From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   How U.S. Efforts to Guide Sudan to Democracy Ended in War   
   By Wong, Crowley and Walsh, May 3, 2023, NY Times   
   Just weeks ago, American diplomats thought Sudan was on the verge of a   
   breakthrough agreement that would advance its transition from military   
   dictatorship to full-fledged democracy, delivering on the soaring promise of   
   the country’s revolution in 2019.   
      
   Sudan had become an important test case in Biden’s core foreign policy goal   
   of bolstering democracies worldwide, which in his view weakens corrupt leaders   
   and allows nations to more capably stand as bulwarks against the influences of   
   China, Russia and    
   other autocratic powers.   
      
   But on April 23, the same American diplomats who had been involved in the   
   negotiations in Sudan suddenly found themselves shutting down the embassy and   
   fleeing Khartoum on secret nighttime helicopter flights as the country   
   spiraled into a potential civil    
   war.   
      
   Biden administration officials and their partners are now struggling to get   
   two warring generals to stick to tenuous cease-fires and to end hostilities,   
   as foreign governments evacuate civilians amid fighting that has left at least   
   528 dead and more than    
   330,000 displaced. The actual toll is almost certainly much higher than those   
   Sudanese government numbers.   
      
   An urgent question at the heart of the crisis is whether the United States   
   miscalculated how difficult it would be to introduce democracy in a country   
   with a long history of military rule, and the risks of negotiating with   
   strongmen who talk about    
   democracy but never deliver.   
      
   Critics say the Biden administration, rather than empowering civilian leaders,   
   prioritized working with the two rival generals, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan,   
   the head of Sudan’s army, and Lt. Gen Mohamed Hamdan, a paramilitary chief,   
   even after they    
   carried out a military coup together in 2021.   
      
   Senior American diplomats “made the mistake of coddling the generals,   
   accepting their irrational demands and treating them as natural political   
   actors,” said Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, an adviser to Sudan’s deposed prime   
   minister, Abdalla Hamdok. “   
   This fed their lust for power and their illusion of legitimacy.”   
      
   And some analysts ask whether U.S. officials have a cleareyed approach to   
   carrying out Mr. Biden’s global push for democratic resilience.   
      
   The violence in Sudan is creating exactly the kind of power vacuum that Mr.   
   Biden’s aides had hoped to avoid. Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group   
   are among the players already trying to fill the gap, current and former U.S.   
   officials say.   
      
   “If this fighting continues, there’s going to be a great temptation among   
   outside actors to say, ‘If these guys are going to fight it to the death, we   
   better get in there, because we would rather have this guy, or this   
   institution, win,’” said    
   Jeffrey D. Feltman, a former U.S. envoy to the Horn of Africa who worked on   
   negotiations for civilian rule.   
      
   “If you don’t get to a cease-fire, not only do you have the misery of   
   these 46 million people,” he added, “you have a higher temptation for   
   outsiders to start hypercharging the fighting by direct intervention.”   
      
   Mr. Hamdok has said civil war in Sudan would make the conflicts in Syria,   
   Yemen and Libya look like “a small play.”   
      
   The State Department and the White House declined to comment.   
      
   The White House’s Africa strategy paper, released in August, asserts that   
   “by reaffirming that democracy delivers tangible benefits,” the United   
   States can help limit the influence of “negative” outside nations and   
   nonstate groups, reduce the    
   need for costly interventions and help Africans determine their own future.   
      
   For the United States, the effort to prevent Sudan’s potential return to   
   despotism is an unlikely role after decades in which the country was largely   
   known for mass atrocities and as a haven for terrorists, including, for nearly   
   five years in the 1990s,   
    Osama bin Laden. In 1998, President Bill Clinton even ordered a missile   
   strike on a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum that he said Al Qaeda used to   
   make chemical weapons, although that intelligence was later questioned.   
      
   It was not until October 2020, a year after the revolution, that President   
   Donald J. Trump announced he would repeal the country’s status as a state   
   sponsor of terrorism after Sudan normalized its relations with Israel.   
      
   “Today, a great people of Sudan are in charge,” Mr. Trump said. “New   
   democracy is taking root.”   
      
   Mr. Feltman and other former and current U.S. officials say supporting   
   democracy should still be the cornerstone of American policy in Sudan, given   
   the aspirations expressed in protests that led to the ouster in 2019 of   
   President Omar Hassan al-Bashir,    
   the dictator of 30 years. Congressional leaders are now calling for Mr. Biden   
   and the United Nations to appoint special envoys to Sudan.   
      
   The setbacks in Sudan follow other democratic disappointments in northern   
   Africa, including a military counterrevolution in neighboring Egypt a decade   
   ago; nearly 10 years of political anarchy in Libya, another neighbor of Sudan,   
   after its dictator, Col.    
   Muammar el-Qaddafi, was overthrown; and a recent return to one-man   
   authoritarian rule in Tunisia after a decade as the only country to emerge   
   from the 2011 Arab Spring with a democratic government.   
      
   Mr. al-Bashir’s downfall four years ago led to joyous displays from Sudanese   
   who hoped that democracy might take root their country despite its failures   
   elsewhere in the region. After several months of junta rule, Sudan’s   
   military and civilian    
   leaders signed a power-sharing agreement that created a transitional   
   government headed by Mr. Hamdok, an economist. The plan envisioned elections   
   after three years.   
      
   However, a council formed to help manage the transition was “a bit of a fig   
   leaf,” since it had more military than civilian members, Susan D. Page, a   
   former U.S. ambassador to South Sudan and a professor at the University of   
   Michigan, said in a post    
   on her school’s website. Important civilian voices were excluded, a problem   
   that would persist into negotiations this year.   
      
      
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