Dr. Issameldin Abbas Ahmed
The Islamists have tried many times to deny their role in igniting the Sudanese war, but the evidence against them has been stacking up. Even before the war, many of their leaders made explicit calls to undermine the framework agreement, even if it led to bloody clashes. As soon as the fighting broke out, their battalions came out and organized themselves in a short time under the banner of Al-Baraa bin Malik. After more than a year of war, their political leaders began to appear publicly and bless the continuation of the war and confront any civilian attempts to stop it. Port Sudan recently witnessed the reception of the Vice President of the National Congress Party, allowing him to speak openly to supporters and indicating that he has the support of the de facto government. This coincided with a celebration by the Deputy Commander of the Army of an Islamist leader and hawk, Ahmed Abbas, the former governor of Sennar. This shows that the Islamists are pumping life into the conflict and insisting on continuing it in the hope of returning to power.
Sudan occupies a geopolitical position that has made it the focus of attention of many countries. On the one hand, it overlooks the Red Sea, one of the most important waterways in the world and a key pathway for global trade, and opening it up to Iranian-backed terrorism. On the other hand, Sudan has open land borders with a number of African countries that suffer from political unrest and where terrorism and violent extremism are active, especially in the Maghreb.
Sudan has experienced terrorist activity since the Islamists seized power in 1989, and they hosted extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. In that period, Sudan not only provided a safe haven, but also allowed the exploitation of its weak and unregulated banking system to finance terrorism. Sudan also opened its doors to those seeking to attract young people to join extremist organizations in Somalia, the Sahel and Islamic State in the Levant.
Most of the extremist organizations that have spread in Sudan and its surroundings are characterized by common features and denominators which can be summarized as follows:
- Violence is a means to reach power: Extremists adopt a violent approach that does not believe in the peaceful transfer of power. They rely on the use of force to achieve their aims and falsely claim that this brings them closer to God. Therefore, they are enemies of any civil transformation and believe in military coups, armed alliances, and violent activity that would weaken the central state.
- The sanctity of the group’s law: Members of extremist organizations believe in harming their opponents. They implement and condone killing, destruction, illegal detention, and drug, human and weapons trafficking.
- Denial of territorial jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of state laws: Extremist groups deny state borders and reject the authority of states.
Many factors have contributed to making Sudan an attractive ground for terrorism and violent extremism including the weakness of Sudanese security institutions and their unwillingness to control terrorist activity, the spread of weapons and illegal trafficking, the spread of inflammatory rhetoric supporting terrorism and violent extremism, imbalances in service, economic and social structures that make some more vulnerable to recruitment and other factors.
These factors are laid out in greater detail in a paper published today by the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, “Will Sudan become the next hotbed of violent extremism?” The factors are mostly local, and there are also international and regional that cannot be ignored. Since the outbreak of the international conflict to control the Red Sea, Iran has been striving to establish a foothold in Sudan to strengthen its position in Yemen. It has benefited from the Port Sudan government’s desperation to garner international supporters and rushed to restore its diplomatic presence in Port Sudan and its military presence in Sudan’s Red Sea territorial water. In addition to Iran role, the weakness or lack of intelligence coordination among countries of the region and the failure to expand the use of information technology in exchanging information, analyzing data, and providing early warning of potential terrorist operations also increase the risk.
As shown above, the risks of terrorism are international in nature and therefore the responses also need to be international. Many international and regional institutions concerned with combating terrorism have prepared studies and developed strategies that enable national institutions in sub-Saharan Africa to control this growing threat, but Sudan has not received its fair share of cooperation due to the long-term isolation of the Bashir regime and the additional obstacles to cooperation posed by Sudan’s relapse into dictatorship following the October 25, 2021 coup and the outbreak of the most recent war that dismantled the already weak security structure.
As elsewhere, violent extremism in Sudan adopts and legitimizes violence. It takes various forms, from planning or inciting the commission of ideologically motivated crimes, to individuals or groups who actually carry out terrorist acts. There are also ethnically and religiously organized anti-democratic movements not linked to extremist organizations but that promote undemocratic goals, such as establishing a totalitarian or theocratic form of government or eliminating the basic rights and freedoms of certain segments of the population. By tracking such terrorist and undemocratic activity in Sudan and analyzing its behavior and nature, measures to combat it, including preventive controls and measures, deploying modern information technology, and ensuring that anti-terrorism measures do not create risks for citizens can more effectively be deployed.
Controlling terrorism and reducing the chances of its expansion in the region requires urgent international interventions including:
- Redoubling efforts to stop the Sudanese war, which has exacerbated the risk of terrorism and violent extremism by allowing extremists to return to Sudan and reorganize through the establishment of militias with an extremist Islamic orientation.
- Developing a regional mechanism for increasing intelligence cooperation based on the use of information technology and modern technical trends such as big data analysis, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things to monitor terrorist activity and build an advanced early warning system.
- Raising the capabilities of the Sudanese security establishment through a comprehensive reform program that addresses all its weaknesses and builds its doctrine in a manner consistent with the project of a civil state and the rule of law.
Dr. Issameldin Abbas Ahmed is a dedicated civil activist deeply immersed in Sudan’s diverse cultures. He actively participates in the activities of the Coordination of Civil Forces through the Civil Humanitarian Aid Organization. His research contributions span areas such as governance, peacebuilding, sustainability, security and military reform, civilian oversight of the police force, smart community development, and transitioning towards a smart economy. He has served as a Short-Term Consultant to the World Bank in digital identity and digital transformation, Director General of the Digital Transformation Agency at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning Sudan, and Director General of Information Technology and Digital Transformation at the Ministry of Interior, Sudan. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Juba University, a Master’s degree in Information Technology from El-Neelain University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Sudan University of Science and Technology.
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