Analysis: Year post-coup, cracks in Sudan’s military junta
By Al-Monitor
KHARTOUM, Sudan, April 21, 2013 (AFP) – When South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, the military government in Khartoum, which was then run by Omar al-Bashir, said it would not accept a country that “is controlled by foreign powers,” but that was not true by any measure.
The conflict with Sudan saw its new president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, go to the United Nations after meeting with the chief of Sudan’s ruling military. While he was in Khartoum, he was assassinated.
Then, on July 9, Sudan’s army dissolved Sudan’s parliament in a move designed to prevent it from interfering with its own ruling military, and it proceeded to arrest parliament members.
There followed the events called the “Arab Spring,” including the toppling of long-serving rulers in several Arab and African countries. In North Africa, there was the rise of popular uprisings in some of the countries that have been ruled for decades by strongmen.
The U.S. has been in North Africa since the first Gulf War in 1991, and the U.S., Europe, and Japan are now leading the coalition of more peaceful countries in the region to protect civilian governments and the institutions that govern them.
Meanwhile, the United States, Europe, and Japan, along with Arab countries, have called a conference on Sudan on April 29 for the protection of Libya’s civilians in Libya.
It was Sudan that set up a one-party state on April 9; Egypt and Ethiopia were the first ones to do so following the overthrow of the former dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in February 2011.
Sudan has been a major factor in the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Libya as well as in the region as a whole. In Sudan, uprisings have been triggered by the Arab Spring. Egypt’s military takeover of the Sinai Peninsula was followed by the army’s repression of thousands of protesters and a crackdown by the Egyptian security apparatus on the country’s Arab Spring.
Sudan was also a