tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/military-coup-12746/articlesMilitary coup – The Conversation2024-03-27T13:26:41Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2265342024-03-27T13:26:41Z2024-03-27T13:26:41ZArgentina: Javier Milei’s government poses an urgent threat to human rights<p>“Milei, you scumbag, you are the dictatorship.” This was among the defiant shouts that rang out across downtown Buenos Aires on Sunday March 24 as some 400,000 Argentinians <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/society/hundreds-of-thousands-march-to-call-for-memory-truth-and-justice">filled</a> the Plaza de Mayo, the iconic square that has borne witness to pivotal moments in Argentina’s history. </p>
<p>People flock to Buenos Aires – and other cities across Argentina – on this date each year for an annual march to commemorate the victims of the country’s last military dictatorship. Between 1976 and 1983, an estimated <a href="https://jacobin.com/2020/06/argentina-dictatorship-dirty-war-military">30,000 people</a> were killed, imprisoned, tortured or forcibly disappeared in a state-led campaign that still haunts the country.</p>
<p>But this year the march felt a little different. Activists showed their palpable outrage at President Javier Milei’s administration for seeking to downplay the brutal legacy of the dictatorship.</p>
<p>And on March 21, Milei’s defence minister, Luis Petri, <a href="https://www.lacapital.com.ar/luis-petri-se-fotografio-cecilia-pando-y-esposas-condenados-lesa-humanidad-n10124703.html">reportedly</a> met with the wives of military officers convicted of crimes against humanity. The meeting occurred amid <a href="https://www.ambito.com/politica/la-respuesta-javier-milei-la-liberacion-genocidas-es-una-gran-mentira-n5969541">rumours of pardons</a> for human rights abuses that had been committed under the dictatorship.</p>
<p>Many human rights have been rolled back too. Activists have faced threats, funding for the country’s <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSefEd0YAyug3sNSnZPse43F2TvM34QDhhCtD6ur2GgdHzxlgg/viewform?pli=1">commemorative sites</a> has been withdrawn and their staff laid off, and workers in the Secretariat of Human Rights have been <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/politics/nineteen-human-rights-secretariat-workers-laid-off-without-prior-notice">sacked</a>. Human rights, which have been hard won over decades in Argentina, are in danger.</p>
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<img alt="A large crowd of people in a street holding banners and pictures aloft." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584410/original/file-20240326-22-bd6xlm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People gather in cities across Argentina on March 24, the anniversary of a coup that installed a brutal military dictatorship in Argentina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/buenos-aires-argentina-march-24-2017-611220890">AstridSinai/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Political violence</h2>
<p>Milei is a self-professed anarcho-capitalist. His policies are at best, nebulous, and at worst, dangerously chaotic. Since he was elected in November 2023, Milei has made <a href="https://theconversation.com/argentinas-anti-government-protests-offer-a-lesson-for-the-international-struggle-against-the-rise-of-the-far-right-222570">clear plans</a> for sweeping liberal economic reforms, cuts to funding for public services, and has opposed equal marriage and legal abortion.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/argentinas-anti-government-protests-offer-a-lesson-for-the-international-struggle-against-the-rise-of-the-far-right-222570">Argentina’s anti-government protests offer a lesson for the international struggle against the rise of the far right</a>
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<p>Milei’s human rights policy is <a href="https://medium.com/@observatorio/newsletter-03-2024-e78b73d578ce">worrying</a>. A number of active and retired military personnel have been appointed to various government positions, including chief of staff and to the Ministry of Defence. However, there would be worse to come in the run up to this year’s March 24 commemorations – an outright assault on human rights. </p>
<p>In early March, Sabrina Bölke, a member of <a href="https://hijos-capital.org.ar/">HIJOS</a> (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence), was <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/human-rights/assaulted-argentine-rights-activist-speaks-out-i-thought-my-life-was-going-to-end">attacked</a> and sexually assaulted in her home. HIJOS is an Argentinian organisation founded in 1995 to represent the children of people who had been murdered, disappeared or imprisoned by the country’s military dictatorship</p>
<p>Before leaving, her attackers wrote “VVLC [viva la libertad, carajo] ñoqui” on one of the walls. This is <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/politics/javier-milei-the-fringe-economist-pundit-turned-presidential-frontrunner">Milei’s catchphrase</a> and loosely translates as “Long live freedom, dammit”. Ñoqui (gnocchi) is a derogatory term for state workers, equivalent to “jobsworth” in English.</p>
<p>This is a lesson in what happens when radical “outsiders” like Milei (or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the US) come in from the shadows. They not only tolerate political violence, but actively encourage it. Lacking political experience, their leadership is founded on creating an “us v them” mentality which emboldens their supporters. </p>
<h2>Revising history</h2>
<p>The day of commemoration brought one more disturbing turn of events. The government released a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/23/javier-milei-argentina-dictatorship-remembrance">video</a> straight out of the denialist playbook, presenting a false, alternative portrayal of the military dictatorship’s crimes.</p>
<p>The video advocates for a “complete memory” that shifts the focus to those killed by armed left-wing organisations in the 1960s and 1970s and calls for the end of the pursuit of justice for military perpetrators. It stars Juan Bautista Yofre, the ex-chief of the Secretariat of Intelligence, and María Fernanda, the daughter of Captain Humberto Viola, who was killed in 1974 by the revolutionary left. </p>
<p>The video resurrects the “two demons” trope. This is a theory that equates systematic state terrorism with the violence committed by the revolutionary left. It justifies the disappearances as the result of a conflict between two warring factions.</p>
<p>It’s a viewpoint that had, in recent years, lost much credibility. In 2006, the prologue to the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons’ truth commission <a href="http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_001.htm">report</a>, which was originally published in 1983 to detail the extent of forced disappearance across Argentina, was <a href="https://jacobin.com/2020/06/argentina-dictatorship-dirty-war-military">rewritten</a> specifically to remove allusions to this myth.</p>
<p>Such rejection of historical facts is not surprising. During his presidential campaign debates, Milei <a href="https://elpais.com/argentina/2023-11-16/el-negacionismo-de-la-dictadura-que-propone-milei-no-cala-en-los-cuarteles-argentinos.html">disputed</a> the number that had disappeared at the hands of the dictatorship.</p>
<p>His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, the niece of a member of the armed forces under judicial investigation, has gone even further. She has <a href="https://elpais.com/argentina/2023-11-15/la-candidata-de-milei-a-la-vicepresidencia-propone-desarmar-el-museo-de-la-memoria-de-la-esma.html">called</a> for an end to human rights trials and has pushed for the closure of the memory museum on the grounds of what was once the notorious former Navy Mechanics School that became a clandestine detention centre during the dictatorship.</p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>Milei and Villarruel may struggle to block human rights trials completely, certainly not without a stand-off with the Argentine courts. The <a href="https://buenosairesherald.com/politics/traitors-milei-rails-against-deputies-who-rejected-omnibus-bill-articles">opposition</a> of congress to Milei’s “omnibus law” (the collective name for his package of liberal reforms) in February 2024 is a reminder that he will undoubtedly face legislative roadblocks. </p>
<p>The Argentine Court of Appeal, which is responsible for ruling on human rights cases, has also been clear that it will <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/723302-la-camara-de-casacion-desbarato-un-intento-de-los-genocidas-">prevent perpetrators</a> of human rights abuses benefitting from house arrest. However, we will probably see a gradual undermining of judicial processes via the release of defendants and the replacement of judges, accompanied by an emboldening of those who deny state terrorism. </p>
<p>It is still early days in Milei’s tenure. But human rights activists and international observers should be concerned about the future of human rights in Argentina.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cara Levey has received funding from Irish Research Council </span></em></p>Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Argentina to commemorate victims of the country’s military dictatorship amid renewed concerns for human rights.Cara Levey, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University College CorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144422023-10-03T14:42:00Z2023-10-03T14:42:00ZFrance’s decision to leave Niger was a bad move: three reasons why<p>After about two months of wrangling between France and the new military regime in Niger, President Emmanuel Macron finally <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/president-macron-says-france-will-pull-ambassador-and-troops-out-of-niger-by-end-of-the-year-12969438">decided</a>, on 24 September, to withdraw the French ambassador and pull out French military forces from Niger. </p>
<p>This was a U-turn. Only four weeks earlier, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20230831-niger-junta-revokes-french-ambassador-s-diplomatic-immunity-orders-his-expulsion">Macron had refused to follow</a> the instructions of the putschists who’d ordered the ambassador and French forces to leave the country. He argued that he did not <a href="https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/Niger-France-does-not-recognize-any-legitimacy-to-the-declarations-of-the-military-junta-in-power/">recognise</a> the new junta, which took power on 26 July, and insisted that his forces would remain in the country. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/staff/dr-olayinka-ajala/">politics and international relations</a>, I have been exploring the security situation and the rise of insurgency in the Sahel for over a decade. In my view, France’s actions have created unnecessary uncertainty in a region already beset by insecurity from increasing jihadist activities, as well as six successful coups in the last three years. </p>
<p>In my opinion, France has made a strategic mistake. Though it did not recognise the junta, it should have maintained communication, especially after falling out with other former colonies such as <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/5/how-malis-military-fell-out-with-its-french-ally">Mali</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/burkina-faso-marks-official-end-french-military-operations-its-soil-2023-02-19/">Burkina Faso</a>. </p>
<p>The other prominent external actor in Niger was the US. The US decided to negotiate with the junta. Unlike France, it did not label the military takeover a coup d'etat. The US <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/u-s-resumes-counterterrorism-drone-operations-from-niger-68e8c903">resumed operations</a> in some of its bases in Niger, having secured agreement from the junta. </p>
<p>Macron’s actions could have three negative outcomes for the region. It will hurt the fight against terrorism. It also opens the door to greater influence of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60947877">Wagner</a>, the Russian-backed mercenary group. And finally it has implications for Europe’s migrant crisis.</p>
<h2>The fight against terrorism</h2>
<p>Niger plays a significant role in the security architecture of the Sahel. The country is actively involved in and contributes to security organisations such as the <a href="https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Terrorism/Counter-terrorism-projects/G5-Sahel">G5 Sahel</a> and the <a href="https://isij.eu/article/interorganizational-cooperation-and-fight-against-terrorism-west-africa-and-sahel">Multinational Joint Task Force</a>. </p>
<p>These organisations are involved in the fight against terrorism in the region. Apart from contributing funds to both organisations, especially the G5 Sahel, France is also involved in training Nigerien forces and flying reconnaissance and attack drones, actively combating terrorists in the region.</p>
<p>The decision by France to pull out of Niger will have an impact on counter terrorism operations in the region. France has been involved there for a long time and has soldiers who thoroughly understand the region. Losing these officers will create a gap that Niger might struggle to fill in the short term. </p>
<p>Like France, the US also has a large military presence in Niger, where it operates its largest drone base in Africa. I have previously analysed the <a href="https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-journal/us-drone-base-agadez-security-threat-niger">importance and security implications</a> of the drone base to the region. </p>
<p>For its part, the EU also contributes to the security of the region by providing <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_768">funding</a> for the G5 Sahel and Multinational Joint Task Force. This momentum must be sustained in order not to lose what has already been achieved in the form of an established security architecture. </p>
<p>The withdrawal of French forces will negatively affect the morale of the soldiers in the security alliance and embolden insurgent groups. An <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66922754">increase in terrorist attacks</a> has been recorded since the coup. </p>
<h2>Russia versus the US</h2>
<p>The terms of the agreement between the US and the military junta were not published. Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to assume that one of Washington’s reasons for making sure it remained in Niger was the fear that it might lose the country to Russia. </p>
<p>In Mali, the military junta replaced French troops with Wagner forces. Since 2022, Russia <a href="https://www.unav.edu/en/web/global-affairs/a-change-in-mali-the-french-out-wagner-in">has gained influence through the Wagner Group</a> after the exit of France.</p>
<p>Washington would want to avoid losing further ground to Russian influence. With the Wagner group already present in Mali, there is suspicion that the <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2023/09/17/mali-niger-burkina-faso-sign-mutual-defence-pact//">recently signed military pact</a> between the three countries (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso) could expand the presence of the group. </p>
<p>In addition, the US has invested heavily in the Sahel, especially in Niger. In the last decade the US has invested hundreds of millions of dollars on security infrastructure, including a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03071847.2018.1552452">drone base in Agadez</a> (central Niger). </p>
<p>The US understands the role “ungoverned spaces” in the Sahel could play in breeding terrorism. Such was the case of the regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda launched attacks against the US and its western allies. </p>
<h2>What it means for migration</h2>
<p>Other major players in Niger such as the European Union also cannot afford to follow the path of France. The EU needs stability in Niger to stem trafficking and avoid another humanitarian catastrophe as seen in 2015-16. Europe witnessed the highest number of migrants <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/niger/asylum-seekers-refugees-and-migration-niger-may-2015">transiting through Niger</a> and Libya into Europe during this period.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that the civilian regimes of presidents <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mahamadou-Issoufou">Mahamadou Issoufou</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/what-you-need-know-about-nigers-ousted-president-2023-08-14/">Mohamed Bazoum</a> contributed to the reduction in the flow of migrants through Niger to Libya. While serving as interior minister, Bazoum was instrumental in passing a law against people smuggling through Niger. The law was championed by Bazoum but also believed to have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/23/niger-observers-link-coup-to-president-mohamed-bazoum-support-of-eu-migration-policies-people-smuggling">contributed to his ousting</a> by the military. The junta could threaten to cancel the agreement and look the other way as migrants again transition through Niger into the EU. </p>
<p>The EU needs to maintain a strong diplomatic channel with the junta to maintain stability, prevent an increase in smuggling and continue efforts towards the return of democratic order. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>While I understand that increased diplomacy with the junta cements its authority, I think foreign powers should accept that there is a government in Niger that has some degree of popularity among the citizens. Frozen channels of diplomacy must be reactivated to prevent a total collapse of the Sahel’s security architecture and in order to achieve a quick transition to democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olayinka Ajala does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>France’s withdrawal from Niger could hurt the regional fight against terrorism, create an opportunity for Wagner’s influence and increase Europe’s migrant crisis.Olayinka Ajala, Senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124672023-08-30T09:08:34Z2023-08-30T09:08:34ZWagner Group: what Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death means for stability in Africa<p>The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin after his <a href="https://theconversation.com/yevgeny-prigozhin-wagner-group-boss-joins-long-list-of-those-who-challenged-vladimir-putin-and-paid-the-price-212181">private jet crashed</a> on August 23 has raised questions about the Wagner Group’s future. Many in the west <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/24/wagner-boss-yevgeny-prigozhin-reported-killed-death-russia-biden-suggests-putin">suspect Kremlin involvement</a> in his death and are asking what will become of the mercenary group without its charismatic leader.</p>
<p>The Wagner Group, often described as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/23/what-we-know-about-the-shadowy-russian-mercenary-firm-behind-the-attack-on-u-s-troops-in-syria/">a private military company (PMC)</a> is a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">state-linked</a> actor with <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">close ties to the Russian military</a>. It has involved itself in the internal politics of <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">numerous African countries</a>, advancing Kremlin interests while providing the Russian leadership with “plausible deniability”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-russias-wagner-group-doing-africa">The Wagner Group comprises</a> former Russian soldiers, convicts and foreign nationals paid to provide mercenary services. It first emerged in Crimea in 2014 and has since extended its services to many other countries including many in Africa. </p>
<p>The death of the Wagner Group’s charismatic leader, a former close ally of Putin, raises questions about these African operations. Based on credible news reports, these include activities in: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/26/wagner-group-russia-mercenary-ukraine-africa/">Equatorial Guinea</a>, <a href="https://www.energyintel.com/00000189-bfb6-d835-abbb-ffbf47c10000">Libya</a>, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">Central African Republic (CAR)</a>, <a href="https://www.energyintel.com/00000189-bfb6-d835-abbb-ffbf47c10000">Chad</a>, <a href="https://african.business/2022/09/resources/russias-wagner-group-involved-in-central-african-forestry-trade">Mali</a>, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/02/28/russia-s-growing-footprint-in-africa-s-sahel-region-pub-89135">Burkina Faso</a>, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">Sudan</a>, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">Mozambique</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-wagner-group-in-africa-influence-commercial-concessions-rights-violations-and-counterinsurgency-failure/">Madagascar</a>. The group reportedly has more than <a href="https://www.energyintel.com/00000189-bfb6-d835-abbb-ffbf47c10000">5,000 operatives</a> across its Africa operations.</p>
<p>A common denominator among these countries is the presence of insurgencies or civil wars, abundant natural resources, corrupt leadership, and unconstitutional governance, among other factors. Many of these states, such as <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Libya-Remains-a-Failed-State-11-Years-After-NATO-Intervention-20220217-0006.html">Libya</a>, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/7/24/sudan-is-heading-towards-complete-state-collapse">Sudan</a>, and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/07/mozambique-is-a-failed-state-the-west-isnt-helping-it/">Mozambique</a>, have many of the characteristics of <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/failed-states">“failing” or “failed states”</a>. </p>
<h2>Wagner Group in Africa</h2>
<p>Designated by the US government as a “<a href="https://www.icct.nl/publication/understanding-us-designation-wagner-group-transnational-criminal-organisation#:%7E:text=The%20United%20States%20is%20declaring,United%20States.%E2%80%9D%20What%20constitutes%20a">transnational criminal organisation</a>” the Wagner Group offers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/26/wagner-group-russia-mercenary-ukraine-africa/">a range of services</a>. These include conducting offensive combat operations, training, ensuring regime security, advising government leadership, and the management and extraction of natural resources. </p>
<p>Described by South Africa-based think tank In On Africa as “<a href="https://www.inonafrica.com/2023/07/07/more-than-mere-mercenaries-the-wagner-group-in-africa/">more than mere mercenaries</a>”, the Wagner Group has also discreetly but effectively put stress on Afro-European relations while bolstering autocratic governments. </p>
<p>It has also promoted anti-neo-colonial figures, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/296849/russia-how-yevgeny-prigozhin-funded-kemi-seba-to-serve-his-own-african-ambitions/">such as Kemi Séba</a> (also known as Capo Chichi). Currently based in Moscow, Séba has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-09/niger-coup-prigozhin-wagner-exploits-anti-french-sentiment/102696370">gained celebrity status </a> through his social media presence and TV talk shows which frequently target French foreign policy. </p>
<p>This has helped to popularise and boost anti-French sentiment among francophone countries in west Africa. France has arguably <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/12/emmanuel-macron-france-erased-from-africa-niger-coup/">continued a neo-colonial approach to west Africa</a> and refused to accept that the era of its “<a href="https://newafricanmagazine.com/16585/">Francafrique</a>” sphere of influence is over, which has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/8/17/french-mistakes-helped-create-africas-coup-belt">exacerbated instabilities</a> across the region. For instance, the persistence of French <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/07/12/the-cfa-franc-french-monetary-imperialism-in-africa/">control of the CFA Franc</a>, the common currency used among former French colonies, gave it control over their economies and political affairs.</p>
<p>The Wagner Group’s involvement in west Africa furthers Russian interests by challenging French dominance. The group has done this through the reportedly <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/russia-internet-research-agency-disbands/">now defunct</a> <a href="https://blogs.prio.org/2023/03/soft-power-and-disinformation-the-strategic-role-of-media-in-wagners-expansion-in-africa/">Internet Research Agency</a>, known as “Russia’s troll farm”. This organisation orchestrated disinformation campaigns on social media to spread anti-colonial sentiments. </p>
<p>By doing this, it reinforced the <a href="https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/anti-french-sentiment-west-africa-reflection-authoritarian-confrontation-collective-west">already strong anti-French sentiments</a> in the Sahel region to discredit France and position Russia as better alternatives. The Internet Research Agency was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-prigozhin-admits-links-what-us-says-was-election-meddling-troll-farm-2023-02-14/">directly associated with the Wagner Group</a> via Prigozhin as its founder and owner.</p>
<p>Beyond propping up failed and failing states, the Wagner Group has faced accusations of <a href="https://acleddata.com/2022/08/30/wagner-group-operations-in-africa-civilian-targeting-trends-in-the-central-african-republic-and-mali/">targeting civilians</a> and committing severe human rights violations in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/24/mali-new-atrocities-malian-army-apparent-wagner-fighters">Mali</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/russian-mercenaries-accused-of-human-rights-abuses-in-car-un-group-experts-wagner-group-violence-election">CAR</a>. </p>
<h2>The circular business of conflict</h2>
<p>In addition to its military activities, the Wagner Group is estimated to have garnered <a href="https://www.energyintel.com/00000189-bfb6-d835-abbb-ffbf47c10000">more than US$20 billion</a> (£15.9 billion) from its diverse business dealings, which range from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/pmc-russias-wagner-group-in-sudan-gold-military-junta/a-65439746">gold mining in Sudan</a> to <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/313233/how-wagner-prigozhin-teamed-up-with-the-cars-diamond-mafia/">diamond extraction in CAR</a>, where it is also reported to be heavily invested in the <a href="https://african.business/2022/09/resources/russias-wagner-group-involved-in-central-african-forestry-trade">forestry and timber business</a>. </p>
<p>Since mercenaries tend to thrive in conflicts, they are likely to profit by prolonging the conflicts they become involved in. So the activities of a PMC such as Wagner can exacerbate conflicts by prolonging hostilities, as witnessed in Libya, Mozambique and CAR. </p>
<p><a href="https://oxfordpoliticalreview.com/2023/03/06/when-private-military-operations-fail-the-case-of-mozambique/">For instance</a>, small raids against villages and police units in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province, where Wagner groups were deployed, escalated into a full-scale terrorist insurgency linked to the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/43047/chapter-abstract/361462906?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Islamic State’s Central African Province</a>.</p>
<p>In Libya, meanwhile, Wagner Group units <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/108429/pdf/">first appeared in 2018</a>, according to a submission to the UK parliament, ostensibly to provide technical support for repairing and maintaining armoured vehicles for the Libyan National Army. Since then, the scope of their operations has expanded with increased funding from Russia and the fighting continues.</p>
<p>The involvement of Wagner or other PMCs in these countries almost inevitably leads to the erosion of sovereignty as unstable governments become dependent on the mercenaries for their survival. This situation may cause local leaders to favour the interests of the PMCs, reinforcing their roles as puppet leaders, causing mass exploitation of resources, leading to environmental degradation, poverty, grievances, intensified conflicts – all of which creates further demand for mercenary services.</p>
<p>As long as certain African countries and their leadership remain plagued by corruption, extended terms in office, election manipulations, neo-colonial influences, and looting of the national treasury, coups will remain a persistent concern. Military coups are on the rise again <a href="https://businessday.ng/backpage/article/as-coups-return-to-west-africa-frances-footprint-in-africa-fades/">particularly in west Africa</a>, stimulating an increased demand for mercenary services. As such, Prigozhin’s death is unlikely to significantly affect the Wagner Groups’s African operations. The more pertinent question is what the new leadership will look like and whether it will be more directly state-controlled. </p>
