 On Thursday, November 25th, tens of thousands of people yet again took to the streets of Sudan. Now they were protesting an agreement between the military which had recently staged a coup and the deposed Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdoq. Now this is a bit unusual because the agreement actually provided for the reinstatement of the Prime Minister. Yet, according to the protesters, this was a betrayal of the democratic process that started in Sudan in December 2018 and culminated in the revolution that overthrew Omar al-Bashir. So what is this all about? We'll be talking about this on Mapping Fault Lines. We have with us Prabir Pulkai. Prabir, like I said, it's a strange situation because you have a coup followed by the deposed Prime Minister signing an agreement with the military according to which he's going to come back but lead a technocratic government. So it's a difficult mix to analyze. So could you maybe take us through what exactly is the process here? Well, I think it's a difficult mix to analyze as you said because as you point out, the Prime Minister was deposed and then he has been brought back but not the cabinet though it was still a government in which the military had representation. Only he has been brought back and he'll be heading a government essentially rubber stamp for the military ruler. So I don't think that he has really got the levers of power within. Given what the others have said, almost all the other forces who are on the streets fighting against the military dictatorship earlier, military rule earlier and also after the recent overthrow of the government of Hamdouk, it does not seem people accept this as a legitimate coming down by the military. Yes, it is some kind of an attempt to placate the... Is it to placate the external powers or is it to placate the people who have moved to the streets? That's a real question. To me, looking at the correlation of forces appears that most of the internal forces have not accepted this. They think Hamdouk has betrayed them, betrayed essentially what you call the 2018 overthrow of machine and the processes that followed. It seems to be an attempt to placate the Americans and the Europeans who had been saying don't do this because it gives a very bad optics to what's happening in Sudan. So you have to make some placatory gestures. So it seems to be more a gesture than a real re-approchement with the civilian government that was there earlier. So I think civilian government, of course, as I said, was also... It would be misnomer. But at least it is a recognition that the military had lost power in some significant sense. And now it had taken complete power. This is again a situation of unsteady equilibrium if we will. But I think it's also very clear that Sudan is not going to be placated by such gestures. To cut Hamdouk's credibility even further, one of the military generals, I think Dagalo, has said that actually Hamdouk knew about the coup that was to take place, which was to depose him. Though he was held in the house arrest after the deposition, after being deposed. So all of this doesn't add to Hamdouk's credibility. And if you see the major forces who are on the streets, who are leading the struggle, they have denounced Hamdouk and they have said, this we do not accept and we want a return to full civilian rule. So Hamdouk's promise is in 2020-23 there will be free elections and then all this will be over. I don't think people believe that 2023 promise has any credibility. So I think we'll have to see how it develops. It's still the initiative rests with the forces against the military rulers. And I think the initiative has not by this changed significantly. And of course there's been a long history of betrayed promises over the past two years, especially for instance there was a promise that a parliament would be set up that was never set up so you can't blame the people. So could you also maybe take us to the strategic importance? You mentioned the need to placate Western powers, the United States, European Union and all that. But what is also the kind of regional significance of Sudan and the kind of geopolitics that's happening there? See, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia have been the horns of Africa countries. So of course Djibouti is an outlier over there. It is a small state let so to say. Now this is important because it controls the Red Sea. Now that is the pipeline, lifeline so to say connecting Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. And if you see that of course U.S. is then the line that connects Red Sea to Mediterranean. So there is a great deal of strategic importance to the horns of Africa, the horns of Africa. That's been there right from the beginning for a long time. We have talked about it. The U.S. attitude towards the horn of Africa has been there. It's very much a part of the way they look at West Asia itself. But cutting across all of that, all the countries in horn of Africa are now under different kinds of civil wars. So we have a failed state, Somalia. We are now seeing the earlier civil war, North and South Sudan, which was again the Americans instigated, the Western powers instigated. They wanted the Sudanese oil region to be independent of North Sudan. Now you also have civil war in Ethiopia. All of this shows that if you really want to control countries from the top using whatever levers of power you have, that does not really ring true with the people. And long-term stability means that the people need a democratic setup where they have what they feel should happen, does happen. Not what the donors may feel, what Americans may feel backed by the military power they have. So I think it's a long, continuous process in which you see the emergence of increasingly of failed states. The other part of it, and this is also related to the Horn of Africa countries, is of course dismantling of Libya and Gaddafi. Gaddafi was a support to the African Union. He was the one who really propped up the