Crossfire War – KHARTOUM – TEHRAN – TRIPOLI WATCH – North – Northeast Africa Theatre: Khartoum – Tehran – Beijing – Tripoli – Riyadh/Cairo – N’Djamena – Addis Ababa – Asmara – Kampala; Sudan Arrests Opposition Leaders and Retired Generals to Increase Control Over Central Region – Under Advisement by Iran – China
Night Watch: KHARTOUM – AFP reports the government in Khartoum has arrested 14 opposition leaders, including retired generals, in what the government claims was a coup attempt designed to create chaos and invite the international community to intervene. The Interior Ministry claimed, “Weapons were transported, hidden and distributed in Khartoum in order to cause widespread trouble, sabotage and attacks on strategic targets.” I suspect the weapons were distributed by the government, under the advice of the two leading foreign powers in Khartoum, Tehran-Beijing. Iran and China, especially Beijing, are experts in framing the opposition by accusing them of being a threat to stability and providing the evidence which of course has been planted. It is the oldest trick of dictatorial-oppressive rule, which is of course unpopular, but to keep the opposition unbalanced and the population under control the government creates an atmosphere of eternal crisis. A sense of being under constant threats, foreign or internal, threats that are either real or imagined, preferably the latter. [GULFTIMES]
And that is why the government’s announcement of the coup was met with disbelief in Khartoum and around this vast nation. The government only controls the military and major institutions as it maintains a strict military command link to Tehran as Iran prepares to use Sudan as a base to support the Islamic radical opposition to Egypt President Hosni Mubarak, the same spiritual element that assassinated Mubarak’s predecessor Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, because Sadat had placed Egypt within the West’s sphere of influence. I have lost count of the number of meetings Khartoum-Tehran have conducted since 2004, which was the year Iran’s then President Mohammad Khatami embarked on his four nation regional tour circumventing Egypt. Oman-Sudan-Algeria-Syria. Khatami was at least three days in Khartoum and addressed the national assembly where he discussed economic opportunity that has been mainly exploited by Beijing since China is the leading international investor in Sudan’s oil fields in the south, which is why Beijing has for 21 years guaranteed Iran was supplied with nuclear and ballistic missile technology, either from China or North Korea.
Most of the opposition leaders arrested were from the central region which, as the rest of the country, is not represented by decisions made in Khartoum and will not be until the current government is overthrown. The international community will not be able to do so until after the war with Iran runs its course this year. Russia is not the main target of Iran’s foreign policy but instead, Tehran will reintroduce Moscow to this region as well as to North Africa and West Asia (Middle East). Moscow reduced a lot of its contacts in all of those areas when the Cold War ended in 1990 to let the entire region go up in smoke and then move back in through the Caucasus toward Iran. When Tehran realizes Moscow cannot be defeated in the Caucasus by Islamic groups and now Georgia then Tehran-Moscow will combine their inter-regional policies. Tehran may attempt to convince Khartoum to cooperate with the new international reality of the post-World War III world with Russia emerging as the most prominent international presence under advisement of Tehran.
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