On July 18, 2015, a group of opposition politicians were traveling by military transport to Asmara, Eritrea when an explosion ripped through the vehicle. The blast killed five people, including four Sudanese officials — Vice President Tawakkol Karman, parliamentary deputy Maryan Hamdan and two former army commanders, Abdel-Hamid El Haj Ali and Badr Abdul-Hadi.
The perpetrators have not been arrested, nor has any military body acknowledged responsibility. The government was never able to provide any proof of the rebels’ involvement.
This incident caused an unprecedented level of animosity between the Sudanese military and civilian leaders over the past two years. On June 14, 2016, protesters from the opposition National Umma Party clashed with the Sudanese military and security forces in the capital Khartoum, injuring more than 160 people. Bashir immediately fired the top military leaders, including Gen. Mohamed Abdallahi, deputy commander of the General Staff, and Gen. Ahmed Rabbani, the defense minister’s chief of staff. The following day, Gen. Abdel-Aziz al-Khayet — head of the defense attache to Washington — also left the country, citing “political reasons.” Al-Khayet was replaced by Maj. Gen. Mohamed Dahir Abdallah.
Nonetheless, Bashir claimed to remain “fully determined” to end the insurgency in Darfur and bring peace to the rest of Sudan’s fragile regions. Yet instead of attending reconciliation talks at peace talks hosted by Djibouti in late 2016, he opted to assume the seat of his late father, Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan since 1989, in military academy. Since that was done, Bashir is trying to impose an increasingly unpopular limited federalization of Sudan with the help of China.
