(Mubarak al-Fadil)
KHARTOUM, July 15 (Reuters) - Sudanese authorities have arrested 17 people including opposition leader Mubarak al-Fadil and retired military officers, accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, state security leaders said on Sunday.
Fadil and Abdel Jalil al-Basha, both of the Umma breakaway party, were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning. Fadil’s party denied the accusations.
“Their plan was to overthrow the government, but it was very weak,” Mohamed Abdallah Atta, deputy head of Sudan’s state security organ, told reporters. “They were ready to fight for seven days,” he added.
He said the group had wanted to execute their plan on July 15 but, lacking arms and soldiers, they had decided to delay and meet again on July 20. Lacking support, they planned instead to cause chaos in the capital.
Atta said the group planned to bring 1,000 conscripts from South Kordofan state in central Sudan, but only 30 had arrived in the capital.
He said Fadil was the group coordinator and was now in Kobar prison, but others were still being questioned by state security. Those charged would be taken to court, he added.
Atta said contacts had been made with undisclosed foreign countries, but said no neighbouring Arab country was involved.
July 16, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government accused the US for the first time of involvement in a sabotage plot foiled yesterday.
US Embassy in Khartoum responds…
July 16, 2007 (KHARTOUM, Sudan) — The American embassy in Khartoum denied Monday allegations by Sudanese officials that the U.S. was involved in an alleged plot to destabilize the government.
“We categorically deny any connection with this alleged conspiracy,” the U.S. embassy said in a statement.
Hehehehe… I’m finding this finger pointing really amusing. But seriously though, I’m quite skeptical about this so called attempted coup. I’m even way more skeptical America had anything to do with it. After all the NCP is cooperating with the CIA extensively. Why mess that up? It’s all just distractions from important issues I say.
I asked a few people about their reactions and read some by other Sudanese. Iraq’s experience is what most fear (that includes me). A few year’s ago before the invasion, I remember people would usually be happy to hear or contemplate this kind of stuff. Now? “Nope, too risky, we don’t want Khartoum turning into another Baghdad” they say.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m sure there’s an Arab Dictator Handbook around somewhere. Blaming outside malevonent forces to prevent people from thinking about internal issues must have been the very first lesson in it.
Anyways, Drima, do you think this was an actual foiled coup, or just preemptive “threat removal”?
RK
think simple .. no need to explain one conspiracy theory by inventing another conspiracy theory … arab dictators are usually very paranoiac .. a few years spent in a bunker (the case of saddam hussein) makes people totally deranged … but even those of them who manage to avoid such extremes are still not exactly good examples of mental sanity …
RK, most probably it’s just preemptive threat removal but I’m thinking it’s more about sending a warning message to Northern opposition groups. The Southern SPLM is too strong to mess around with.
Like I said, things like this used to excite many Sudanese people in the past but now they mostly just get nervous and think “oh, no we don’t need a Baghdad here”.
Still reading reports and scanning opinions in Sudanese news, both English and Arabic to get a better idea.
Nobody,
Actually Saddam Hussein could be the worst possible example you could bring to support your argument. Hussein was one of the smartest dictators in the Middle-East, and a man who carefully studied the lessons of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. It was only later in his reign that he was reduced to endless indulgence and frequent bouts of paranoia.
No, this isn’t a matter of conspiracy at all. Many dictators in history solved internal issues by moving the public attention to external issues.
And in this particular case, as Drima stated, the leadership of Sudan has no reason whatsoever to suspect the US. It’s just an empty and redundant declaration, made because many such declarations were made in the past, and worked.
You’re not giving dictators around here the credit that they’re due, man. Horrible credit though that may be.
Drima,
Like I said, things like this used to excite many Sudanese people in the past but now they mostly just get nervous and think “oh, no we don’t need a Baghdad here”.
While I understand this sentiment, it can lead down the road of supporting the assholes of today because they’re stable. The grave is also very stable. So is the prison cell. Stability, in fact, is not all that good if it just leads to greater instability down the road.
Always keep that in mind. Perhaps bloody revolution is not the best of ideas (in any case, those often end with little change on the ground as it is, other than new posters, flags, and chants), but one must always strive for improvement.
Drima, what do you think about this?
Roman Kalik Says:
July 18th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Nobody,
Actually Saddam Hussein could be the worst possible example you could bring to support your argument. Hussein was one of the smartest dictators in the Middle-East, and a man who carefully studied the lessons of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
i dont know whose examples he studied but if these are his teachers then it’s the same shit … hitler and stalin are well known lunatics .. stalin was famous for his obsession with security and his constant paranoia that everybody was plotting behind his back … i dont think that hitler and nazis need introduction …
And in this particular case, as Drima stated, the leadership of Sudan has no reason whatsoever to suspect the US.
the point is not that he has a reason .. otherwise he would be a normal person …
No, this isn’t a matter of conspiracy at all. Many dictators in history solved internal issues by moving the public attention to external issues.
that one is by the way entirely the interpretation of historians who are trying to rationalize historic processes…
Nobody, it wasn’t historians who wrote it. It was political analysts during the Middle-Ages and the Renessaunse. Machiavelli, for example, merely put down to paper what many of the rulers of the city-states of Italy were already doing.
