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The future is military

The main question this year is how far Khartoum will pursue militarism to compensate for its loss of the South

Billboards in Khartoum celebrate the regime’s military prowess and its increasingly bellicose tactics against the newly independent South. Massive pictures of the President, Field Marshal Omer Hassan Ahmed el Beshir, and the Defence Minister, General Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein (now also wanted by the International Criminal Court), stare down, in uniform and unsmiling, at the dusty streets. ‘Long ago, our ancestors told us to look after the nation’, runs one poster, echoing an old song. As opposition groups step up protests and the regime responds by arresting human rights and political activists, this sounds like a threat....

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The future is military

The main question this year is how far Khartoum will pursue militarism to compensate for its loss of the South

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