For the last two years, the civil war in Sudan, the largest contemporary war in Africa, has ripped the country apart. As Beverly Ochieng, Wedaeli Chibelushi, and Natasha Booty report at the BBC, “The war, which continues to this day, has claimed more than 150,000 lives. And in what the United Nations has called the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, about 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes. There is evidence of genocide in the western region of Darfur, where residents say they have been targeted by fighters based on their ethnicity.”
In the latest installment of Solidarity Without Exception, we examine the roots of Sudan’s social and humanitarian crisis today, the domestic and international dimensions of the political revolution that swept Sudan in 2019, which led to the overthrow of Omar Al-Bashir, and the violent counterrevolution that, since 2023, has been led by two military factions (and their international allies), deepening the oppression of the Sudanese people and enabling genocidal actions by said military forces. Cohost Blanca Missé speaks with: Nisrin Elamin, assistant professor of African studies and anthropology at the University of Toronto and a member of the Sudan Solidarity Collective, who is currently writing a book on Gulf Arab capital accumulation and land dispossession in central Sudan; and Ibrahim Alhaj Abdelmajeed Alduma, a Virginia-based human rights advocate for Sudan and a communication and disinformation specialist with years of experience working in NGOs with a focus on community development, youth capacity building, and strengthening the role and impact of civil society institutions.
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Music Credits:
Venticinque Aprile (“Bella Ciao” Orchestral Cover) by Savfk | https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Blanca Missé:
Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception, a podcast series about working people’s struggles for national self-determination in the 21st century and what connects them and us. This podcast is produced by the Real News Network in partnership with the Ukraine Celebrating Network, and I am Blanca Mise. We are releasing this episode on Sudan in the midst of an escalation of the crisis in the country. As a rapid support forces DRSF have launched an unprecedented drone attack on Port Sudan, which has become today the defacto capital of the country and a critical humanitarian hub. The United Nations reports that over 12 million people have been displaced, and then half of Sudan’s population is facing acute hunger. In addition, there are numerous reports of atrocities and violations of human rights from both sides, the Sudanese army and the RSF. In this context, pretty dreadful context. We are really delighted to have today in our podcast two amazing guests, Nisrin Elamin, who is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, and Ibrahim Alduma, a human rights advocate for Sudan based in Virginia.
Both are Sudanese and very active in the solidarity with the Sudanese people and ready to share with us a very different perspective than the one we get from mainstream news. That is to say a working class perspective on the situation in Sudan. We want to understand together both the depth of the social crisis and also the roots of the political revolution that swept Sudan in 2019 and led to the overthrow of Omar Al Bashir and how the situation involved in 2023 into an internationalized contra revolution led by these two military factions, the remainings of the official army and the RSF and the international allies that support them. A counter revolution that deepens the oppression of Sudanese people and enables genocidal actions by all these military forces on civilians. We’ll explain the importance of the resistance or solidarity committees. That is to say the grassroots neighborhood-based activist group that initiated the revolution and are still today active by providing essential emergency relief support. And finally, and most importantly, we’ll discuss what we can do together here in the US to support them and advance the struggle for liberation in Sudan and how the latter is connected to the struggles for freedom in the region and in the world.
Welcome to the podcast Solidarity Without exception. Let’s try to a bit in order to understand the situation in Sudan today so we can retrace the origins of the last episode of Struggle in the Country to the movement that was called, so-called the Arab Spring that reached Sudan first in 2013 with a first wave of protest, but then had a very significant second wave of mobilizations starting in December, 2018, which eventually succeeding in Toppling O Omar Basit and ending a 30 year military dictatorship. And that was a huge success. Now, when one looks at the news, at the time, the way Sudan was being portrayed was a little bit different than the rest of Arab countries or even Algeria. There was a tendency to label the social struggles in Sudan more as bred riots or struggles for basic survival. And I would like you to explain the nature of the mobilizations that occurred in the country, specifically the ones in 20 18, 20 19, 20 20. So the audience, the American audience, can understand what that movement was.