So my question is, why should Arab rulers be in any way stupider than the feudal lords and kings of Europe? Why should they be stupider than the Tzar who blames the loss of a war on the Jews, and thus redirects the wrath of the returning soldiers?
“group planned to bring 1,000 conscripts from South Kordofan state in central Sudan, but only 30 had arrived in the capital.”
Nope, doesn’t sound like a US-backed overthrow. More like Spanish or Italian.
RK
i doubt that arab dictators read machiavelli … but anyway even the examples of stalin and hitler that you say were studied by saddam are famous cases of the dictatorial paranoia …
stalin purges were mostly random and were driven by his madness … it’s a well known fact … there was no particular sophistication in his case … just a person who was suspicious about anybody around …
dunno about the russian tsar .. i dont know how seriously he believed in jewish conspiracy but fuhrer and the nazi leadership obviously believed in this shit .. well at least in my opinion .. it’s not for nothing that by the end of the war, when germany was running out of all resources, they were actively speeding up the elimination of jews ….
as far as i can see there was no manipulation of masses by the nazi leaders in this sense … they were part and parsel of the same mentality and ideology themselves …
about saddam his close aides testified later that they never dared to contradicte him because it would immediately put him very suspicious …
bashir may look a bit better and he probably is, yet even the author of this blog once wrote that he is starting to believe that bashir is deadly serious when he is talking about zionist conspiracy around darfur.. as to me i did not have doubts in this for a moment …
bashir also does have a reason to revile the yankees .. after all as far as i know the US was heavily mediating between him and the rebels in the south .. now they are going to have an independence referendum in 2011 ..
immediately after the US brokered this agreement between them the war in darfur broke out .. and it’s not hard to guess what bashir is thinking now .. that he is not going to play into ataturk forever … most people say that the south will massively vote for independence in 2011 and so bashir is basically letting go something like 1/4 of the country with many oil fields …
and i bet they have more minorities waiting to see what happens in darfur to make their mind if it’s worth to join the fray … so basically bashir is thinking something like: what the fuck do you want from me now? that i continue to dismember the country by my own hands ??? dont forget that he got nothing from the US in return for the peace in the south .. only more sanctions
Stalin started out as fairly smart, in my opinion. I’m not sure when his policy of overkill enemy removal turned into seeing enemies everywhere, but it didn’t start out that way.
With Saddam, it wasn’t paranoia as much as it was pride. Saddam was always right, as far as he was concerned, and woe to anyone who thinks otherwise.
As for Bashir, I don’t think he’s a paranoid wreck. Not just yet anyhow.
“so basically bashir is thinking something like: what the fuck do you want from me now? that i continue to dismember the country by my own hands ??? dont forget that he got nothing from the US in return for the peace in the south .. only more sanctions”
I couldn’t have said it better myself! Khartoum *does* want to have better relations with the United States but I don’t really think there is trust anymore. They’d rather look east towards China than West as that has paid off nicely. I think the problem with America is an inconsistent foreign policy towards Sudan. One day we’re treated like terrorists, next day we’re praised for cooperation in the war on terror. One day some US official says sanctions should be lifted, next day someone says Sudan should be included in the war on terror since the janjaweed are terrorists. Seriously, wtf? Which one is it?
Frankly, when it comes to terrorism harboring activities, I think al-Bashir did a good job by isolating the Islamist, Bin Laden fan named Turabi. I support him for that. As for democracy, corruption and Darfur, don’t even get me started.
RK, thanks for that link. If it’s true then it’s excellent news.
“While I understand this sentiment, it can lead down the road of supporting the assholes of today because they’re stable. The grave is also very stable. So is the prison cell. Stability, in fact, is not all that good if it just leads to greater instability down the road.”
I know man but it’s not that easy. For me it really is a dilemma bro. There has to be a better way than a bloody revolution. Iraq has shown that it *is* too risky. Grrr…
RK, I do agree with you that Saddam was more proud than he was paranoid.
As for Machiavelli, you missed my point. The development of the methods to retain power evolve in the positions of power. They can just as easily be developed by Arab dictators as they were by the Medici.
And why wouldn’t Arab dictators read Machiavelli, by the way? Most were fairly educated, and the author is famous.
Halalhippie,
“Nope, doesn’t sound like a US-backed overthrow. More like Spanish or Italian. :-)”
It could be Danish!