<p>But the use of mercenary companies such as the Wagner Group to help unstable or illegitimate governments hold on to power will not bring sustainable peace. Instead, dialogue, transitional governments reflecting people’s desires, the rule of law, and genuine democracy are essential. Otherwise, Africans will keep demanding positive change by all means.</p>
<p>To maintain popular support in an era of instability, African leaders must be seen to act in their people’s best interests. They must heed popular demands to halt misrule and the misuse of African resources across the continent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Idris Mohammed receives funding from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development to commission a report on sexual violence in the northwest region of Nigeria. He is a member of conflict research network of west Africa ( CORN West Africa). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olumba E. Ezenwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Russia was using the mercenary group to further its foreign policy aims in west Africa. There’s no reason to think Prigozhin’s death will change that.Olumba E. Ezenwa, Doctoral Research Fellow, Conflict, Violence, & Terrorism Research Centre, Royal Holloway University of LondonIdris Mohammed, Conflict Researcher, Department of Mass Communication, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, SokotoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2115492023-08-17T10:20:48Z2023-08-17T10:20:48ZNiger: Ecowas military intervention could trigger 3 bad outcomes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542849/original/file-20230815-21-ogk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria-led Ecowas artillerymen land by helicopter on 10 January, 1999 in Freetown. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66465146">threat</a> of military force to end the coup in Niger has led to significant divisions in the region.</p>
<p>It has heightened tensions in Niger itself, as well as among its neighbours. </p>
<p>There are more and more signs that any military intervention is likely to be met with stiff opposition. <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/niger-coup-supporters-rally-as-regional-force-mulls-intervention-/7222246.html">Growing support</a> for the junta has emboldened the coup plotters to stay in power and call the bluff of the <a href="https://ecowas.int/">Economic Community of West African States</a>, Ecowas. </p>
<p>In reaction to the threat of force, more Nigeriens took to the streets to show their opposition, with one <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2023/08/military-junta-thousands-of-coup-supporters-gather-near-french-military-base-in-niger/">protest</a> held close to a French military base in Niamey. </p>
<p>The option of military force has divided countries in west Africa and the Sahel. Ecowas members are fully aware that an all-out war would increase the fragility of the region. A meeting of Ecowas military chiefs in Ghana on <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20230817-%F0%9F%94%B4-live-ecowas-military-chiefs-to-meet-over-niger-coup">17 and 18 August</a> will discuss intervention options. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Ecowas parliament is <a href="https://punchng.com/ecowas-parliament-divided-over-planned-military-action-in-niger/">divided</a> over a military intervention. Member countries such as Nigeria, which currently holds the rotating chair, are also being put under internal pressure. <a href="https://punchng.com/niger-kano-residents-protest-planned-standby-force/">Protesters</a> took to the streets in Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria, against a possible invasion of Niger. </p>
<p>For their part, countries that neighbour Niger but do not belong to Ecowas, such as Chad and Algeria, have <a href="https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/niger-chad-and-algeria-opposed-to-military-intervention-would-aggravate-the-situation/">opposed</a> the use of force. </p>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/staff/dr-olayinka-ajala/">politics and international relations</a>, I have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329456894_US_Drone_Base_in_Agadez_A_Security_Threat_to_Niger">researched</a> the implications of foreign military bases in Niger. My view remains as I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/niger-coup-why-an-ecowas-led-military-intervention-is-unlikely-211136">previously argued</a> that a military intervention in Niger is unlikely. </p>
<p>However, the threat of force means tensions remain high. This is understandable as a great deal is at stake. I have identified three major implications of a full-blown war. </p>
<p>The first casualty would be the ongoing regional war against terrorism because countries currently committed to this fight would have their armies and resources diverted. </p>
<p>The second is that there would be a mass influx of refugees into the seven countries bordering Niger. This would have a knock-on effect as more refugees seek to find their way to Europe. </p>
<p>The third is that the conflict would heighten tensions between Niger and France. The junta blames France for the country’s insecurity and economic woes. </p>
<h2>Counting the cost of war</h2>
<p>Nigerien soldiers, through the <a href="https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Terrorism/Counter-terrorism-projects/G5-Sahel">G5-Sahel</a> and <a href="https://mnjtffmm.org/">Multinational Joint Task Force</a>, are involved in the fight against <a href="https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/boko_haram.html">Boko Haram</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/what-australia-is-doing/terrorist-organisations/listed-terrorist-organisations/islamic-state-west-africa-province">Islamic State West Africa Province</a> (ISWAP) and other terrorist groups around the Lake Chad Basin and other regions of the country. An attack led by Ecowas on Niger would distract the soldiers and divert critical resources. </p>
<p>Terrorist groups could then take advantage of borders weakened by conflict. They could also benefit from a situation where armies which previously fought side by side against insurgents such as Boko Haram and ISWAP were now fighting one another.</p>
<p>The example of Syria and how ISIS <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/comparing-al-qaeda-and-isis-different-goals-different-targets/">quickly emerged</a> in the region gives a glimpse of what could happen. </p>
<p>Most of the Nigerien population lives in the southern part of the country next to the borders with Nigeria, Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali. These countries would suffer an influx of refugees, further destabilising what are already fragile states.</p>
<p>A war between the Nigerien military and Ecowas would embolden human traffickers and lead to more Africans taking advantage of the chaos to travel north towards Europe. </p>
<p>Niger has several bilateral and multilateral arrangements with the European Union and other countries in Europe to <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_4536">curb mass migration</a> through Libya and the Mediterranean sea.</p>
<p>Agadez in central Niger used to be a <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20171213-focus-niger-agadez-desert-migrant-hub-people-smuggling-sahel-hotspots-route-libya">major hub for illegal migration</a> but this has changed as a result of the concerted effort between Niger and its European allies. </p>
<p>Military intervention would lead to a total collapse of the relationship between France and Niger’s people. There is already anger among a large part of the Nigerien public against the former colonial master and its activities in the country. </p>
<p>Niger was a French colony from 1922 till independence in 1960 and Paris has <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20230803-niger-coup-brings-france-s-complicated-relationship-with-its-former-colonies-into-the-spotlight">continued</a> to play a critical role in the domestic political and economic affairs of the country.</p>
<p>If people believe that Ecowas is being pushed to take military action by France and its allies, Nigeriens could look to Russia which has issued its own <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66478430">warning</a> against military intervention.</p>
<p>While Russia might not have the capacity and resources to fully mobilise in support of the junta, it might engage the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60947877">Wagner Group</a>, the Russia-backed private military contractor, which already has a <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/tracking-arrival-russias-wagner-group-mali">presence</a> in neighbouring Mali. </p>
<p>Russia has been careful not to support the coup plotters so as not to upset its allies in Africa, such as South Africa and Namibia, who both oppose the coup. But a full-scale military intervention would provide Moscow with an opportunity to get involved and “gain another ally”. The military leaders in Burkina Faso for instance have been <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/5/interim-burkina-faso-president-hails-russia-as-strategic-ally">strengthening </a> their relationship with Russia.</p>
<h2>Limited options</h2>
<p>Ecowas is desperate to “do something” after the junta defied its <a href="https://www.thecable.ng/ecowas-threatens-force-gives-7-day-ultimatum-for-return-to-democracy-in-niger">seven-day ultimatum</a> to step down.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the junta is not showing any signs of backing down. </p>
<p>I think the best option is to rule out military action and to negotiate a short transition period to restore democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211549/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olayinka Ajala does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The use of force to end the coup in Niger would come at great cost and cripple the regional fight against terrorism.Olayinka Ajala, Senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2113532023-08-11T15:39:27Z2023-08-11T15:39:27ZMilitary coups in Africa: here’s what determines a return to civilian rule<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542141/original/file-20230810-25-hyb3hk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of Niger's July 2023 coup celebrate in the capital, Niamey. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Balima Boureima/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Slightly more than two years after Niger’s first peaceful handover of power from one civilian president to another, the military seized power in July 2023. The coup – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13943662">the fourth in Nigerien history</a> – follows on the heels of recent military interventions in Africa. Mali (August 2020 and May 2021), Chad (April 2021), Guinea (September 2021), Sudan (October 2021) and Burkina Faso (January and September 2022). </p>
<p>Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the number of military coups has <a href="https://arresteddictatorship.com/coups/">declined sharply</a>. However, francophone west Africa now accounts for <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-west-africa-has-had-so-many-coups-and-how-to-prevent-more-176577">approximately two-thirds of all military coups</a> that have occurred since then. </p>
<p>As a political scientist analysing African politics, I have <a href="https://people.clas.ufl.edu/selischer/">studied</a> military coups and their outcomes for the last decade and a half. In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2023.2230718">recent article</a>, Justin Hoyle, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Florida, and I demonstrate that since 1989, military coups across the world have resulted in two outcomes. </p>
<p>First is the withdrawal of the junta from executive power. This means the junta doesn’t participate or interfere in post-coup elections. While it is necessary for the transition to democracy, it isn’t sufficient in itself. This scenario played out in the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/110/439/295/164122">Nigerien coup of 2010</a> and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00472330701651929">Thailand coup of 2006</a>. </p>
<p>Second is electoral rigging by the junta in favour of its own candidate. This scenario establishes a regime in which coup leaders entrench themselves in executive power.</p>
<p>Examining how military coups unfold is crucial to understanding a country’s path back to democracy. It also provides insights into the effect of coups on the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691217000/shock-to-the-system">quality of democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>The research</h2>
<p>We <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2023.2230718">studied</a> five countries and 12 post-coup transitions: Egypt (coups in 2011 and 2013), Mauritania (coups in 2005 and 2008), Niger (1996, 1999 and 2010), Fiji (2000 and 2006) and Thailand (1991, 2006 and 2014). </p>
<p>Overall, we examined slightly more than a third of all military coups between 1989 and 2017.</p>
<p>Out of a total of 32 post-coup environments, we found that in half of all cases, juntas withdrew from executive power in the coup’s aftermath.</p>
<p>However, even with the military’s withdrawal from power, the transition period to civilian rule was highly volatile. Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, counter-coup attempts by a rival faction within the armed forces intending to remain in power occurred rather frequently. This was the case most recently in <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/09/17/441222504/presidential-guard-announces-takeover-of-burkina-faso">Burkina Faso in 2015</a>. </p>
<p>Although many coups result in the withdrawal of juntas from executive power, many of the cases from our study were near-misses – the country could’ve ended up under <a href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/military-coups-are-key-to-understanding-contemporary-autocracies/">military authoritarian rule</a>.</p>
<p>We examined four key variables and their influence on coup outcomes. These are: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>the internal coherence of the armed forces</p></li>
<li><p>the ability of civil society organisations and political parties to mobilise against the junta</p></li>
<li><p>the deployment of donor leverage </p></li>
<li><p>trade dependency on regional and western partners. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Of these, we argue that the two that matter the most are: the internal cohesion of the military and the vibrancy of civil society groups. </p>
<h2>The findings</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2023.2230718">analysis</a>, we found that the single most important variable that accounts for different coup outcomes is the internal coherence of the military.</p>
<p>When there’s internal coherence, militaries generally feel <a href="https://academic.oup.com/fpa/article-abstract/12/2/192/2367607">inclined</a> to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691217000/shock-to-the-system">withdraw</a> from executive power. This is because holding on to power <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-polisci-032211-213418">challenges</a> their internal cohesion.</p>
<p>Internal cohesion <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2023.2230718">is based on</a> the factors that triggered the coup. If a coup occurs in response to threats to the country’s territorial integrity, to the preservation of public order, or to the military’s material or reputational benefits, the junta will have the backing of the military at large. This is because the benefits of seeking power outweigh the risks of not being in power. </p>
<p>If a coup occurs for reasons outside these, the junta either won’t seek power or will face resistance from within the military and withdraw. We found this confirmed in all the coups that we analysed.</p>
<p>Another relevant yet less significant variable is the positioning of civil society toward the junta. </p>
<p>Where civil society groups manage to rally the population to demand a return to democratic civilian rule, juntas depart from power. The most prominent example of this was in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=de&lr=&id=xSZwAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=egypt+2011+nepsted&ots=r-G56kRRmg&sig=YmiQioJNNM-ECTabvUcrsIT2w_c#v=onepage&q=egypt%202011%20nepsted&f=false">Egypt after the 2011 coup</a>. </p>
<p>Interestingly, we didn’t find that aid dependency or membership in an international organisation with anti-coup rules exerted any discernible influence on juntas. This means that domestic variables – and in particular the drivers of the coup – influence political aftermaths.</p>
<h2>What it all means</h2>
<p>For the current transitions in parts of Africa, these findings are troubling. </p>
<p>In Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad, militaries overthrew their governments because of threats to their countries’ territorial integrity or to the military’s material benefits. The juntas in these countries can rely on the backing of the military at large. This decreases the likelihood of a return to civilian rule. </p>
<p>The implications of our findings for Niger and Guinea are less straightforward, however. Here, coups were staged by a sub-section of the military, even though such a move wasn’t in line with the interests of the armed forces at large. Our research findings suggest a more volatile dynamic for these two post-coup states.</p>
<p>At this stage, no one can predict how the motives of Niger’s presidential guard will shape future action. Much will depend on <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66430115">coup leader Abdourahmane Tchiani’s</a> ability to convince the military that a coup was the right thing to do politically. </p>
<p>Generally, military coups bode ill for democratic processes. In instances where juntas withdraw from power, democracies don’t emerge. When juntas rig post-coup elections, they <a href="https://theloop.ecpr.eu/military-coups-are-key-to-understanding-contemporary-autocracies/">become entrenched in power</a> in the medium to long-term. This has devastating consequences for the political and civil rights of their populations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastian Elischer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Examining how military coups unfold is crucial to understanding a country’s path back to democracy.Sebastian Elischer, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049282023-05-03T15:48:55Z2023-05-03T15:48:55ZSudan’s entire history has been dominated by soldiers and the violence and corruption they bring<p>Sudan’s <a href="https://redress.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Briefing-Central-Reserve-Police.pdf">Central Reserve Police</a> (CRP) recently announced it would be deploying officers to the streets of Khartoum to <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article273488/">“secure public and private property”</a>. That may sound puzzling in the context of the current violence: what are the police doing in the middle of this?</p>
<p>The answer is simple. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-sanctions-sudans-central-reserve-police-over-crackdown-protesters-2022-03-21/">The CRP are not “police” in any civilian sense</a> – they are one of several paramilitary groups in Sudan, and they are intervening on the side of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF).</p>
<p>This helps explain <a href="https://theconversation.com/sudans-conflict-has-its-roots-in-three-decades-of-elites-fighting-over-oil-and-energy-204389">recent events in Sudan</a>, where history has entangled military force and state power, and has produced multiple armed groups which are now vying for control of the state.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sudans-conflict-has-its-roots-in-three-decades-of-elites-fighting-over-oil-and-energy-204389">Sudan's conflict has its roots in three decades of elites fighting over oil and energy</a>
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<p>That history began with the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1570579">Turco-Egyptian conquest</a> by the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, in 1820. By consolidating territory over several decades, this created what became Sudan: a colony built by armed force.</p>
<p>At the end of the 19th century, it <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/sudoverview3.htm">came under effective British control</a>. While colonial states always tended to be violent, Sudan was particularly fierce in imposing central control on a large and diverse population. The state was always uniformed and armed.</p>
<p>And when Sudan – then the largest territory in Africa – became <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/sudoverview4.htm">independent in 1956</a>, the new country inherited that militarised and centralised nature. Soldiers have always seen themselves as the proper guarantors of its sovereignty. They played a central role in the attempts to impose central authority which <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17531055.2014.949599">led to protracted civil war</a>, beginning in the south in the 1960s and spreading to the west and east from the 1980s.</p>
<h2>Mostly ruled by soldiers</h2>
<p>Sudan has been mostly ruled by soldiers since 1956: in 1958, 1969 and 1989, <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/26044/sudan-coup-timeline/">military coups</a> overthrew shortlived civilian governments. When popular unrest threatened military rulers – <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2014/10/50-years-on-remembering-sudans-october-revolution-by-willow-berridge/">as happened in 1964, 1985</a> and 2019 – their regimes were toppled only because some of the soldiers changed sides and turned on the incumbents. Every time, soldiers continued to wield much power. Even in revolution, Sudan has never tamed its army.</p>
<p>That process looks cyclical: soldiers kept defying the authority of civilian politicians. But there was a long-term trend of change. Soldiers who seized power by force learned from experience. The greatest threat to them lay among their own rank and file, who might turn against them. So, particularly under the long rule of Omar el-Bashir, who <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/a-timeline-of-key-events-in-rule-of-sudan-s-al-bashir/4871412.html">seized power in 1989</a>, they fostered the emergence of alternative armed forces. </p>
<p>Alongside the SAF, new paramilitaries were created <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-sanctions-security-forces-in-sudan-for-serious-human-rights-abuses/">like the CRP</a>. The long-running wars with rebels encouraged that process – Sudan’s rulers recruited militia who would <a href="https://csf-sudan.org/library/remote-control-breakdown-sudanese-paramilitary-forces-and-pro-government-militias/">fight insurgents on the cheap</a>, but who could also support them against insubordinate soldiers. Those militias came from the peripheries of Sudan – in some ways, they had much in common with the rebel armed groups against whom they fought, some of whom occasionally switched sides.</p>
<p>Even after the <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/right-nationality-and-secession-south-sudan-commentary-impact-new-laws">secession of South Sudan in 2011</a>, Sudan had multiple armed forces. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – the SAF’s main antagonist in the current violence – grew out of a local militia in Darfur to become the largest, most dangerous product of that process. </p>
<p>All these armed groups shared the belief that control of the state was rightfully theirs, and the ultimate prize. It was not simply that the state paid, armed and fed soldiers – though that was always important, and especially so when a brief <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2020/073/article-A003-en.xml">boom from oil revenues</a> swelled state resources in the first decade of the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Money talks – so do guns</h2>
<p>Control of the state allowed soldiers to establish themselves as entrepreneurs – in anything from <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-minerals/exposing-rsfs-secret-financial-network/">manufacturing and banking to gold mining </a>– and to reward their friends and supporters. Much of Sudan’s economy <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/29/sudan-economy-dominated-by-military-interests-report">came under the control of soldiers</a> not as a single, coherent group, but as actual or potential rivals, each anxiously watching the others.</p>
<p>In the end, this increasingly messy and splintered array of armed groups could not save Bashir. When popular anger against his rule seemed unstoppable in 2019, both the SAF and RSF turned against him and Bashir was <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-al-bashirs-fall-is-only-the-start-of-a-new-sudan-115389">pushed out of office</a>. The effective leaders of the SAF and RSF, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/16/who-is-al-burhan-sudans-military-de-facto-head-of-state">Abdel Fattah al-Burhan</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/sudan-conflict-hemedti-the-warlord-who-built-a-paramilitary-force-more-powerful-than-the-state-203949">Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo</a> (aka Hemedti) established themselves as the faces of military power. </p>
<p>But by that time, there were too many armed groups for any stable transition to be agreed. The SAF and RSF <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/sudan/critical-window-bolster-sudans-next-government">circled around each other for months</a>, each hoping the move to civilian rule could be manipulated to preserve their own position while disadvantaging the other. The two briefly cooperated in removing the civilian parts of the transitional government <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/sudans-coup-one-year-later">in the coup of October 2021</a>, but their rivalry only grew more intense. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sudan-violence-between-army-and-militia-is-a-symptom-of-an-old-disease-that-is-destroying-africa-204288">Sudan: violence between army and militia is a symptom of an old disease that is destroying Africa</a>
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<p>Across Sudan, armed militias and rebel groups (some large, some not) staked their claims to inclusion in a new government, and threatened violence if they were denied. The SAF and RSF both treated these local pretenders <a href="https://timep.org/2023/03/07/a-plague-o-both-your-houses-the-false-dilemma-of-sudans-elites/">as potential allies in their rivalry</a>. In the end, it was (ironically) pressure to agree the terms of a new transition to civilian rule that finally precipitated open conflict between the SAF and RSF. Both knew that civilian rule was a threat, and each tried to deflect its impact on to the other.</p>
<p>That history – which has left soldiers at the centre of power while dividing them into opposing factions – explains why the current violence is so messy and intractable. There are multiple actors beyond the SAF and RSF, from paramilitary police in Khartoum to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/01/fighting-devastates-sudans-west-darfur">rival militias in Darfur</a>. For the leaders of these armed factions, control of the state is an existential matter: they need it to keep their followers loyal. </p>
<p>Yet the resources of the state are not sufficient to support them all – and any civilian government would want to turn those resources to other uses. So, even if Sudan’s untamed soldiers could be reconciled, it is hard to see how they would be brought under civilian control.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Willis has in the past received funding for research from the UK Research Councils and the UK government</span></em></p>Sudan was formed by conquest, and its politics and, increasingly, its wealth have been controlled by the military ever since.Justin Willis, Professor of History, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1996282023-02-20T13:52:18Z2023-02-20T13:52:18ZIslamist terrorism is rising in the Sahel, but not in Chad – what’s different?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511155/original/file-20230220-18-cskr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Local residents gather around the biggest mosque in the region for the evening prayer in Bahai, Chad.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the rise of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Boko-Haram">Boko Haram</a> in Nigeria and the emergence of <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/evolution-salafi-jihadist-threat">Islamist-Salafist</a> groups in northern Mali in 2013, the Sahel has increasingly been caught in the maelstrom of Islamist terrorism. </p>
<p>The region is now described as the new <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/02/1133217">global epicentre</a> of violent extremism. The population is suffering immensely, and in some areas more than <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2021/698048/EPRS_BRI(2021)698048_EN.pdf">2 million</a> people have been displaced. Agriculture and development have come to a halt there.</p>
