Sudan’s generals and the challenge of creating democratic societies

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us” is the classic language of two cowboys psyching themselves up for a gunfight at the OK Corral. It is a phrase ready-made for the grotesque spectacle of two generals blasting each other for control of what is left of Sudan.

Two gunslingers at war is a tragedy for the Sudanese people. At least 400 civilians have been killed in their crossfire. Some 3,500 are injured. This reckless disregard for life is symbolic of a wider betrayal: that of the “revolution” that overthrew the almost 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

The word “revolution” needs to be qualified because, for all the authenticity of the movement in which hundreds of thousands took to the streets for months on end, the overthrow of Bashir itself was executed by generals in a classic coup d’état. Two of them, after failing to agree how to divvy up the spoils, are now at war.

It is a sad denouement. Anyone in Khartoum in the weeks following Bashir’s ousting in April 2019 will remember the elation that accompanied his downfall. They will also recall the genuine hopes for a better Sudan, one where everyone would have a chance to participate in the economic, political and cultural life of the country.

Those were heady days. But even then there was one question that optimists struggled to answer: what would persuade the men with guns to put them down? They had too much to lose. The armed forces had run the economy for decades. Power meant economic “rents”, the chance to extract income from oil, minerals and state monopolies.

One way of looking at Sudan’s crisis is the idea of the elite bargain. In so-called “limited access” orders — a concept developed by the late Nobel economist Douglass North — power, and the economic benefits that go with it, is divided between elites. Competition is strictly controlled and new entrants are discouraged.

In Sudan, the army and a mainly Arab elite concentrated around Khartoum controlled the economic pie. One of the few ways of getting a bite was through violence. That is how Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemeti”, earned his seat at the table. First, he led a so-called Janjaweed militia fighting rebels in Darfur. Later he became head of a paramilitary militia established by Bashir who sought to fragment military power in order to control it.

That was a bad miscalculation on Bashir’s part. The equilibrium was disturbed, as it was when people rose up against his dictatorship. Hemeti made his move; Bashir was overthrown.

But the protesters had also earned a seat at the table. They proposed something radical: a shift from a limited-access society to one where people could compete for resources based on merit. The word they used was “democracy”. The army should return to barracks.

For a while the men in khaki went along with the charade. Some may even have believed in a new elite bargain, “a gamble on development” in the phrase coined by Stefan Dercon, an Oxford economist. For that to work, resources would have to grow. Competition in business and politics would be established.

But the armed forces reneged on the deal. Soldiers mounted a second coup in 2021, killing off the fledgling democratic transition. That left unfinished business: the allocation of power between Hemeti’s paramilitary militia and the state army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The latter’s attempt to neuter Hemeti by absorbing his fighters into the regular army triggered today’s violence.

One should not underestimate the difficulty of moving from limited-access societies to open-access ones. For many advanced western economies, it took hundreds of years. Some African countries have been states for little more than 60. Only a few, including Ghana, Botswana and Mauritius, have achieved anything like it.

That is not to forgive either Hemeti or Burhan for reneging on democracy or for using Sudan’s cities for target practice. Nor is to apply the soft prejudice of low expectations. But it is to acknowledge the arduous historical process of forming functioning open societies that offer their citizens greater opportunities.

People who believe that Africans are innately more prone to corruption and coups are wrong, not to say racist. People who believe many Africans live in countries trapped in cycles of corruption and violence are merely observers of the facts. Transitioning to something better is devilishly difficult. Sudan is a salutary lesson.

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