnic group Khartoum attempted to starve to death in the 1990s.  The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide explicitly declares as genocidal those acts "Deliberately inflicting on the [national, ethnical, racial or religious group] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."  This is precisely what the Khartoum regime is doing.

Malik Agaar, former governor of Blue Nile and head of the umbrella Sudan Revolutionary Front (which includes the SPLA/M-N), reported today (June 30, 2012) that in Blue Nile, "dozens of people were dying each day due to lack of food and medicine" (Reuters [Addis Ababa/Khartoum], June 30, 2012). This number will soon grow to hundreds of people per day, and the ultimate death toll---given the appalling hesitation on the part of the international community---will certainly be tens of thousands. Indeed, it is increasingly likely that in the end hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost.

Refugees now arriving in South Sudan from Blue Nile and South Kordofan are typically in terrible condition; and they tell us much about those who remained behind or are unable to travel south (the elderly, the infirm, young children, the sick and the wounded).  They are coming in ever greater numbers, overwhelming humanitarian capacity, especially in Upper Nile, to which an enormous number of people are fleeing from Blue Nile.  Several weeks ago, MSF estimated that some 4,000 refugees were pouring into South Sudan every day; that number has likely grown. 

But even reaching South Sudan is no longer enough, as MSF has stressed with growing alarm for a number of weeks.  A week ago (June 23, 2012) the medical relief organization reported on the ghastly conditions confronting people who have often walked for many days and are badly weakened for lack of food and water:

"Sudanese refugees who are stranded in South Sudan with almost no water will start dying in large numbers unless aid agencies respond immediately to what is now a 'full blown emergency,' the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières has warned. Some 16,000 people are camped along a dirt road in Upper Nile State after fleeing fighting between the army and rebels in neighbouring Sudan. MSF said they would run out of water in eight days.

"Aid workers say refugees in the region are already dying of dehydration and diarrhoea. 'Agencies involved (need) to switch gear and realise this is a full blown emergency---they cannot plan for weeks or months to make it perfect. They have to step up activities right now,' Voitek Asztabski, MSF's emergency coordinator for Upper Nile State, told AlertNet in Nairobi.

"'So switch the gear to emergency and realise the seriousness of the situation because otherwise we are going to lose people like flies.' The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) is racing to move the refugees by truck from the makeshift site, dubbed K18, to a new camp 60km away before the rainy season makes routes impassable. MSF warned that if there were heavy rains in the next week refugees would be left stranded without water in an area where temperatures climb to over 40 degrees Celsius during the day."

And MSF is far from alone: IRC and Samaritan's Purse report many children showing signs of "severe malnutrition"; Oxfam declares its sense that "we're on the path from crisis to catastrophe"; and Save the Children puts the issue most broadly many weeks ago: "A toxic combination of conflict, rising food and fuel prices, and severe cash shortages is having a devastating effect on the civilian population in both countries. With the rains on the way the situation could not be more critical."

Such terrible human suffering and destruction is deliberate on Khartoum's part, and until the international community accepts this basic fact and responds accordingly, the regime will push ahead with its genocidal assault on civilians in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile.  On its grim 23rd anniversary the regime is being challenged by increasing numbers of courageous Sudanese; the brutal tyranny they wish to end deserves no credit, in any quarter, for a disingenuous and expedient agreement on "humanitarian access."

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College, has published extensively on Sudan, nationally and internationally, for more than a decade. He is author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.

By Eric Reeves

June 27, 2012 (SSNA) -- The Washington Post op/ed that appears below ("Regime Change in Sudan") was first published almost eight years ago---August 23, 2004.  All the significant claims made in this piece, I remain convinced, were fully justified by the political, military, and humanitarian realities in Sudan at the time.  The present massive effort at "regime change" on the part of the Sudanese people is even more grimly justified; and in responding to this popular uprising, the international community must not fail to consider the human destruction and suffering that have occurred throughout greater Sudan during these past terrible years.  Further, the world must also take seriously what is almost certain to occur if a badly wounded National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime somehow survives the current crisis.  International agnosticism and expedient dithering are intolerable given this terrifying prospect.

