Why Israel’s Attack Arms Factory in Khartoum, Sudan
6 min readIsrael’s attack on a Khartoum arms factory highlights its tougher line in Africa and Sudan’s growing ties with Iran – African Confidential
2nd November 2012
Taken by surprise, Khartoum officials at first offered contradictory explanations for the devastating attack on the El Yarmouk arms factory in Khartoum at around midnight on 23-24 October. After emergency discussions, the regime blamed Israel and complained to the United Nations Security Council. Although Iran and Arab governments condemned the attack, there was little real Arab support and virtually none from elsewhere.
The trigger for the bombing of the El Yarmouk Industrial Complex was an attack on Israel from Gaza using Sudanese-made rockets, a senior Sudanese opposition source claimed. Opposition parties have supporters – and therefore sources – even in government organisations. As always, Israel declined to confirm or deny the attack but one serving official told Africa Confidential that the reason was developments in the Sinai Desert, where Al Qaida and other jihadists had built up bases as Egypt’s former regime under President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak was losing control.
‘We need time to understand exactly what happened here, but the role of Sudan is clear: it is a dangerous terrorist state,’ the Israeli Defence Ministry’s Director of Policy and Political Military Affairs, Major General (Retired) Amos Gilad, told Israeli Army Radio. After a strike against a Sudanese arms convoy in January 2009, the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said: ‘We operate in every area where terrorist infrastructures can be struck. We are operating in locations near and far, and attack in a way that strengthens and increases deterrence. There is no point in elaborating. Everyone can use their imagination. Whoever needs to know, knows.’ At the time, Khartoum’s National Congress Party regime had kept quiet about the attack until relatives of the victims leaked it (AC Vol 50 No 7, Air strikes and silence). The silence was later seen as an admission that the NCP was moving weapons, thought to be Fajr-3 rockets, via Sinai to the ruling Harakat al Muqawama al Islamiya (Hamas) in Gaza.
The government has hosted both Hamas and Hezbollah since the guru of the NCP (then called the National Islamic Front, NIF), Hassan Abdullah el Turabi, and Mustafa Osman Ismail set up the People’s Arab Islamic Conference in Khartoum in 1991 (AC Vol 41 No 13, Hall of mirrors). The PAIC was later seen as the cradle of Al Qaida.
Doomsday meteors
This time, say opposition and other sources, the rockets for Gaza were Shihab (meteor), probably Shihab-3. These have a 1,280-kilometre range. Some observers doubted that such rockets would be destined for Gaza or that Iran would allow such a powerful weapon to be made in Sudan. Others counter that Iran needs a reliable manufacturing centre in case of an Israeli attack. ‘The sky was filled with burning phosphorus, making people believe Doomsday had come’, said one Sudanese.
Britain’s Sunday Times listed Israel’s attack force as eight F-15I aeroplanes, four carrying two one-tonne bombs, escorted by four fighters; two CH53 helicopters, in case crew rescue were required; one Boeing 707 tanker, to refuel the jets and choppers over the Red Sea; and crucially, a Gulfstream G550 ultra-long-range electronic warfare jet.
This was to jam Sudan’s radar. Production may have been underground. Photographs released by the United States-based Satellite Sentinel Project show the main target as a 60-metre shed in the north-east of the vast Yarmouk Complex and some 40 6.5 m. containers, monitored days earlier. ‘While SSP cannot confirm that the shipping containers seen on October 12 remained at the site on October 24, analysis of the imagery is consistent with the presence of highly volatile cargo in the epicenter of the explosions’, it says.
SSP was set up with assistance from Harvard University and finance from the ‘Not on Our Watch’ group founded by actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. It also noted ‘at least six’ 16 m. impact craters. Most of Yarmouk was not targeted but it was damaged by a massive fire that reignited the next day and again on 29 October. Khartoum said that two people were killed and many injured but did not mention deaths at the factory itself. Local reports claimed at least seven Iranian engineers died. The regime still has rocket storage facilities near Kenana, in White Nile State, we hear. There were reports in White Nile that a convoy of weapons had been bombed some three weeks ago, a Sudanese source told us. Reuters news agency quoted ‘Western intelligence sources’ as confirming this.
Yarmouk, some 14 kilometres from central Khartoum, is in El Shejera (‘tree’, originally Gordon’s Tree) and a series of strategic installations is scattered across the area from the White Nile to the Blue Nile, mixed in with mainly down-market housing. The National Security and Intelligence Service (NISS) quickly cordoned off the area, refusing access even to police, who alone have the laboratory and other facilities needed to investigate the damage.
NISS officials locally blamed the attack on the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, which only served to enhance the image of regime disarray, since the SPLA (North or South) has no airpower. Khartoum State GovernorAbdel Rahman el Khidr then explained that the fire had spread because of ‘dry grass’, after which the Sudan Armed Forces Spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Sawarmi Khalid Saad, blamed a welder. The NCP Spokesman, Professor Badr el Din Ahmed Ibrahim, offered yet another version and it was hours before Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman blamed Israel. The NCP was probably awaiting confirmation of Israel’s role from ‘other security forces in the neighbourhood,’ an oppositionist said.
Sudanese reacted with derision: ‘The government spends its energy on crushing the people not defending the country,’ one commented. Most of Sudan’s weapons – manufactured or imported (mainly from China, Iran,Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) – have been used at home. Khartoum’s growing military cooperation with Iran suggests it wants to build a serious arms export industry. Intelligence agencies will watch its links with Islamist governments and groups in Libya, Tunisia and most of all, Egypt, more closely.
Sudan’s relations with Iran – military and other – were active from soon after the 1989 coup but grew strongly after the 2008 and 2009 defence agreements. Several regime stalwarts had already been trained in security skills, including torture, in Iran. In 2008, the then Iranian Defence Minister, Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, described Sudan as ‘the pivot of Iran-Africa relations’. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s push into Africa has grown rapidly. Israel monitors the ties between Tehran and Khartoum: ‘We know that it is also involved in shipping arms and weapons to Libya through Darfur. From Darfur, weapons also go to Chad andMali. Meanwhile, Iran continues to increase its interests in the region through business links and support of domestic wars,’ an official said.
Tehran’s task force
After the Yarmouk bombing, the Khartoum government emphasised its support for Palestine and Muslim causes but barely mentioned Iran. Tehran had other ideas. ‘A task force of the 22nd Iranian army docked in Sudan this morning,’ the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported on 29 October. The task force comprised ‘a helicopter fleet and destroyer ships, which have been sent to Sudan with a message of peace and security to the neighbouring countries and also of confronting terrorism.’ This news may not have reassured neighbouring Gulf governments.
Khartoum again declared itself at war with Israel; in fact, it has officially been at war since 1967. It also complained to the UN Security Council, where Ambassador Dafa’allah el Haj Ali Osman, a former envoy toBangladesh and Pakistan, told the Council that Israel ‘was the main factor behind the conflict in Darfur’. Also on 29 October, though, Tariq al Humeid, Editor-in-Chief of Saudi Arabia’s Asharq al Awsat, which is close to the Royal Family, ridiculed Sudan’s pretensions to confront Israel or produce weapons when its people were hungry. He attributed Sudan’s problems to ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ rule and failed to criticise Israel’s attack.
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I highly appreciate the moved taken by Israelite government bombing Sudan’s army factory last month.Further more, reluctant position of Arab countries over Israelite attacked is congratulated too because Bashir’s baseless claimed has made people allover the universe tired of him not unless only those who sub humans who can support Bashir at this juncture.Israelite should warned him and his intimidative government for further attack if they persistently keep on making reckless statements over the issue.