<p>Five explanations are usually given for the rise of Islamist terrorism in the Sahel: <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/salafism-in-nigeria/5EC64F70A4BCBD521C64C610A0A05FD8">dissatisfaction</a> with the political order, <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/publication/crime-after-jihad-illicit-business-post-conflict-mali">bad governance</a>, <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/publication/crime-after-jihad-illicit-business-post-conflict-mali">corruption</a> and <a href="https://www.africabib.org/rec.php?RID=364364319">ethnic rivalries</a> to <a href="https://issafrica.org/research/policy-brief/money-talks-a-key-reason-youths-join-boko-haram">economic reasons</a> such as poverty or unemployment, especially among the youth. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.undp.org/press-releases/hope-better-jobs-eclipses-religious-ideology-main-driver-recruitment-violent-extremist-groups-sub-saharan-africa">recent study</a> cited economic precarity as the main factor. This is a scenario where young people in particular face high unemployment and thus lose hope about the future.</p>
<p>Chad is one of the <a href="https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks">poorest countries</a> in the world. It was ruled for 30 years by the authoritarian president Idriss Déby Itno, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/idriss-deby-itno-offered-chadians-great-hope-but-ended-up-leaving-a-terrible-legacy-159443">died in 2021</a> under unexplained circumstances. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/idriss-deby-itno-offered-chadians-great-hope-but-ended-up-leaving-a-terrible-legacy-159443">Idriss Déby Itno offered Chadians great hope, but ended up leaving a terrible legacy</a>
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<p>The country fulfils all the conditions associated with Islamist terrorism. But, so far, the threat reaches Chad from the neighbouring countries and not from the inside. So then, what holds Chadian society together? </p>
<p>For my <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/contjas/article/view/239122">research</a> I drew on data from an opinion survey I conducted in five Chadian towns (the capital N’Djamena, Abéché, Sarh, Mongo and Moundou) from 2015 to 2016. My aim was to get the views of all ethnic and linguistic groups in the country. Long-term studies show that people do not change their political and religious attitudes overnight. In view of the actual political transition in Chad and the increase in Islamist terror in the region, the results are still valid today and could allow conclusions to be drawn for other countries.</p>
<p>The results show that one reason the threat of Islamist terrorism doesn’t come from inside is because Chadians want to live together peacefully. Other reasons include the fact that Chadians have high religious tolerance and Deby’s authoritarian regime favoured groups who had a tendency towards religious fundamentalist ideas - appeasing them with economic benefits. </p>
<h2>The findings</h2>
<p>My research sampled 1,857 people who answered about 130 questions in face-to-face interviews. By analysing the quantitative dataset, I identified groups within Chadian society according to their propensity for democracy, cohabitation and religiosity, and their religious fundamentalist tendencies.</p>
<p>The data confirmed a high fragmentation of Chad’s society along ethnic, religious and economic lines. </p>
<p><strong>Democracy:</strong> Chad is one of the <a href="https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-report/TCD#pos4">least democratic</a> countries of the world. Yet more than half of the survey respondents supported democratic ideas. </p>
<p><strong>Tolerance:</strong> A substantial majority of respondents expressed the desire to live peacefully with other groups. But the respondents who labelled themselves Salafists – the spectrum of Salafism ranges from a spiritual renewal of Islam as in the times of Mohammed to a hybrid religious-political ideology seeking to establish a global caliphate – were the least inclined to social coexistence.</p>
<p>During individual interviews, religious Muslim and Christian leaders and opinion leaders also emphasised Chadians’ willingness to live together peacefully. They stressed that both religions are frequently represented in many families. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-the-rise-of-jihadist-movements-in-africa-42905">What lies behind the rise of jihadist movements in Africa</a>
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<p><strong>Religion:</strong> Chad, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2010/04/15/religious-affiliation-islam-and-christianity-in-sub-saharan-africa/">a predominantly Muslim society</a>, is one of the few countries in the Sahel region to have a substantial Christian minority. This is partly a legacy of French colonial rule, which fostered a Christian educated elite in the south of the country.</p>
<p>It is also a consequence of Déby’s authoritarian and corrupt rule which emphasised the balance between the different religions. However, he favoured certain groups from the north who had been Islamised for centuries. Members of these groups were over represented in the highest income categories.</p>
<p>The data confirmed that religion played an important role in the daily life of most of those interviewed. The regular observance of religious practices is firmly embedded in the everyday life of Muslims and Christians. </p>
<p>The religious practices of the other religions were also acknowledged. </p>
<p>I was particularly interested in the respondents’ tendency towards religious fundamentalist ideas that could possibly lead to religious violence. The dataset allowed me to create an “Islamist fundamentalism” index. </p>
<p>In contrast to “religiosity”, which measures religious affiliation, belief and practice, conceptualising the measurement of any <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1401_4">religious fundamentalism</a> focuses on:</p>
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<li><p>a literal understanding of the sacred book of the respective religion </p></li>
<li><p>the exclusivity of one’s religion </p></li>
<li><p>the importance of religion in societal life. </p></li>
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<p>The Islamist fundamentalism index also contained specific items like the introduction of Sharia law. In this way, I was able to identify respondents who were more inclined towards Islamic fundamentalism, and might even be willing to lean towards Islamist terrorism to achieve their goals.</p>
<p>The highest Islamist attitudes were expressed by more than a third of the sampled Muslim population. I found the strongest Islamist fundamentalist attitudes among respondents who attended an Arabic primary school or a Qur’anic school and had no further schooling, and among respondents with two years of higher education.</p>
<p>Only a minority of the respondents who never went to any school showed Islamist fundamentalist attitudes. </p>
<p><strong>Social profile:</strong> A large number of respondents who scored high as Islamist fundamentalists were merchants and came from high income groups. Most were most likely to have benefited economically during the Déby era. They displayed the biggest support for the late authoritarian president, embraced above average undemocratic attitudes, and supported authoritarian structures in general.</p>
<h2>What’s significant</h2>
<p>Why are these results noteworthy? </p>
<p>Research in other countries has shown that dissatisfaction and frustration about bad governance, corruption or poverty fosters the emergence of Islamist terrorism. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jihadism-and-coups-in-west-africas-sahel-region-a-complex-relationship-176988">Jihadism and coups in West Africa’s Sahel region: a complex relationship</a>
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<p>In Chad, however, the profiteers of the Déby regime were the most fundamentalist. They admitted that they were willing to take to violence if they did not agree with their political leader. But, with their own position secured, they seem not to have seen any need to turn against the corrupt structures that benefited them. They had made peace with the regime.</p>
<p>Déby’s son Mahamat Déby has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56836109">taken power</a> by violating the country’s constitution. He was appointed transitional president in October 2022 following a so-called national inclusive dialogue. Like his father, he has to deal with sporadic attacks by <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/boko-haram-nigeria">Boko Haram</a> in the Lake Chad region, which is threatened by Islamist terrorism. The economic situation of the country is precarious. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chad-is-making-a-huge-effort-to-find-peace-chadians-arent-convinced-it-will-work-189268">Chad is making a huge effort to find peace: Chadians aren't convinced it will work</a>
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<p>Will Mahamat Déby continue to satisfy his wealthier, non-democratic compatriots, who are more inclined towards Islamist fundamentalist ideas and were the strong supporters of his father’s rule?</p>
<p>Or will he opt for democratic structures and fair distribution of resources and wealth so as not to give fundamentalist Islamist groups inside Chad a reason to turn to violence and against the state?</p>
<p>The answers to these questions are unclear. What’s needed is more knowledge about these groups and their attitudes, their behaviour and propensity for radicalisation. This will broaden our understanding of Islamist tendencies and threats, and to develop long-term peace in the Sahel.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helga Dickow received funding from the Gerda-Henkel-Foundation in the framework of the special research programme “Islam” for a research project about laicism in Chad. </span></em></p>Chad fulfils all conditions to be affected by Islamist terrorism. But the threat so far comes from its neighbours, not from the inside.Helga Dickow, Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institut, Freiburg Germany, University of FreiburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1891752022-08-25T09:16:45Z2022-08-25T09:16:45ZMacron in Africa: a cynical twist to repair the colonial past while keeping a tight grip<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480624/original/file-20220823-11-sz325m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and Guinea-Bissau's President Umaro Sissoco Embalo (R) during Macron's visit in July 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In late July 2022 French president Emmanuel Macron <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220725-macron-embarks-on-african-visit-to-renew-relationship-with-continent">concluded a tour</a> of Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau. And he visits <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220820-five-years-after-last-visit-macron-to-return-to-algeria-in-bid-to-reset-ties">Algeria</a> between 25 and 27 August.</p>
<p>At first glance, his choice of countries is difficult to understand. Three former French colonies – Cameroon, Benin and Algeria – and a former Portuguese colony, Guinea-Bissau, seem very different.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, taken together, Macron’s visits tell a story in which France is doing penance for its colonial crimes while simultaneously trying to maintain the influence it gained through colonialism. </p>
<p>These two themes also emerged at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/france-wants-to-fix-its-relations-with-africa-but-its-going-about-it-the-wrong-way-171234">New France Africa Summit</a> in October 2021 in Montpelier. There, Macron promised investments in African technology startups as a way to increase the influence of French private business, while also promoting the scholar Achille Mbembe’s <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/admin/upload/default/0001/11/47114246c489f3eb05ab189634bb1bf832e4ad4e.pdf">report</a> on the new relationship between France and Africa. </p>
<p>Macron got another chance to show off his good relationship with African leaders at the <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/2022/02/17-18/">European Union-African Union summit of February 2022</a>. This was hosted by Macron – France held the presidency of the European Union at the time – and EU Council president Charles Michel.</p>
<p>The penance efforts were on show in each of the recent country visits. At a press conference with Cameroon’s president Paul Biya, Macron said France’s archives on colonial rule in Cameroon would be <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220726-macron-says-france-remains-committed-to-africa-s-security-on-first-stop-of-three-nation-tour">opened</a> “in full”. He said he hoped historians from both countries would work together to investigate “painful moments”.</p>
<p>In Benin the French president <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/27/macron-contin-to-visit-benin-to-talk-about-security-and-culture">accompanied</a> Benin’s president, Patrice Talon, on a visit to an exhibition devoted to the royal treasures of Abomey. These had been robbed by France 139 years ago and were returned in November 2021. In Guinea-Bissau he <a href="https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2022-07-29/French-president-wraps-up-Africa-tour-in-Guinea-Bissau-1c2SjqOqiqs/index.html">announced</a> the opening of a French school and a sports exchange programme, in line with his increased emphasis on cultural diplomacy. </p>
<p>The effort to maintain influence was evident in all three visits too. With the presence of French troops in Mali dwindling, Paris is looking for new military options and hoping to find those with Macron’s hosts. In Benin the French president therefore talked about security while in Yaoundé he restated France remained <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/07/26/macron-promises-to-open-archives-on-cameroon-colonial-era_5991547_4.html">committed</a> to the security of the continent. </p>
<p>In Guinea-Bissau Macron declared France should “<a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20220729-macron-promises-to-revive-relations-with-guinea-bissau-and-help-region-battle-terrorism">contribute</a> to the fight against terrorism everywhere in the region”.</p>
<p>In my view Macron exploits the increased call for the more fundamental decolonisation of African societies as a cover to exercise continued influence on the continent.</p>
<h2>Rectifying the colonial past</h2>
<p>The project for <a href="https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/about/equity/centre-for-equity-and-inclusion/race/decolonising-academia/what-does-decolonising-mean/">decolonial justice</a> has recently been used by other former colonial powers to brush up their image in Africa. Belgium recently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/20/belgium-returns-patrice-lumumba-tooth-congolese-independence">returned a tooth</a> of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first prime minister, 61 years after enabling his assassination. </p>
<p>Rectifying the colonial past has become a popular way for northern governments to do their diplomacy in Africa. In the past there were calls for new relationships and a forgetting of the colonial past. Now heads of state showcase their willingness to face colonial crimes head on. US secretary of state Antony Blinken, for instance, talked about the need to become “<a href="https://agoa.info/news/article/16039-transcript-us-secretary-of-state-s-address-at-south-africa-s-future-africa-institute.html">equal partners</a>” and acknowledge </p>
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<p>generations of Africans whose destiny had been determined by colonial powers. </p>
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<p>In my view this is a smart way to flip the script the Russians and the Chinese employ. They stress that they never colonised the continent, a claim already put forward in the 1960s when <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/zhou-enlais-african-safari-1963-1964/">Zhou Enlai and Leonid Brezhnev</a> visited the continent. </p>
<p>In his bid to reset this narrative, Macron went as far as to brand Russia “one of the last imperial colonial powers” for its invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<p>It’s all part of the cynical twist of Macron’s version of decolonisation, which seeks to repair the old while setting back the cause of decolonisation through intervention. </p>
<h2>Renewed interest in Africa</h2>
<p>What separates France from the US and Belgium is that the Elysée is trying to offset a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60419799">dwindling military position</a> in Mali. Its troops are leaving and are being replaced by Russian mercenaries, the so-called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/world/europe/wagner-group-russia-ukraine.html">Wagner Group</a>. </p>
<p>France intervened in the north of Mali in 2013 with <a href="https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ_French/journals_E/Volume-06_Issue-3/spet_e.pdf">Operation Serval</a>. Paris also brought in allied nations like Belgium and Sweden to provide additional capacity and training. The aim was to push out Islamic fighters in the Sahel. </p>
<p>The Cold War logic that has been imposed on this trip, however, is far too simplistic. It overlooks the regional politics of West Africa, where the Economic Community of West African States (<a href="https://ecowas.int/">ECOWAS</a>) has increasingly felt the need to intervene against the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-west-africa-has-had-so-many-coups-and-how-to-prevent-more-176577">coups</a> that have plagued the region: Mali in August 2020 and May 2021, Guinea in September 2021, Burkina Faso in January 2022 and the failed coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau in February 2022.</p>
<p>The West African coups, rather than the intervention in Ukraine, also explain what brought Macron to Guinea-Bissau, which took over the rotating presidency of ECOWAS in July. The organisation <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-62037317">lifted sanctions</a> when the junta in Mali promised to hold elections in February 2024. </p>
<p>ECOWAS has also managed to reach an agreement with Burkina Faso’s military junta on a timetable for a transition back to democracy. A return to civilian rule is scheduled for July 2024.</p>
<p>With a combined promise of increased cultural investments and weapons for Guinea-Bissau, Macron is seeking to meddle with the regional organisation. That’s despite claiming France “always respected” the position of ECOWAS in regional matters. It is an easy way for the Élysée to blanket West Africa without having to engage in shuttle diplomacy to different West African capitals when it has a vital interest to protect.</p>
<p>Keeping the focus on Ukraine and Lavrov’s mission was therefore in the interest of the French president, who was also conveniently asked questions about why African countries had not received weapon shipments as easily as Ukraine. The delivery of weapons could then be presented as something positive, rather than a disastrous policy that hardly ever works. </p>
<p>As always, it will be regular people who will pay the price because they are forced to live in increasingly heavily armed societies. The <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/destabilization-mali">uprising</a> in the north of Mali in 2013, which Macron is now seeking to manage through ECOWAS, was the consequence of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/19/libya-air-strikes-gaddafi-france">2011 military intervention</a> by France and its allies in Libya and the subsequent overthrow of Libyan leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muammar-al-Qaddafi">Muammar Gaddafi</a>. </p>
<p>It might set these countries back for years, preventing them from joining the African Lion economies – Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa – countries that were avoided by Macron.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Gerits receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the United Kingdom </span></em></p>Macron’s recent visits to Africa tell a story in which France is doing penance for its colonial crimes while trying to maintain influence gained through colonialism.Frank Gerits, Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa and Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations, Utrecht UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765682022-02-09T14:02:29Z2022-02-09T14:02:29ZSudan’s protestors aren’t giving up despite heavy odds: here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445051/original/file-20220208-21-4nr1ag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sudanese protesters clash with security forces during an anti-coup protest in Khartoum, Sudan in December 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/STR</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sudanese have been going out on the streets for non-violent, peaceful protests for more than three months since the military coup on October 25, 2021.</p>
<p>Thousands of demonstrators have been defying a ban on protests and have marched in Khartoum and other cities denouncing the military takeover. They are <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20211225-thousands-of-protesters-in-sudan-call-for-transition-to-civilian-rule">calling for</a> a fully civilian government to lead the country’s now-stalled transition to democracy.</p>
<p>Since the October coup, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220207-sudan-security-forces-fire-tear-gas-at-anti-coup-protesters">at least 79 people</a> have been killed. The internet has been blocked for long periods, preventing the protesters from telling the world about what goes on. </p>
<p>But the main protest organisers – the neighbourhood resistance committees and the Sudanese Professionals Association – say that they will not leave the streets until the fall of the coup regime, and until the military leaders are held to account for the atrocities they have committed.</p>
<p>The protests have remained peaceful, and people have not stopped coming, despite the military’s use of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/7/sudan-security-forces-fire-tear-gas-at-anti-coup-protesters-2">excessive force</a>. When the military leaders have responded so harshly and have not given in on any demands, why do the protests still continue?</p>
<p>We’ve carried out research into <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/file/7420-after-the-uprising-including-sudanese-youth.pdf">youth activism</a> in Sudan and <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8098-a-glimpse-of-hope-for-the-future-protests-and-emotion-in-sudans-mawkib">have insights into what drives people</a> to continue protesting. </p>
<p>We believe that the reasons for continued protests are a combination of; historical proof that demonstrations can bring change, previous experience in organising protests and because they’re driven by young people who have the tools and energy to keep pushing and who have little faith in others to make the change happen.</p>
<h2>The drivers</h2>
<p>The first is the success that ordinary Sudanese had in toppling former president Omar al-Bashir. Resilient demonstrations from 2018 to 2019 against Bashir <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/18/12-defining-moments-in-sudans-12-month-uprising">contributed to</a> the fall of a president that had been in power for three decades. </p>
<p>These events showed Sudanese people that they could bring about change. Marching in the street, day after day, <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7201-blog-from-sudan-the-sudan-uprisings-the-revolution-of-the-youth">is seen</a> as something worthwhile, something rewarding, that will bring an outcome. </p>
<p>The main protest organisers are the neighbourhood or resistance committees and the Sudanese Professionals Association. </p>
<p>Initially <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7920-the-role-of-local-resistance-committees-in-sudans-transitional-period">established in</a> 2012, the neighbourhood committees were run by young volunteers to ensure essentials – such as bread, sugar and cooking gas – were distributed. They developed into underground resistance committees and, together with the Sudan Professional Association (an association of health workers, doctors and lawyers), organised people into marches throughout Khartoum and in other towns.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/7420-after-the-uprising-including-sudanese-youth">Young people</a> – Sudanese youth – were the backbone of the protests against Bashir. And continue to be today.</p>
<p>The generation of people, between the ages of 15 and 30, were all raised under the authoritarian rule of the Islamist party National Congress Party which ran the country from 1989 to 2019. Political activism was harshly repressed, making <a href="https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POLAF_158_0033--kayzan-in-the-neighbourhood.htm">voluntary charity work</a> one of the few arenas where young people could engage. As opposition to the regime increased, youth engagement <a href="https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-cahiers-d-etudes-africaines-2020-4-page-943.htm">gradually turned</a> from charity to political protests, seen in Khartoum and other cities from 2013. </p>
<p>The lessons learnt by young people from voluntary work and previous resistance and repression under Bashir became instrumental for the success of the uprising in 2019. </p>
<p>The volunteers had learnt how to organise supplies, and the politically experienced taught the others how to mobilise, and both groups knew how to crowdfund. <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/sudans-uprising-the-fall-of-a-dictator/">Underground organisation</a> and the use of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2018.1547249?scroll=top&needAccess=true">social media</a> were key.</p>
<p>It’s allowed demonstrators to maintain stamina and continue to mobilise protests over and over again, regardless of the challenges. </p>
<p>The second driver is that young people are drawn to demonstrate out of a feeling of responsibility to change the situation. This is written based on observation and interviews from our ongoing <a href="https://www.ethnologie.uni-bayreuth.de/de/forschung/promotionsprojekte/akkordeon/akkordeon1.html">research project</a> which started in 2018. </p>
<p>These emotions are a key aspect of the Sudanese revolution and may explain why the protests continue even in the face of brutal violence from the military. This was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2019.1578017">also seen</a> in Tunisia and Egypt.</p>
<p>The act of going over and over again to the <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/8098-a-glimpse-of-hope-for-the-future-protests-and-emotion-in-sudans-mawkib">Mawkib</a> is an act of resilience but also is part of encouragement that the fight is not over.</p>
<p>A third reason for the endurance of the protests is disappointment with formal political participation and channels. Previous protests proved that informal and clandestine organisation through neighbourhood committees worked. In addition, activists are also <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/sudan-is-hamdoks-return-a-signal-of-democracy-or-military-victory/a-59901328">deeply disappointed</a> with the Forces for Freedom and Change, a coalition of civilian political forces which accepted a power sharing with the military in the transitional government from 2019, thereby allowing the army to get back in power. </p>
<p>The demonstrators also have <a href="https://roape.net/2021/10/27/it-hasnt-fallen-yet-the-rule-is-military-still-lessons-from-the-sudanese-revolution/">little faith</a> in the influence of the international community. This is due to the experience with the international community during Bashir’s regime. The <a href="https://www.undispatch.com/the-harmful-effect-of-us-sanctions-on-sudan/">economic sanctions</a> for example, that were imposed on Sudan in the early 1990s, did not directly affect the regime. But they had a heavy impact on the life of the citizens. </p>
<h2>A call for support</h2>
<p>The protesters recognise that the change has to come from within. In our interviews with activists, they also underline that it can be aided by well thought out support from the international community.</p>
<p>It could, for example, take direct action against the military itself, such as individuals, rather than the country as a whole. </p>
<p>It could also take the form of pressure on states in the region to withdraw their support for the coup makers. And it could involve finding ways to support civil society and activists instead of withdrawing aid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lovise Aalen receives funding from the ARUS-project (Assisting Regional Universities in Sudan) at Chr. Michelsen Institute, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the ARUS project or CMI. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mai Azzam received funding from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) as a scholarship for her PhD. All data and opinions expressed in the article are the responsibility of the authors.
