{"id":51521,"date":"2025-07-16T19:17:32","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T16:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=51521"},"modified":"2025-07-17T15:18:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:18:43","slug":"are-we-like-libya-syria-and-yemen-thats-a-poor-comparison-my-friend-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/are-we-like-libya-syria-and-yemen-thats-a-poor-comparison-my-friend-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Like Libya, Syria, and Yemen? That\u2019s a Poor Comparison, My Friend (2\/2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Abdullah Ali Ibrahim<\/strong><\/p>\n

(From my book \u201cFrom Revolution to War\u201d, Al-Mawsu\u2019a Al-Sagheera Publishing House)<\/p>\n

One of the most reckless tendencies in our political thinking is making haphazard comparisons between our situation and those of other countries\u2014without evidence or context. Whenever we see a country in its death throes, we hastily declare, \u201cThat\u2019s our fate too.\u201d 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\u2014or is still happening\u2014in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. But instead of generalizing about \u201ctragedies of the East,\u201d I want to look deeper into the political details of each context.<\/p>\n

What clearly sets Sudan apart is this: we still have a functioning national army, while in those countries\u2014whether their armies were good or bad\u2014they have all but vanished.<\/p>\n

In Yemen, tribal duality undermined the army following President Ali Abdullah Saleh\u2019s 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\u2014a mere one percent of the population\u2014dominated the upper ranks.<\/p>\n

Yet even within Sanhan, Saleh\u2019s 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\u2019s faction comprised the Republican Guard, Special Forces, Anti-Terror Units, and the Air Force (led by his brother), all dominated by Sanhan tribesmen.<\/p>\n

Saleh made repeated efforts to weaken Al-Ahmar\u2019s forces\u2014sending 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\u2014so much so that Eritrea was able to occupy Hanish Island in December 1995, an outcome of this strategic weakness.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s forces, which also built alliances with political movements, like Al-Ahmar\u2019s alliance with Salafists.<\/p>\n

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.
\n(In the end, Saleh allied with the Houthis against the post-revolution regime. They tolerated him\u2014until they no longer did, killing him and dismantling his army.)<\/p>\n

Those who claim that the current war in Sudan mirrors the fates of Libya, Syria, and Yemen\u2014fates the Sudanese revolution allegedly failed to anticipate\u2014are 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.<\/p>\n

Sudan\u2019s Islamist regime (\u201cIngaz\u201d) 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.<\/p>\n

In Libya, the revolution emerged in the practical absence of an army\u2014armed 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014both 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.<\/p>\n

The war we face today in Sudan was, in fact, inevitable\u2014even if the revolution had never happened.
\nAs the chief of the Kababish tribe once said, \u201cRiding a two-humped camel is uncomfortable.\u201d The dual structure of Sudan\u2019s 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\u2019s chain of command\u2014yielding to the will of deposed president Omar al-Bashir, who was the RSF\u2019s supreme patron.<\/p>\n

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\u2014not just after the revolution\u2014to 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.<\/p>\n

The revolution offered the army a political opportunity to resolve two long-standing issues in the context of security and military reform:<\/p>\n

1. Its prolonged and fruitless involvement in governance\u2014half a century of military rule since independence in 1956.<\/p>\n

2. The continued presence of an unwanted “Army of Harm”\u2014the RSF\u2014which the army tolerated begrudgingly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The rallying cry of this reform was:
\n\u201cSoldiers back to the barracks\u2014and the Janjaweed, i.e., the RSF, must be dissolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s parallel diplomacy and economic ventures\u2014resources 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014it 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.<\/p>\n

One can\u2019t help but wonder: Did the army need this catastrophe to finally return to the barracks?
\nTo go back, as it were, to its original mandate\u2014\u201cas you were.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Abdullah Ali Ibrahim (From my book \u201cFrom Revolution to War\u201d, Al-Mawsu\u2019a 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\u2014without evidence or context. Whenever we see a country in its death throes, we hastily declare, \u201cThat\u2019s our fate …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51522,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51521\/revisions\/51522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}