SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: AP – A new strongman in Sudan? Experts aren’t so sure

6/8/19: AP – A new strongman in Sudan? Experts aren’t so sure, by Joseph Krauss and Samy Magdy

 AP’s feature piece quotes from experts who doubt that Himedti can establish a new patronage system akin to that which kept Omar Al Bashir in power for three decades, despite Himedti’s ability to draw from his family’s vast livestock and gold mining operations and Saudi-Emirati funding to buy support from local elites.

 Sudan expert Alex de Waal notes that “Khartoum elites are unanimous that Hemedti cannot be the ruler of Sudan” because he is “an uneducated Darfurian…from the wrong class and the wrong place.”

 Suliman Baldo, a senior researcher with the Enough Project, doubts that Himedti can sustain “exhausted” Sudan’s “collapsed” economy.

 Baldo and Sudan researcher Jerome Tubiana also note that given Himedti’s violent past, he may have too many enemies to buy support in Sudan’s peripheral regions.