Anti-government protests in Sudan have spread to at least 35 cities and villages as professionals and marginalised young people pile more pressure on President Omar al-Bashir’s regime in a fifth week of unrest.
Demonstrators chanting “Fall, that is all” continued to pour on to the streets of Khartoum, the capital, and from Abri in the north to El-Gadarif in the south. They did so in spite of a crackdown in which at least 45 civilians have been killed and hundreds detained.
Rather than being cowed by the clampdown, say analysts, demonstrators have been galvanised. The movement to oust Mr Bashir, which began last month with protests against a bread price rise, now cuts across social classes and ethnic divides.
In Khartoum this week, engineers at a sit-in in front of their union headquarters held up posters with a dark outline of Mr Bashir’s face with just one word written beneath it: “Leave.” Men and women were beaten and tear-gassed.
Videos have also been circulating on social media showing security forces shooting protesters with live ammunition in the three cities that make up the Khartoum metropolis, including Bahri and cultural capital Omdurman.
The waves of protests, which pose what analysts say is the biggest threat to Mr Bashir’s 29-year rule, come as the president begins losing support both internationally and among his domestic backers. The demonstrations, which are reminiscent of the Arab uprising that toppled governments in north Africa and the Middle East, have unfolded amid an economic crisis brought on by inflation, years of sanctions and the loss of oil revenue following the independence of South Sudan in 2011.
Mr Bashir returned from a two-day trip to Qatar this week, his first since protests erupted on December 19, with no sign of financial support and only the blandest of endorsements from the Gulf state, which promised a “firm stance on Sudan’s unity and stability”.
The president did not visit Saudi Arabia, normally his strongest regional supporter, suggesting relations are cooling. In a recent speech in Khartoum, he pointedly failed to thank Riyadh for its support, and later in Nyala, South Darfur, he made unusual entreaties instead to fellow African countries including Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia and South Sudan. He even appealed to the Fur people of Darfur, who have traditionally been bitter opponents after years of Khartoum-sponsored massacres.
Muhammad Osman, a Sudanese commentator, said that Mr Bashir’s policy of shifting allegiances and playing one state off against another had turned him into an unreliable partner in the eyes of many. “No one is going to shed a tear for Bashir if he’s gone tomorrow,” he said.
As well as pressure from youth, unions and professional associations, Mr Bashir faces opposition from a league of 22 political parties, many of which have withdrawn from his coalition government in recent weeks. The league is headed by the president’s former adviser, Ghazi Salaheldeen, who left the regime in 2013.
Mr Bashir has called Mr Salaheldeen an opportunist who has “jumped ship”, but analysts say others ostensibly still loyal to him could also defect if events turn decisively against him.
The president remains surrounded by a clique of die hard loyalists, said Mr Osman, an old-guard implicated in years of corrupt and authoritarian rule who fear “reprisals against them in the event of regime collapse”.
Mr Bashir, who has survived several challenges to his leadership, appears determined to cling on, say analysts. If he is pushed from the presidency without an amnesty, he could face trial at the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants against him in 2009 and 2010 for alleged offences connected to massacres in Darfur including war crimes and extermination
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