Nisrin Elamin:
I mean, I think as you mentioned, the revolution of December of 2018 started many years before, right? In the sense that there were protests in Sudan against IMF recommended austerity measures and other kinds of policies that were making life very difficult for people really since 2011. I mean, we could go even further back, but if we’re looking at that period, so in January of 2011, for example, there were protests in and also in, and they were I think even a few days before the protest in Egypt started, but they were brutally squashed. Then we had protests again in 2013. In 2016, and a lot of them did sort of get triggered by policies that were making life difficult for people where food prices were rising. The state would withdraw subsidies of food and fuel and people were just not able to make ends meet. So I would say that was definitely the trigger, but in many ways it was also much deeper than that in the sense that what we saw in December of 2018 was kind of a convergence of decades old grievances around brutal state violence in Sudan’s peripheries.
I’m sure your audience remembers the genocide in Darfour that started in 2003, but also kind of struggles over land in rural areas where the Bashir regime had sort of rolled out a neoliberal policy of privatizing the small scale agricultural sector and kind of decimating it by withdrawing state subsidies and supports to small farmers in order to kind of plunge small farmers into debt and then attract foreign and domestic large scale investments in land. So you saw a kind of convergence of various grievances and struggles if you will come together. And notably, unlike the revolution in 1964 and 1985 that the uprising in 1985 that overthrew military dictatorships, the December revolution started in the peripheries demaine in a place called RA before it actually came to the capitol.
Blanca Missé:
Thank you so much. Because you explained to us that the anti neoliberal content and dynamics, right, that also had to do resisting those measures and the privatization of land. I wonder if Ebra has something to add on the nature of this most recent wave of struggle in Sudan?
Ibrahim Alduma:
Yeah, I think Nasrin almost said everything. I just wanted to emphasize that Sudan had two revolutions before this revolution. And also a lot of people like the Sudanese intelligence were expecting this revolution even before the Arab Spring because Sudanese people could not bear with these kind of suppressions against the freedoms. And again, these things, and also we had a lot of partial rebels and revolutions, but it was militarized evolutions like the art movement in their foreign cordan. So sese people feel that they have some change during the period before the revolution. And then when December, 2019 revolution came, everybody came together to do this revolution because it was right time to do it.
Blanca Missé:
Thank you, Brian. And one question I have for you is how do you guys describe this most recent wave of struggles, right, that began let’s say in 2011, because the way it’s portrayed in the media, it’s a little bit confusing. Is this a revolution and turn into a civil war? What kind of definition or characterization of the situation you have to explain to working people in the US are trying to make sense about what’s happening and what are the major players that need to be taken into account to understand the situation in Sudan today? I know I’m asking you a very hard question, but we’re trying through this podcast to present a working class perspective on all the struggles for national liberation occupation that sometimes is often in contrast with the ones we hear in mainstream media. So what would you be the best summary you can give Nire? Do you want to get us started?
Ibrahim Alduma:
So mainly if we came to describe or analyze the root causes of the conflict in Sudan and the root causes of the revolution, it would be very complicated. But we know that we have dictatorship regime for over 30 years, three decades. During this time, the regime was just planning to stay on power. This is one of the major things that regime any policy and any procedures and any laws and any actions that the regime was taken wasn’t for Sudanese people or for the sake of satisfaction of people, it was just for staying in power. That’s why they created the RSF, and that’s why they made the complex and turned the political confidence again is the central regime to ethnic conflict in Dar foreign in South Coan by just making some weapon, an arming of the contradictional tribes and making it just to protect the regime in the middle.
And then they created the national intelligence, which was very brutal against civilians and K in other states and areas. And then it was the regime against the people. People are insisting of taking overthrowing the regime, and the regime was insisting to take on power. And that’s why they created different procedures and different strategies to stay on power. And one of the main strategies that resulted in the recent war, this ongoing war, is by RSF, which is mainly created by the regime. It was directly belonging and reporting to the regime instead of belonging and reporting and getting orders from the national army. So that’s why this is one of the militias and the other militias also created by the regime either to fight alongside with them or create militias to find the other art movements. So the regime was planning to stay that was negatively affecting the situation, the economic situation, the social situation, the security situation in Sudan, and people were getting frustrated and getting suppressed anytime. So in December 19, people will go out and the regime tried to do a lot of strategies during that very short period, but they didn’t manage to do anything and then they overthrown. But the results of that and the implications of the previous actions are still affecting Sudan.