Mai works as a consultant for Royaa Center for Feminist studies in Khartoum, Sudan as well as for the Sudanese Solidarity for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (TASAMI), Khartoum, Sudan. Both organizations are independent and do not relate to the article or any opinion discussed in it. </span></em></p>When the military leaders have responded so harshly and have not given in on any demands, why do the protests still continue?Lovise Aalen, Senior Researcher, Political Science, Chr. Michelsen InstituteMai Azzam, PhD candidate, Bayreuth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1746342022-01-10T15:52:15Z2022-01-10T15:52:15ZRising instability in Mali raises fears about role of private Russian military group<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440056/original/file-20220110-27-vlu6xa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colonel Assimi Goita has stepped back from undertakings that there would be a return to civilian rule soon.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Habib Kouyate/Xinhua via Getty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tensions are mounting in West Africa as Mali resists pressure from the region, the EU and US, to come up with a firm timetable on how civilian rule will be restored after two coups and a military takeover. </p>
<p>The atmosphere has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f4525017-eb6f-47ee-b05e-d381e1b05407">worsened in recent weeks</a> in the wake of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/25/mali-approached-russian-private-companies-moscow-not-involved">reports</a> that Mali has entered into an arrangement with the Russian private military company – <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-corporate-soldiers-global-expansion-russias-private-military-companies">the Wagner Group</a>. </p>
<p>In the first weeks of 2022 the regional body of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/9/west-africa-bloc-ecowas-hits-mali-with-sanctions-after-poll-delay">announced</a> that it was closing its borders with Mali. And that it was prepared to activate its <a href="https://www.ecowas.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Final-Communique-on-Summit-on-Mali-Eng-080122.pdf">standby force</a> should the need to deploy it arise. </p>
<p>Ambassadors were withdrawn, with Mali <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2022/01/10/mali-protests-ecowas-sanctions-closes-borders/">retaliating</a> in kind.</p>
<p>This ratcheting up was preceded in mid-December 2021 by French forces officially <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/15/french-forces-leave-malis-timbuktu-after-nearly-9-years">withdrawing</a> from Timbuktu – the latest move in France’s strategic draw-down in the Sahel. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/france-has-started-withdrawing-its-troops-from-mali-what-is-it-leaving-behind-170375">France has started withdrawing its troops from Mali: what is it leaving behind?</a>
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<p>The day after France’s withdrawal, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken <a href="https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/12/16/us-warns-mali-wagner/">weighed in</a> on Mali’s looming deal with the shadowy Russian private military company. He stressed that the Wagner Group “will not bring peace to Mali”. He further urged the transitional government:</p>
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<p>…not to divert scarce budgetary resources away from the Malian Armed Forces’ fight against terrorism</p>
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<p>On December 23rd, 15 European states and Canada issued a <a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/mali/news/article/statement-on-the-deployment-of-the-wagner-group-in-mali-23-dec-2021">joint statement</a> condemning the Malian government’s choice to pursue a deal with “foreign mercenaries instead of supporting the Malian Armed Forces,” a clear reference to the Wagner Group.</p>
<p>The EU also imposed <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-hits-russian-mercenary-group-wagner-with-sanctions-2021-12-13/">sanctions</a> against both Mali and the Wagner Group.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/24/africa/russia-mercenaries-mali-intl/index.html">reports</a> emerged soon after that members of Wagner had arrived in Bamako via Libya where the group has been <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-corporate-soldiers-global-expansion-russias-private-military-companies">operating</a> since at least 2015. </p>
<p>For its part, Mali’s current regime continues to <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20211225-mali-denies-deployment-of-russian-mercenaries-from-wagner-group">adamantly deny</a> collaborating with Wagner.</p>
<p>If recent history offers any lessons, Mali’s experiment with the Wagner Group should be concerning. The group actively seeks out political instability and has done little to genuinely remedy underlying issues in the states with which it contracts. It has arguably made things more volatile for clients. </p>
<p>One needs to look no further than the Central African Republic, where the Wagner Group has <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/central-african-republic/russias-influence-central-african-republic">exacerbated tensions</a> via summary executions and ethnic targeting. This has contributed to an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis. </p>
<p>Indeed, continued political strife may actually be good business for groups like Wagner. As I’ve suggested in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592318.2019.1601869?casa_token=B7qq2OZyBgUAAAAA:27VoUa6uOkfflcKMvwvRzB5tvvd3KmXHuPT1p1AKJYu4jUvnBtXulDjOu7UrgQUhvt8jRQyoeG83">my research</a>, maintaining some degree of instability might ensure the longevity of contracts though private contractors have to be careful to ensure that their reputations aren’t severely damaged by poor performance. </p>
<p>My ongoing work suggests that the political and social context in Mali provide just the right ingredients for the Wagner Group.</p>
<h2>Instability in Mali</h2>
<p>Mali has been politically volatile over the past two years. </p>
<p>The current political climate can largely be traced back to <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2020/08/five-things-know-about-malis-coup">popular protests</a> that began in 2020. Those resulted in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/world/africa/mali-mutiny-coup.html">successful coup in August 2020</a>, led by Colonel Assimi Goita, that saw democratically elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (known by his initials IBK) deposed. </p>
<p>The country has since struggled both to find its democratic footing and to confront an <a href="https://acleddata.com/2021/06/17/sahel-2021-communal-wars-broken-ceasefires-and-shifting-frontlines/">increasingly</a> active and violent Islamist insurgency. </p>
<p>Less than 10 months later Colonel Goita was sworn in as president following a second <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57239805">coup</a> in May 2021. The country has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/africa-mali-government-and-politics-60afe11f3629bc3440b4b2dab14e476a">officially</a> been ruled by a military junta since June 2021. </p>
<p>Goita originally signalled a commitment to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/malis-progress-toward-elections-insufficient-says-w-african-bloc-2021-09-07/">host elections</a> by February 2022. But, unsurprisingly, he has since walked back this pledge. Recent indications point to a potential <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/mali-conference-recommends-election-delay-up-five-years-2021-12-30/">five-year</a> delay until elections. </p>
<p>A coalition of political parties has understandably <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/3/mali-opposition-rejects-election-delay-in-new-transition-plan">rejected</a> this proposal. </p>
<p>The prospects of any return to democracy have been further dimmed by the arrival of the Wagner forces which have a <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27717&LangID=E">history</a> of human rights abuses including involvement in extrajudicial killings and torture.</p>
<p>The military junta may want Wagner’s assistance in countering Islamist insurgents, but it is possible that it will simultaneously use the group to repress political opposition.</p>
<h2>The Wagner Group</h2>
<p>Wagner has operated across the African continent in countries including Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, and Mozambique.</p>
<p>A deal with Mali’s current regime is just the type of partner it is looking for. </p>
<p>With a military junta in a state rife with political fragility, uncertainty and a plethora of lucrative natural resources, Mali looks like a winning lottery ticket. It also helps that Western security force assistance is drying up while Russia appears to be using Wagner to sweep in and fill the void. </p>
<p>There is no guarantee that the group will make headway against Islamist Groups in Mali. It has suffered some setbacks in recent history. This has led to a willingness to quickly <a href="https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/russian-mercenaries-a-string-of-failures-in-africa/">vacate</a> when casualties rise and long term payoffs are unclear. </p>
<p>In late 2019 for instance, the group <a href="https://globalriskinsights.com/2021/02/too-many-mercenaries-in-mozambique/">withdrew</a> from Mozambique after suffering <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/world/africa/russia-africa-troops.html">several casualties</a> in the fight against <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2020/10/the-secret-to-the-northern-mozambique-insurgencys-success/">Ahlu-Sunna Wa-Jama</a>, an Islamic insurgency that has wreaked havoc in the Cabo Delgado province over the past two years. </p>
<p>Like its other ventures, the Wagner Group was most likely lured to Mozambique’s natural-gas rich region of Cabo Delgado in search of contracts laden with resource concessions for Russian corporations. </p>
<p>In fact, in 2019 Russia’s Vladimir Putin <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190822-mozambique-russia-sign-energy-security-deals">inked deals</a> with Mozambique that included resource opportunities for Russian firms, but the instability in the country’s north has stalled progress.</p>
<p>Private military and security companies are far from novel and Wagner’s current modus operandi is not all that different from the first generation of similar companies that emerged in the immediate period following the Cold War. </p>
<p>Filling the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203018354/corporate-soldiers-international-security-christopher-kinsey">security vacuum</a>, these groups provided a diverse array of services to client states that had lost economic and military support from superpowers such as the US and Russia.</p>
<p>But comparing Wagner to first generation firms like the infamous South African company, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161407?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Executive Outcomes</a>, may not be entirely fair. </p>
<p>For instance, Wagner is almost certainly connected to the Russian government. The group’s founder, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/world/europe/prigozhin-russia-indictment-mueller.html">Yevgeny Prigozhin</a>, is a shadowy Russian oligarch with direct ties to Putin. </p>
<p>The relationship has led many to label Wagner a quasi-state actor offering the Russian government “<a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-corporate-soldiers-global-expansion-russias-private-military-companies">quasi-deniability</a>” in conducting military activities abroad. </p>
<p>Groups like Executive Outcomes, while drawing from former South African special operations forces, lacked such direct connections to their government. </p>
<p>While Mali’s democratic future remains unclear, the presence of Wagner will only complicate matters. For Wagner, and Russia more generally, Mali is a yet another important outlet in the growing <a href="https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/30188/the-u-s-must-be-wise-in-strategic-competition-with-china">strategic tensions</a> with the West.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not represent the Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or the US Government.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Michael Faulkner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rising tensions in West Africa heighten as the military junta in Mali engages Wagner, a Russian private military company while defying ECOWAS.Christopher Michael Faulkner, Postdoctoral fellow - National Security Affairs (Views expressed are the author's own and not those of any US government agency), US Naval War CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1660412021-09-06T15:20:13Z2021-09-06T15:20:13ZWhat it will take to end civil war in the Central African Republic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419108/original/file-20210902-16-5k55r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Russian armoured personnel carrier on the streets of Bangui.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Camille Laffont/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent months, Central African politicians and journalists have shared images of the military posing in front of different town signs – seemingly as proof of the state <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20210224-pro-government-central-african-forces-capture-ex-president-s-boziz%C3%A9-stronghold">regaining control</a> over a country caught up in civil war for <a href="https://www.clingendael.org/pub/2015/speculating_on_crisis/">almost a decade</a>.</p>
<p>The civil war commenced when rebel groups in the country’s northeast formed a coalition in 2012 to topple President François Bozizé. Their declared interest was the defence of a marginalised population’s demands for development. </p>
<p>However, the more likely trigger for the rebellion was Bozizé’s attempt to take over control of the armed groups’ lucrative <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/central-african-republic/dangerous-little-stones-diamonds-central-african-republic">mining business</a>.</p>
<p>The rebellion quickly grew in size and easily overwhelme a weak Central African army that had no interest in defending its <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/press-freedom-under-threat-in-central-african-republic/a-16785956">autocratic ruler</a>. While the rebels were dislodged from the capital by international pressure and a peacekeeping mission by 2014, they remain active in the hinterlands.</p>
<p>A view into the country’s <a href="https://natoassociation.ca/rumble-in-the-jungle-a-special-report-on-the-central-african-republic/">history</a> shows that military control has always been short-lived in this vast and lightly <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/centralafricanrepublic/overview">populated country</a>. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/de/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/african-government-politics-and-policy/security-arena-africa-local-order-making-central-african-republic-somaliland-and-south-sudan?format=HB">in-depth study</a> comparing the Central African Republic with South Sudan and Somaliland, I found the imprint of the state in peripheral areas of the former to be by far the lowest. </p>
<p>I argue that only an emphasis on civilian aspects of rule – such as providing education, health and building infrastructure – can stop rebellions from successfully challenging the state’s rule in the future.</p>
<h2>A long history of conflict</h2>
<p>The Central African Republic has a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Central-African-Republic">long history</a> as a meeting point between societies from different parts of Africa and more recently colonisers from Europe. These encounters often turned violent. </p>
<p>Over the centuries slave raiders hunted for people, French concessionary companies brutally enforced unpaid labour, and foreign militias took up camp when chased from their own countries. </p>
<p>Such practices have divided the people living within the borders of the Central African Republic, <a href="https://history.state.gov/countries/central-african-republic">created</a> on 13 August 1960. Heated debates on belonging versus foreignness, status and dependency have ensued. </p>
<p>Politicians and public figures often question the true Central Africanness of people who they assume once came from elsewhere or don’t speak the national language.</p>
<p>The state’s institutions have not dealt effectively with these issues. Instead, after the founding hero of the nation, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Barthelemy-Boganda">Barthelemy Boganda</a>, died shortly before independence, a small circle of elites centred in the capital, Bangui, focused on gaining power and keeping it.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Dacko">David Dacko</a>, who took the presidency through a questionable deal with parliamentarians upon independence, was deposed in a coup d’état by the army commander <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/bokassa-jean-bedel-1921-1996/">Jean-Bédel Bokassa</a> in 1965. </p>
<p>Bokassa <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/21/archives/bokassa-is-reported-overthrown-in-coup-in-central-african-empire.html">ruled brutally</a>, becoming increasingly paranoid of any challenge to his rule. He was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13150040">deposed</a> in 1979 with French support, and replaced again by Dacko. Dacko was soon deposed by another military coup d’état by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andre-Kolingba">André Kolingba</a> in 1981. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ange-Felix-Patasse">Ange-Félix Patassé</a> won elections in 1993 and was sceptical of the military, filled with what he thought to be Kolingba loyalists. Indeed, Kolingba attempted a coup unsuccessfully in the early 2000s. But it was another military commander – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55387951">François Bozizé</a> – who succeeded in deposing Patassé with Chadian support in 2003. </p>
<p>Given this history, successive rulers have defunded security institutions. This created a weak army that was unable to face the large <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/seleka-rebellion-car-sparks-cycle-violence">Seleka rebellion</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>Since 2014, the army’s capacity has been bolstered again with international <a href="https://www.irsem.fr/data/files/irsem/documents/document/file/1219/NR_IRSEM_36.pdf">support</a>. </p>
<p>However, this has also led to a military approach to establishing state control. Government representatives regularly criticise the <a href="https://operationalsupport.un.org/en/security-council-renews-central-african-republic-arms-embargo">arms embargo</a> on the country as holding them back from advancing against the rebels. Foreign powers try to gain favours with the government by providing armament and training. </p>
<p>The UN mission monitors and <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/central-african-republic-un-report-calls-urgent-end-mounting-human">warns</a> about the state military’s transgressions in the past and present. The military has thereby become the core object of negotiating the state’s role within and beyond its borders. </p>
<h2>Re-establishing state authority</h2>
<p>Indeed, the return of the state and especially its military to peripheral localities is often <a href="https://www.cordaid.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2020/02/Securing-legitimate-stability-in-CAR-External-assumptions-and-local-perspectives.pdf">invoked</a> by people on the ground, from the minister in Bangui to the farmer on the outskirts of Ndélé in the north. </p>
<p>But in more detailed discussions, people expect the state – unlike the rebel groups and unlike foreign forces – to take up the issues they urgently care about: questions of belonging and of status.</p>
<p>Many people are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/10/foreigners-central-african-republic-coronavirus-fears-grow">xenophobic</a> towards inhabitants of alleged Arabic origin - whom they call “Chadians”. Many others are ready to welcome returnees displaced by the civil war to neighbouring countries, hoping they will help restart the economy. </p>
<p>Central Africans expect the state not simply to be a military power, but to lead an open debate on what it means to be Central African and who has the right to return. </p>
<p>The population is tired of impunity for perpetrators of violence, while armed groups hold a firm grasp on many areas. They expect the state not just to take back control, but also to seek justice for past crimes and stop impunity in future. </p>
<p>Finally, public services are minimal because the central state has never sought to develop the peripheries. Ongoing conflict blocks any attempt at development. The people I spoke to want the state to funnel its resources into service provision and provide jobs and status to its citizens.</p>
<p>Given the history of the Central African Republic with foreign armed groups and frequent coup d’états within a small elite circle, it is unsurprising that citizens are doubtful of the intentions of current actors to re-establish state authority. </p>
<p>Gaining lasting public support for the institutions being put in place - a stronger national army and a larger public administration - will mean tackling issues of belonging, of status and of public service. Simple military reconquest will not create lasting stability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166041/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Tim Glawion receives funding for his academic research from the German Science Foundation. He is a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies.</span></em></p>Only an emphasis on civilian aspects of rule, such as education and health, can shield the state from rebellions that challenge state power in the future.Tim Glawion, Research Fellow, German Institute of Global and Area StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1597132021-04-29T14:59:31Z2021-04-29T14:59:31ZFive key insights into Déby’s leadership that point to where Chad may be heading<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397849/original/file-20210429-24-1cf0xdo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Idriss Déby, the late former president of Chad.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PASCAL GUYOT/AFP via Getty Images)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chadian President Idriss Déby died in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/20/chads-president-deby-has-died-of-injuries">mid-April</a> after more than three decades in power. The army <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56815708">announced</a> that the 68-year-old leader died from injuries inflicted on the battlefield during clashes with rebels in the north of the country. Subsequent to his death, a military junta led by his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby, executed a military coup d’état dissolving the country’s political institutions and constitution.</p>
<p>Rebellions and instability are far from being without precedent in Chad. Déby <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/06/28/enabling-dictator/united-states-and-chads-hissene-habre-1982-1990#">took power</a> from his former mentor, President Hissène Habré as a rebel. Leading the rebel movement – le mouvement patriotique du salut – Déby <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/03/world/rebels-in-control-of-chad-s-capital.html">ran Habré out of town</a> and installed himself as head of state on 2 December 1990.</p>
<p>In the wake of Idriss Déby’s death it seems likely that force will again be used to capture and retain political power, destabilising the country. The greatest weakness that confronts the new military junta is that they have no real claim to political legitimacy other than force. </p>
<p>I’m <a href="https://africacenter.org/experts/dr-daniel-eizenga/">a researcher</a> on civil-military relations, political violence, and regime trajectories in the vast Sahel region, which includes Chad. My analysis of Déby’s time in power brings forth five key insights into his leadership that could also provide an idea of where the country may be headed. </p>
<h2>Violent beginnings</h2>
<p>Déby’s rise to power had extremely violent beginnings. At 28 years old in 1979, he took up arms alongside the soldiers of Hissène Habré’s FAN (forces armées du nord), during a tumultuous civil war between various factions of armed groups. Habré took control of N'Djamena in 1982. During the civil war, southern Chad experienced a near <em>de facto</em> secession.</p>
<p>Under Habré’s rule, Déby commanded the Chadian national armed forces. In this role, he almost certainly led the “pacification” campaigns in southern Chad. These violent campaigns sought to eliminate potential threats to Habré’s regime from southerners, and were responsible for <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/03/chad-habres-government-committed-systematic-atrocities">mass atrocities</a>. Thousands of civilians were killed. </p>
<p>In 2016, Hissène Habré stood trial and <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-trial-of-hissene-habre/">was found</a> guilty of rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people. Idriss Déby was never tried for his role in Habré’s regime. Déby supported the investigation and trial of Habré – he <a href="https://liberties.aljazeera.com/en/a-long-way-from-democracy-reed-brody-on-deby-habre-and-the-future-of-chad/">managed to manipulate</a> the process so that his role in the regime remained outside of the account.</p>
<p>Déby’s violent beginnings persisted under his own tenure in power. He continued to target political rivals and rebel leaders in an effort to dissuade any challenge to his authority. Assassinations, attempted coups, and political violence punctuated his 30-year rule up until his death. </p>
<h2>Multiparty system in name only</h2>
<p>When Déby took power in 1990, <a href="https://tsep.africa.ufl.edu/the-electoral-system/chad/">he faced pressure</a> to enact a multiparty political system. In 1993, he allowed for the organisation of a Conférence Nationale Souveraine, which brought together members of Déby’s party the MPS (mouvement patriotique du salut), civil society, the civilian political opposition, and demobilised rebels leaders. They debated and drafted a constitution that enshrined a multiparty political system. The Conference then charged a transitional government to organise and hold a referendum on the drafted constitution within one year, but Déby had other ideas.</p>
<p>Déby <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vZvRlTItEqsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA15&dq=restauration+autoritaire+tchad&ots=keUOyq5gNx&sig=UUPteYtwOjHK1AbxiUmy6s0qOWQ#v=onepage&q=restauration%20autoritaire%20tchad&f=false">removed</a> the head of the council, delayed the referendum for two years and dramatically revised the drafted constitution so it included far fewer checks on executive power. The opposition acquiesced to achieve a multiparty system that many hoped would usher in political change. </p>
<p>During the 1996 presidential election, Déby’s party rallied the support of several small political parties, dividing the opposition and securing his victory. He and his party repeated electoral victories in 2001 and 2002, despite the fact that in both instances the opposition strongly contested the results, with some candidates boycotting the elections altogether. Legislative elections would not be held again until 2011 as a consequence of instability and rebellion. </p>
<p>The Chadian government has failed to organise legislative elections since 2011, even though they were due in 2015. </p>
<h2>No respecter of term limits</h2>
<p>In 2005, Déby <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/fr/node/222335">removed</a> presidential term limits ahead of elections in 2006. The term limits would have prohibited him from running for reelection.</p>
<p>Their elimination <a href="https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-1803#acrefore-9780190228637-e-1803-div1-6">sparked rebellions</a> in the east and north of the country. This included members of his Zaghawa kinsmen who felt they’d been sidelined from power. </p>
<p>Rebel groups nearly captured N'Djamena on two occasions. First in 2006 when Chadian forces defeated the rebels before they entered the capital, and again in 2008 when a coalition of groups laid siege to the presidential palace, only to be repulsed by the Chadian armed forces with French military support. </p>
<p>Ultimately, Déby’s use of violence and co-option enabled him to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589001.2013.840974">successfully defeat</a> these rebel groups. He pitted his adversaries against themselves and had different peace agreements with Sudan that deprived the rebels of safe haven.</p>
<p>Some of these rebel groups persist today, including the Union of resistance forces (L'Union des forces de la resistance) which is led by Déby’s nephew Timane Erdimi. They led an incursion into Chadian territory from southern Libya in 2019. </p>
<p>The Front pour l’alternance et la concorde au Tchad (FACT) – responsible for Déby’s death – also has linkages back to the rebel groups that emerged in the 2000s.</p>
<h2>Political manipulation</h2>
<p>A ruthless military tactician, Déby approached governance with significant autocratic calculation. He allowed a multiparty system with a degree of political pluralism, something that had been previously unthinkable under Chad’s dictators or during the civil war. But this obscured a strategy of authoritarian entrenchment. A multiparty system brought many opposition actors out in the open, making them easier to manipulate, to bargain with, or to monitor.</p>
<p>Déby <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20190823-tchad-opposition-divisee">was</a> highly skilled at exacerbating internal tensions within the political opposition <a href="https://www.cairn.info/journal-politix-2013-4-page-47.htm">causing</a> parties, which would have otherwise been unified against him, to fight among themselves. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UFE0052702/00001">doled out</a> positions in government as patronage to important or threatening constituencies. He also played political actors against each other forcing them to make unpopular decisions – such as supporting the political opposition – causing them to lose support at home or be fully reliant on the regime.</p>
<p>In 2018, the constitution underwent a complete overhaul. The position of Prime Minister was eliminated and presidential term limits were reinstated, but non-retroactively so it wouldn’t affect his tenure in power. It also raised the age requirement for presidential candidates.</p>
<p>That last reform was a case of strategic elections manipulation. Popular opposition figures, Yaya Dillo Djerou and Succès Masra, were both excluded from the April 11, 2021 elections. The Supreme Court cited their birth certificates as justification for the decision. The two younger candidates also happen to lead threatening political constituencies. </p>
<h2>Lack of popular legitimacy</h2>
<p>Idriss Déby’s death <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/the-unstable-foundations-of-political-stability-in-chad_508844d3-en">has revealed</a> the principal weakness of his authoritarian rule: a lack of popular legitimacy. This always threatened to topple the regime and trigger widespread insecurity through a very fragile region. </p>
<p>Under Idriss Déby, Chadian citizens <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/living-by-the-gun-in-chad/">have not</a> prospered, nor have they truly known peace.</p>
