Surviving revolution and democratisation: the Sudan armed forces, state fragility and security competition

Abstract

Sudan has for decades been one of Africa's most fragmented polities. Yet arguably the single most consequential actor in its recent history is among the least well studied: the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). For most of post-independence statehood, Khartoum has been ruled by generals. This article places SAF in a longitudinal context of the expansion and contraction of state power and the functions of the coercive apparatus in these processes. It situates SAF in institutional logics, driven by historically contingent ideas about the nature of the polity, the role of the army within it and its likely partners and enemies. Doing so historicises the strategic calculus of SAF during the 2018–2019 December Revolution which mobilised millions but ended with a new coup in October 2021. I underscore how institutionalised rivalry between SAF and other security services has moulded patterns of regime change and consolidation: from Ja'afar Nimeiri and Omar Al-Bashir to Abdelfatah Al-Burhan today, anxieties over security competition and state fragility shape SAF's willingness to break with regimes it once dominated and its subsequent subversion of revolutionary change and democratisation.

Effective Social Protection in Conflict: Findings from Sudan

“…One of the tactics this elite has used to maintain its dominance has been the deployment of militias; successive governments granted these a significant level of autonomy in Sudan's peripheral regions and recently Khartoum. This weakened the army's monopoly on violence and heightened institutional rivalries between different parts of the security apparatus (Verhoeven 2023). Further, it positioned the RSF to benefit from Darfur's rich seams of gold, as well as the lucrative smuggling operation across the Sahara (De Waal 2019; Abbas 2023).…”