Syria and Sudan are two countries with similar presidents. Even the Arabic letters of the two presidents’ names are similar: President Bashar Assad of Syria and President Omar Bashir of Sudan.
Both the governments are facing severe crisis. Both the leaders believe they are victims of conspiracies and both survive on repression and wars.
Sudanese have been fighting wars most of the time of the 22 years of Bashir regime.
However, lately he has run away from his domestic problems to the borders after situation in the capital city became too confusing. Various political forces now call upon each other to take steps to end his bloody regime.
Bashir has announced he is planning to liberate Hagleg city and bring down the Juba government of South Sudan. He wants now to liberate one city after he failed to keep the entire south five years ago when he saw that he was besieged internationally because of the crimes he committed in the west and south of the country.
Now he wants to keep the Sudanese people engaged in a fresh war. He is forcefully drafting youths on the conviction that this old ploy of declaring another war will prolong his regime for five more years and over that time the people’s wrath against him will die down. His wars for existence are against foreigners and aimed at unifying the ranks inside. He depends on conspiracy theories to stop people opposing him and also to throw the critics to jail.
He is not new at such games. He has survived two decades with civil wars. Such games have also helped him destroy his opponents or tame the opposition leaders, such as Sadiq Al-Mahdi, who do not dare to rise up against him.
The question now is, will Sudan, which has been under the Bashir regime — the worst part of its history since its independence — be happy to be thrown into another war.
Bashir’s wars do not end with Nubia, Kardovan, Blue Nile, Darfur and lately in Abeyi. Moreover, he is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes against the people of Darfur.
Bashar and Bashir are two models of the regimes that survive on the help of security forces and military power. No values matter to them and they want to hang on to power by hook or by crook. They go on committing crimes for their survival.
Similar to the hypocrisy of Assad regime, Bashir’s lies about nationalism, Pan Arabism and Islam have been uncovered.
It is not hard to discover the real face of Bashir. In 1989, he rebelled against the democratic government elected by the people. Then he promised that his government was temporary and its task was to rescue the country from what he called street chaos. But later the Sudanese people discovered that they were left with only two options — either jump to a civil war or flee to some foreign country. The country was left to Bashir and his cronies and the military commanders close to him.
The fate of Syria’s Bashar is left to the people who will decide the course of their revolution, which did not stop even for a single day since it started more than a year ago.
In Sudan, Bashir wishes for a war with the south so that he can again declare an emergency in the country and close down newspapers and bring treason charges against the opposition.
Between Bashar and Bashir
