Who is Salah Gosh Sudan’s Spymaster?

By Lt. General Abakar M. Abdallah, Jerome B. Gordon and Deborah Martin[i]

Lt.  General Salah Gosh head of NISS in Bashir Regime 

Lt. General Salah Abdallah Mohamed (Gosh) is Sudan’s spymaster and head of the National Intelligence Security Service that controls Jihadist Rapid Support Forces/Janjaweed Militias and the Bashir regime’s ‘shadow army’.  It is the cruel instrument of the Bashir regime ethnically cleansing the indigenous African peoples in Darfur, South Kordofan and the Blue Nile state. These forces under General Salah Gosh have attacked, detained, raped and tortured thousands of protesters throughout Sudan since the outbreak of daily rallies on December 18, 2018 seeking the ouster of the Bashir regime after 30 years of corrupt and brutal rule.

 Middle East Eye (MEE) had reported March 1^st, 2019 that Salah Gosh had met with Israeli Mossad Director Yossi Cohen in Germany in February 2019 on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. It cited a senior Sudanese military source.

The unconfirmed report said the meeting was arranged by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and that under discussion was Gosh’s potential installment as Sudan’s leader once beleaguered President Omar al-Bashir is toppled from his post.

None of the other nations mentioned in the report have commented on its veracity so far. 

Khartoum’s intelligence service said the claim by the London-based Middle East Eye news site was “bare of truth” and “lacks professionalism and objectivity,” according to a report on Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.

“Sudan does not need to move secretly or follow a path that runs against its national principles or policies,” the National Intelligence and Security Service said.

Who is General Salah Gosh? What is his history? And why would Israel become involved in a plot with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to replace Sudan’s Islamist dictator, President Omar Hassan al Bashir with Gosh who has also been indicted by the International Criminal Courts at the Hague for genocide in Darfur, South Kordofan and the Blue Nile State.

Salah Gosh studied engineering at Khartoum University graduating in 1982. During his years at university, he served as a secret agent for Muslim Brotherhood organization. Following the 1989 coup, he was appointed as a head of the Internal Security Department and became infamous in torturing political opponents to death in “Ghost Houses”. This was the time he “introduced the culture of rape in the Sudanese security services”.  In the “Ghost Houses” of detention centers in Khartoum and elsewhere, they rape both women and men. In 2004 he was appointed as a Director-General of National Intelligence Security Services (NISS). Gosh transferred the culture of rape from Khartoum detentions centers as part of the strategy of war used against the Darfuri people. He is the mastermind of systematic rape, burning of villages, seizing of properties, arbitrary arrests, random killings, disappearances, torture, harassment and long detention without trial in Darfur. Since their creation, the Janjaweed militias have operated under the command of the NISS. Gosh is responsible for genocide, human right abuses and war crimes committed by Janjaweed militias in Darfur. His name is among the 17 Sudan government officials accused of committing genocide, human right abuses and war crimes in Darfur in the International Criminal Court indictments of 2009 and 2010.  For whatever reason, the UN Security Council decided not to publish all the names of those officials accused of committing these genocidal crimes in Sudan.

 President Bashir returned Gosh to his position as head of the NISS in February 2018 because he was upset with Mohamed Atta’s failures to curb the demonstrations. The second problem was that there was an internal conflict inside the NCP between President Bashir, who wanted to re-elect himself in the 2020 elections, and Nafi Ali Nafi his Deputy. Nafi rejected Bashir’s reelection and began a campaign against him. First, he visited the Atbra Faculty of Education and delivered a speech against the re-election of Bashir and he threatened to dismantle the Islamic Movement. To stop Nafi and quell the demonstrations, Bashir brought back the brutal former head of the NISS, Salah Gosh.

In October 2018, Gosh traveled to France and met with French officials to inform them about the role of Sudan and Russia in the Central African Republic (CAR) hosting peace negotiations between resistance groups and the government. Sudan and France have a long history of intelligence cooperation. This cooperation was a result of the Khartoum regime handing over the notorious terrorist “Carlos the Jackal” (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, Venezuelan terrorist)  to the French in 1994. Gosh oversaw detention of “Carlos, the Jackal” and participated with the late Hassan Abdallah al-Turabi in negotiations for his extradition with French intelligence agents. Since then, Sudan and France have continued intelligence cooperation.

