People's Democracy

Israeli Raid on Khartoum

Yohannan Chemerapally

THE exact reasons for the midnight attack on a Sudanese armaments factory in the capital Khartoum in late October by Israeli military aircraft had initially baffled the international community. Sudan, already weakened by partition and internal wars, poses no credible threat to Israel. But as later events showed, the attack was connected to the full scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza that followed a few weeks later. Israeli authorities had alleged that Hamas had set up a conduit via Sudan to smuggle in arms through Egypt into the Gaza Strip.

Israel in the last couple of years has been systematically targeting Sudan. The Israeli air force attack on the Yarmouk military arms factory located in the southern part of the capital city was the latest. Sudanese officials said that four “radar evading” Israeli aircraft were involved in the attack. In the explosion that followed, two people were killed and many more injured. The Sudanese government has threatened retaliation against Israel. “We reserve the right to react at a time and place we choose”, said the information minister, Ahmed Bilal Osman. According to the minister, unexploded bombs found on the site also had clear Israeli markings.

Israeli officials meanwhile are neither confirming nor openly denying that they were responsible for the latest attack on Sudan. Israel has a track record of carrying out assassinations and other covert acts all over the world. It is only now that the Israeli authorities have admitted to the killing of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Yasser Arafat’s deputy in Tunis in 1988. Those currently occupying high positions in the present Israeli government were involved in the planning of the assassination of Arafat’s right hand man.

Israel has kept on making various allegations against the government in Khartoum. These include charges that Sudan is supplying the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip with weapons allegedly provided by Iran. The other allegation is that Sudan has forged a military alliance with Iran and is helping Teheran to sidestep the punitive sanctions the West has imposed. Immediately after the attack on the munitions factory, the director of political-military affairs in the Israeli defense ministry, Amos Gilad, said that Sudan was a “dangerous terrorist state”. He said that it would “take some time to understand” the facts surrounding the attack.

Israeli security officials have since acknowledged that they do “operate inside Sudan”. They have unofficially let out information that F15 Super Strike Eagle bombers were used in the strike on the Khartoum munitions factory.  Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli brigadier general, told the Associated Press that it was likely that his government perceived an “imminent threat” emanating from the Yarmouk ordinance factory. He said that the strike could have been aimed at destroying “a new category of weapons” that were meant to be delivered to Gaza.

Israeli analysts close to the country’s military establishment also claim that the aircraft involved in the bombing raid over Khartoum were fueled in mid air over the Red Sea as they completed the more than 4000 km round trip from their base in Israel. The attack on Khartoum is also being interpreted by Israeli authorities as a veiled warning to Iran. It was meant to highlight the Israeli Air Force’s stealth capabilities and ability to launch long distance raids. A senior Israeli defense analyst writing for the country’s top selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, claimed that the Sudan attack was “a live practice run for Iran”. Sudan and Iran had signed a military cooperation agreement in 2008 but the biggest supplier of arms to Sudan today is China. Iran does supply small arms and more importantly a few surveillance drones that have been used by the Sudanese military in its operations in volatile regions like Darfur.

In early November, the Obama administration issued yet another veiled warning to Israel to desist from any military adventurism against Iran. Most observers however are of the view that the latest attack on Sudan is part of the psych-ops that Israel has been conducting against Iran. Besides they point out that carrying out a similar operation against Iran will be a very difficult proposition as Israeli planes will have to fly over countries like Jordan and Iraq. The flight path the Israeli planes took to attack Sudan, according to many defense analysts, was through a busy international air corridor over the Red Sea, helping them to avoid careful military surveillance.

Besides, any attack on Iran would put in motion a chain of events that could have unforeseen consequences for the region and the world. Efraim Halevy, a former chief of the Israeli Intelligence Agency –Mossad, said that a war with Iran would be a “generations long war”. Countries like Egypt which have normalised relations with Iran after the Arab Spring will not take kindly to any unilateral action by Israel against Iran. The Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf are crucial for the commercial and military activities of the West.

Sudan has been quick to take up the matter with the UN Security Council asking the world body to condemn the Israeli act of aggression on its soil. Sudan’s ambassador to the UN, Ali Osman described the attack “as a blatant violation of the UN charter”. He also accused Israel of helping the rebel forces in Darfur. Fighting between the Sudanese army and separatist forces has been going on for more than a decade. The Sudanese information minister was of the view that the Israeli bombing raid was aimed at weakening the Sudanese armed forces which are currently engaged in fighting separatist forces on multiple fronts. Israel supported Southern Sudan for the last two decades in its fight to secede. Today, the newly independent country is a strong military and commercial ally of Israel. However, the Israeli raid on the armaments factory happened just weeks after the governments of the North and South Sudan agreed to work peacefully to find a solution to their border problems and the distribution of oil revenues. Earlier in the year, the two countries were on the brink of renewed full scale warfare. Fighting had broken out over the disputed oil producing region of Abyei. 

The Sudanese information minister pointed out that this was the fourth documented attack by Israel in the last couple of years. In 2009, a convoy carrying weapons to northern Sudan was targeted from the air, killing several people. The Israeli prime minister at the time Ehud Olmert had boasted: “We operate everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure-in close places and in places far away”. Earlier this year, two vehicle convoys were targeted from the air in a remote desert area near the border with Egypt, killing forty people. There were stories in the Israeli media that the two convoys were heading towards Gaza with arms supplies. Hamas was quick to deny that it receives any armaments from Sudan. According to reports in the Arab media, sophisticated arms looted from Libyan armories after the NATO intervention there, have been smuggled in large quantities into Gaza. In 2011, there was a missile strike on a car in Port Sudan. Two passengers who were in the vehicle were killed. Reports in the Israeli media said that the car was carrying a senior Hamas official. Hamas had vehemently denied the claim.

Sudan anyway has been in the West’s line of fire for many years. In 1998, US Cruise Missiles targeted the al Shifa pharmaceutical factory. It was in retaliation to the al Qaeda attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar as Salam. Sudan had nothing to do with those attacks but was a convenient soft target. Khartoum had repaired its relations with the US to a great extent after that. After South Sudan was allowed to secede last year, the Obama administration had started the process to remove Sudan from the US state department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism. Israel obviously wants Sudan to remain on the “terror list” and may have launched the recent attacks to keep the spotlight on the alleged “terrorist” links Khartoum has with groups and states like Hamas and Iran that are on America’s terror list.  

“We have the legal right to attack Israeli wherever. They killed our people – and we know how to retaliate”, the Sudanese information minister has asserted. The Arab League has condemned the attack. The Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Qandil told the Sudanese vice president, Ali Osman Taha, that his government “rejects any aggression that undermines the sovereignty, security and integrity of Sudan”.

The government led by Omar al Bashir which has so far weathered the impact of the “Arab Spring” is trying to mobilise support among the people as it faces challenges from within and without. There were demonstrations against the government all over Sudan in the middle of the year. Heavy handed tactics by the security forces helped quell the demonstrations within a short time. Public dissatisfaction over the rising cost of living – petrol prices were hiked up recently, has not helped matters. The country is facing an economic crisis after the South seceded. More than two-thirds of the oil that was produced in united Sudan came from the South. The refineries that are located in the North have remained mostly idle, after the South unilaterally stopped pumping oil earlier in the year. Salafi elements are making attempts to sideline the moderate Islamists who have been in power since the military coup of 1988 that was led by Bashir. These elements had reportedly played a big role in the violent protests that erupted in September after the release of the anti-Islamic video in the US.