Will the protests in Sudan bring a spring?

Demonstrations that began about three weeks ago to protest rising bread prices in Sudan have gradually spread to many cities and gained a breadth that now includes political demands. The political demands include the resignation of Omar al-Bashir, who has ruled the country for thirty years, and his government, as well as combating the high cost of living, unemployment and corruption, and restructuring the state, while Omar al-Bashir's visit to Assad figures, if only slightly, among the subjects of protest.

Because these demonstrations have a dimension reminiscent of the Arab Spring, they appear to be welcomed with sympathy and supported by some of those who backed the Arab Spring.

Yet it must be said at once that neither is the regime in Sudan like the regimes in the places where the Arab Spring took place, nor are the protests against al-Bashir's government, or the language used in those protests, the same language. In fact, if not the only similarity, then the most obvious one between the countries where the Arab Spring took place and the regime in Sudan is that the head of state has been running the country without interruption for thirty years. In Egypt Hosni Mubarak for 30 years, in Tunisia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali for 25, in Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh for 32, in Libya Muammar Gaddafi for 42 years, and in Syria Bashar al-Assad together with his father (as of 2011) for 44 years had been ruling their countries alone, dictatorially.

Yet compared with these five countries, a significant difference of Omar al-Bashir by a wide margin is that the many political parties in the country can continue their activities relatively freely. At present there are 120 political parties of every persuasion in Sudan. Al-Bashir, who is also the Chairman of the ruling National Congress Party, has regularly entered elections since coming to power and has succeeded each time in renewing his rule and social legitimacy. Moreover, in Sudan's elections, although debates about fraud certainly exist, one does not see the ruling party receiving votes at rates reaching 99 percent as in other countries. This keeps the opposition always hopeful in the elections, keeps it from losing its belief that a path to changing the government remains open, and therefore keeps it from breaking away from the system.

Since coming to power, while al-Bashir has been occupied with both the Darfur problem and the problem of the South's secession, the country has been subjected to an embargo imposed by ABD. These preoccupations were not only about demands and complaints directed at his person; they were the result of a division within society, and in this division, because al-Bashir led a certain segment, he found a social segment sufficiently united around him despite strong opposition. The opposition, led by the separatists, already represented outside forces, and social support against them never ran short.

The support given by Western countries to the South's secession, because of the small number of Christians South Sudan contains, also, on the one hand, made Sudan close ranks within itself. For that reason al-Bashir, resting on a ground of national struggle that other Arab dictators did not have, did not face a serious legitimacy problem, at least at home. Those who voted for him really did, to a large extent, vote for him.

In these processes, of course, al-Bashir's relations with the opposition were also quite turbulent. While the country was passing through divisions, storms and encirclement, it is unthinkable that the government's relations with the opposition would proceed along their natural course. Serious economic hardships were always experienced. There were deep disagreements with the opposition over how to deal with both the Darfur problem and the problem of partition. But in these disagreements al-Bashir always managed to mobilize a social segment that supported him.

In recent years, Bashir has also made a special effort toward social reconciliation. He gave leading figures of opposition parties a place in his cabinet. At present the government is, in a sense, like a broadly participatory consensus or at least a coalition government. For that reason it should not be thought that the protests taking place now represent all segments of society.

Although the protests are widespread, it appears that participation is not as broad as to include all segments of society as in the Arab Spring process, and although political discourses were mixed in later, the protesters' demands are fundamentally economic in cause. And a regime change in any case cannot possibly offer a prescription that will remedy the economic difficulties Sudan now faces.

The economic difficulties in Sudan are first of all a problem accumulated by sanctions that have continued for twenty years, and then by the scarcity of resources that arose when South Sudan seceded and 70 percent of the oil resources remained in the South. In fact, if oil production in the South were continuing, Sudan would still receive its share because of transit rights. However, since the internal problems in the South continue and this obstructs production, Sudan cannot for now benefit from that resource.

For that reason it is not possible for the ongoing protests in Sudan to bring a spring. Moreover, al-Bashir's overthrow because of economic difficulties would bring in Sudan only the country's fragmentation, and this would bring instability to the entire African continent.

In fact, contrary to what is supposed, BAE and SA, and even Egypt, because he has not yielded to pressures to cut his relations with Turkey and Qatar, although they do not much like al-Bashir, are not very pleased with these protests targeting him.

Egypt in particular fears that a change brought about through protests would set off a wind that will reach it as well, like the Arab Spring process, since it is experiencing the same economic difficulties. That is why last week Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Intelligence Chief Abbas Kamel paid a visit to Khartoum. Although in this visit the concern to give al-Bashir a message of solidarity together with these fears came to the fore, of course there is also, to a degree, a concern to take advantage of the situation and exercise a tutelage over the Sudanese head of state on behalf of the Gulf.

To the Arab Spring sympathizers who look warmly on the protests in Sudan, let us remind them that in Egypt too the coup came by the road opened by demonstrations that looked democratic and were presented as assertive against the elected President Muhammad Morsi.

Of course the demands and hardships of the people in Sudan must not be ignored, but a regime change that these protests would pave the way for has no prospect of bringing more democracy or economic prosperity. The only thing it would bring is nothing other than a chaos that will not remain confined to Sudan but will spread to all of Africa. One must look at whose calculation or demand this might be.

In Sudan the electoral path is open for a change of government. When that is so, we know well enough what it costs to change a government by other means. In fact, all the experience we have lived through in the very process of the Arab revolutions and counter-revolutions should have taught us this well enough.