Sudan: coup, what coup?

Sudan’s army has just dissolved the government, dismissed the prime minister and declared a state of emergency. That certainly sounds like a coup — but it’s not, unless you count the army taking over from itself as a coup. The two uniformed power brokers who effectively controlled Sudan last week (a regular soldier called General Burhan and an opportunistic warlord lieutenant general Hamdan) still control the country this week.

My Oxford English Dictionary defines a coup as a ‘sudden and decisive stroke of state policy’ and also as ‘a finishing stroke.’ Sudan’s coup that is not a coup was neither sudden nor decisive. The mood of end-game impatience with the civilian part of the government has been building for months, while this week’s superficial change of guard decides nothing — the factional deadlock within the armed forces remains as deadly as ever.

Worse, the faux-coup is not a ‘finishing stroke’ but rather perpetuates the disastrous grip of a military that has spent most of the last fifty years turning resource-rich Sudan into one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world.