SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Financial Times - Sudan’s revolutionaries need help to avoid the ‘Myanmar trap’
David Pilling calls for external encouragement and support for Sudanese institutions in order to avert Sudan taking the path of Egypt or Myanmar, where revolutions that ousted one military regime saw it replaced by another.
The obstacles to Sudan’s democratic transition highlighted by Pilling include the absence of an “obvious champion in Washington” under the US presidency of Donald Trump, that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states “currently propping up Sudan” lack an “interest in seeing a vibrant democracy take hold,” and that the Sudanese military and Islamists are “waiting for their chance” to “crush” the revolution.
Thus, Pilling writes that Sudan requires external financial help for the democratic transition to survive, and for Sudan to shift its perception among “a whole generation of western officials” away from associations with “genocide and terrorism.”