<p>The use of force has historically been the only mechanism for the transfer of power in Chad. With Idriss Déby’s death this appears unlikely to change for some time to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Eizenga received funding for his dissertation fieldwork research in Chad as part of grant FA9550-12-i-0433 awarded from the United States Department of Defense through the Minerva Initiative to the University of Florida. He is currently a Research Fellow with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not an official policy or position of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.</span></em></p>Déby’s legacy is one of violent beginnings and fake democratic showsDaniel Eizenga, Research Fellow, Africa Center for Strategic StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1561272021-03-03T19:06:30Z2021-03-03T19:06:30ZThanks to the internet, we know what’s happening in Myanmar. But a communication blackout may be near<p>Social media has given us valuable access to the actions of both the military and anti-coup protesters in Myanmar, but a communication blackout may be coming. </p>
<p>The country’s military seized control of the government on February 1, after the National League for Democracy (NLD) won the general election in a landslide.</p>
<p>The opposition-backed army has since detained hundreds of NLD members, including party leader Aung San Suu Kyi.</p>
<p>Thousands have taken to the streets in protest, relying heavily on open communication channels to broadcast military abuses from inside and receive support from outside. And activists likely haven’t seen the last of the military’s attempts to shut these down. </p>
<h2>Broadcasting human rights abuses</h2>
<p>After just one month, there is an astonishing internet archive documenting both the harms done by the military since the coup, as well as countless acts of protest. </p>
<p>There are shocking videos of military personnel <a href="https://twitter.com/soezeya/status/1363896903063117827">showing off their guns</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/soezeya/status/1365531767898181632?s=20">drone footage</a> of people being detained in monasteries, and snapshots into ongoing acts of violence.</p>
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<p>At the same time, demonstrators are using social media to find creative ways to keep morale high, such as by staging candle-lit vigils. </p>
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<p>In response to the massive civil disobedience movement, the military has partially stopped communications to the outside world. For the past 17 days, internet access in Myanmar has been blocked at night. </p>
<p>In doing so the army is demonstrating it can control internet access without, for now, completely cutting off Myanmar off from the rest of the world.</p>
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<p>Parts of the country had already had internet cut off since June 2019, in what has <a href="https://time.com/5910040/myanmar-internet-ban-rakhine/">been dubbed</a> the “world’s longest internet shutdown” by the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/19/myanmar-end-worlds-longest-internet-shutdown">Human Rights Watch</a>.</p>
<p>Days after the coup began, Facebook was <a href="https://time.com/5943151/facebook-myanmar-military-ban/">blocked nationwide</a> and remains blocked by most internet service providers. Adding to this, a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-internet-idUSKBN2AB0WK">new cybersecurity law</a> has been drafted which would give the army sweeping powers to censor citizens online and violate their privacy.</p>
<p>So far these efforts have only been partially successful. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-coup-how-myanmars-military-used-the-pandemic-to-justify-and-enable-its-power-grab-155350">COVID coup: how Myanmar’s military used the pandemic to justify and enable its power grab</a>
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<h2>Watching the cat and mouse game online</h2>
<p>Myanmar’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/young-brave-and-media-savvy-the-next-generation-is-the-great-hope-for-democracy-in-myanmar-20210217-p573b6.html">internet-savvy younger generation</a> began sharing information on how to avoid a communication blackout almost as quickly as restrictions were imposed. </p>
<p>When Facebook was blocked, they shifted to Twitter. They’ve <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-06/myanmar-military-blocks-internet-facebook-authoritarian-playbook/13126654">been using</a> virtual private networks (VPNs), which mask internet protocol (IP) addresses so a user’s internet activity can’t be traced. </p>
<p>They’ve migrated to platforms offering extra privacy through end-to-end-encryption, such as WhatsApp and Signal. To communicate protest times and locations, they’ve turned to older technologies such as landlines. </p>
<p>And at the same time, they’ve created local networks using newer Bluetooth messaging apps that work over short distances. With these small, decentralised clusters of communication they can avoid cell tower transmission.</p>
<p>But despite activits’ ingenuity, in this cat and mouse game the Myanmar military is ultimately stronger and equipped with far greater resources. As <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/how-many-dead-bodies-asked-myanmar-protester-shot-dead-on-bloodiest-day">violence escalates</a>, the military will be increasingly eager to limit the flow of information to and from the country’s citizens.</p>
<p>If the proposed cybersecurity bill becomes law, using VPNs will become illegal. The tweets, images and videos that have kept the outside world informed could come to an abrupt stop, or slow down significantly. </p>
<p>Cutting off internet access entirely in Myanmar would lead to huge economic disruption, too — even more than has already been felt. But the military may still see this as preferable to being derided across the globe, including by its own United Nations ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun. </p>
<p>The ambassador was close to tears before the UN General Assembly as he called on the international community to help restore Myanmar’s democratically elected government. </p>
<p>For the rest of us, a full blackout would mean an absence of critical information that advocates and policymakers rely on to create petitions, lobby governments and corporations, and impose sanctions. But for people inside Myanmar, it would mean much, much worse. </p>
<h2>Putting on the pressure online</h2>
<p>For now, online tools remain salient for those wanting to put pressure on Myanmar’s military. </p>
<p>One online petition <a href="https://www.change.org/p/telenor-stop-telenor-from-enabling-dictatorship-in-myanmar?recruiter=58633740&recruited_by_id=1bbaa430-df7b-0130-f5ac-0022196d7dd0&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard">(now closed)</a> urged Telenor, a Norwegian telecommunications company working in Myanmar, to push back on the proposed cybersecurity law. And the company <a href="https://www.telenor.com/media/press-release/telenor-groups-response-to-proposed-myanmar-cyber-security-bill">did</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, Facebook took down all accounts linked to Myanmar’s military, blocking their use on Facebook and Instagram and thus stemming one of the military’s primary means of communication. There is still a push to get Facebook to completely <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/facebook-end-hate-speech-in-burma?link_id=8&can_id=2c06fdbc91b48f6a1353a8c15e4d9bc4&source=email-breaking-two-dead-in-myanmar-murdered-by-the-military-3&email_referrer=email_1091181&email_subject=you-did-it-facebook-announces-partial-ban-of-military-pages">ban the military from promoting its services and products</a>. </p>
<p>There are also online pages that serve as clearinghouses for those who want to offer support. The coup brought Myanmar’s economy <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/05/964405285/myanmars-coup-will-be-painful-for-already-struggling-economy-analysts-warn">to its knees</a>. Activists and the wider public will quickly feel the financial loss spurred by business shutdowns, the protest movement and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/18/myanmar-sanctions-and-human-rights">economic sanctions</a> imposed by foreign states (even where these are carefully targeted).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.isupportmyanmar.com/">Initiatives to support them</a> — largely channelled through groups in the United States and Australia — are taking donations to help pay for protesters’ activities and topping up their phone credits. Some onlookers may choose to support local journalists broadcasting from inside, by subscribing to English newspapers such as <a href="https://www.irrawaddy.com/">The Irrawaddy</a> and <a href="https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/">Frontier</a>.</p>
<p>Finally, there are border groups that combine their online presence with on-the-ground work in ethnic minority areas. For example, the Karen ethnic minority group on the border of Thailand and Myanmar posted information about recent <a href="https://twitter.com/WahkusheeT/status/1366721383905046528?s=20">defections of military personnel</a> in favour of the movement.</p>
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<p>In Bangladesh, Rohingya refugees have <a href="https://twitter.com/MyatsuAung19/status/1366034545259249673?s=20">protested against the military coup</a>.</p>
<p>Even if a total blackout befalls Myanmar, activists can use porous borders to cross into nearby countries, especially Thailand and Bangladesh, where infrastructures for activism already exist. </p>
<p>By collecting information from inside the conflict zone, crossing borders and broadcasting it, these groups have the potential to short-circuit internet bans. And with them, online efforts can carry on.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/internet-blackouts-in-myanmar-allow-the-military-to-retain-control-154703">Internet blackouts in Myanmar allow the military to retain control</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Banki conducts research on areas bordering Myanmar and has communicated with people from the organizations mentioned in this article. </span></em></p>Technology has played a key role for both sides engaged in the conflict. So what would happen if Myanmar’s military shut down all communication to the outside?Susan Banki, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547012021-02-21T12:05:48Z2021-02-21T12:05:48ZThe exclusion of women in Myanmar politics helped fuel the military coup<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385371/original/file-20210219-13-e7hj4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5760%2C3664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-coup protesters flash the three-fingered salute during a rally in downtown Yangon, Myanmar on Feb. 19, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Feb. 1, 2021, Myanmar’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55902070">military seized power</a>. While a dramatic event, the coup was a continuation of old power structures. </p>
<p>Myanmar’s decade-long period of political transition, peace-building and democratic elections fell short of freeing the country from military control. Despite its female leader, the exclusion of women throughout the failed transition to democracy is partly why Myanmar was unable to create deep institutional change. </p>
<p>Aung San Suu Kyi’s image as “mother of the nation” depicted her as a caring matriarch. This image stood in contrast with the harsh patriarchy of military rule. But politics in Myanmar defy stereotypes and simple classifications. </p>
<p>Suu Kyi may have been the face of the era of democratic reforms, but in reality, the transition was initiated and controlled by the military. Suu Kyi’s legacy as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/01/aung-san-suu-kyi/">permanently stained by her handling of the Rohingya genocide</a>, and her projected femininity and democratic idealism should not be confused for feminism or inclusive democracy.</p>
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<img alt="Aung San Suu Kyi stands before a podium and speaks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385035/original/file-20210218-20-ijjhjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aung San Suu Kyi addresses judges of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, in December 2019. She was defending Myanmar against allegations of genocide in its campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gender can still help us understand politics in Myanmar, however — just not along these lines. Instead, a different story emerges by looking at the exclusion of women in key stages of the transition process. It is a tale of the persistence of patriarchal power throughout the decade of democratization.</p>
<h2>Constitution kept men in charge</h2>
<p>The governing patriarchy is on full display in the 2008 constitution that spurred Myanmar’s decade of democracy. According to one provision of the constitution, <a href="https://www.socialwatch.org/sites/default/files/B15Burma2010_eng.pdf">certain positions are suitable for men only</a>. Women are excluded from key ministerial positions, and a major government agency, the Union Civil Service Board, regularly uses this clause of the constitution to block applications from women for both mid- and junior-level positions. This caps decades of extreme repression of women. </p>
<p>The Myanmar army is infamous for its <a href="https://womenofburma.org/reports/if-they-have-hope-they-would-speak">systematic targeting of ethnic minority women and girls for sexual violence</a>, and the militarization of the country has contributed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-020-00255-2">widespread discriminatory practices</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/internet-blackouts-in-myanmar-allow-the-military-to-retain-control-154703">Internet blackouts in Myanmar allow the military to retain control</a>
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<p>The peace process (2011-15) between the Tatmadaw — Myanmar’s military — and ethnic armed groups that have long challenged its hold on the country <a href="https://www.swisspeace.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/Media/Publications/WP_5_2014.pdf">was a deal involving men</a>. Only four women <a href="https://www.inclusivesecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Womens-Inclusion-in-Myanmars-Nationwide-Ceasefire-Agreement.pdf">served inconsistently</a> on senior negotiation delegations (less than six per cent). <a href="https://www.prio.org/utility/DownloadFile.ashx?id=1758&type=publicationfile">Women were also largely excluded</a> from ceasefire structures and monitoring teams.</p>
<p>Other important institutions also failed to modernize during the transition. Instead, they generally mirrored <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-020-00266-z">conservative and traditional attitudes</a>. Women’s <a href="https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking?month=1&year=2021">representation in parliament</a> gained roughly five per cent in both the 2015 and 2020 elections, growing from less than five per cent in 2014 to just over 15 per cent in November’s contested election. <a href="https://www.cartercenter.org/news/publications/election_reports.html#myanmar">Important as this progress was</a>, equality was ultimately handcuffed by the embedded patriarchy of the military. </p>
<p>The military <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-019-00247-x">orchestrated the democratic transition</a> according to rules designed to give them continued influence. In so doing, they hamstrung women’s political inclusion. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A row of police in riot gear stand behind barbed wire." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385044/original/file-20210218-14-wkbfoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Police stand guard behind barbed wire as they attempt to stop protesters outside Union Election Commission office in November 2020, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar after the military said it did not accept the election results.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Tatmadaw also retained the right to appoint 25 per cent of legislative seats. A military background is required for certain ministerial positions. Since women were only recently allowed to serve in the military, the requirement effectively makes them ineligible to hold these offices. </p>
<p>There were only two women among the 166 military appointees following the 2015 elections. The military appointed only 10 per cent of women to national, state and regional legislative chambers in 2020. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) only elected one woman to both the 2015 and 2020 parliaments. The military quota makes reform unlikely because any constitutional amendment to address discrimination requires 75 per cent approval.</p>
<p>The patriarchy of the military is reflected in the non-military political parties, notwithstanding Suu Kyi’s leadership. The parties are gatekeepers to women’s representation. But <a href="https://www.emref.org/sites/emref.org/files/publication-docs/gender_and_political_in_myanmarenglish_online.pdf">they have generally not taken steps to improve women’s political participation</a>.</p>
<h2>No quick fix</h2>
<p>We are not arguing more women in Myanmar politics would have prevented the coup. There is no such thing as a quick fix to eliminate the country’s history of militarization. </p>
<p>But we do suggest that women’s relative absence from positions of influence helped enable the military to maintain its grip on power.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women in masks carry placards as they sit in a boat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385048/original/file-20210218-20-81ld12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ethnic Entha women display placards during a protest against the military coup in Inle Lake, Taunggyi, Myanmar, on Feb. 11, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Aung Ko San)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Understanding this connection is important for three reasons. First, giving women a seat at the table makes a difference. Research shows that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2018.1492386">equality and inclusion foster sustainable peace</a>, meaning that <a href="https://fba.se/contentassets/46391654ca6b4d8b995018560cb8ba8e/research_brief_bjarnegard_et_al_webb.pdf">the attitudes of the participating men are also required</a>. Rather than just armed organizations, <a href="https://fba.se/contentassets/c44814eb02b04124960629d864fa6b04/research_brief_nilsson_svensson_webb.pdf">civil society groups and women’s organizations should be included in transitions from war to peace</a>.</p>
<p>Second, <a href="https://asia.fes.de/news/feminism-in-myanmar">the women’s movement in Myanmar offers new models for collaborative governance</a>. Relegated to the shadows, women’s groups nonetheless organized to contribute to the peace process through informal channels, including back-channel negotiation. They have shown a path for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2018.1472030">bridging ethnic differences</a> to work towards common goals. </p>
<p>Finally, by tracing the path of patriarchy in Myanmar, we can better understand what brought about the coup. As we grapple with <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-coup-in-myanmar/">why the military staged a coup at this particular moment in time</a>, it should be seen in light of the country’s militarized recent history and the power dynamics of the transition. Women’s rights organizations are currently mobilizing and are putting it out there quite simply: <a href="https://www.genmyanmar.org/update_news/112">a militarized Myanmar is a threat for women</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabrielle Bardall has consulted for The Carter Center Myanmar project in the past.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elin Bjarnegård receives funding from the Swedish Research Council. </span></em></p>Despite having a woman leader, women are largely excluded from key positions of influence and leadership in Myanmar — a situation that helped the country’s military succeed in its recent coup.Gabrielle Bardall, Research Fellow, Centre for International Policy Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaElin Bjarnegård, Associate Professor in Political Science, Netherlands Institute for Advanced StudyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547032021-02-17T13:49:27Z2021-02-17T13:49:27ZInternet blackouts in Myanmar allow the military to retain control<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384514/original/file-20210216-15-1i6ks19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5000%2C3300&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester holds up a placard with an image of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during an anti-coup rally in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Feb. 15, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Myanmar citizens have been living under military control for weeks after the country’s military <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55902070">staged a coup</a>. Citing issues of electoral fraud in the November 2020 general elections, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/myanmars-military-reverts-to-its-old-strong-arm-behaviour-and-the-country-takes-a-major-step-backwards-154368">military detained elected officials</a>, including civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and implemented a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55889565">national internet shutdown</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aung San Suu Kyi shares a laugh with Justin Trudeau." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384513/original/file-20210216-21-fjmer7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar and an honourary Canadian citizen, shares a laugh with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his office in Ottawa in June 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
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<p>Internet shutdowns in Myanmar represent a serious threat to democracy, but these actions aren’t entirely surprising — many Myanmar citizens have experienced all this before.</p>
<p>During the country’s history of military rule from the 1960s to 2011, the military employed many of the same tactics to gain control. The ongoing national internet shutdowns and social media bans highlight a continued cycle of anti-democratic repression and censorship employed by Myanmar’s military — although there are ways internet service providers can help the country’s censored citizens. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1361032747763007488"}"></div></p>
<p>The path to democracy in Myanmar has been slow and laborious. The election of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in 2015 and 2020 represented significant progress and suggested democracy was finally taking hold in the country. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the coup has halted the country’s progress once again. </p>
<p>The military has been Myanmar’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/2/2/analysis-why-is-myanmar-military-so-powerful">most powerful institution</a> since its independence from Britain in 1948. The military-led coup in 1962 was followed by nearly five decades of military rule. Following general elections in 1990, the military refused to hand over power and placed the winning candidate, Aung San Suu Kyi, under <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2010/11/13/burma-chronology-aung-san-suu-kyis-detention">house arrest for more than 15 years</a>.</p>
<h2>Military still has might</h2>
<p>In 2008, democracy proponents were hopeful that a new constitution would finally bring democratic norms and institutions to Myanmar. But <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/21/asia/myanmar-military-the-real-power/index.html">the constitution</a> was drafted by the military regime and maintained its privileged position. For example, it gives the military “the right to take over and exercise state sovereign power” if there are any threats to national unity. </p>
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<img alt="Soldiers stand next to a military truck" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384523/original/file-20210216-13-16uowkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers stand next to a military truck in Yangon, Myanmar on Feb. 15, 2021. Security forces in Myanmar have intensified their crackdown against anti-coup protesters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-reconstruction-insig/rude-and-insolent-fraught-talks-preceded-myanmars-army-seizing-power-idUSKBN2A9225">fraught discussions</a> with the civilian government this month about the election, the military specifically cited provisions in the constitution to justify the coup and declare a state of emergency. </p>
<p>Internet shutdowns are a common tool of repression used by governments to halt the flow of web-based communication and information. Since 2019, more than 36 countries have used internet shutdowns for a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/global-5#">variety of reasons</a>. Recent shutdowns have occurred in India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Belarus and other countries.</p>
<p>Myanmar has become a frequent user of internet shutdowns. In 2007, the military junta <a href="https://opennet.net/research/bulletins/013">escalated their information warfare tactics</a> and ordered a national internet shutdown to maintain complete control. </p>
<p>In June 2019, the Myanmar civilian government initiated the world’s <a href="https://restofworld.org/2021/myanmar-one-blackout-ends-another-begins">longest internet shutdown</a> at the behest of the military, citing issues of instability and the use of internet services to co-ordinate illegal activities in Rakhine and Chin states. Lasting almost a year, the regional shutdown raised serious concerns that many citizens had been left in the dark <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/24/882893419/parts-of-myanmar-unaware-of-covid-19-due-to-internet-ban-advocates-say">about the global COVID-19 pandemic</a>. </p>
<p>On Jan. 31, 2021, the Ministry of Transportation and Communication — controlled by the military — <a href="https://netblocks.org/reports/internet-disrupted-in-myanmar-amid-apparent-military-uprising-JBZrmlB6">ordered a nationwide internet shutdown</a> to prevent citizens from reporting on the military coup. The move was similar to actions taken by the military in neighbouring Thailand during its 2014 coup, which focused on information control and <a href="https://citizenlab.ca/2014/07/information-controls-thailand-2014-coup/">blocked more than 56 URLs</a>.</p>
<p>Following orders to both state-run and foreign internet providers, the initial shutdown in Myanmar began around 3 a.m. Connectivity levels declined 50 per cent by 8 a.m. As access to the internet was severely restricted, the military successfully executed their coup, detaining key political leaders and NLD supporters. </p>
<h2>Using the internet ‘kill switch’</h2>
<p>Instead of a consistent network shutdown, internet shutdowns and social media bans have come in waves over the past two weeks in Myanmar. A partial internet shutdown was initially observed, shielding coup efforts. Once the military seized power, connection was restored. </p>
<p>Citizens turned to Facebook, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/04/myanmar-coup-army-blocks-facebook-access-as-civil-disobedience-grows">the main source of news and communication</a> for 50 per cent of the population, to protest the coup and demand a return to democracy. On Feb. 3, the military ordered a <a href="https://www.mmtimes.com/news/myanmar-bans-facebook-temporarily.html">social media ban</a>, primarily focused on Facebook. Telenor Myanmar (part of Norway’s Telenor Group) restricted Facebook, while <a href="https://www.dica.gov.mm/en/link/myanmar-posts-and-telecommunications">Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications</a> restricted Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. </p>
<p>Since Feb. 1, millions of people in Myanmar have participated in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/14/world/asia/myanmar-military-crackdown.html">civil disobedience campaigns and protests</a> on the streets and online. Although social media bans have remained in place, protesters have <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/myanmar-protests-protesters-getting-around-internet-blackout-14159342">found ways to co-ordinate</a> through encrypted messaging services and virtual private networks, known as VPNs. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/civil-disobedience-myanmars-new-normal.html">mass protests continue</a>, the military is responding with further internet shutdowns and social media restrictions. A second nationwide shutdown was ordered on Feb. 6, but connectivity was mostly restored by Feb. 7. On Feb. 14 and 15, citizens experienced <a href="https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/myanmar-experiencing-near-total-internet-shutdown-14198398">two consecutive nights of internet shutdowns</a>, allowing the military to carry out further crackdowns. </p>
<p>The military has changed its censorship technique to <a href="https://netblocks.org/reports/iraq-introduces-nightly-internet-curfew-JAp1DKBd">curfew-styled internet blackouts</a> that seriously affect the ability of citizens to communicate and verify information. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1361152641645035520"}"></div></p>
<h2>Will shutdowns continue?</h2>
<p>The various tactics used in Myanmar to quell <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/myanmar-protesters-streets-naypyitaw-yangon-police-coup-violence">growing protests against the coup</a> are different from previous shutdowns in 2007 and 2019, but they have a similar effect. </p>
<p>On Feb. 15, in Mandalay, <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/myanmar-protests-resume-after-second-night-of-internet-shutdown/">soldiers broke up a group of 1,000 protesters</a> at the Myanmar Economic Bank using slingshots, sticks and a number of warning shots. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A policeman aims a slingshot into the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384562/original/file-20210216-13-pydf7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A policeman aims a slingshot towards an unknown target during a crackdown on anti-coup protesters holding a rally in front of the Myanmar Economic Bank in Mandalay, Myanmar on Feb. 15, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The military has also recently put forward a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-internet-idUSKBN2AB0WK">new cyber-security bill</a> that could give it sweeping control over online data and allow the collection and monitoring of citizens online. This bill would <a href="https://theconversation.com/myanmars-military-has-used-surveillance-draconian-laws-and-fear-to-stifle-dissent-before-will-it-work-again-154474">severely affect privacy</a> and freedom of speech. </p>
<p>If the military regime is unable to prevent citizens from mobilizing, Myanmar will almost certainly experience continued cycles of internet shutdowns. Citizens may also be met with extreme force and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/04/dozens-countries-governments-rely-internet-shutdowns-hide-repression/">government-sanctioned violence</a>, similar to the current situation in Ethiopia. </p>
<h2>What can be done?</h2>
<p>The situation in Myanmar should be a point of international concern. Internet shutdowns prevent citizens’ ability to document violence and hold perpetrators accountable, leaving them at risk of extreme violence. </p>
<p>But the international community, including foreign ISPs, governments and <a href="https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton-internet-shutdowns-during-covid-19-will-help-spread-the-virus/">advocacy networks, can help</a> end shutdowns in Myanmar. </p>
<p>Given the vast changes to the telecommunications landscape in Myanmar, the growing number of ISP providers could undermine social media bans and internet shutdowns. Telenor Myanmar, for example, seems to have recently intentionally delayed a Twitter ban amid <a href="https://www.telenor.com/media/press-release/myanmar-authorities-orders-nationwide-shutdown-of-the-data-network">public outcry</a>. Delaying the execution of an order is one way for ISPs and telecommunication operators to resist shutdown orders, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/10_dictators_digital_network.pdf">as they’ve done in Egypt</a>. </p>
