In previous versions of this article, a Western diplomat was quoted as making a reference to Lenin. The diplomat referenced Stalin. This version has been corrected.
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Sudan's Macabre Display Of Victory Over Attackers
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"They were tired," said Anwar Bushra, a merchant who witnessed the attack. "They were asking people where can they find food."
In a city with no shortage of men in camouflage, residents greeted the fighters with more confusion than glee, Bushra said.
The fighters seemed disoriented as they asked people on the street for directions to the presidential palace and other targets, witnesses said. They did not shoot at civilians but blasted holes into two banks, a Pepsi billboard, a clock tower and a building painted with an image of Mickey Mouse.
Even so, they reached within about 200 yards of the state-run broadcasting station, and to the foot of a bridge leading into the heart of Khartoum.
They were repelled not by the military but by Bashir's loyal security forces. Witnesses said the sound of machine-gun fire lasted until 3 a.m. that Sunday.
"This was a huge embarrassment" for the government, a senior Western diplomat said on the condition of anonymity. "It's clear that this was a conspiracy with many strands."
One of those strands is the internal support the rebels apparently had within the Sudanese military, which includes many soldiers from Darfur and officers whose loyalties may lie with the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, Khalil Ibrahim, a former government insider who broke with Bashir in 1999.
In the days leading up to the attack, the government, aware of the rebel advance, began purging the military, according to a U.S. source in the region who was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. At least 18 colonels and one general were arrested, the source said.
Another factor was Chad. According to Sudanese officials and the Western diplomat, the coup attempt was financed with at least $50 million worth of weapons and equipment from the neighboring country, whose president, Idriss Déby, is from the same politically powerful tribe as Ibrahim. Déby accused Bashir of backing Chadian rebels in an almost identical attempt to oust him in February, and according to the diplomat, he soon after convened a meeting of Darfur rebels to plan for retaliation.
Only the Justice and Equality Movement signed up.
Within the increasingly fragmented Darfur rebel movement, Ibrahim's faction is the strongest militarily but probably the least popular among the millions who have suffered in the five-year-old conflict, which some experts estimate has left as many as 450,000 people dead, though the government says that number is exaggerated.
"They want power -- they don't care for people," said Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a human rights activist in Khartoum, referring to Ibrahim's group.
