‘Just Fall, That’s All’ — Sudan Protests Seeking Al-Bashir’s Ouster Gain Momentum

For a time in the 1990s, Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden. And Mr. al-Bashir is the only current leader of a nation to be wanted by the International Criminal Court. The court has accused him of crimes against humanity and genocide, accusing him of playing “an essential role” in atrocities in Darfur, a region in Sudan’s west.

In recent years, he has sought to improve his standing in the West, and in 2017 the United States agreed to lift a list of sanctions against Sudan, citing several promising changes. Among other things, Sudan agreed not to engage in arms deals with North Korea, and to reduce its interference in South Sudan, which became independent in 2011 after a long civil war.

But sanctions relief has not solved economic problems in Sudan, which has faced foreign currency and bread shortages in recent months.

“There is nothing in Sudan,” one activist, Hafiz Mohamed, said Sunday in a phone interview from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Automated teller machines do not dispense cash, and retirees cannot withdraw their money from banks, he said.

“If you do have money, there is not enough flour for bakers to make bread,” Mr. Mohamed said, adding that lines to buy bread could be hours long.

It was the price of bread that helped spur the initial protest in the town of Atbara on Dec. 19. Demonstrations quickly spread across Sudan despite often-harsh efforts to suppress them. Over the next three months, through mid-March, government forces killed 60 protesters, according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights, a group based in New York.

In addition, the police and the state’s powerful internal security agency, the National Intelligence and Security Service, “have entered and conducted attacks on at least seven medical facilities,” according to the report.