<p>Telenor Group has attempted to provide details of the military’s directives, but it was <a href="https://www.telenor.com/sustainability/responsible-business/human-rights/mitigate/human-rights-in-myanmar/directives-from-authorities-in-myanmar-february-2021/">recently ordered to stop</a>. Nonetheless, the company’s actions have helped raise awareness about the situation in Myanmar, and ISPs should develop clear policies around forced shutdowns in the future in countries experiencing political upheaval.</p>
<p>Governments should also regularly denounce the use of internet shutdowns and pressure ISPs to take a stronger stance against them — in Myanmar and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154703/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cassandra Preece receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Beny receives funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program.</span></em></p>Internet shutdowns and social media bans in Myanmar have helped the military retain control after the Feb. 1 coup. Here’s why ISPs should develop clear policies around forced internet shutdowns.Cassandra Preece, PhD Student, Political Science, McMaster UniversityHelen Beny, PhD Student, Political Science, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1544892021-02-10T08:48:07Z2021-02-10T08:48:07ZPersecution, dire living conditions keep pushing Rohingya to seek better refuge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382435/original/file-20210204-18-wrerc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C113%2C2533%2C1569&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zikri/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Myanmar’s military coup earlier this month has revived <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-04/what-does-myanmars-military-coup-mean-for-the-rohingya/13114488">questions</a> about the persecution of Rohingya, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-coup-rohingya-refugees-bangladesh/a-56459279">stoking fears</a> among the refugees.</p>
<p>The United Nations has <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/people/reference/rohingya-people/#:%7E:text=Most%20live%20in%20Rakhine%20State,world%E2%80%9D%20by%20the%20United%20Nations.">described</a> Rohingya as “the most persecuted minority in the world” due to the systematic discrimination that they face. </p>
<p>The coup might have put Rohingya in an even more precarious situation. Many of them are now <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-coup-rohingya-refugees-bangladesh/a-56459279">more fearful of returning</a> to their homeland.</p>
<p>Ever since they were rendered stateless through the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring countries, especially Bangladesh. </p>
<p>Malaysia has been another destination country for Rohingya since the 1970s. However, being registered as refugees with the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Malaysia does not guarantee <a href="https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2019/02/25/time-for-a-comprehensive-policy-for-refugees/">legal rights to employment, education and healthcare</a>. </p>
<p>Rohingya people live at the margin of the society and are considered illegal migrants under the local laws. </p>
<p>What factors, then, compel Rohingya to take perilous journeys by sea and land to seek safety?</p>
<h2>Journey to safety</h2>
<p>Rohingya people habitually reside in Northern Rakhine State of Myanmar, which shares borders with Bangladesh. Thus, settlements in Bangladesh refugee camps are one option for the majority of Rohingya due to its proximity. </p>
<p><a href="https://ksr.hkspublications.org/2019/11/12/the-ruse-of-repatriation-why-the-current-efforts-to-repatriate-the-rohingya-back-to-myanmar-will-fail/">Repatriation deals with Bangladesh have not worked</a> because of the ongoing persecution in Myanmar. </p>
<p>Desperate refugees in the camps resort to smuggling and trafficking networks to reach Malaysia for a better life. </p>
<iframe title="" aria-label="chart" id="datawrapper-chart-IFxGV" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/IFxGV/1/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="100%" height="495"></iframe>
<p>The perilous journey usually starts with crossing the Andaman Sea by boat to reach southern Thailand. </p>
<p>Upon arrival, human traffickers would detain them before they were released to enter Malaysia overland after paying a huge sum of money. Those who could not pay would be tortured and sold into slavery. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/14/malaysia-turns-back-migrant-boat-with-more-than-500-aboard">increased patrols by Thai and Malaysian authorities</a> caused Rohingya to be stranded at sea for months due to boat turnbacks. </p>
<p>Fortunately, <a href="https://www.iom.int/news/largest-rohingya-group-arrive-indonesia-2015-receives-support-north-aceh#:%7E:text=The%20296%20Rohingya%20%E2%80%93%20primarily%20women,as%20required%20by%20Indonesian%20authorities.">some found refuge in Aceh, Indonesia</a>, after being rescued by fishermen and sheltered by local authorities. </p>
<p>But their journey did not stop there. <a href="https://www.nst.com.my/world/region/2021/02/662431/missing-rohingya-refugees-indonesia-trafficked-malaysia">Many were trafficked</a> across the Straits of Malacca to reach Malaysia. This is due to family reunions and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yunizar_Adiputera/publication/328162053_Yunizar_Adiputera_Atin_Prabandari_ADDRESSING_CHALLENGES_and_IDENTIFYING_OPPORTUNITIES_for_REFUGEE_ACCESS_to_EMPLOYMENT_in_INDONESIA_POLICY_BRIEF/links/5bbc3ab8a6fdcc9552dcaada/Yunizar-Adiputera-Atin-Prabandari-ADDRESSING-CHALLENGES-and-IDENTIFYING-OPPORTUNITIES-for-REFUGEE-ACCESS-to-EMPLOYMENT-in-INDONESIA-POLICY-BRIEF.pdf">lack of livelihood opportunities</a> in Indonesia. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whoever-wins-the-us-election-human-rights-in-southeast-asia-are-losing-149440">Whoever wins the US election, human rights in Southeast Asia are losing</a>
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<h2>Push factors</h2>
<p>Two main factors push Rohingya to keep taking these risky journeys. </p>
<p><em>First</em>, decades of systematic discrimination and persecution by Myanmar force Rohingya to flee. </p>
<p>Having no citizenship means Rohingya are deprived of basic rights of livelihoods and freedom of movement. </p>
<p>Following the military crackdowns in 2017, which led to <a href="https://www.unocha.org/rohingya-refugee-crisis#:%7E:text=Yet%20it%20was%20August%202017,%20have%20fled%20into%20Cox's%20Bazar.">745,000 Rohingya seeking shelter in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh</a>, the International Court of Justice ruled that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/international-court-of-justice-orders-myanmar-to-prevent-genocide-against-the-rohingya/2020/01/23/ff383ff4-3d29-11ea-afe2-090eb37b60b1_story.html">Myanmar must take measures to prevent genocide</a> against this ethnic minority. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/myanmar-politics-int-idUSKBN2A11W6">Last week’s military coup</a> put Myanmar under a one-year state of emergency. Leaders of the National League for Democracy – the party that recently <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54899170">won an election in a landslide</a> – and other key politicians were detained. </p>
<p>Worryingly, the military general in power, <a href="https://time.com/5004822/myanmar-rohingya-min-aung-hlaing/">Min Aung Hlaing</a>, engineered the 2017 brutal crackdowns targeting Rohingya people, which democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/aung-san-suu-kyi-from-symbol-of-human-rights-to-fighting-claims-of-genocide-12205035">regrettably defended</a>. </p>
<p><em>Second</em>, lack of livelihood and educational opportunities cause refugees to leave Bangladesh and continue to look for a better place, such as Malaysia.</p>
<p>Being marooned in overcrowded and under-resourced refugee camps in Bangladesh means that Rohingya cannot live even at subsistence level. </p>
<p>Competition for resources with the impoverished locals also creates friction between the refugees and host society. </p>
<p>The lack of jobs and proper schooling leads Rohingya people to seek a better future, only to find themselves becoming victims of human trafficking syndicates.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Baca juga:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-aceh-is-a-rare-place-of-welcome-for-rohingya-refugees-143833">Why Aceh is a rare place of welcome for Rohingya refugees</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Could international sanctions work?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-sanctions-idUSTRE79A0YR20111011">Myanmar has faced various economic sanctions</a> due to its poor human rights record. </p>
<p>For instance, the US imposed broad sanctions on Myanmar after the crackdown on student protests in 1988 before finally <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-37375829">lifting them in 2016</a>. </p>
<p>To minimise the impacts of sanctions on the general public, the US then targeted sanctions against certain individuals and industries. In 2019, following the military operations against Rohingya, the US imposed <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-myanmar-sanctions-idUSKBN1YE1XU">targeted sanctions on Myanmar military officials</a>. </p>
<p>However, these efforts did not stop the genocide against Rohingya and the oppression of other ethnic minorities like Kachin and Chin.</p>
<p>On the one hand, such sanctions would apply some pressure on Myanmar to be accountable. On the other hand, these actions could also be used by the military junta to justify and maintain their authoritarian rule and suspicion of the West.</p>
<p>Moreover, Myanmar is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-un-idUSKBN16O2J6">continuously backed by China and Russia</a> for their geopolitical interests. </p>
<h2>Sharing responsibility</h2>
<p>Moving forward, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must abandon its “non-interference” policy regarding the plight of Rohingya. </p>
<p>Over the years, rhetorical condemnations of Myanmar – one of the last three members to join the regional bloc – have been directed by Malaysia and Indonesia individually instead of collectively by ASEAN members. </p>
<p>In this regard, there should be closer co-operation with and support for Bangladesh, which bears the strains of hosting <a href="https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/bangladesh-expects-start-rohingya-repatriation-myanmar-june">over 1.2 million refugees</a>. </p>
<p>Besides the monetary cost of hosting Rohingya – estimated to be <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/cost-supporting-rohingyas-dhaka-now-saddled-12b-year-1804855">over US$7 billion by 2024</a> – Bangladesh needs to be supported through development projects that meet the needs of both refugees and the locals hosting them. </p>
<p>Livelihood and educational opportunities are crucial to empower the Rohingya community and instil a sense of dignity and hope in their future. </p>
<p>Most importantly, the repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar must come with citizenship and equal rights. </p>
<p>ASEAN should uphold its <a href="https://asean.org/asean-human-rights-declaration/">Human Rights Declaration</a> as an inclusive regional community that acts to save lives rather than merely becoming an economic bloc motivated solely by trade and investment at the expense of human rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Para penulis tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi di luar afiliasi akademis yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>Continued persecution in Myanmar and dire living condition in Bangladesh push Rohingya people to keep seeking refuge.Aslam Abd Jalil, PhD candidate, The University of QueenslandAtin Prabandari, Assistant Professor, Department of International Relations, Universitas Gadjah Mada Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1528142021-01-21T16:55:06Z2021-01-21T16:55:06ZBiden’s peaceful inauguration doesn’t end America’s longtime coup addiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379989/original/file-20210121-23-7ivefs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden review the troops from the east steps of the U.S. Capitol during the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(David Tulis/Pool Photo via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joe Biden is now the 46th president of the United States. He was inaugurated under intense security following the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/06/trump-virtual-coup-turns-real-mob-breaches-capitol/6571251002/">attempted coup</a> on Jan. 6, 2021, by Donald Trump supporters after the former president called for an insurrection against his own country’s government.</p>
<p>In his inauguration address, Biden made reference to the coup attempt and once again held up the U.S. as an example to the rest of the world: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world. That is what we owe our forebears, one another, and generations to follow.”</p>
</blockquote>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qpDlnpNkPdg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Biden makes his inaugural address, via CTV News.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>World responses to the raid on the U.S. Capitol had taken a similar tone, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s incredulous claim that the “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55568492">United States stands for democracy around the world</a>.”</p>
<p>But as Biden takes power and the U.S. Senate prepares to hold Trump’s second impeachment trial, it’s important to keep in mind that there was nothing unique about the attempted coup except that it happened at home. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have backed military coups around the world for decades, from Iran in 1953 to Bolivia in 2019.</p>
<p>One study counted <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2020.1693620">64 covert and six overt coups</a> backed by the United States. Yet the erasing of the history of U.S.-backed coups allows the United States to forget its own acts in toppling other governments, retroactively washing itself clean. </p>
<p>Take George W. Bush, who is increasingly gaining some grudging respect since the end of his presidency. <a href="https://people.com/politics/president-george-w-bush-addresses-violence-at-the-u-s-capitol/">Bush spoke out clearly</a> against the “mayhem unfolding at the seat of our nation’s government” on Jan. 6. “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic,” he tweeted. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/by-inciting-capitol-mob-trump-pushes-u-s-closer-to-a-banana-republic-152850">By inciting Capitol mob, Trump pushes U.S. closer to a banana republic</a>
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<p>The dismissive reference to “banana republics” is more polite than Trump’s comments about “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/shithole-countries/580054/">shithole countries</a>” but it amounts to the same preaching of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-capitol-raid-exposes-the-myth-and-pathology-of-american-exceptionalism-152668">American exceptionalism</a> and the same contempt for non-white non-Americas. </p>
<h2>Guatemala</h2>
<p>Take one of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Kurtz-Phelan-t.html">original supposed “banana republics,”</a> Guatemala. In the early 1950s, president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, following the recommendations of the World Bank, began a campaign for economic independence that threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita Brands International. The U.S. company’s highly profitable business in Guatemala was affected by the end of exploitative labour practices in the country.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1347569588674965504"}"></div></p>
<p>The father of modern advertising, Edward Bernays, <a href="https://www.modernmarketingpartners.com/2017/06/01/chiquita-pr-campaign/">set about</a> “engineering consent” for the false accusation that Arbenz was a communist. American officials then egged on Guatemalan army officers to overthrow Arbenz, which they <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019300">did in 1954</a>. </p>
<p>Military regimes continued for decades, inflicting <a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/military-rule-threatens-guatemalas-highland-maya-indians">violence upon Indigenous Peoples</a>. Guatemala’s truth commission concluded that civil war had claimed <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19636725">200,000 lives</a> and that the army committed 93 per cent of all human rights violations. </p>
<h2>South Korea, Iran</h2>
<p>This U.S.-backed coup wasn’t the first. In the wake of the Second World War, an American army occupation in <a href="https://thewire.in/history/uncovering-the-hidden-history-of-the-korean-war">South Korea</a> throttled grassroots Korean democracy and imposed U.S. ally Syngman Rhee as president. Several coups followed until the arrival of lasting democracy in the 1980s. </p>
<p>South Korea’s <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2012/04/truth-commission-south-korea-2005">truth commission found</a> that tens of thousands of people had either been killed or suffered human rights violations, 82 per cent of them at the hands of the South Korean military. </p>
<p>Most famously, the U.S. helped topple Iran’s first democratic president, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. When Mossadegh echoed the doctrine of governments like Canada that oil resources belonged to the people, he upset British and American oil companies. Their home governments then painted Mossadegh as a dangerous leftist. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh rides on the shoulders of cheering crowds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379349/original/file-20210118-17-1wh6k55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In this September 1951 photo, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh rides on the shoulders of cheering crowds outside the parliament building after reiterating his oil nationalization views to his supporters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo, File)</span></span>
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<p>U.S. media reports painted him as effeminate and weak. “<a href="https://iranbeyondthenews.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/the-man-who-made-the-world-say-%E2%80%9Cwhat-if%E2%80%9D/">He favoured pink pyjamas</a>,” according to the <em>New York Times</em>. <em>Time</em> magazine called him the “weeping, fainting leader of a helpless country.” Kermit Roosevelt, a CIA operative in Iran, hired paid protesters, and Iran’s army soon toppled the government. </p>
<h2>South Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile</h2>
<p>U.S. governments even approved coups against pro-American rulers. Ngo Dinh Diem’s tenure as president of South Vietnam ended unceremoniously in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy approved a plan for Vietnamese army officers to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/01/archives/us-and-diems-overthrow-step-by-step-pentagon-papers-the-diem-coup.html">overthrow him</a>. The U.S. would then work with a revolving door of military rulers in South Vietnam until 1973, when it withdrew its forces from the country. </p>
<p>President Lyndon Johnson encouraged a <a href="https://www.insideindonesia.org/accomplices-in-atrocity">coup against Sukarno</a>, Indonesia’s first president, by pro-western army officers. Sukarno was no democrat, but the United States was content with him until he took steps against western oil companies. Yet while trying to isolate his government, the U.S. government kept in contact with pro-western economists and the Indonesian army, as historian Bradley Simpson <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=7853">chronicles</a>. The U.S. embassy aided the mass killing of as many as a million people in 1965-66. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet is seen in full military garb." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379352/original/file-20210118-13-tf732q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet is seen in this March 1998 photo in Santiago, Chile.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Jakarta is coming,” graffiti in Chile proclaimed as President Salvador Allende’s policies increasingly irritated U.S. President Richard Nixon. The “<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/18/how-jakarta-became-the-codeword-for-us-backed-mass-killing/">Jakarta method</a>” saw an attempt to copy the “success” in Indonesia. Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s forces seized power in 1973, then <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2003/09/commission-inquiry-chile-03">“disappeared” and tortured thousands of people</a>. </p>
<h2>Bolivia</h2>
<p>America’s addiction to coups survived the end of the Cold War. The U.S. has backed coups in Haiti, Honduras and elsewhere. Most recently, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silence-us-backed-coup-evo-morales-bolivia-american-states">cheered the toppling</a> of Bolivia’s president Evo Morales in 2019 after the Organization of American States implied Morales was rigging votes. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-zimbabwe-to-bolivia-what-makes-a-military-coup-127138">From Zimbabwe to Bolivia: what makes a military coup?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Later investigations showed the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/bolivia-dismissed-its-october-elections-fraudulent-our-research-found-no-reason-suspect-fraud/">claims were groundless</a>. As has often been the case, U.S. corporate interests were at stake.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/29/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-elon-musk-and-the-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia/">We will coup whoever we want</a>,” said Telsa founder Elon Musk, long <a href="https://socialistproject.ca/2020/07/elon-musk-overthrow-of-democracy-in-bolivia/">interested in the country’s lithium</a>, needed for electric car batteries. </p>
<p>Coup addiction overseas has now come home to Washington. We can draw three lessons. </p>
<h2>Lessons learned</h2>
<p>Firstly, “American exceptionalism” insists that the U.S. is different from all other countries. In fact, it’s derivative. Trump’s forces followed a well-thumbed script. Consent must be manufactured, the enemy demonized — a pattern laid out in the 1950s by Bernays and Roosevelt. If necessary, crowds are mobilized in the pursuit of “regime change.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-capitol-raid-exposes-the-myth-and-pathology-of-american-exceptionalism-152668">The U.S. Capitol raid exposes the myth and pathology of American exceptionalism</a>
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</em>
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<p>Second, the method of the coup must be made acceptable via demonization and imagining coups as an acceptable way to transfer power. The American penchant for coups normalized this mindset long before Trump. Americans accept violence as simply another item in the political arsenal. </p>
<p>Finally, it helps to bring racism and sexism into play. Mossadegh was deemed weak and effeminate. Diem’s alleged weakness helped convince Kennedy that he had to go. It was easy to convince the American public to accept these faraway coups. Trump’s innovation was to convince millions of Americans that their fellow citizens, especially racialized Americans, were destroying the U.S. at home — <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-u-s-capitol-raid-was-a-failed-self-coup-previously-seen-in-dying-regimes-152917">and that a self-coup to remove that threat</a> was perfectly acceptable. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/30/biden-america-is-back-team-insiders-repeat-mistakes-us-trump">America is back</a>,” says Joe Biden. The many victims of U.S.-backed coups might wish for America to stay home from time to time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Webster receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, but no funds from this grant supported this publication. </span></em></p>From a global perspective, there was nothing unique about the recent raid on the U.S. Capitol. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have backed military coups around the world for decades.David Webster, Associate Professor of History / Professeur Agrégé, Département d’Histoire, Bishop's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1528032021-01-07T02:10:33Z2021-01-07T02:10:33ZWas it a coup? No, but siege on US Capitol was the election violence of a fragile democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377439/original/file-20210106-15-jwk6ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Insurrection at the US Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Did the United States just have a coup attempt? </p>
<p>Supporters of President Donald Trump, following his encouragement, stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-protesters-again-dispute-trumps-defeat-d-c-police-make-arrests-11609945368">disrupting the certification</a> of Joe Biden’s election victory. Waving Trump banners, <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/watch-hundreds-of-trump-supporters-storm-capitol-hill-break-fences-and-fight-with-police-2021-01-06">hundreds of people</a> broke through barricades and smashed windows to enter the building where Congress convenes. One <a href="https://www.fox5dc.com/news/woman-shot-killed-after-pro-trump-protesters-charged-us-capitol-identified">rioter and one police officer died</a> in the clash and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-us-capitol-dc-protest-2021-01-06/">several other police officers were hospitalized</a>. Congress went on lockdown.</p>
<p>While violent and shocking, what happened on Jan. 6 wasn’t a coup. </p>
<p>This Trumpist insurrection was election violence, much like the election violence that <a href="https://theconversation.com/once-you-engage-in-political-violence-it-becomes-easier-to-do-it-again-an-expert-on-political-violence-reflects-on-events-at-the-capitol-152801">plagues many fragile democracies</a>.</p>
<h2>What is a coup?</h2>
<p>While coups do not have a single definition, researchers who study them – <a href="https://oefresearch.org/activities/coup-cast">like ourselves</a> – agree on the key attributes of what academics call a “coup event.” </p>
<p>Coup experts <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343310397436">Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne</a> define a coup d’etat as “an overt attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting head of state using unconstitutional means.”</p>
<p>Essentially, three parameters are used to judge whether an insurrection is a coup event:</p>
<p>1) Are the perpetrators agents of the state, such as military officials or rogue governmental officials? </p>
<p>2) Is the target of the insurrection the chief executive of the government?</p>
<p>3) Do the plotters use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?</p>
<h2>Coups and coup attempts</h2>
<p>A successful coup occurred in Egypt on July 3, 2013, when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/world/middleeast/egypt.html">forcefully removed</a> the country’s unpopular president, Mohamed Morsi. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, had recently overseen the writing of a new constitution. Al-Sisi suspended that, too. This qualifies as a coup because al-Sisi seized power illegally and introduced his own rule of law in the ashes of the elected government. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Civilians and soldiers in fatigues holding weapons cheer on a balcony, at night" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377457/original/file-20210106-23-hydyzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egyptian protesters celebrate the military overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi along with officers of the Egyptian Republican Guard, July 3, 2013, in Cairo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/egyptian-opposition-protesters-and-officers-of-the-egyptian-news-photo/172570168?adppopup=true">Ed Giles/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Coups don’t always succeed in overthrowing the government.</p>
<p>In 2016, members of the Turkish military <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-will-turkeys-failed-coup-and-massive-purge-affect-its-economic-future-62947">attempted to remove Turkey’s strongman president, Reçep Erdogan, from power</a>. Soldiers seized key areas in Ankara, the capital, and Istanbul, including the Bosphorus Bridge and two airports. But the coup lacked coordination and widespread support, and it <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2017/07/take-to-the-streets-turkeys-failed-coup-one-year-later/">failed quickly</a> after President Erdogan called on his supporters to confront the plotters. Erdogan remains in power today. </p>
<h2>What happened at the US Capitol?</h2>
<p>The uprising at the Capitol building does not meet all three criteria of a coup.</p>
<p>Trump’s rioting supporters targeted a branch of executive authority – Congress – and they did so illegally, through trespassing and property destruction. Categories #2 and #3, check.</p>
<p>As for category #1, the rioters appeared to be civilians operating of their own volition, not state actors. President Trump did <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2021/01/06/washington-dc-protest-twitter-facebook-silence-donald-trump/6569864002/">incite his followers</a> to march on the Capitol building less than an hour before the crowd invaded the grounds, insisting the election had been stolen and saying “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-protests/trump-invited-supporters-to-wild-protest-and-told-them-to-fight-they-did-idUSKBN29B24S">We will not take it anymore</a>.” This comes after months of spreading unfounded electoral lies and conspiracies that created a perception of government malfeasance in the mind of many Trump supporters. </p>
<p>Whether the president’s motivation in inflaming the anger of his supporters was to assault Congress is not clear, and he tepidly <a href="https://abc7.com/president-donald-trump-news-twitter-washington-dc-protest/9414371">told them to go home as the violence escalated</a>. For now it seems the riot in Washington, D.C., was enacted without the approval, aid or active leadership of government actors like the military, police or <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1346911179042484230">sympathetic GOP officials</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Congress staffer holds his hands up while Capitol Police SWAT team clears an office" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377475/original/file-20210107-14-pnllvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SWAT police try to clear the Capitol building of pro-Trump rioters, Jan. 6, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/congress-staffer-holds-his-hands-up-while-capitol-police-news-photo/1230457711?adppopup=true">Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>American political elites are hardly blameless, though. </p>
<p>By spreading conspiracy theories about election fraud, numerous Republican senators, including <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/1/4/22213246/republican-senators-hawley-cruz-cotton-trump-electoral-college-presidential-election-joe-biden">Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz</a>, created the conditions for political violence in the United States, and specifically electoral-related violence. </p>
