Bashir was once Uganda’s ‘enemy.’ He’ll be missed when he falls

From last Friday, protesters descended on the zone outside Sudan’s army headquarters in Khartoum, upping their pressure on President Omar al-Bashir to resign. For the first time since the start of the year, after the Bashir government sparked protests after announcing that the price of fuel and bread would rise, the military - whose loyalty has kept him in power - seemed to crack.

Bashir has presided over an inflation-wracked economy weakened by years of sanctions for Khartoum’s alleged support for terrorism; a regime tarnished by his indictment for war crimes in the Darfur region; and diminished coffers following the loss of oil revenues in the wake of South Sudan’s independence.

African strongmen survive comfortably without popular support. They get into trouble when they run out of resources to dole out patronage to their base, and buy off both rivals and the rest of the country with social bribes. But Bashir’s troubles should tell Ugandans a much bigger story. Sudan is the single largest importer of Ugandan coffee, buying nearly a million bags. Considering that Uganda is the largest coffee exporter, that is something.

The more dramatic thing about that is that until the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in Naivasha, Kenya, in January 2005, ending the long civil war with the south, Sudan was an “enemy state” to Uganda. That was because of Khartoum’s support for the now defeated Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in norther Uganda. Khartoum backed the LRA because of Uganda’s support for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which ran deep, involving deployment of the UPDF alongside the South Sudan rebels.

Many young Ugandans who are now news consumers, probably don’t know that there was a time when Khartoum planes regularly bombed parts of the north, at the height of the Kony war. That was a time when no speech by President Yoweri Museveni and his lieutenants on politics and security could end without a sharp condemnation of Bashir.

To move from that to being a key trading partner, and a situation where Uganda became a big defender of Bashir when the International Criminal Court was on his neck for war crimes, is probably one of the most dramatic turnarounds in relations between rival nations in Africa of this century.

How did it happen? One explanation is to be found in what has happened to Uganda over the last 40 years since the fall of Idi Amin in 1979, which was sharply accentuated by the economic liberalisation policies of the Museveni government from 1988. Uganda has become the most mercantilist nation in eastern Africa, even way ahead of Kenya where there are now even complaints against “cheap” Ugandan eggs.

We stumbled into it. Starting from 1966 with the “Buganda Crisis”, we became a country of exiles and refugees. As we were scattered far and wide by the crises at home, we established relations in these places, which in later years became trading networks.

For them to become trading networks, though, it required the radical economic liberalisation regime of the late 1980s and the 1990s. One of the key elements of this related to agriculture (which still enjoys an extensive tax-free regime), in turn are explained initially by Museveni and the NRM’s need to rebuild their southern agrarian base in the first years. It’s hard to find this combination of a formerly exile/refugee elite-dominated nation; a highly liberal economy; and a pampered agrarian political base, in Africa.

Then some. As Museveni grew longer in the political tooth, and became the longest-ruling leader in the region, Bashir came to perform another function. In power since June 1989, Bashir became Museveni’s necessary companion in the Big Man’s club.
And, though he has been in office longer, he still compares more favourably than Bashir. Thus Bashir’s role reversed, and he became a useful idiot for Museveni. Makes one wonder whether Kampala would really be happy to see him go. Whenever that happens, it can’t be too long from now.

Sudanese nationalists have never forgiven Bashir for “losing a country”, with South Sudan’s independence. Without Uganda’s military support for the SPLA, the war in the south would still have ended eventually, but probably the south would have had a loose federal relationship with Khartoum, and not become an independent state. Indeed, if the charismatic SPLA leader John Garang had not died in that Uganda presidential helicopter crash in 2005, many believe South Sudan might not have gone its separate way. Bashir would still have the oil.

Today, with South Sudan still in the throes of war, Bashir in trouble, and Ugandan coffee ruling in Sudan, it seems the only parties to have profited in the many crises of the Sudans, are the former foes sitting somewhere in Kampala!

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3