Sudan. A desperate Bashir | MadaMasr
▻https://madamasr.com/en/2019/02/10/opinion/u/a-desperate-bashir
It has been eight weeks since anti-government protests began in Sudan, and the government is running out of money. And so Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is not spending his time addressing rallies and strategizing with his inner circle on how to quell or placate the most serious protests in his government’s 30 year history. He is on a plane, criss-crossing the Middle East and North Africa, visiting heads of states in the hope that he can extract some support to bridge his regime for another few months, to fill petrol pumps with fuel and ATMs with cash. These financial boosts have, in the past, come in many forms, ranging from vanilla aid to development schemes, where land or strategic ports are sold off to foreign sovereign leaders and billionaires. During Osama bin Laden’s years in Sudan, it was rumored that, at one point, the government had sold him over half of the agricultural land under its control. When he was expelled from Sudan, his losses were estimated to have reached US$300 million.