When Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir returned a few weeks ago from a summit in Ethiopia with his South Sudanese counterpart and former civil war foe, many people here expected him to talk of peace. Instead, the 69-year-old ruler donned his officer's uniform, waved his trademark walking stick and – once again – threatened to cut off South Sudanese oil exports through Sudan, something the northern country's battered economy can ill afford.

The International Criminal Court-indicted leader faces a succession debate at home and his rhetoric was aimed less at the South, an uneasy neighbour since it split from the north in 2011, and more at hard-line Islamists and army officers in his own circles, analysts say. …

Any handover would be complicated by Bashir's indictment at the ICC for war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region, where the government and the Janjaweed militia have been battling rebel groups from the minority non-Arab population since 2003. Analysts say he would be anxious to ensure a successor would not turn him over to The Hague to improve relations with the West.

"He would want a hardliner as successor to make sure there won't be any concession with the ICC," said Magdi El Gizouli, a political analyst and author of the "Still Sudan" blog. …

Aly Verjee, senior researcher at the Rift Valley Institute, said Bashir had still the support of many in the army and NCP but the risk was that disgruntled officers might team up with Islamists who feel he has given up the religious values of his 1989 coup. That risk was exposed when authorities unveiled in November a coup plot involving a former spy chief and 12 officers. One of them was a senior Islamist army officer, who is revered as a hero fighting southern "infidels" during the long civil war. "The question is not whether anti-Bashir sentiment exists, but how deep it runs, how permanent it is, and how many of the leadership are sympathetic to such views," said Verjee.