Context
Opposition leader Hassan –al Turabi has said that Sudan will soon see an “Arab spring” since President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has failed to overcome economic crisis and end insurgencies in Darfur and border regions.
Turabi is calling for regime change and has been imprisoned for this. He has asked people to stage a peaceful revolution so it can end in a real multiparty parliamentary system.
Turabi was the spiritual leader behind the Islamist government of Bashir, but the two men later fell out. In 1993, Washington placed trade embargoes on Khartoum and listed it as a state sponsor of terrorism for harboring Osama bin Laden and other extremists.
Inflation in Sudan has risen after it lost 75% of its oil production, the main source of state revenue, to newly-independent South Sudan in July 2005.