Regarding the London-based MEE news report on an alleged plot backed by Saudis, Egyptians and possibly Israeli Mossad Chief Katz to assist Gosh in overthrowing the Bashir regime in Khartoum this might not be true. Based on our analysis of Sudan’s current crisis, there will be no coup in Khartoum other than the faux one President Bashir staged on February 22, 2019 in Khartoum.  If there is a coup it will be orchestrated from inside and not from outside Sudan.  Such coups would be agreed upon within ruling National Congress Party (NCP), the political parties controlled by the Arab ruling elites, senior security chiefs and generals. Since the independence of Sudan in 1955, successive regimes fought what is called the North/South Sudan war.

The Southern Sudanese were fighting because their citizenship rights were denied by the ruling Arab regimes in Khartoum. However, these ruling Arab regimes in Khartoum successfully turned wars of liberation into religious Jihad wars. The Northern political class was able to mobilize all Sudanese Muslims and Arab Middle East countries in the name of Islam to support them fighting Southern Sudanese indigenous African people and maintain power in Sudan. Prior to Khartoum signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the South Sudan’s SPLM in 2005, wars erupted in Eastern Sudan and Darfur for the same reasons as in the South: denial of their rights.

In 2003, the Bashir regime found itself fighting wars on three fronts: South Sudan, Eastern Sudan and Darfur.  The Bashir regime could not fight wars on three fronts. They decided to quickly give away South Sudan and deal with the other two: Darfur and Eastern Sudan. Like the South Sudan war, first, they isolated Darfur from the media preventing the international community from learning the reality of the genocidal war it was waged against the indigenous African people. In Eastern Sudan, the Bashir regime essentially bought off Eritrea.  It agreed to fund the Eritrean government budget, salaries for their employees and provide free fuel for ten years.  In return, Eritrea forced the Eastern Sudan people to strike a peace deal with Khartoum. That ended the East Sudan revolution.

 Throughout the history of Sudan successive regimes continually fought against revolutionary wars and were able to deny their existence through lies and false media. However, the current popular uprising that began on December 19, 2018 opened a new chapter that the regime could not contend with false propaganda. First, the demonstrations started from Bashir’s home town in the North. The December protesters categorically rejected not only the NCP and its leader Bashir, but the whole system including the existing political parties that originated from the same region, the North. These claims not only threatened Bashir’s regime but the whole Arab system that has ruled Sudan since independence. These demonstrations threatened not only the NCP Muslim Brotherhood regime but the power that Arabs inherited from their colonial masters with the Independence of Sudan in the mid-1950s. Bashir’s abandoning the NCP political class by appointment of generals as governors was agreed upon by the Northern political elite not only to maintain Bashir in power but to save the Arab regime that has ruled Sudan since independence.

[i] Lt. Gen. Abdallah is Chairman of the Sudan United Movement. He is a native of North Darfur who joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 1984 and became active in the Nuba Hills and Darfurians resistance movements. In 1989 he joined the Patriotic Salvation Movement in neighboring Chad based in Darfur. He served as an officer in the Chadian army for 23 years. He held senior intelligence and counterterrorism posts including as Coordinator of the Multi-National Joint Task Force of Nigeria, Chad and Niger. He was Coordinator of Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) Anti-Terrorism Unit of Chad and Commander of PSI Anti-Terrorism Battalion of Chad 2004. He is a graduate of the Intelligence Officers’ Advanced and Combating Terrorism Courses, US Army Intelligence Center and Schools, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He was a Counter Terrorism Fellow and a Graduate of the College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University, Washington, DC, 2005. He was an International Fellow and Graduate of the US Army War College, Class of 2008. He was Graduate of Nigeria Armed Forces Command and Staff College Course 22, of the year 2000. He is the co-author of Genocide in Sudan: Caliphate Threatens Africa and the World with Jerome B. Gordon and Deborah Martin, JAD Publishing, LLC, 2017.

Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review and author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016. He is co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida. He is producer and co-host for the weekly Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix program that airs on-line from Jerusalem.

Deborah Martin is a 35-year veteran linguistics specialist and consultant on Sudan culture and affairs.