The military-political alignment of Sudan: the lost battle for the Russian base
Photo: Press Service of the Black Sea fleet
- Vice President of the Government of the Sudan Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
As many readers of the Military Review are probably aware, the distant African Sudan has recently become of great strategic value both for the Russian Federation and for the United States of America.
We have already considered this episode of the struggle for this strategically important country earlier in the article “Desirable Sudan: a new point of confrontation between Russia and the United States". However, a lot has changed in the world since its publication - and these changes have affected Africa as well.
One of the most significant events of recent days was the official suspension of the agreement with the Russian Federation on the creation of a logistics center for the Russian Navy in Port Sudan.
- the statement of the Chief of the General Staff of the Sudan Mohammad Usman al-Hussein in an interview with the Blue Nile TV channel.
This unpleasant event for Russia, however, is the fruit of the political and economic activity not only of America, but also of a number of other countries.
The beginning of this stories was laid after the overthrow of the former Sudanese president-dictator Omar al-Bashir. As previously discussed in the previous article, during his reign, the country was in international isolation. However, the situation changed dramatically under the new civilian government - and Sudan suddenly became the center of a colossal international investment project.
But, however, contrary to popular belief, these events were caused not only by the desire to eliminate the fragile influence of Russia in the country. Sudan has become a place of fierce competition from a number of states desperate to get their little piece of Africa ...
And it is this topic that will become the main one in our conversation today.
Coalition of the West or all against all?
Unfortunately, many news reach the Russian information space in an extremely distorted form. Alas, the latest news from Sudan was no exception - the majority of journalists, analysts and officials (which is especially sad) in Russia are so fixated on our military base that they completely lost sight of the real strategic alignments in the country.
To an inexperienced observer, "Sudanese passions" look like a real centralized attack on Russian plans. A real flurry of events falls on those who are interested: international treaties are being concluded, meetings are being held, loud statements are made ...
Big politics, however, is never simple, understandable and entirely logical - and Sudan, alas, is no exception to the rule.
Many are probably interested in a natural question - why did this small, poor African country, in general, suddenly become so interesting for so many major political players?
Well, I will try to give you an answer to it, dear readers.
First of all, it is, of course, the geographical position of Sudan - this state is located in a strategically important region of the globe and is a logistic transshipment point of one of the greatest transport arteries of the planet - the Suez Canal. Also in the region is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden of the Arabian Sea - it is one of the most important and busiest waterways in the world: up to 22 merchant ships pass through the strait annually and 000% ($ 14 trillion) of the total volume of world trade.
Secondly, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, Sudan is beneficial precisely because of its poverty. The country requires a huge amount of investment, large-scale construction, it needs personnel to carry out state activities and much, much more.
What does this mean for anyone looking to get their own piece of the Sudanese pie?
To control at least part of the country or part of the government does not require sophisticated manipulations and super-large monetary investments, which would be required in more developed countries. Sudan is very convenient - it requires, in fact, the most modest investments and will give incredible returns.
By the way, it was the second point that served as one of the main factors of the country's interest on the part of the Russian Federation, and it also became one of the key factors of Moscow's political defeat in the region.
However, first things first.
Thirdly, Sudan is one of the few neutral countries in this part of the globe - it is not strongly influenced by any side of the global geopolitical conflict, and therefore, until recently, was seen as an extremely attractive ally for many of its participants.
However, one should not be mistaken about the factor of Khartoum's conditional neutrality. In fact, it has long been the object of close scrutiny by a number of states unfriendly to the Russian Federation, one of which began to take decisive action long before Moscow, in general, thought about creating its own naval base there.
Naturally, we are talking about the Republic of Turkey.
As you know, Ankara is a kind of "contractor" of the American-British military-political bloc. One of its central tasks is to be active in those countries with which London and Washington, for one reason or another, cannot have official close ties.
Naturally, the Americans have long been interested in cooperation with Sudan - but how could it be arranged if the dictator Omar al-Bashir was in power?
And here Turkey came to the rescue.