<p>Academics have documented that <a href="https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2020/10/13/assessing-the-risk-of-electoral-violence-in-the-united-states/">contentious political rhetoric</a> fuels the risk of election-related violence. Elections are high-stakes; they represent a transfer of political power. When <a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Enyhan/democratic-norms.pdf">government officials demean and discredit democratic institutions</a> as a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546550902950290">simmering political conflict</a> is underway, contested elections can trigger political violence and mob rule.</p>
<h2>So what did happen?</h2>
<p>The shocking events of Jan. 6 were political violence of the sort that too often mars elections in young or unstable democracies. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/world/bangladesh-protests-violence-arrests/index.html">Bangladeshi elections suffer from</a> perennial mob violence and political insurrections due to years of government violence and opposition anger. Its 2015 and 2018 elections looked more like war zones than democratic transitions.</p>
<p>In Cameroon, armed dissidents perpetrated violence in the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/12/cameroon-election-violence-anglophone-regions">2020 election</a>, targeting government buildings, opposition figures and innocent bystanders alike. Their aim was to delegitimize the vote in response to sectarian violence and government overreach. </p>
<p>The United States’ electoral violence differs in cause and context from that seen in Bangladesh and Cameroon, but the action was similar. The U.S. didn’t have a coup, but this Trump-encouraged insurrection is likely to send the country down a politically and socially turbulent road. </p>
<p><em>This story has been updated to reflect the death toll of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152803/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clayton Besaw is a senior analyst with the One Earth Future Foundation and the Open Nuclear Network, a non-profit organization that promotes peace and security in post-conflict countries and the mitigation of nuclear weapons proliferation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Frank is an analyst with the One Earth Future Foundation and the Open Nuclear Network, a non-profit organization that promotes peace and security in post-conflict countries and the mitigation of nuclear weapon proliferation.</span></em></p>Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting Congress’s certification of Joe Biden as president-elect. Coup experts explain this violent insurrection wasn’t technically a coup.Clayton Besaw, Research Affiliate and Senior Analyst, University of Central FloridaMatthew Frank, Master's student, International Security, University of DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1448462020-08-28T12:22:26Z2020-08-28T12:22:26ZMali celebrates after president’s ouster – but there are few ‘good coups’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354491/original/file-20200825-22-1l01kww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C8%2C5439%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The scene in Mali's capital on Aug. 18, 2020, after Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his prime minister were overthrown by the military.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowds-cheer-as-soldiers-parade-in-vehicles-along-the-news-photo/1228096969?adppopup=true">John Kalapo/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Immediately after Mali’s unpopular president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was removed on Aug. 18 by the military in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/malis-predictable-coup-leaves-an-unclear-path-to-civilian-rule-144774">swift and bloodless coup</a>, many Malians celebrated.</p>
<p>Keita’s ouster came after years of <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200811-malian-protesters-regroup-to-demand-the-resignation-of-president-keita">corruption, mismanagement and failed promises</a>. <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200420-mali-election-runoff-tarnished-by-intimidation-and-allegations-of-vote-rigging">Credible allegations</a> of fraud and election-related violence further fueled popular anger after a contested parliamentary vote in March. </p>
<p>After his ouster, there was a veritable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/20/mali-coup-coronavirus/">jubilee among the citizen protesters</a> who had demonstrated since June to demand Keita’s resignation. They flocked to the streets holding signs reading “This isn’t a coup, it’s a revolution” and “mission accomplished.” </p>
<p>Some countries have seen <a href="https://academic.oup.com/fpa/article-abstract/12/2/192/2367607">democracy take root</a> after an <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002716654742?journalCode=jcrb">autocratic regime</a> was ended by a coup, including Nigeria in 2010 and even Mali itself, back in 1991. </p>
<p>But there are very few “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/13/why-does-united-states-still-believe-myth-good-coup/">good coups</a>.” Overthrowing a corrupt leader is an easy fix for the moment, but history shows the price is almost always political and economic instability – and, usually, another military coup.</p>
<h2>Coup risk</h2>
<p>I am a quantitative political analyst who uses coup data and a machine learning system called <a href="https://oefresearch.org/activities/coup-cast">CoupCast</a> to examine why coups happen and predict where they are likely to occur. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://oefdatascience.github.io/REIGN.github.io/">data collected by the research network I work with</a>, there have been 466 coup attempts in 95 countries since Jan. 1, 1950. This data clearly shows that so-called “coup events” – that is, both failed and successful coups – <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2019/04/17/how-to-predict-when-a-despot-will-fall">substantially increase the risk of another coup event</a> in the future.</p>
<p>Once a country has had a single coup event, it will have, on average, five such events over 70 years. Between 1950 and 2020 we find only 19 examples of countries that experienced just one coup, among them South Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe. Thirteen countries have had at least 10 coup attempts since 1950, with Bolivia topping the list at 22.</p>
<p>Research suggests <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168016630837">a new authoritarian regime</a> is most likely to emerge after a coup – and it may well use <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168016630837">violent repression</a> to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0095327X19881747?journalCode=afsa">assert its power</a> in an unstable era.</p>
<p>Mali follows this pattern. Until President Amadou Touré was overthrown in a 2012 coup, its government was relatively stable. The post-coup period was characterized by popular anger, lack of political progress and economic troubles. By April of this year, Coupcast placed Mali among the countries most likely to see a coup event in 2020.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Crowd of supporters raising their fists and snapping photos of soldiers in fatigues" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=370%2C0%2C5225%2C3104&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354478/original/file-20200824-14-w5hbdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People cheer on the army in Bamako, Mali, on Aug. 21, 2020, three days after the military overthrew Mali’s president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/malian-army-soldiers-arrive-amid-a-crowd-of-supporters-at-news-photo/1228144336?adppopup=true">Annie Risemberg/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Why coups beget coups</h2>
<p>Just one coup attempt can increase a country’s coup risk for up to 25 years, <a href="https://oefresearch.org/activities/coup-cast">CoupCast’s</a> data analysis shows. Most countries will have another coup before their quarter-century of consequences ends. When that happens, it adds another 25 years of risk. Countries can become trapped in cycles of coups and post-coup crises.</p>
<p>At that point, coup risk can be diminished only by a long period of political stability. Both South Korea and Uruguay, for example, long ago surpassed the risk phase to become stable democracies. </p>
<p>Even after the restoration of civilian rule, though, coups can leave a precedent for military involvement in politics. Once generals have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/02/what-history-coups-middle-east-tells-us-about-venezuela/">had a taste of political influence</a>, it becomes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/13/why-does-united-states-still-believe-myth-good-coup/">increasingly difficult to stop further interference</a>. </p>
<p>Coup events also <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1536-7150.00162">negatively affect a country’s economy</a> by decreasing foreign economic investment and diminishing domestic productivity. Such economic downturns feed into the coup cycle. As the economy crumbles, popular discontent rises and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002713520531">additional military interventions become more likely</a>. </p>
<p>Mali was only eight years into its 25-year coup risk window when Pres. Keita was overthrown. Now the clock starts again. Hopes on the ground are high that the country will see a <a href="https://theconversation.com/malis-predictable-coup-leaves-an-unclear-path-to-civilian-rule-144774">better future under a new leader</a>. But history gives much reason to be cautious.</p>
<p><em>This article has been corrected to accurately characterize Mali’s March 2020 contested election.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clayton Besaw is a research associate with the One Earth Future Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes peace and security in post-conflict countries.</span></em></p>A coup may be a quick fix for a problem leader, but history shows that coups beget more coups.Clayton Besaw, Political Science Researcher, University of Central FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1271382019-11-20T09:23:28Z2019-11-20T09:23:28ZFrom Zimbabwe to Bolivia: what makes a military coup?<p>Evo Morales, president of Bolivia since 2006, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bolivia-in-crisis-how-evo-morales-was-forced-out-126859">resigned</a> on November 10 following weeks of demonstrations triggered by a disputed election in October. Morales won the election amid allegations that the result was rigged in his favour. </p>
<p>The turning point in Morales’s departure from office was the intervention of Williams Kaliman, commander of the Bolivian armed forces. Speaking at a press conference, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50369591">Kaliman urged Morales</a> to resign “for the good of our Bolivia”. Morales has since gone into exile in Mexico and the manner of his departure has sparked <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/world/americas/bolivia-evo-morales-coup.html">passionate debate</a> about whether it was tantamount to a military coup.</p>
<p>Two years ago this month, the Zimbabwean military placed former President Robert Mugabe under house arrest. Subsequently, SB Moyo, a major general in the army, accompanied by a high-ranking air force officer, <a href="https://www.enca.com/africa/full-statement-by-zim-army-on-state-broadcaster">publicly broadcast the message</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is not a military takeover of government. What the Zimbabwe Defence Forces is doing is to pacify a degenerating social, political and economic situation in our country. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The military insisted it was only targeting criminals around Mugabe who were perpetrating “crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country”. The officers vowed that the situation would return to normal, once they brought the “criminals” to justice. The “criminals” were never brought to justice, but Mugabe resigned from office a week later. </p>
<p>Like the recent case in Bolivia, the Zimbabwean military’s intervention generated animated discussion about whether it was actually a military coup. Some Zimbabwean ruling political elites, international media and political commentators described it as a <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/southern-africa/zimbabwe/b134-zimbabwes-military-assisted-transition-and-prospects-recovery">“military-assisted transition”</a>, “<a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-20-zimbabwe-when-is-a-coup-not-a-coup/">non-coup-coup</a>”, and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/21/zimbabwes-strange-crisis-is-a-very-modern-kind-of-coup">“modern”</a> intervention, among other names.</p>
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<h2>Call it by its name</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/advance-article/doi/10.1093/afraf/adz024/5607894?searchresult=1">new research</a> provides some clarity on how to understand the Zimbabwean military’s action in November 2017: the intervention was a coup bearing substantial commonalities with historical coups in Africa. </p>
<p>The coup happened because Zimbabwe’s generals were dissatisfied with Mugabe’s demotion of those who had fought in the country’s 1970s liberation struggle within the structures of the ruling ZANU PF party. Mugabe’s waning authority also coincided with growing political ambitions of some generals and insecurity in the military’s higher ranks caused by job insecurity and fear of criminal prosecution.</p>
<p>The way the military justified its political manoeuvres were similar to justifications used by other military forces in Africa since the 1960s. Crucially, the military also violated <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Zimbabwe_2013.pdf">Zimbabwe’s constitution</a> by deploying without the president’s authorisation. </p>
<p>These and other indicators that the military’s action was a coup went largely unrecognised at the time by many commentators and journalists. Mugabe was also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2014.933646?journalCode=cjss20">a demonised politician</a>, particularly by sections of the Western media and diplomats, who were keen to see him leave political office.</p>
<p>The more coups have <a href="http://www.operationspaix.net/DATA/DOCUMENT/8211%7Ev%7EThe_African_Union_as_a_norm_entrepreneur_on_militarycoups_detat_in_Africa__19522012___an_empirical_assessment.pdf">become widely unacceptable</a> in Africa since the early 2000s, the more pervasive strategic uses and misuses of the term coup have become. Mugabe’s international adversaries chose not to call the military’s intervention a coup, lest that saved him from an ignominious fall from power. In a volte-face, when <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Mugabe died in September 2019</a>, Western media and diplomats often described him, in their <a href="https://theconversation.com/mugabe-is-dead-but-old-men-still-run-southern-africa-123611">obituaries and commentaries</a> on his political career, as having lost power in a military coup. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Gabriel Mugabe: a man whose list of failures is legion</a>
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</em>
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<p>Subjective uses of the word coup risk banalising and misrepresenting a term that has a clear meaning. Patrick McGowan, an accomplished researcher on coups in Africa, has offered a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-modern-african-studies/article/african-military-coups-detat-19562001-frequency-trends-and-distribution/C7E923CE86B78DD099FDEFAF89F1F88E">usefully precise definition</a>. Coups are ejections from power of political leaders, through unmistakably unconstitutional means, mainly by part of the army: “Either on their own or in conjunction with civilian elites such as civil servants, politicians and monarchs.” Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup played out along the lines of McGowan’s definition. </p>
<p>Whether events in Bolivia constitute a military coup will become clearer in the coming weeks and months as researchers and investigative journalists uncover the elite politics at play behind the scenes and the exact motivations of Kaliman and his fellow military commanders. </p>
<h2>In the aftermath</h2>
<p>In Zimbabwe today, the state of affairs looks much like the aftermath of first-time coups seen in African countries such as Benin in 1963 or Uganda in 1971. First-time coups are often extremely popular, so a government that emerges as a result of such a “maiden” coup commands significant legitimacy early on. </p>
<p>But that legitimacy soon fades when pledges to deliver a credible post-coup election and to conduct substantive political, social and economic reforms do not materialise. As legitimacy wanes, authoritarianism re-emerges. </p>
<p>This is a key part of the post-coup situation in Zimbabwe today. Two years on, reforms are cosmetic and proceed slowly. And an election held in July 2018 was not deemed credible by <a href="https://thecommonwealth.org/media/news/zimbabwe-election-commonwealth-releases-observer-group-report">Commonwealth</a>, <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/eu-observers-say-zimbabwe-election-fell-short-on-fairness-20181010">EU</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/e460f71c3e7b477cbff3cf58484370d9/The-Latest:-US-based-election-observers-criticize-Zimbabwe">American</a> election observers. Legitimacy has dwindled and authoritarianism returned, as demonstrated by the military’s <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ffd8b486-1b45-11e9-9e64-d150b3105d21">strong repression of protests</a> against fuel price increases in January 2019.</p>
<p>In 1970, the South African scholar and anti-apartheid activist <a href="https://www.ruthfirstpapers.org.uk/term/cluster/barrel-gun">Ruth First warned</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once the army breaks the first commandment of its training – that armies do not act against their own governments – the initial coup sets off a process… the coup spawns other coups. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps First is wrong and Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup was simply an aberration, a never-to-be-repeated occurrence now consigned to the history books. But one can never be too certain. The quip by American historian <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/advance-article/doi/10.1093/afraf/adz024/5607894?searchresult=1#165697513">Walter Laqueur</a> rings true: “Coups d’état are annoying not only for practising politicians but also from the point of view of the political scientist”, because they are capricious.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blessing-Miles Tendi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the military intervened against Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2017, it wasn’t widely called a military coup. New research shows that’s exactly what it was.Blessing-Miles Tendi, Associate Professor in the Politics of Africa, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1262122019-11-03T08:32:31Z2019-11-03T08:32:31ZBissau-Guineans hold their breath – again – as uncertainty deepens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299640/original/file-20191031-187934-1wdab7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Guinean immigrants living and working in Portugal participate in a demonstration against the political crisis in Guinea-Bissau back in 2012. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Tiago Petinga</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Guinea Bissau’s President Jose Mario Vaz <a href="https://punchng.com/guinea-bissau-president-sacks-ministers/">announced</a> earlier this week that he had sacked the government. His decision threw the West African country into further chaos and casts doubt over elections planned for this month. </p>
<p>This is the latest in a months-long confrontation between the presidency and the government led by Prime Minister Aristide Gomes. </p>
<p>Vaz’s action is a step backwards in terms of the political gains made during the successful legislative elections in March. Prior to that the country and its 1.8 million citizens had made considerable political progress in the wake of five major coup events over the <a href="https://theconversation.com/rivalries-ahead-of-guinea-bissaus-election-raise-questions-about-stability-119669">past 19 years</a> – and an ongoing constitutional crisis. The crisis stems from continued tensions between the legislature and the presidency.</p>
<p>The latest crisis will certainly test its nascent political stability.</p>
<p>One big test will be what happens to plans to hold a presidential election in <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2019/06/19/guinea-bissau-presidential-election-to-be-held-on-november-24/">November</a>. Opposition discontent, repression and the constitutional crisis could all undermine popular support for holding the election under such conditions. Under the current political climate, the likelihood of a peaceful and uncontested presidential election is likely be substantially lower.</p>
<p>But the biggest test to stability will be whether the current political crisis leads to the military intervening. Coup events in <a href="https://www.voanews.com/archive/guinea-bissau-military-stages-bloodless-coup-2003-09-14">2003</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/world/africa/guinea-bissau-coup-removes-presidential-front-runner.html">2012</a> were catalysed by political discontent within the military, especially around election periods. </p>
<p>President Vaz has made several important reforms to mitigate the political power of the military. But the combination of a prolonged political crisis, popular discontent and a looming election makes the prospect of another coup attempt more likely than it was before.</p>
<h2>The background</h2>
<p>The context for this current crisis goes back to March, when Vaz refused to appoint Domingos Simoes Pereira, a member of his own African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, as prime minister. Vaz’s term then ended before a new cabinet was approved that included Gomes as a compromise candidate.</p>
<p>This resulted in the national people’s assembly appointing their own interim president. But Vaz continued to hold on to the job, further inflaming the crisis.</p>
<p>The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) eventually brokered a compromise which allowed Vaz to stay on as a caretaker president until the November election, albeit with limited powers. This compromise was meant to temper further escalation of the constitutional crisis. </p>
<p>It did little to mitigate the root causes of political division within Guinea-Bissau. The consequences of continued constitutional uncertainties, elite rivalries and popular discontent were never going to be solved by the ECOWAS-led compromise.</p>
<p>A lot of hope was pinned on a successful and uncontroversial presidential election. But the tension between the presidency and the legislature is far from solved. The current catalyst for Vaz’s claim of a serious political crisis is derived from the <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/protester-killed-police-block-guinea-bissau-rally-143130082.html">death of an opposition protester</a> and Gomes’s use of Facebook to publicly accuse a political rival of fomenting a <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/africa/Coup--drug-claims-rock-Guinea-Bissau-politics/4552902-5329302-p7bych/index.html">coup plot</a>. </p>
<p>It seems that Vaz lost faith in Gomes and already existing fault lines in the balance of power were reopened. Gomes now refuses to obey the order and claims that Vaz’s mandate is constitutionally invalid. Vaz’s order also <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/africa/2019-07-04-guinea-bissau-president-names-government-in-move-to-end-deadlock/">tests the ECOWAS compromise</a> by directly interfering with the government in the lead up to the election. </p>
<h2>The options</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to identify what the opposition needs to do in navigating a potential escalation of the political crisis in the country. The situation could easily get dangerous for individual opposition.</p>
<p>Finding ways to avoid further escalation of tensions would be a good first step. Stability and peace would result in the best outcome for both the government and opposition.</p>
<p>But this will be easier said than done.</p>
<p>One potential option would be for opposition leaders to work with Vaz and Gomes to work out an agreement in which major political figures abstain from using social media or other communication mediums in a negative way. This would remove one avenue for stoking the flames of division. </p>
<p>But this option may fall flat if political rivalries and unresolved constitutional questions continue to escalate within the government.</p>
<p>The prospects for a smooth transition are worse than they were before. The <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/1034401">peaceful March election</a> and the ECOWAS compromise only created a tentative sense of stability for a nation that has been the victim of disruptive elite rivalries and systematic organised criminal activity for the past two decades.</p>
<p>It is also not clear how helpful another intervention by ECOWAS – or another third party – might be. The current political system needs to undergo an internally led peaceful transfer of power as a first step to mending the strong political rifts. </p>
<p>The November election also presents a quandary. On the one hand it could be a flash point with no clear solution. On the other, delaying it could result in just as much discontent. </p>
<p>And even if the election is held peacefully in November, a victory by incumbent Vaz may further escalate the unresolved constitutional tensions faced by the country.</p>
<p>One possible step that could mitigate tensions could be if both the government and opposition could agree on a new election date, and make a credible commitment to it. </p>
<p>Finally, the political crisis and any potential instability may once again force the military’s hand (albeit a weaker one than in the past). Even a failed military intervention would certainly result in the crisis being escalated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clayton Besaw is a research associate with the One Earth Future Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes peace and security in post-conflict countries.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Powell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The political crisis and any potential instability may once again force the military’s handClayton Besaw, Political Science Researcher, University of Central FloridaJonathan Powell, Associate professor, University of Central FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1184992019-06-11T11:23:13Z2019-06-11T11:23:13ZWhy Sudan’s deadly crackdown on protesters could escalate in coming weeks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278682/original/file-20190610-52767-1l79mke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this Sunday, June 9, 2019 frame grab from Sudan TV, Lt. Gen. Jamaleddine Omar, from the ruling military council, speaks on a broadcast. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sudan/07ccc064f6c846ec9224a4c26204a60e/2/0">SUDAN TV via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sudanese security forces <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/06/03/world/middleeast/ap-ml-sudan.html">violently removed a protest camp</a> in the capital, Khartoum, on June 3. </p>
<p>In addition to brutally beating the pro-democracy protesters, government troops also fired on the demonstrators. Early numbers suggest that at least <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/world/africa/sudan-protests-military-crackdown.html">61 people died during the week</a>, though that number may grow in the coming days. </p>
<p>The deadly violence occurred after months of citizen protests against the violent and repressive rule of the longtime ruler of Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir. Sudan’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-16010445">military removed</a> him from office on April 11. </p>
<p>Soon after the coup, talks began about the transition of power to civilian rule. There were high hopes among democracy advocates that a new civilian government would soon take control of the state. </p>
<p>As scholars of armed conflict, we believe that such reforms are likely to be put on hold following this episode of government repression. The findings from our <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dZksxBUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">forthcoming research on coups around the world</a> suggest that this state-sponsored brutality may just be the start of a more deadly crackdown.</p>
<h2>A brief history</h2>
<p>Since coming to power through a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Omar-Hassan-Ahmad-al-Bashir">military coup</a> in 1989, al-Bashir ruled Sudan with an iron fist. The government routinely engaged in widespread atrocities as a way to cripple dissent. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oupjapan.co.jp/en/products/detail/9780">This violence was largely directed</a> at the disenfranchised southern and western portions of the country, in Darfur and what is now South Sudan. Political power is largely concentrated in the areas <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sudan-south-sudan-and-darfur-9780199764198?cc=us&lang=en&">surrounding Khartoum</a>.</p>
<p>After years of international economic sanctions in response to those human rights abuses, in 2018 large groups of citizens in Khartoum, as well as in municipalities surrounding Khartoum, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan">began to demonstrate and call</a> for al-Bashir to step down from power. </p>
<p>Though the military initially responded by <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/sudan">violently suppressing the protests</a>, the Sudanese Army finally acquiesced to popular demands and arrested al-Bashir.</p>
<p>This recent escalation of violence is not the first instance of indiscriminate violence by the new military junta in Sudan. On May 15, soon after the April coup, military forces <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/world/africa/south-sudan-transition.html">opened fire</a> on protesters in Khartoum.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278683/original/file-20190610-52741-vb76ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sudanese Americans rally outside the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 8, 2019, in solidarity with pro-democracy protests in Sudan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sudan-Washington/43067cc0503245f5a43c1196e2884152/15/0">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Perceived threats</h2>
<p>Our research suggests that there may be greater violence against Sudanese civilians in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>We study when and where governments respond to threats through the use of state-sponsored violence – specifically, killings by the government. Potential threats to government control may be external, such as rebel attacks, or they may be internal, such as military coups. </p>
<p>A government’s perception of these threats is intimately tied to their control of the capital city. When governments believe that there is a risk that they may lose control of the capital, we have found that government elites respond with the use of greater targeted violence toward civilians.</p>
<p>While coups themselves are rare events, the threat of a coup, and leaders’ behavior to avoid it, are more common in fragile states. Leaders who are concerned about being unseated may purge the capital of perceived dissidents as the possibility of a coup emerges. </p>
<p>This was the case in the 1960s and the early 1980s in Guatemala, as <a href="https://hrdag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/state-violence-guate-1999.pdf">the Guatemalan government killed thousands</a> of suspected dissidents when they believed the risk of a coup was greatest. Similarly, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/Ethiopia919.pdf">the Derg regime</a> in Ethiopia killed over 10,000 people in the late 1970s, when the government felt threatened by the growing terrorist campaign inside Addis Ababa.</p>