For if we look seriously at all the various data sources, we must conclude that over the past eight years human mortality---from all war-related causes in both Sudan and South Sudan---is measured in the hundreds of thousands of lives lost.  At the same time, many hundreds of thousands of civilians in South Kordofan, Blue Nile, and along the North/South border continue to face a life-threatening lack of food, water, and medicine.  This vast humanitarian crisis has been deliberately engineered by the Khartoum regime as an unspeakably cruel counter-insurgency strategy.

A similar refusal to grant full humanitarian or UN peacekeeping access in Darfur has also been immensely destructive.  Although there are no important studies or data sets for mortality after July 2010, as many as 300,000 civilians in Darfur and Eastern Chad have died from war-related causes since August 2004.

During the same time, millions of human beings have been uprooted.  There are already more than 200,000 refugees from Blue Nile and South Kordofan in South Sudan.  Another 50,000 have fled to Ethiopia.  In Darfur, despite manipulation of displacement figures by senior UN officials, it is clear from data collected by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre that more than 2 million people have been newly displaced in this period of almost eight years, a great many for the second or third time.  UNHCR estimates that approximately 280,000 Darfuris remain refugees in Eastern Chad.

Millions of children throughout Sudan suffer for lack of food, water, medicine (including vaccinations), and education.  Some of the areas in the eastern states (Red Sea, Kassala, and Gedaref) suffer from the worst rates of malnutrition in all of Sudan.  A great many children die or live physically stunted lives.

And yet regime officials have run the economy into the ground, all the while grossly enriching themselves and their political cronies. The NIF/NCP engaged in wild overspending during the oil-revenue boom years, but now finds itself incapable of closing a massive budget gap.  The gap was created in large part by regime's diplomatic intransigence in refusing to negotiate a reasonable transit fee for Southern Sudan's crude oil moving north to Port Sudan. 

Inflation, already likely running over 40 percent (and higher for food and fuel), is poised to become hyper-inflation as the budget gap compels the printing of money.  The value of the Sudanese pound is in freefall, making most imported goods far too expensive for all but the richest Sudanese and collapsing import businesses.  Removing the subsidy for fuel may address much of the budget shortfall, but far from all.  More broadly, the IMF estimates that the Sudanese economy will contract this year by 7 percent.  The loss of the fuel subsidy along with severe inflation in food prices has been the catalyst of the current uprising---and this inflation is rising rapidly and inexorably.

If hyper-inflation strikes the economy, it will crumble within a matter of weeks.  The Sudanese pound will become virtually worthless, and the anticipation of this reality will cause a run on the banks, which will then collapse.  There will be no currency of international exchange, and even domestic economic transactions will move rapidly toward barter.

But the human costs, the terribly predictable and staggering human costs, do by far the most to have justified arguing for regime change eight years ago.  And if the current cabal of génocidaires and thugs should somehow prevail over the civilian uprising now underway, the all too predictable cruelty of the coming years will cause massive additional mortality and suffering.

This is the essential fact that the international community must bear in mind as it moves with dismaying tardiness to address the enormous implications of the uprising in Sudan.

*************************************************************

"Regime Change in Sudan"

The Washington Post, August 23, 2004; Page A15  [unedited; emphases added]

By Eric Reeves

The horrors in Darfur mark this century's first great venture in genocide, but they are not the first such action perpetrated by the National Islamic Front (NIF) regime ruling Sudan. That distinction goes to the jihad directed against the various African peoples of the Nuba Mountains beginning in 1992. Genocide began again in the vast oil concessions of southern Sudan in 1998, when the African peoples of the region became targets of a systematic policy of scorched-earth clearances. Many hundreds of thousands were killed or displaced.

Khartoum’s genocide in Darfur is both familiar and different. It is, as seasoned Sudan analyst Alex de Waal has argued, "the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide by force of habit." Confronted with a surprisingly robust military insurgency in Darfur---growing out of decades of economic marginalization and a near-total breakdown in civilian security---the government in Khartoum instinctively responded by organizing and deploying the Janjaweed Arab militia, which has brutally and systematically destroyed the means of agricultural production throughout Darfur, focusing almost exclusively on African tribal groups. These people now confront "conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction": They face genocide.