Ankara has quite close historical ties with Khartoum, which have been successfully superimposed on common confessional preferences and economic interests. Omar al-Bashir, however, acted rather slowly, although this did not prevent the two sides from concluding a number of critical agreements, one of which concerned the construction of a large-scale Turkish naval base on the island of Suakin.
- said the President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
By the way, Ankara has shown itself to be super effective in the negotiations - the government of al-Bashir has leased the above territories ... for 99 years.
How Turkey becomes a major player in Sudan
Facts of the current year:
1. Six cooperation agreements have been signed.
2. Turkey will help Sudan to establish the work of the Supreme Committee and joint inter-ministerial commissions in order to develop cooperation in the fields of energy and defense.
3. Turkey will help rebuild and rebuild infrastructure in Sudan.
4. Trade volumes should grow from half a billion to 2 billion.
5. Sudan will allocate 100 thousand hectares for agricultural needs of Turkey.
After that, however, Turkish successes fell under the skating rink of the revolution, which swept away the old political alignments in the country. Around the same time, Moscow began to act more or less actively - and the rates increased many times over.
Unfortunately, we have to admit that Russian relations with Khartoum can be called extremely reckless to say the least. All the risks of such a relationship were clearly not taken into account by the leadership of our country - and the situation around Sudan is causing enormous reputational damage to Russia right now.
News of a possible strengthening of Russian influence in the region has multiplied interest in Khartoum. In the Russian information space, there are a number of very curious, but, alas, false versions that it was some kind of "cunning plan" to draw the West into Sudan, but they do not stand up to criticism even without a detailed analysis of the entire situation. It is obvious that this country in any case would become one of the outposts of the NATO bloc - the question here is only how soon could this happen? Moscow's interest clearly accelerated this process - and, alas, Russia had no chance of gaining the upper hand in this party.
Why are we generally forced to view the Sudanese events through the prism of our country's defeat?
The reason for this is extremely simple - as mentioned above, Sudan has been a point of heightened interest for many years, both for Turkey and for competing monarchies of the Gulf. The unexpected activation of the United States is largely associated with Washington's desire to have an operational base for confronting Iran and China - while America in these scenarios acts as the supreme predator, which will take its toll regardless of the victory of any of its satellites.
This is the monstrous mistake that our country made when deciding to try to take our place in the Sudanese confrontation - we started a dangerous game on a foreign field without significant preparation and any serious trump cards. In turn, the opponents were fully armed and knew all the local layouts very well.
For example, TIKA, an agency affiliated with the Turkish government, has implemented 14 projects in Sudan over the past 716 years (during the reign of Omar al-Bashir) (which is especially important, most of them are in education - in fact, Ankara has carefully raised a generation pro-Turkish lobbyists).
The saddest thing in this situation is the fact that Russia did not even act as a serious competitor for any of the parties: in fact, we fell into a snake ball, in which Ankara is fighting against Cairo and Riyadh, and Washington is fighting against Beijing and Tehran. By the way, the latter, albeit nominally, are our allies, but in fact they did not support the Russian Federation in this struggle in any way - and after all, they had the resources and leverage for this: Tehran has been engaged in the development of a supply network for terrorist groups in Sudan for two decades, and China had a good investment backlog (in particular, in the field of mining).
As was natural, Russia was kicked out of this tangle - playfully, in passing and with extremely serious consequences for our foreign policy activities.
In the history of Sudan, a long-known truth emerges again and again, which, however, has not yet been qualitatively comprehended in Russian society - that we critically need a serious and working school of military anthropology, orientalism and analytics. The lack of a competent analysis of the operational and strategic situation again and again brings Russia down on various fronts of hybrid warfare (the Sudanese events more than fit into this war format). The relevant departments, as expected, are getting worse and worse with the current load - and this is a trend not only for the Russian Federation, but also for many countries of the world.
For this reason, the so-called "think tanks" are in such demand at present - independent organizations engaged in the preparation of analytical reports commissioned by the government. This is an experience that we should definitely adopt and actively use for our own purposes - otherwise, many foreign policy actions of our country may repeat the fate of Sudan.
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