Sudan growth path boosts al-Bashir’s comeback chances

From the highway, this farming village looks like yet another poor, mud-walled settlement baking in the stupefying heat.

The houses are low-slung and built from dun-coloured bricks, and during the hot hours of the day, the only earthly creatures brave enough to step outside are fly-covered donkeys.

But inside the homes, children watch satellite TV.

They also have electricity, water, ceiling fans, DVD players and even air conditioners – a small miracle here – wedged into the mud walls.

In the span of a generation, which neatly coincides with the 21 years President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been in charge, the people of Tabga, like millions of other Sudanese in certain areas, have become living proof of an economic transformation.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Sudan’s gross domestic product has nearly tripled since al-Bashir took power.

Much of that growth has happened in the past decade or so since Sudan began exporting oil, propelling the nation’s “longest and strongest growth episode since independence” in 1956,a recent World Bank report said.

As Sudan continues voting this week in the first multiparty election in decades, it is precisely the fruits of this expansion – more schools, more roads, more hospitals, more opportunity – that explain why so many voters are eager to re-elect al-Bashir, who is suspected of war crimes and is often perceived as a villain in the West.

“Why would we vote for change?” asked Kamal Yusuf, one of Tabga’s elders, sitting on a couch in his brother’s spacious mud house, sipping a cool Pepsi (with ice). “Our lives are so much better than they used to be.”

Plenty of African countries have experienced similar economic growth in recent decades.

But without hesitation, many Sudanese attribute the modernity, prosperity and change unfolding around them to the hard work of one man: al-Bashir, who has governed with a tight fist since 1989.

The fact that al-Bashir, an army general who seized power in a military coup, has been charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes against humanity for what prosecutors say was “an essential role” in the bloodshed in Darfur does not seem to bother many people in areas that have benefited from the economic boom.

Nor do al-Bashir’s frequent xenophobic diatribes or his history of cozying up to terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, which has resulted in stiff sanctions.

It is not that Sudanese particularly enjoy his combativeness with the West, which may play well in other parts of the Muslim world.

They just do not seem to think it is relevant.

“Things here are flourishing,” said Safi Eldin, a sesame exporter.

In other words: It’s the economy, stupid. Of course, al-Bashir remains a highly polarising figure in some parts of Sudan, like Darfur in the west, and in the semiautonomous south, which fought a long war against him.

But here in the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and in Khartoum, the capital, the vast majority of people interviewed said they would vote for him.

Many recalled with a grimace the late 1980s, when Sudan was plagued by triple-digit inflation, bread lines and disastrous economic policies – and governed by some of the same opposition politicians who contested these elections until they recently dropped out.

“Those other guys had their chance,” said Ibrahim al-Mahi, a teacher. Wednesday was Day 4 in the voting process, and turnout continued to be steady in the north and a bit problematic in the south.

Earlier in the week, Sudanese election officials were hit by numerous complaints of missing ballots and incomplete voters lists, so they extended the election to five days of voting from three to give everyone in this sprawling country of nearly one million square miles a chance to vote.

Most analysts expect al-Bashir to win handily, though the election will not be the legitimising moment that al-Bashir, clearly agitated by the International Criminal Court indictment, seemed to be seeking when he campaigned so aggressively.

The leading opposition figures and many election observers have complained that he manipulated state news media, the election rules and even the printing of ballots to ensure he would not lose.
The truth is, though, al-Bashir probably could have won without rigging.

For years, Sudan’s political opposition has been disorganized and poisonously divided, while the party in power, the National Congress Party, has been unified and professional.

It was no surprise that al-Bashir campaigned relentlessly, flying all around Sudan the past several weeks and spending millions of dollars on slick posters and billboards, ubiquitous on Khartoum’s arrow-straight thoroughfares.

Rare are pictures of him decked out in his military uniform or like an Islamic sheik, images he has projected before. Most posters today show him standing in front of icons of industry: a dam, a factory, a road, a steamroller.

“For the sake of development and prosperity,” one poster said.

In 1999, in the middle of al-Bashir’s years in power, Sudan began pumping oil, and much of the growth flows from that.

But Sudan has not squandered this opportunity. Corruption is not a crippling problem here, as it is in neighbouring Kenya, or in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, two African nations blessed with staggering amounts of resources but suffering from the so-called resource curse.

World Bank executives say Sudan has some of the sharpest economic policymakers on the continent, who have invested wisely in infrastructure, education and the country’s agriculture industry Of course, wealth here is not evenly shared.

Al-Bashir’s Sudan is a thoroughly militarized place and the president’s troops are among the biggest beneficiaries of the boom, constantly getting new weapons, trucks, hospitals and other perks.

There are also large sections of the country, especially in southern Sudan and Darfur, that remain desperately poor and where the well-worn images of stick-thin children are still true. Around 40 percent of Sudan’s 40 million people live below the poverty line.

That said, the newfound prosperity is not confined to the office towers rising from the banks of the Nile in downtown Khartoum.

The village of Tabga is a three-hour drive from the capital, in a paper-flat rural area dominated by Arab tribes.

Sudan has long been controlled by northern Arabs like al-Bashir, but it was not until the past 10 or 15 years, when al-Bashir solidified his authority, that people here said they tasted something resembling the good life.

Yusuf, one of the village’s elders, recalled how 20 years ago he used to drink dirty water from canals, walk miles to the nearest hospital and live off porridge.

But those days are over.

Tabga, population 800, has its own health clinic, water tower and electricity meters.

“And my kids,” Yusuf said proudly, “are going to college.”