No reasonable world order can tolerate a serially genocidal regime that rules only by virtue of ruthless survivalism. Yet this is what the United Nations appears prepared to do. A July 30 U.N. Security Council resolution on Darfur was an exercise in temporizing. Veto-wielding China and Russia, as well as Pakistan and Algeria, resisted all meaningful action; both China and Pakistan abstained in the final vote, signaling that nothing further will be done when the Security Council takes up Darfur again on Sunday.

In the distorting shadow of the Iraq war, this is an exceedingly difficult moment to argue for "regime change" in Khartoum. But regime change alone can end genocide as the domestic security policy of choice in Sudan. And it is the only thing that can avert the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Darfur. The mismatch between humanitarian need and capacity grows more deadly each day. And Khartoum is strenuously resisting deployment of any peacekeeping force, even from the African Union.

The moral logic of regime change could not be clearer. The NIF came to power by military coup in 1989, deposing an elected government and aborting the most promising peace process since Sudan's independence in 1956. The only arguments against regime change are those of realpolitik (the regime is Sudan's de facto government) and practicability (how can Sudan’s governance be taken into international receivership?).

But years in power cannot legitimize genocide: This will only encourage regimes like Khartoum's to believe they are invulnerable and act accordingly. Even from the realpolitik perspective, acceptance of rule by those who commit genocide is counterproductive to regional and world order; it also offers encouragement to other regimes tempted to use genocide as a political weapon.

To the second objection---how will it be done?---there are certainly no easy answers. But one consequence of the Iraq war (though of course not a justification in itself) is that public discussion of regime change by the United States will resonate much more deeply in Khartoum’s despotic thinking. If it is coupled with serious efforts to work with our European allies to squeeze Khartoum by means of comprehensive economic sanctions, as well as sanctions targeted against NIF leaders, we may first be able to secure a permissive environment for humanitarian intervention in Darfur, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

If regime change is not to be chaotic, it must be organized by a consortium of international actors, including regional governments; efforts must be made to reach out to all opposition parties throughout the country and in exile. A proportionately representative interim governing council must be created externally but be ready to move quickly to take control when the NIF is removed by whatever means are necessary. The great risk is an implosion of the military that sustains NIF power, but this risk is as great without any effort of regime change.

The challenges adumbrated here are daunting and politically risky.  The consequences of failing to accept these challenges are continuation of genocidal rule and additional hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The writer is a professor at Smith College.

By Eric Reeves

June 25, 2012 (SSNA) -- The success of the current, rapidly growing rebellion in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan is far from assured.  The National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime—facing a serious domestic challenge for the first time in years—will use all the considerable force at its disposal to retain full control over national wealth and power.  Brutality has already increased with the number and determination of protestors, who now include not only students but lawyers and other civilian constituencies. And as the protests spread—to Omdurman and other parts of central Khartoum, to Sennar, el-Obeid, Wad Medani, Damazin (Blue Nile University), Gedaref, Kosti, and Port Sudan—there is even more pressure on this ruthlessly survivalist regime to emulate the tactics of Gaddafi in Libya and al-Assad in Syria.  The coming days and weeks are likely to be extremely bloody.

But Sudanese with whom I've spoken in recent days are unanimous in their conclusion that now is the moment—that having come this far, there is no turning back.  If the moment is lost, another may not come again soon.  There is also a growing sense of the regime's vulnerability—a belief that after 23 years of NIF/NCP tyranny, the regime's leadership cannot react to the current economic crisis except with the most savage methods of repression.  This in turn will only alienate more of the civilian population.  What is certain is that insofar as this is a rebellion sparked most immediately by rapidly rising consumer prices, the regime is out of options.  The broader economy continues an implosion that began over a year ago and is now accelerating; this is nowhere more conspicuous than in the rapid increase in the inflation rate.

