He lost a third of his country, a quarter of its population and most of its oil resources when South Sudan broke away. One of his allies, religious scholar Hassan Turabi, invited Osama bin Laden to Sudan in 1991, prompting the United States to place Sudan on its list of states sponsoring terrorism. After years of promising to hold his country together amid disputes with the oil-rich south, al-Bashir quickly accepted the referendum results in 2010 that created one of the world's newest countries, South Sudan. When economic hardship deepened after the split with South Sudan, protests inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings broke out in the country as early as 2012. Let me tell them that in Sudan we have a hot summer, a burning hot summer that burns its enemies."

Source: Otago Daily Times April 11, 2019 22:30 UTC