<h2>The risk of a coup</h2>
<p>With data from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343313484347">the Uppsala Conflict Data Program</a>, we can identify where governments around the world have used force against civilians and also where rebel activity took place between 1989 and 2018.</p>
<p>We also used machine learning methods, including those employed by <a href="https://oefresearch.org/activities/coup-cast">CoupCast</a>, the premier scientific model for forecasting coups.</p>
<p>With this, we could predict <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/04/23/how-to-predict-a-coup">the risk of a coup occurring</a>, relative to other countries.</p>
<p>Scholars have found that the risk of coups is tied to major shifts in economic and political stability. Weak civil society, unregulated political competition and economic downturns all contribute to a rise in the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636410591002527">potential risk of a coup</a>. Coups often happen in bursts, so the time since the last coup matters, too.</p>
<p>As the estimated risk of a military coup rises, our models show a significant increase in government-sponsored violence. This is particularly true in parts of the country close to the capital. </p>
<p>When the risk of a coup is high, governments engage in more targeted killings of civilians in capital cities, as well as the surrounding district. Within the capital, a 1% increase in coup risk results in 20 additional civilian deaths by government forces a year. </p>
<p>Additionally, nearly all civilian deaths within the capital take place in countries in the top 25% of coup risk.</p>
<p><iframe id="tX7LO" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tX7LO/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>What this means for Sudan</h2>
<p>The risk of a coup within Sudan has increased since al-Bashir’s forced exit from office, as compared to the days leading up to his ouster.</p>
<p>This is largely because <a href="https://oefresearch.org/activities/coup-cast">past coups increase</a> the risk of future coups, a fact that is not lost on the perpetrators of coups d’état. </p>
<p>Less than two months since the removal of al-Bashir, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/06/03/729329601/sudan-security-forces-open-fire-on-protesters-in-capital">pro-democracy advocates within Sudan have called</a> on the new regime to hand over power to a civilian government. Negotiations on a possible transitional power-sharing government have ended <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/world/africa/sudan-security-forces-protesters-violence.html">with no agreement</a>, and demonstrators have increased <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/06/03/729329601/sudan-security-forces-open-fire-on-protesters-in-capital">their demands</a> for the government to hand over power. </p>
<p>Our models suggest that, as the perceived internal threat grows within Sudan, protesters – particularly those in the capital – are at risk of being brutally suppressed, with violence only escalating. </p>
<p>The civilians killed on June 3 may just be the start of a more violent campaign.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=thanksforreading">Thanks for reading! We can send you The Conversation’s stories every day in an informative email. Sign up today.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118499/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Keels receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua Lambert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History shows that when government elites believe that there is a risk that they may lose control of the capital, they escalate targeted violence against civilians.Eric Keels, Research Fellow at the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy, University of TennesseeJoshua Lambert, Ph.D Candidate in Security Studies, University of Central FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1156112019-05-10T10:40:23Z2019-05-10T10:40:23ZTruth, justice and declassification: Secret archives show US helped Argentine military wage ‘dirty war’ that killed 30,000<p>History books may never tell the full story of the dictatorship that terrorized Argentina from 1976 to 1984. </p>
<p>But newly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/americas/argentina-dictatorship-cia-documents.html">declassified United States military and intelligence documents</a> recently delivered to Argentina offer new details about the country’s brutal military junta. </p>
<p>The archival documents were the <a href="https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/">fourth and final batch of 43,000 declassified</a> U.S. telegrams, military records, intelligence and confidential memos given to Argentina following an extraordinary <a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/1976-odni-launches-argentina-declassification-project-online-portal">2016 agreement</a> between Argentine President Mauricio Macri and former U.S. President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>“Argentines now have more information about a dark period of our history that will allow us to continue strengthening justice, seeking and finding the truth,” <a href="https://twitter.com/mauriciomacri/status/1116845447421808640">Macri said on Twitter</a> after receiving the 7,500-document report on April 12.</p>
<p>The archives narrate the <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2019-04-12/declassification-diplomacy-trump-administration-turns-over-massive-collection-intelligence-records">human rights abuses committed by Argentina’s military government</a>, often with the assistance of the United States. They include the forced disappearances of 30,000 people, international assassination squads that stalked their victims abroad and the kidnapping of hundreds of babies born in detention.</p>
<h2>Bloody history of US intervention</h2>
<p>The U.S. declassification effort began under persistent pressure from Argentine human rights groups founded to uncover the atrocities of the dictatorship – a period I have spent my academic career <a href="http://www.auschwitzinstitute.org/profiles-in-prevention/rut-diamint/">studying</a>.</p>
<p>Argentine democracy was interrupted by military coups six times in the 20th century. </p>
<p>The declassified documents outline what happened after the last coup, staged in 1976 by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla. It gave way to the cruelest, most repressive and violent eight years of Argentina’s history.</p>
<p>In August 2000 representatives from Argentina’s <a href="https://gruber.yale.edu/justice/center-legal-and-social-studies-cels">Center for Legal and Social Studies</a> and the original <a href="https://abuelas.org.ar/idiomas/english/history.htm">Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo</a> – a human rights group that locates the lost children of the dictatorship, which has since splintered into several factions – <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-294874-2016-03-18.html">met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright</a>.</p>
<p>That encounter led to the <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB73/">declassification of 4,700 State Department documents</a> in 2002. Those documents included U.S. diplomatic cables, memoranda, reports and meeting notes related to the Argentine dictatorship, and revealed clear U.S. involvement in the junta’s “dirty war.” </p>
<p>Now, Argentina has the military and intelligence archives behind these operations, too.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/273619/original/file-20190509-183109-qsljpx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Trump, seen here with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in 2017, personally delivered in April a disc containing newly declassified U.S. documents relating to Argentina’s dictatorship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-US-Argentina/1322bb5ed73a4233af80c13dc18d7927/6/0">AP Photo/Evan Vucci</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The declassified documents show that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2149208.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A413ed858c691957408e6bf49bca8c9ac">U.S. intervention in Latin America</a> went well beyond giving “a little encouragement” to Latin American military regimes, as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger <a href="https://www.intel.gov/argentina-declassification-project/history">put it in 1976</a>. </p>
<p>Argentina was the operations center for <a href="https://unredacted.com/2019/04/12/u-s-completes-historic-transfer-of-47000-declassified-documents-to-argentine-government-frinformsum-4-12-2019/">Plan Condor</a>, a U.S-organized <a href="https://www.notimerica.com/politica/noticia-operacion-condor-plan-condor-20151109112936.html">alliance</a> between the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, created in 1975 and operational until around 1980. </p>
<p>Fearing the spread of communism across the Americas, the Ford administration offered these rightist military regimes everything from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/world/americas/argentina-dictatorship-cia-documents.html">counterinsurgency training and financial assistance to intelligence briefings</a>. </p>
<p>With U.S. support, Argentina’s junta kidnapped leftists, dissidents, union leaders and anyone who looked remotely like a threat. They tortured detainees, and then <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/donde-estan-los-aviones-de-los-vuelos-de-la-muerte">threw them alive and conscious out of airplanes</a> into the River Plate, near Buenos Aires, or dumped their bodies in mass graves.</p>
<p>Pregnant women were killed after giving birth, their babies adopted by the families of childless generals. Neighbors under police surveillance informed on other neighbors to appease the junta, then were abducted and tortured anyway.</p>
<p>The U.S. eventually grew uncomfortable with the activities of its Argentine allies.</p>
<p>In 1976 Robert C. Hill, U.S. ambassador to Argentina, reported to Washington that the number of people detained by the junta must “<a href="https://www.intel.gov/argentina-declassification-project/history">run into the thousands</a>” and, with Kissinger’s knowledge, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/22/world/argentine-junta-felt-safe-from-the-us.html">confronted</a> the Argentine government about its human rights abuses.</p>
<p>“[Argentina’s] security forces are totally out of control,” Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman told Kissinger in 1976.</p>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://www.intel.gov/argentina-declassification-project/history">withdrew its support</a> from Plan Condor after Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977. Carter, a Democrat, hoped to see democracy restored in Argentina.</p>
<p>That would take another six years.</p>
<h2>A bloody history learned little by little</h2>
<p>Argentines have learned the details of this <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2019-04-12/declassification-diplomacy-trump-administration-turns-over-massive-collection-intelligence-records">sadistic</a> regime little by little. </p>
<p>Even in the waning days of the dictatorship, human rights groups began filing freedom of information requests and <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/96712-zaffaroni-y-los-habeas-corpus-durante-la-dictadura">writs of habeas corpus</a> with the dictatorship, to little effect. </p>
<p>The law began to work in democracy’s favor again after Argentina’s first post-dictatorship leader, the late President <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/02/obituary-raul-alfonsin">Raúl Alfonsín</a>, was elected in 1983. He created a truth commission that uncovered 340 secret detention centers across Argentina and identified 8,690 “disappeared” people. </p>
<p>Once some perpetrators and victims were known, the victims’ families could file suits to hold the people who oversaw torture centers criminally responsible for their loved ones’ disappearance.</p>
<p>Painstaking archival research, interviews, <a href="http://www.cels.org.ar/common/documentos/Coloquio_Paris_paralelismoglobal.pdf">investigations, lawsuits</a> and prosecutions have followed under every administration since, albeit with differing levels of priority.</p>
<p>Much of what is known about the fates of those abducted by the military regime was <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/defensa/archivos-abiertos/sistema-de-archivos-de-la-defensa/politica-de-clasificacion">discovered in the basement of the Argentine Air Force</a> in 2013, where “<a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/listasnegras.pdf">black lists</a>” of identified leftists were archived.</p>
<p>The newly declassified U.S. archives offer little new information that might bring closure to thousands of Argentine families whose loved ones remain, officially, “disappeared.”</p>
<p>As of 2017, <a href="https://www.fiscales.gob.ar/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Lesa-Humanidad-Estado-de-las-Causas-2017.pdf">2,979 people had been tried</a> for their role in the dictatorship. The charges include <a href="https://www.fiscales.gob.ar/lesa-humanidad/agenda-de-juicios-de-lesa-humanidad-para-2019/">crimes against humanity</a>, arbitrary detention and kidnapping. Another 593 cases remained <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-argentina-the-supreme-court-spurs-national-outrage-with-leniency-for-a-dirty-war-criminal-78296">in process</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Never again’</h2>
<p>The newly declassified U.S. telegrams and confidential communications may spur new prosecutions. </p>
<p>They include the <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2019-04-12/declassification-diplomacy-trump-administration-turns-over-massive-collection-intelligence-records">names of government officials and informants</a> complicit in Plan Condor, as well as details on the torture techniques used to extract information from detainees.</p>
<p>“The release of these documents stands as a uniquely valuable contribution to the cause of human rights, the cause of justice and the cause of our fundamental right-to-know,” <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2019-04-12/declassification-diplomacy-trump-administration-turns-over-massive-collection-intelligence-records">said</a> Carlos Osorio, a Latin America analyst at George Washington University’s National Security Archive.</p>
<p>In 2014, under President Cristina Fernández, Argentina began its own <a href="http://desclasificacion.cancilleria.gob.ar/userfiles/Res408-2009_0.pdf">declassification program</a>, alongside that of the United States. Among other disclosures, it published thousands of <a href="https://www.cancilleria.gob.ar/es/actualidad/boletin/la-desclasificacion-de-archivos-por-la-memoria-la-verdad-y-la-justicia">dictatorship-era archives</a>, including 648 pages documenting the staffing and <a href="http://desclasificacion.cancilleria.gob.ar/desclasificacion-2014">day-to-day operations</a> of the military junta’s foreign ministry, including its relations with the United States.</p>
<p>Argentina’s commitment to <a href="https://www.redalyc.org/html/765/76525696001/">uncovering every dark detail</a> of the dictatorship derives from a national sentiment that its democracy depends on understanding the past. </p>
<p>“Nunca mas” – “never again” – has become the rallying cry of a population that insists that history should not repeat itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rut Diamint receives funding from Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy. </span></em></p>Traveling death squads. Sadistic torture techniques. Stolen babies. The US helped it all happen by aiding Argentina’s military regime in the 1970s, according to newly declassified documents.Rut Diamint, Political Science Profesor, Torcuato di Tella UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1158552019-04-24T13:50:58Z2019-04-24T13:50:58ZThe internal – and external – factors that will shape Sudan’s political transition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270432/original/file-20190423-175535-1vd9kxa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sudanese protesters outside of the military headquarters in Khartoum.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48006015">stamina</a> exhibited by mainly young protesters in Sudan is a clear reflection of the depth of their grievance and frustration. Their persistence was critical in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-sudans-protesters-upped-the-ante-and-forced-al-bashir-from-power-115306">ousting</a> the dictator Omar al-Bashir. But it will also be required to provide the desired quality of the post uprising government and political environment.</p>
<p>In the coming days, weeks and months, I have no doubt that the Sudanese people will be shocked by the evidence of atrocities and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47997729">corruption</a> during the 30 years of misrule by the National Congress Party in the name of political Islam. </p>
<p>The unprecedented drama of al-Bashir’s ouster and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/africa/sudan-omar-hassan-al-bashir.html">stepping down</a> after only one day of Lt. Gen. Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, who ousted him, shows the extent of breakdown in the National Congress Party. This political drama has been influenced and shaped by the resilience and determination of the Sudanese protesters. </p>
<p>Amid public pressure, the new Sudanese military ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/04/14/new-military-council-leader-promises-civilian-government-for-sudan">ordered</a> the arrest of National Congress Party leaders, including al-Bashir. He has also amalgamated the Sudanese military forces. Above all he has shown willingness and commitment to give way to civilian rule.</p>
<p>But there is lingering suspicion that Burhan may favour the military junta managing the transition. This would be a repeat of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/academics-have-shaped-sudans-political-history-and-may-do-it-again-115232">1985 transition</a>. This time around, protesters are determined to break that cycle of repeated civilian uprisings followed by military takeovers. </p>
<p>Their demand for civilian rule is backed by the recent <a href="https://africa.cgtn.com/2019/04/22/au-steps-up-pressure-for-a-transition-to-civilian-rule-in-sudan/">unequivocal resolution </a>by the AU Peace and Security Council. This is also the <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2019/04/19/sudan-protest-hub-africanews-updates/">stance of the US</a>. The real challenge now is whether the Sudanese professionals association and political parties can agree on a civilian transitional government. </p>
<p>Equally important is the role played by outsiders. Sudan has undoubtedly become the battlefield of the politics of the Gulf. And of political Islam and moderate Islam. The Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain bloc supports – and has leverage over – the military council. Its aim is to isolate the political Islam bloc of Qatar, Turkey and Iran. </p>
<p>While the Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain bloc agrees with the Sudanese protesters that political Islam has failed to deliver during the past 30 years, they don’t agree that the military council is unfit to manage the transition. Or that a civilian transition government would be ideal to put Sudan on a solid path of sustainable democracy. </p>
<h2>Dangers ahead</h2>
<p>The professionals association and political parties <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48006015">haven’t been able to jointly agree</a> on a list of the candidates for the transitional government. </p>
<p>The professionals association appeared ready with its list of candidates. But the political parties are yet to agree and reconcile their list with that of the professional association.</p>
<p>If they fail to agree on a list the military council could seize the opportunity to directly appoint a handpicked government headed by prime minister under its direct supervision. This is what happened in 1985. </p>
<p>The failure to reach consensus on the civilian transitional government could lead to a rift between the protesters and professionals association and political parties on one hand and protesters and the military junta on other hand. It could also widen cracks between the professional association and political parties. </p>
<p>These divisions could be avoided if the political parties could support the professionals association to manage the civilian transitional government. This could create a conducive political environment for fair and transparent national elections. </p>
<p>This critical moment is not about sharing the political cake. Rather it’s about creating an environment for democracy to prosper. In my view the professional association rather than political parties are best suited for this task.</p>
<h2>External actors</h2>
<p>The external actors with interests in Sudan will influence the final outcome of this uprising. </p>
<p>In my view the political position of neighbouring countries should be guided by the resolution of the AU Peace and Security Council. This has called for the military junta to immediately hand over power to civilian transition government. </p>
<p>So far the reaction has been mixed. For example Ethiopia has <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2019/04/15/ethiopia-stands-with-resilient-sudanese-protesters-pm-abiy//">made it clear that it backs</a> the choice of people of Sudan . On the other hand Egypt <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-xl/middleeast/top-stories/egypt-foreign-minister-spy-chief-visit-protest-hit-sudan/ar-BBRu8kq">sent its chief spy</a> to Khartoum in support of military junta – and as part of the politics of the Gulf. </p>
<p>The reaction of countries further afield has also been mixed. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates sent a <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-uae-delegation-meets-sudan-military-council">high powered delegation</a> to Khartoum. </p>
<p>Turkey, Qatar and Iran are anxious that the change in Sudan is targeting their political Islam agenda and have tried to reverse the trend. <a href="https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/18/04/2019/Sudan-denies-reports-that-Khartoum-rejected-to-meet-Qatari-delegation">The minister of foreign affairs of Qatar</a> tried to visit Khartoum through some remnants of the National Congress Party in the ministry of foreign affairs. His visit was blocked in a fiasco that <a href="https://www.hawarnews.com/en/haber/sudanese-undersecretary-of-ministry-of-foreign-affairs-dismissed-because-of-qatar-h8426.html">resulted</a> in the sacking of the undersecretary of the ministry.</p>
<p>The Sudanese populace is determined to provide a new political path. For this reason, external actors should be guided by the will of the people of Sudan rather than their narrow political interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115855/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luka Kuol does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People in Sudan are determined to provide a new political path and need to guide candidates who want to lead the country.Luka Kuol, Professor of Practice for Security Studies, Africa Center for Strategic StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1154702019-04-15T14:59:34Z2019-04-15T14:59:34ZSudan can avoid past mistakes by drawing lessons from its history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269284/original/file-20190415-147522-1xxg51n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Leader of Sudan's transitional council, Lieutenant General Abdel-Fattah Burhan</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/STRINGER</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A military coup d’etat in Sudan <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-sudans-protesters-upped-the-ante-and-forced-al-bashir-from-power-115306">has ended</a> Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year rule. </p>
<p>This is the sixth coup the country’s military have led <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14095300">since</a> independence in 1956. The military were pressured into the coup by the country’s third major civilian uprising. Historically, the two most famous uprisings were the October Revolution of 1964, which ushered out Sudan’s first military regime, and the April Intifada of 1985, which ousted the second.</p>
<p>As in the 1985 uprising, the military maintain that they are siding with a popular uprising. A Transitional Military Council has been formed and its leadership maintains that it’s committed to bringing back a civil state and multi-party democracy.</p>
<p>But there’s still <a href="https://rakobanews.com/sudan-news/sudan-now/13195/">considerable scepticism</a> towards the new military leaders. Protesters continue their sit in outside army headquarters, which originally began nine days ago when they demanded the army support the movement against al-Bashir. They <a href="https://rakobanews.com/sudan-news/sudan-now/13190/">now fear</a> the army may use force to break it up. </p>
<p>The continuing protests have forced the Transitional Military Council to change its leader once already. And there are worrying signs that the transition to civilian rule will not be smooth. </p>
<p>There is a real risk that a trend which emerged during the last two transitional periods of 1964 - 1965 and 1985 - 1986 will be repeated. On both occasions key rebel groups didn’t participate in the negotiations. This meant that negotiated settlements of the country’s broader conflicts were doomed from the get go. </p>
<p>The other danger is the military’s future role. Key here will be the relationship between the new military transition council and the civilian leaders of the Intifada. </p>
<p>Sudan has seen this movie play out before. In 1985, Siwar al-Dahab became chairman of a transitional military council after he had ousted President Gaafar Nimeiry in a coup. After elections, he surrendered power to prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. </p>
<p>Siwar al-Dahab, relatively unambitious but politically conservative, played on divides between the political parties and the professionals, and between left-leaning and Islamist-leaning factions in the professional movement. The result was that the Intifada failed to achieve a number of its aspirations for more meaningful social transformation.</p>
<p>It’s crucial that the professionals and other political forces do not allow the same issues that divided them in 1985 to divide them today. This could play into the hands of the factions in the military that want to maintain the authoritarian system which <a href="https://qz.com/africa/615938/sudan-could-spend-up-to-70-of-its-budget-on-several-war-fronts-this-year/">awarded</a> the majority of the government’s budget to the security sector.</p>
<h2>The principal players</h2>
<p>Events since al-Bashir was forced out suggest there’s still a lot left to play for. </p>
<p>Lieutenant General Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf was named as al-Bashir’s replacement. But he was forced to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47913338">step down</a> after just one day as protesters regarded him as too close to al-Bashir’s regime. </p>
<p>General Abdel-Fattah Burhan then took over the military council, immediately promising to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47918736">“uproot”</a> al-Bashir’s regime. He also promised to hand over power to civilians after a two year transition period.</p>
<p>Burhan, a soldier by profession, has never previously taken any political positions. His role in the army included responsibility for Sudan’s operations alongside the Saudi led coalition in <a href="https://www.sudanakhbar.com/488615">Yemen</a>. He also has close ties to the Transitional Military Council’s new deputy leader Mohammad Hamdan aka Himeidti, who helped him remove al-Bashir from power. </p>
<p>Himeidti is the commander of the <a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a0d6be54.html">Rapid Support Forces</a>, a private military force which was <a href="https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/background-who-are-the-rapid-support-forces-in-sudan">partially</a> integrated into the military and security services. The unit is <a href="https://enoughproject.org/reports/janjaweed-reincarnate-sudans-new-army-war-criminals">regarded</a> by many as a re-branded version of the Janjaweed militias of which Himeidti was himself a part. These perpetrated mass atrocities during the government’s counter-insurgency against the rebel movement in Darfur from 2003. </p>
<p>How the leaders of the Darfur rebel factions react to Himeidti’s involvement will be crucial to the viability of any transitional government Burhan leads. </p>
<p>Equally important is who comes out on top in the current contest over key ministerial posts.</p>
<h2>Control of ministries</h2>
<p>The Transitional Military Council has demanded that it’s represented in both the <a href="https://rakobanews.com/sudan-news/sudan-now/13056/">interior and defence</a> ministries. </p>
<p>Care needs to be taken on these appointments. Whoever controls these ministries will be in a position to determine the fate of the deeply entrenched, and <a href="https://enoughproject.org/reports/sudans-deep-state-how-insiders-violently-privatized-sudans-wealth-and-how-respond">highly corrupt</a>, military and security complex established by al-Bashir and his Islamist allies. </p>
<p>It’s also crucial that any new technocratic cabinet is not seen as being biased towards one political group or set of interests. </p>
<p>Historically there has been a great deal of crossover between prominent professional unions and the political parties. Particularly with regards to lawyers, doctors and university lecturers who <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/civil-uprisings-in-modern-sudan-9781472574015/">played</a> a prominent role in the forerunner of today’s Sudan Professional Association.</p>
<p>In 1964, many of the professionals who participated in the first transitional cabinet <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/civil-uprisings-in-modern-sudan-9781472574015/">were members or sympathisers</a> of the Sudan Communist Party. In 1985, a good number of them sympathised to a greater or lesser extent with <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/civil-uprisings-in-modern-sudan-9781472574015/">political Islam</a>. </p>
<p>During the uprising the Sudan Professional Association has been good at not making its affiliations clear. But as it becomes more public – and members engage in talks and join transitional bodies – there will inevitably be considerable speculation as to its sympathies.</p>
<h2>Representation of marginalised groups</h2>
<p>The new cabinet should also take two other issues on board: women’s representation and regional representation.</p>
<p>Previous transitional cabinets have been very male dominated. This needs to change, particularly given the <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/4/11/18305358/omar-al-bashir-sudan-president-military-coup-protests-women">enormous</a> presence of women on the streets during this uprising. </p>
<p>Regional representation is also key. There’s a real risk that the trend from the last two transitional periods continues. Then, political forces based in the riverain north negotiated the transition to democracy and rebels did not participate in the interim governments. This meant that the war in the periphery continued, as did the regional inequalities that fed it. </p>
<p>Then it was the southern-based rebels that were sidelined during the transitional process. Now it could be those who have taken up arms in the West of the country.</p>
<p>It’s crucial that both east, west and the new south – and particularly the groups targeted by the regime’s lethal counter-insurgencies – are given fair representation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Willow Berridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are concerns that the transition to civilian rule in Sudan won’t be smooth.Willow Berridge, Lecturer in History, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.