At the same time, long pent-up political grievances on the part of the various marginalized peoples of Sudan have created a super-charged environment for the uprising.  Bitter discontent and anger runs deep in the eastern states (Red Sea, Kassala, Gedaref).  In Darfur the expedient Doha "peace agreement" has failed miserably, and millions of Darfuris continue to suffer in camps and insecure rural areas.  In the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan and in Blue Nile engineered famine has begun to bite deeply, and the refugees pouring into South Sudan convey innumerable tales of horror and desperation.  Nubia in the far north has also long been restive, and North Kordofan is no bastion of support for the NIF/NCP.  Decades of economic neglect and abandonment—the failure to provide development aid, schools, hospitals, roads, and other basic elements of infrastructure—are now energizing the economically driven rebellion.

As the uprising in Sudan continues to spread and intensify during its second week, there are several key indicators of how well it is succeeding, and how likely it is to achieve its central goal of regime change.

[1]  Some stop-gap appeasement measures may be adopted by the regime; prices for consumer goods may be manipulated over the short term in order to take steam out of the uprising.  But these efforts can't be too great or the regime will be seen as capitulating and demands will only grow.  And in refusing to consider reinstating the fuel subsidy, the regime today dug its heels in deeply. For as even the NIF/NCP recognizes, the extraordinary economic pressures that brought about the highly unpopular decision to remove subsidies can no longer be resisted; they derive from budgetary realities that cannot be changed.  The fuel subsidy alone has cost approximately $2 billion annually.  Budgetary woes would only exacerbated by short-term measures.  The upshot is that inflation is rising steeply and inexorably in Sudan, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. 

The $2.4 billion budget gap created by the loss of oil revenues from South Sudan simply cannot be closed, even with an end to the fuel subsidy.  In fact, the economy is projected by the IMF to contract by over 7 percent this year, further diminishing the revenue base for the regime.  Without the ability to borrow money to cover this growing shortfall, the regime will have no choice but to print more money.  This is the fastest and surest route to higher, and accelerating, inflation. The continuing and substantial fall in the exchange value of the Sudanese pound is only the most conspicuous measure of international assessment of the currency at present.  When the printing presses are cranked up, the pound will go into free fall.

If those economists who suggest inflation is already running at over 40 percent are correct, then adding to the budget deficit—as any significant re-instatement of subsidies would do—only increases the rate of inflation.  Moreover, although the regime has vaguely promised to cushion the blow of inflation for food purchases, there are simply no means available to halt the effects of inflation, even for food.  A typical food basket that today costs what is deemed an exorbitant 30 Sudanese pounds could very soon cost 60 pounds; and any stabilizing (i.e., subsidizing) of this price at previous price levels (in non-inflated pounds) will then be twice as expensive and will create an even greater budget gap—and more inflation.  This is the engine of what economists call "hyper-inflation," and it will destroy not only the value of the Sudanese pound but the broader economy.

If hyper-inflation occurs, savings will be wiped out in a matter of weeks; banks will experience runs and soon fail; there will be no viable currency for international trade, even as there is exceedingly little in the way of foreign exchange reserves.  Even domestic commercial transactions will be impossible and there will be a rapid move toward a barter economy.  The desperate flight to what hard currency remains available on the black market will further exacerbate inflation.

The political ramifications of the economic implosion are many.  It has already proved impossible for the regime to sustain the vast and expensive patronage network that over the years has provided critical political support; that network is now shrinking even further, eroding political support when it is most needed. Regime promises about streamlining government and the bureaucracies—even if carried out—are not remotely sufficient, but will certainly alienate many NIF/NCP loyalists.  At the same time, the army and security services take up approximately half the budget (perhaps more); they are now being paid with an inflated currency that is increasingly worthless; large-scale desertions and defections will soon occur, particularly among soldiers recruited or conscripted from the marginalized regions (this is already occurring in the Nuba Mountains). 

