Why new civilian-military deal should be rejected

The Ghost of Munich: Why should the political agreement that is currently taking place between Freedom and Change and the putschists be rejected, and what is the alternative?

Amgad Fareid Eltayeb

“Peace for our time”, this was the phrase uttered by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after he signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in September 1938. This agreement aimed mainly at appeasing Hitler through a settlement that included accepting his annexation of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to preserve what seemed to be stability in the European continent at the time. But the  (About us, without us) agreement, as the Czechs called it, ended only six months after it was signed with Hitler’s occupation of all the lands of Czechoslovakia, then the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, and millions of deaths in massacres of genocide, gas burners, and war battles throughout the world. What is happening now in Sudan brings back the spectre of Munich to mind.

Answering the question in the title requires going back to basics.

First, the current political process – which remained hidden for a while until it produced this framework agreement, was not based on a search for a realistic solution to the national crisis.  Rather, it was originally based on a deal of understandings that was concluded through the RSF’s brokers present in the forces of freedom and change, between the commander of the RSF and the group that controls the reins of affairs in Forces of Freedom and Change, as the leader of Haq Movement, Muhammad Suleiman Abdul Rahim, called it in his article published in Al-Jareeda newspaper, issue (November 28, 2022). These RSF understandings with the dominant group came as a result of their continuous secret negotiations that began in November 2021, at that time, FFC rejected the Burhan-Hamdok’s agreement while it was secretly negotiating Rapid Support, and trying to lure in the international community to those negotiations. These understandings include attempting to publicly re-market RSF , and to ensure a measure of independence for it during the transitional period, in addition to overlooking issues such as the RSF economic activities and an attempt to market RSF to the international community as one of the factors for the solution and stability in Sudan, and the acceptance of the return of its proxy delegates from the forces of the old regime to the new political alliance, which is called the Civil Bloc (and here I mean the faction of the original Democratic Unionist Party controlled by Ibrahim al-Mirghani, who has a close ties with Taha Osman al-Hussein, the historical sponsor and god-father of the Rapid Support Forces, who will naturally be more effective in serving the interests of the Rapid Support and Emirates in side the FFC, in addition to the immersion of the issue of transitional justice and abridging it in the immunities of the coup leaders and their personal safety, in return for the unconditional political support by the leader of the RSF for the positions of FFC. A witness to this was Hamidti’s statement of his support and acceptance of the draft constitution of the Bar Association before even reviewing it, according to his statement. As for him, it is coming from the circles of FFC which is enough. The basis on which this process and this agreement originated, makes it basically impossible to end with a good solution.

One of the factors that led to the Burhan-Hemeti coup on October 25 last year was the stumbling of the security and military sectors reform process in Sudan and the continuation of the military establishment as it was before during Bashir’s era. One of the biggest distortions in this institution is the multiplicity of military forces and the presence of an entire parallel army represented by the Rapid Support Forces. The framework Agreement resorted to linguistic manipulation and talked about agreed-upon schedules for merging, without mentioning where these schedules are or how they will be reached and agreed upon… The agreement reduced all talk about Rapid Support to two clauses confirming its existence, independence and separate subordination to the head of state. While the agreement was detailed in the provisions related to the army and the police, and clearly stipulated that they were prevented from doing business and investment, this was ignored or even referenced in the text about rapid support force.

Also, the claim that the agreement fully guarantees the civil government is completely incorrect. Rather, the opposite is true. The definition of the government is that it is the administrative apparatus of the state that monopolises the practice of legitimate violence. The agreement talks about a prime minister who does not have any authority over the commander-in-chief of the army (and of the Rapid Support Force as well, which is also classified within the regular forces as a separate entity). Even the Security and Defence Council mentioned in the constitutional document and chaired by the Prime Minister does not necessarily include the Commander-in-Chief of the Army or the Commander of RSF, but rather it can consist of representatives of both, which makes these organs/forces actually independent of the executive branch. It was more sensible here to restore the normal situation of the Minister of Defence in supervising the national military forces and amending the Armed Forces Law which is inherited from the National Congress Party era that stripped this position of all real supervisory powers and duties over the army. The justification that the army does not want the civilian transitional government to interfere in its affairs because it is not elected is an erroneous justification, as who elected the army leadership in the first place?! This justification reflects the military’s lack of conviction in the legitimacy of this government and its intention to turn against it sooner or later when the course of things does not please its leadership. There is no army in the world, except in military regimes, that is not subject to its government. This agreement, in its current form, actually enshrines the authority of the military over the state apparatus.

The dominant group in the Forces for Freedom and Change worked hard to portray these understandings with Hemedti, and later with Hemedti and Burhan, to the international community as Noah’s Ark, until the international community no longer saw a political path other than what the dominant group reflected them, no matter how unrealistic events proved.

The mass movement and protest became no longer part of the factors of the international community’s analysis of the political situation. Rather, a meeting between Yasir Arman and Muhammad al-Hassan al-Mirghani, or a phone call between Taha Osman al-Hussein with any of the members of the Central Council, for example, maybe more important to the international community in the context of what the dominant group reflects on them about its self-proclaimed Noah’s Ark of politics in Sudan.

The international community, especially the tripartite mechanism, will fail if it tries to reverse-engineer this agreement to get it out through a sham political process, because it simply bears the factors of its annihilation in its details, and will establish for more instability in Sudan. And if the international community still wants or has the will to facilitate a political process that leads to a political solution that ends the October 25 coup, then this process must be:

1- Public… This does not necessarily mean that the deliberations are public, but that the process itself and its agenda are in the open in the first place, instead of taking place in the dark.

2- Structured and with a clear agenda related to the actual problem it is trying to solve, which is the October 25 coup, not a chaotic one that puts all the issues on the table at the same time and tries to end with political exchange deals.

3- Gradual and stepladdered, proceeding from what is more urgent and less complicated to the next, in a way that allows the involvement of all real stakeholders in the discussion of the issues that concern them, and not assuming the possibility of representation and limiting it to a group that cannot even represent the coalition that it claims to represent in a genuine way ( Referring to the Haq leader Muhammad Suliman’s article once again).

Political solutions cannot be reached by appeasement of the usurpers, nor can they be sustained through political bribes, for which demands will escalate under the dominance of the Munich agreement approach.

The cost of failure increases cumulatively and in an escalating geometric sequence after each failed attempt to reach a solution. The cost of bad political solutions to any crisis – no matter how hard their beneficiaries try to market them – is that they impede good solutions of taking place and force people to live with the consequences of the repetition of mistakes.

It is not possible to reach a solution to a problem by coexisting with it. What happened on October 25, 2021, is a military coup, in which power was illegitimately seized, and without clearly defining this as the basis for the crisis, any attempt at a solution becomes just an attempt to legalise this coup, nothing more.