African Union because he had enough petrodollars to fund African Union's budget. After he fell, African Union has ceased to really be a power. So Africa's internal ability to really play a role in these kind of conflicts has gone down significantly. So if we look at it, I think we are looking at a long period of instability through which internal forces have to emerge which can re-establish a democratic state in these parts of the world. And Sudan seems to be one of the first which has challenged the military and challenged the military very successfully for the last more than two years. So I think Sudan is the country to watch whether it can create a new future in the Horn of Africa. Right, and it's interesting because the contrast is of course in Egypt where there was a similar process ten years ago but with the aid of the United States and the allies of the military and Abdul Fateh Al-Sisi are now in control. But you mentioned Ethiopia which is again significant because there have been new developments. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has apparently moved to the battle front to lead soldiers from the front as he says. This has been a conflict that has been going on for over a year now and there have been claims that the rebels, the Tigray People's Liberation Front are close or 200 kilometers away from Adi Sababa. They're trying to cut the large part of the country from Djibouti port which is very important. So could you maybe also take us through the conflict there in this context? Again the history of the conflict is of course the Tigray Liberation Front, what it is today. Did control the government from quite some years. I think from 1990 to about 2012 it was led by one of the strong leaders. After that led again Tigray forces really led the next government also till Abiy Ahmed took over. Though he was a weaker ruler than the earlier Janawi's government. So you have the issue that Tigray has dominated Ethiopian government for the last almost 30 years. And it is ethnically still only 7% of the population. So there has been increasingly a feeling of alienation that they don't represent us. This ethnic divisions always have laid at the surface of most African countries because these are all colonial constructs. Though Ethiopia can say we have been a very old ancient kingdom. The reality is those kingdoms do not correspond to today's what would be called the identities that people claim for themselves. And Ethiopia they have not come out of any anti-colonial struggles unlike for instance in Kenya. The identity was formed around anti-colonial struggles in Ghana again formed against anti-colonial struggles. So Ethiopia had this mixed bag of ethnicities and those ethnicities have only widened over the last 30-35 years. Eritrea was of course the province which broke away from Ethiopia, fought a long civil war. And Abiyah Ahmad finally recognized that they have to part company and they reached an agreement for which he got the Nobel Prize as well. Now we are seeing a brutal civil war break out in Ethiopia again. There are no good sides over here during wars of this kind atrocities take place and are taking place across the line. The question for the United States again which sees itself as the overseer of Ethiopia which it really was particularly over the last couple of decades if not more. What the US is now facing is how does it hold the country together and what can it do with Abiyah Ahmad, the TPLF, how they can bring them to a table together and still make the country hold. It doesn't look like that is feasible and again because the internal processes have never been strong therefore there is this problem. There is a further problem with Egypt regarding this grand dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile and that has problems with Sudan as well as in Egypt. So we have a further issue over there but that's not what is right now in the center of things. I think what we are going to see is increasingly a bloody civil war in which whether the TPLF can regain power. That doesn't look so likely because it doesn't seem that they have that kind of credibility to win a civil war of this nature that we are seeing unfold at the present moment. Abiyah Ahmad will he hold power? Will he be able to defeat the TPLF? Not so clear because the TPLF has at least from reports 250,000 people on the ground. They have arms. They have relatively a well armed force by which they can wage such war. There is also a third party here Eritrea and we have to see what they do because Eritrea has conflicts with both TPLF and it could also have a conflict with Ethiopia depending on what Abiyah Ahmad and they decide. So will it develop into a three-cornered war? We don't know. There are tensions between TPLF and Eritrean forces. That is something yet to be watched. So will we see a breakaway of for instance certain parts of Ethiopia? There is a part of Ethiopia which is close to Somalia. Ethnically they feel themselves more Somalians and Ethiopians. But again Somalia is a failed state. So again what do they do over there is a question. So I think we are going to see instability in this region for some more time till there is a genuine popular forces who come out to say we need peace and we need re-approachment. That at the moment doesn't seem to be happening. What we are seeing still are strong leaders who are fighting over what they consider as their share of the state. And Ethiopia is not a marginal player. It is one of the largest populous countries in Africa, particularly in North Africa. It had also developed quite a bit in the last few decades. So this is very unfortunate that we see now civil wars in the two countries which had some semblance of state, particularly Ethiopia. And they might all follow in the direction of Somalia. So this destabilization of the entire Horn of Africa I think doesn't portend well for the rest of the world. Of course not for Africa. Thank you so much Prabir. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.