[2]  A huge question looming over the current crisis is what position the army will take as protests grow.  The National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) are likely to remain loyal to the end, but the army is potentially another story, especially given the evident rift between the most senior generals now exercising greatest political power in the regime, and the mid-level officer corps.  The NIF/NCP ruthlessly purged the army on coming to power in 1989, and effectively destroyed it as an institution in the Egyptian mold.  The army has never regained a true esprit de corps, and disaffected officers up to the rank of colonel may soon refuse to obey orders to use violence against protesting civilians.

So far the protestors have used no weapons beyond burning tires, blocking streets, and hurling rocks.  But there are many weapons hidden away in and around Khartoum and the other cities in which protests have occurred; and if civilian casualties begin to mount, these weapons may well make an appearance, rapidly escalating the military and political stakes.  Any such armed insurrection will be, in the regime's view, justification for rapid and extremely violent counter-measures.  At this point a reprise of rebellion in Libya and Syria will be fully in evidence, although Sudan is vastly larger geographically than either (especially if Libya is understood to mean the coastal regions where more than 95 percent of the people live).  Rebellion in areas as remote as Nubia, Port Sudan, el-Obeid, and Gedaref will be difficult to confront simultaneously, especially since the Sudan Armed Forces are taking a ferocious beating in the Nuba Mountains, and are spread thin in Darfur, Blue Nile, and the border regions with South Sudan, including areas immediately adjacent to Abyei.

Once desertions and defections begin, there will be a cascade.  Morale is low among most of the front-line troops, and there is little desire to support a failing regime.  If the NIF/NCP loses the unified support of the army, or even the mid-level officer corps, its days are numbered.

[3]  The "Kauda coalition" that created the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) now takes on particular significance. It fashions a significant military alliance between the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North and Darfuri rebel groups, including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), as well as the Beja Congress in the east. The military implications of the new alliance are potent.  But even more significant is the political framework agreement negotiated by SRF elements: this provides a model for how other political constituencies can begin negotiations over transitional and power-sharing arrangements even before the regime falls.

The inclusion of JEM in the SRF is particularly significant, given its Islamist background and troubling ties to the Popular Congress Party of Hassan al-Turabi.  Djbril Ibrahim, the new leader of JEM, may well be more pragmatic than his brother Khalil, who was killed in a suspiciously sophisticated air strike late last year; moreover, Djbril doesn't carry the same grim baggage Khalil did from the North/South civil war, in which Khalil was complicit in many of the atrocity crimes committed against Southerners.  If the kind of political negotiations that created the SRF can be replicated among other northern political constituencies, then a post-NIF/NCP government need not be as chaotic as some are predicting. 

Indeed, the predictions of a "new Somalia" in Sudan if the regime falls have been consistently glib and tendentious, taking little account of the singular rapidity with which clan warfare developed, and enveloped, Somalia and Mogadishu in particular.  The political culture in Sudan is richer and deeper, even if the opposition has been too compliant and ultimately feckless since the military coup that brought the NIF/NCP to power in June 1989.  Here it is worth remembering that Sadiq el-Mahdi's (then) ruling Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party of Mohamed Osman Mirghani had come to terms on a peace agreement with the rebel movement in South Sudan (the SPLM/A) by June 1989.  Indeed, it was precisely to abort this prospective peace agreement that the NIF launched its coup earlier than planned.

The political transition will be enormously difficult in the wake of the power vacuum produced by deposing the NIF/NCP.  It will be a moment of profound historical truth for Sudan—but also for the international community.

[4]  The international response is perhaps the greatest uncertainty at present.  If important international actors continue to respond to the crisis on the basis of the perceptions that have guided U.S. Sudan policy during the Obama administration, the regime may well believe that it can triumph if it simply remains brutal enough.  Khartoum finds the example of Syria is powerfully encouraging.   Dismayingly, the U.S. continues to cleave to the judgment of special envoy Princeton Lyman as expressed in an interview of with Asharq Al-Awsat:

[Asharq Al-Awsat] The U.S. administration has welcomed the Arab Spring which has overthrown a number of dictatorships in the Middle East and led to free and fair elections being held. Are you calling for the Arab Spring to encompass Sudan, as well?

[Lyman] This is not part of our agenda in Sudan. Frankly, we do not want to see the ouster of the [Sudanese] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.