Nobody, as for the Nazis: “Repeat a lie a thousand times, and it becomes the truth.” -Dr. Joseph Goebbles, Minister of Propaganda
And perhaps if you repeat it two thousand times (on Pravda), you start believing it yourself…
Though I admit that both you and Drima have a point when you say that Bashir doesn’t have an idea what the US wants from him, which may have led to very increased suspicion.
Drima Says:
July 19th, 2007 at 2:34 am
“so basically bashir is thinking something like: what the fuck do you want from me now? that i continue to dismember the country by my own hands ??? dont forget that he got nothing from the US in return for the peace in the south .. only more sanctions”
I couldn’t have said it better myself! Khartoum *does* want to have better relations with the United States but I don’t really think there is trust anymore. They’d rather look east towards China than West as that has paid off nicely. I think the problem with America is an inconsistent foreign policy towards Sudan. One day we’re treated like terrorists, next day we’re praised for cooperation in the war on terror. One day some US official says sanctions should be lifted, next day someone says Sudan should be included in the war on terror since the janjaweed are terrorists. Seriously, wtf? Which one is it?
bashir could have scored not bad at all under previous administrations… something like the former iranian shah .. he is obviously a serious economic reformer who undertook a series of very radical and unpopular reforms … the world bank always praises sudan’s economic achievements … bashir approach to the south is reasonable and if he indeed lets them go in 2011 then it would be without precedent in the arab world …
as to darfur i think the US could have closed the eyes on it … i won’t be surprised at all if it comes out that the uprising in darfur was inspired by the south in the same way as any compromise in darfur may inspire another chain of similar separatist movements … neither the rebels seem to be a piece of cake as they regularly kill and rape each other even in the middle of this disaster …
the current US administration seems to be completely swept away by all this human rights and democracy demagoguery … in the good old days of kissinger the US policy would have been, to the contrary, to assisst bashir in his attempts to reform the economy and stabilize the country ..
as to democracy i think the time is not ripe for democracy in the arab world … after the latest experiments with democracy in iraq, lebanon and gaza i should admit that i am very unimpressed by the results ..
RK
goebbles certainly makes a very good point about the propaganda but i am not talking about tactical propaganda .. i am talking about ideology .. i think that anybody who read mein kampf won’t argue that it was written by a man who very passionately believed in every word of his book … and this holds true about all major nazi leaders …. hitler by the way said something about the jews in the sense that if they set up other powers against germany yet another time they would pay dearly for this … so in many ways the holocaust was a natural extension of this paranoia .. but it was no propaganda stunt or macciavellian trick … the nazi leadership believed in the protocols and other bullshit …
as to stalin he simply destroyed the russian army before the war with his unending purges … virtually all best officers were physically eliminated … mind you my family were prominent communists .. the father of my grandma was a deputy of people’s congress .. he was executed in 1937 … my grandma was hiding this fact from us because she was afraid it would undermine our trust in the communist party .. she was the staunchest stalinist to the end of her life … such were 99% of people stalin has executed … and there were millions like that … orwell described this phenomena pretty well in 1984 .. many people think that 1984 is a kind of fantasy .. in fact it’s a very faithful to the reality account of orwell’s experience of NKVD in spain where the russians were heavily involved during the spanish civil war …. there was nothing smart about stalin .. it was a pretty bizarre case of a complete psychopath taking control of a huge country …
my impression from saddam come mostly from his behavior during the trial and from what that comittee set up by the senate or congress published regarding the pre-war intellligence failure …i understand that saddamss last words before the execution were something about free palestine and united iraq …
anyway from what that comittee published he comes out as a person totally out of touch with the reality …. he simply had no idea what was going on neither in iraq and let alone elsewhere … tarik aziz claimed that even at the beginning of the war saddam still believed it was just a limited action and no large scale invasion.. according to his aides they did not dare to argue with him because he would see it as an attempt to undermine his authority … after several years spent in a bunker and several attempts on his life the guy went completely psycho …
the way the comittee findings portray him he was a deeply delusional person with the unshakable belief in his own righteousness and infallibility, absolutely sure that iraqis should suck his cock for all good things he has done for them and having no doubt that this is indeed how ordinary iraqis see it …
Salam! There are very few blogs Middle Eastern blogs that I value posts in and linking to and from; yours is one. Please note: I have changed the URL of my blog. I had to. Apologies.
“Iraq’s experience is what most fear (that includes me).”
Wouldn’t that be an effectively better situation, considering how many people currently die in Sudan?
“i understand that saddamss last words before the execution were something about free palestine and united iraq …”
And that was a very smart thing to say. Saddam was executed by Shia extremists and associating them with the hated occupiers of Palestine probably insulted them more than anything else he could have said.
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