Are We Like Libya, Syria, and Yemen? That’s a Poor Comparison, My Friend (2/2)

By Abdullah Ali Ibrahim

(From my book “From Revolution to War”, Al-Mawsu’a Al-Sagheera Publishing House)

One of the most reckless tendencies in our political thinking is making haphazard comparisons between our situation and those of other countries—without evidence or context. Whenever we see a country in its death throes, we hastily declare, “That’s our fate too.” In doing so, we lie to ourselves, driven by uncertainty and shallow analysis. Here, I want to examine our own revolution and war, which many have likened to what happened—or is still happening—in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. But instead of generalizing about “tragedies of the East,” I want to look deeper into the political details of each context.

What clearly sets Sudan apart is this: we still have a functioning national army, while in those countries—whether their armies were good or bad—they have all but vanished.

In Yemen, tribal duality undermined the army following President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s victory in the 1994 civil war, which dismantled the southern Yemeni army. He then began building the Republican Guard and a family-centered military structure, planning as early as 1991 to pass power to his son. Close relatives were placed at the helm of elite units, with his son Ahmed Saleh commanding the Republican Guard. His tribe, Sanhan—a mere one percent of the population—dominated the upper ranks.

Yet even within Sanhan, Saleh’s attempts to groom his son for succession were not universally accepted. The army split: one side remained loyal to Saleh, the other aligned with Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar. Saleh’s faction comprised the Republican Guard, Special Forces, Anti-Terror Units, and the Air Force (led by his brother), all dominated by Sanhan tribesmen.

Saleh made repeated efforts to weaken Al-Ahmar’s forces—sending them to fight the Houthis between 2004 and 2010 in what was effectively a war of attrition. He dismantled the institutional foundations of the military, severing it from the executive branch. He confined the army to the capital while leaving the countryside to tribal militias—so much so that Eritrea was able to occupy Hanish Island in December 1995, an outcome of this strategic weakness.

He took full control over military appointments and promotions, and distributed weapons among favored branches. Tribal leaders were given quotas in the army and assigned recruits from their clans. Some army units became fully tribalized, led by their respective chiefs. The same applied to Al-Ahmar’s forces, which also built alliances with political movements, like Al-Ahmar’s alliance with Salafists.

When the revolution broke out in March 2010, Al-Ahmar sided with it, providing protection to protest camps. This culminated in a Gulf Initiative in November 2011, which called for military reform and unifying the two armies.
(In the end, Saleh allied with the Houthis against the post-revolution regime. They tolerated him—until they no longer did, killing him and dismantling his army.)

Those who claim that the current war in Sudan mirrors the fates of Libya, Syria, and Yemen—fates the Sudanese revolution allegedly failed to anticipate—are ignoring fundamental differences in the political and military dynamics. A review of those countries reveals critical distinctions. Their revolutions occurred after their regimes had already built tribal (Yemen, Libya) or ideological (Syria) armies that overtook or replaced the national military.

Sudan’s Islamist regime (“Ingaz”) also sought to build a parallel army to protect itself against uprisings or even rebellion from its own national army. But it never succeeded in weakening the national army to the point of irrelevance.

In Libya, the revolution emerged in the practical absence of an army—armed groups quickly filled the void. In Syria, the national army eroded as the war dragged on, allowing the 4th Armored Division to become the dominant force. In Yemen, the army had already fractured into two warring camps by the time of the revolution.

None of those countries witnessed the kind of alliance that Sudan saw between its national army and a paramilitary force. In Sudan, the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were allies—both in dealing with the transitional period and, ultimately, in undermining it, as seen in their joint coup against the civilian government on October 25, 2021.

The war we face today in Sudan was, in fact, inevitable—even if the revolution had never happened.
As the chief of the Kababish tribe once said, “Riding a two-humped camel is uncomfortable.” The dual structure of Sudan’s military was headed for collision. From the start, the army never accepted the RSF as a legitimate internal force. However, it tolerated its existence outside the army’s chain of command—yielding to the will of deposed president Omar al-Bashir, who was the RSF’s supreme patron.

According to its founding law, the RSF only fell under army command during states of emergency. Its commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) was determined from the very beginning—not just after the revolution—to build a rival army, not a temporary militia destined for disbandment. His current refusal to integrate the RSF into the army is not new; it has always been his stance. He has invested relentless effort in building an autonomous force.

The revolution offered the army a political opportunity to resolve two long-standing issues in the context of security and military reform:

1. Its prolonged and fruitless involvement in governance—half a century of military rule since independence in 1956.

2. The continued presence of an unwanted “Army of Harm”—the RSF—which the army tolerated begrudgingly.

The rallying cry of this reform was:
“Soldiers back to the barracks—and the Janjaweed, i.e., the RSF, must be dissolved.”

But the army turned a deaf ear to the revolution. Instead, it formed a blood-soaked alliance with the RSF, granting it equal footing in post-revolution political arrangements. It overlooked the RSF’s parallel diplomacy and economic ventures—resources that funded its war machine. It allowed the RSF to establish camps alongside regular army bases and even gave it a tower inside the Army Headquarters complex.

The army delayed addressing the issue of RSF integration. And when it finally did, it realized that this was not a force designed to be dissolved—it was built to endure. That realization forced the army into a brutal war, one it now wages to reclaim its national and professional integrity, which it had repeatedly compromised in pursuit of political power.

One can’t help but wonder: Did the army need this catastrophe to finally return to the barracks?
To go back, as it were, to its original mandate—“as you were.”