[Asharq Al-Awsat] The SPLM has said that it wants to bring the Arab Spring to Sudan. Do you oppose this?

[Lyman] We want to see freedom and democracy [in Sudan], but not necessarily via the Arab Spring. (March 2011)

It would appear not to matter to Lyman that the overwhelming majority of Sudanese have long wanted regime change, and are now explicit in expressing this goal.  Their seriousness can be measured by the increasing willingness to risk their lives and well-being to achieve such change. But the expedient and disingenuous declaration that the U.S. wants "to see the regime carry out reform via constitutional democratic measures" is a measure of how morally bankrupt the Obama administration's Sudan policy has become.  There is not a shred of historical evidence that the NIF/NCP has the slightest interest in "reform via constitutional measures"—and Lyman and the Obama administration know this full well.  No doubt Lyman felt that questions about an "Arab Spring" in Sudan were entirely hypothetical and that he could dodge the question with another expedient and disingenuous answer.  But the "Arab Spring" has begun in Sudan; agnosticism, neutrality, and expediency are simply no longer policy options. 

This is just as true for other important international actors, including the UN, the EU, as well as the African Union and the Arab League, though the latter two seem hopelessly compromised.  What is certain is that "neutrality" in present circumstances offers tacit support to the regime; such "neutrality" and would seem to suggest that the U.S. is not alone in believing Khartoum capable of "carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures."  But present realities cannot be ignored; the regime is showing its true colors now that is threatened by democratic forces. As Amnesty International declared (June 22, 2012):

"'The Sudanese government is showing zero tolerance for demonstrations and continues to deny the Sudanese people its right to peaceful assembly,' said Paule Rigaud, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Africa."

Moreover, for more than a year newspapers have experienced ever greater censorship, closures, fines, and confiscation at the hands of the regime.  Any newspaper daring to report independently on the uprising risks the severest reprisals.  Indeed, there are a number of reports that the regime has already shut down Internet and cell phone service, or will soon do so.

If the international community is honest and committed to furthering democracy and reform in Sudan, it is time for a fundamental recalibration of political equities.  Moreover, this cannot be done on the basis of a purely "regional" assessment of how "acceptable" the current regime is.  Libya has yet to emerge from the throes of its convulsive deposing of Gaddafi.  Chad is ruled by the supremely callous and expedient Idriss Déby, whose attitude toward the regime in Khartoum is defined wholly by his own vicious survivalism. Central African Republic is a failed state. Khartoum is at war—economically and militarily—with its southern neighbor, South Sudan. Ethiopia and Eritrea both see Khartoum exclusively through the lens of a narrowly conceived national self-interest (although Ethiopian president Meles Zenawi has told the U.S. that he thinks that regime change is the only solution to the ongoing crises in Sudan).  And Egypt is a state in transition, and it's simply not clear how Egypt's past neo-colonial attitude toward Sudan during the Mubarak years will change with a new president facing severe constraints imposed by the army.

The world cannot stand at a safe diplomatic distance, hiding behind absurd claims about the democratic capabilities of the NIF/NCP regime, or tendentious characterizations of "regional views"—or doubts about the "legitimacy" of the aspirations of those now rebelling against decades of tyranny.  Support for those working for democracy and freedom in Sudan must be urgent, unambiguous, and tough-minded.  Condemnation of and response to the regime's brutality must be vigorous and consistent.  And this condemnation and response must forcefully address all the atrocity crimes that the regime continues to perpetrate—in the Nuba Mountains, in Blue Nile, in Darfur, and in the form of relentless aerial attacks on civilians in north and South Sudan.  There can be little doubt that this is indeed the moment of truth for both Sudan and for the international community. 

Libya and Syria offer telling examples of what happens when the world underestimates the ruthlessness of tyrants who will use any degree of force and violence to sustain themselves in power. The "Arab Spring" in Sudan offers a moment in which we may assess whether the world has learned anything about the costs of accommodating such tyranny.

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College, has published extensively on Sudan, nationally and internationally, for more than a decade. He is author of A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.