Which is to say that, by early 2017, the big winner in the Yemen war seemed to be Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. But in fact that was not the case. While offloading the Janjaweed militia to Yemen short-circuited complaints about Bashir’s designs on his neighbors, the mounting Sudanese body count in Yemen and persistent complaints from Sudan’s military that the UAE and Saudis were scrimping on their pay led to widespread dissatisfaction among Khartoum’s elite. They worried that Bashir had sold himself, and their country, to a bunch of spoiled Gulf princes.
The curtain in this final act was raised that June, when Bashir’s intelligence services reported that Taha Osman al-Hussein, the director of the president’s office (and Bashir’s closest confidante), had been secretly taking payments from the Saudis for exercising influence on Bashir. This included the recommendation, made by Taha, that Bashir cut Sudan’s ties with Qatar—advice that Bashir rejected. Buying Taha did not come cheaply. “The reports on this put the figure, reliably, at between $20 and $25 million dollars,” Abdulrahman al-Amin told me, “which doesn’t count the mansion that Taha was given by the Emiratis on Dubai’s Palms Island.” Worse yet, as Bashir was informed, Taha had secretly taken on Saudi citizenship—which put him under the protection of Mohammed bin Salman.
The result was that on June 14, 2017,
when Bashir turned on Taha and Taha fled to Khartoum’s airport, the Sudanese president couldn’t touch him. The standoff was resolved by senior Saudi officials, who urged Bashir to allow Taha (whose plane was surrounded by soldiers of Bashir’s personal guard) to fly to Riyadh.
Bashir’s tussle with Taha also resulted from Taha’s inability to deliver on the promise he’d made back in 2015, when he told Bashir that Sudan’s alliance with Saudi Arabia would result in better relations with the U.S. That was supposed to include Sudan’s removal from the State Department’s list of countries supporting terrorism.
Not only had that not happened, but Bashir had been shunned during the recent Arab summit in Riyadh, where he’d been hoping to meet with Donald Trump. The White House had made it clear that that wouldn’t happen. As a result, Bashir sent Taha instead. And so it was that, during a break in the meetings, it was Taha and not Bashir who was introduced to the American president. Standing between them was a leading Saudi official. This is Taha Osmen al-Hussein, our good friend from Sudan, the official said.
Trump smiled and stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
Sanctions have been removed, but nobody has seen real benefits with inflation skyrocketing. Bashir had to shuffle his cabinet in response to pressure a few months ago, so he may be facing internal pressure within the ruling party/military Sudan’s economic crisis: Bashir dissolves government
@ this GIF
