The Washington Institute for Improving American Policies in the Middle East says that, after a little more than a year since the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime, Sudan can go either toward a familiar pattern of dysfunction, or towards a pioneering path that not only benefits the country's population, but the wider Arab world and After him.

In an article by the writer Alberto Fernandez, vice president of the Middle East Institute for Media Research in Washington and US Chargé d'Affaires in Khartoum from 2007 to 2009, the institute said that the massive demonstrations of last June 30 in Sudan organized by the resistance committees, the popular base of the forces of freedom and change, were raised Many pivotal demands include the rapid transition towards civilian rule, more firmness by civilians, distance from elements of the former regime that still dominate the country’s bureaucratic apparatus, accountability for violations of the former regime, and loosening the army’s grip in many areas.

Unique history

The author said - in his article titled Sudan on Edge: An Inevitable Fall or a Better Way Ahead? - Africa and the Middle East are teeming with countries that stand on the edge of the abyss, but in a region that is supposed to be condemned to different types of tyranny, the history of Unique Sudan, as the first country to overthrow an old authoritarian regime alone, it is possible to break many of the prevailing pessimistic expectations.

He pointed out that Sudan’s already impoverished economy remained even before the "Covid-19" epidemic crisis and the subsequent global downturn in continuous decline, as the inflation rate reached about 100%, unemployment 25%, and the economy is expected to contract by 8% this year after contracting 2.5% Last year, the country also had billions of dollars in arrears in debt to global lenders due to the incompetence and greed of former leaders, and Sudan was asked to pay $ 826 million in compensation for al-Qaeda bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the settlement of these claims remains 300 million are stuck in the US Senate.

The Hamdok government, according to the article, did not fail, although it did not make progress (Anatolia).

Hamdok did not fail

The writer went on to say that the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdock had not failed, although it had made no progress. It is the most diverse government in the country, and it allowed freedom of the press and repealed laws that limited women's and religious rights and started a painful and slow process, in the eyes of critics, to achieve transparency and accountability in the actions of the previous regime, and recovered between $ 3.5 and $ 4 billion in assets, according to the committee Fighting corruption and dismantling the system, as I made real progress last month at the "Sudan Partners" conference in Berlin, obtained 1.8 billion in new aid and improved long-term relations with the IMF and the World Bank, but these encouraging basic developments were just initial steps.

Despite the sincerity and seriousness of the civil government, the author says, Sudan cannot recover from the legacy of three decades of chaos and disorder overnight.

The author urged the United States to accelerate the strengthening of civilian government in Sudan and provide early support to it, and to warn regional leaders against using Sudan as another geopolitical football.

A fateful choice

The writer said that the United States has a fateful choice at this pivotal moment. It could deal with Sudan as if it had quite enough time to get things right, or it could prioritize the country as an urgent case of immediate support, a situation in which it provides real benefits to the regional interests of the United States.

The article concluded by saying that Sudan, which inherited a heavy legacy and was trapped in the tensions of the Renaissance Dam between the two neighbors, Egypt and Ethiopia, would be easy for Washington to remove from its interest, however, given the despair and blockage of the horizon in most Arab-speaking countries, it is important that Washington do everything in It can now, but not later, to ensure the emergence of Sudan as a tolerant, civilian-led country rather than another failed state. This would be better not only for the United States, but also for a region hungry for stories of relative success amid the misery that is accumulating every day.