Nisrin Elamin:
Yeah, I think I would just add that like Ibrahim said, I think the RSF formerly known as the Jja weed, who were largely responsible for the genocide and ur, that started in 2003, which of course was carried out in partnership with the army, but the RSF was really the jja weed at the time were really the ones who were burning villages to the ground, destroying people’s livelihoods and farming infrastructure to sort of make sure people couldn’t return to their farming land. That those got turned by the Bashi regime about 10 years later into this paramilitary force called the RSF. And around that time in 2014, the European Union through something called the process also legitimized the Jja or the RSF as it was named at that time, turning it essentially into its border patrol at the border between Sudan and Libya. So at the time, they paid the Bashir regime about $200 million to transform and legitimize the RSF and to kind of externalize its border to stem the migration of East Africans into Libya so that they wouldn’t have to deal with the problem at the Mediterranean.
And so there was a kind of dual purpose here, both using the RSF for external international partners, the RSF and the Army both sent troops to fight in the war in Yemen, the Saudi coalition’s behalf. So they became kind of mercenaries for hire. And of course the Bashi regime was using them also to coup proof their regime against the army, right? Because having learned from the 64 and 85 revolution, the Bashi regime kind of wanted to make sure that another kind of army coup couldn’t happen easily. So I think that’s one element of the story.
Blanca Missé:
What are the other players embedded now in the situation in Sudan, right? Because you’ve told us the national or internal dynamics and how actually the war going on today that is really harming and causing all these fatalities among civilians. It’s kind of engineered by this detector regime that has fallen but not fallen. But I do think that we also hear other foreign powers embedded today in Sudan. And my question would be can you explain to us who is also intervening in Sudan and what would be a path for national liberation in Sudan today?
Nisrin Elamin:
Yeah, I mean, I think they’ve always been external powers entangled in and sort of interested and engaged in extracting Sudanese resources. And I would say over the last two decades, probably some of the most prominent external players have been the Gulf States, like the Emirates, like Saudi Arabia. And just as an example, I study the large scale investments in land that Saudis and Emiratis and real estate and ports that Saudis and Emiratis have made over the last two decades. And I would estimate that about that they’ve combined invested about 27 billion in Sudanese real estate land and then efforts to kind of acquire ports, none of which have actually succeeded. And they’ve actually, right before the war, they controlled more Sudanese land than all of Sudan’s domestic, large domestic investors combined. So what does that mean? It means basically that they have a lot at stake, and that continued military rule is what’s going to allow them to protect those investments.
A lot of them also cause tensions and resistance. If I study some of the, I kind of worked in some of the communities that surround these Saudi and Emirati owned farms, and all of them faced resistance because this land was essentially taken by the state from small farmers and herders who have been using these communal lands for generations. And so a lot of them got kind of essentially pushed out of their livelihoods, and then some got absorbed into the continuously expanding security state that was repressing more and more different forms of urban and rural descent. So I think those are important actors. There are lots of other actors I mentioned the European Union, the Russians and the Turks have been vying for space along the Red Sea because of Sudan has a very long coast along the Red Sea, and everybody has. So lots of countries have been vying and trying to kind of privatize the national port.
Not to much success. There is an active and powerful port union that has been resisting these attempts to privatize the port. But right before the war, the Emirate signed a 6 billion port deal with Sudanese governments and business elites about 200 kilometers north of the national port that included an airport, a private toll road that would link them to some of their agribusiness investments further inland. And the idea I think was not only to kind of secure a strategic post along the Red Sea, but also to undermine the national port in order to control better control what is coming in and out of the country.
Ibrahim Alduma:
Yeah, thank you so much. I think you already explained everything, but I just wanted to maybe more explanation of their interest in Sudan. As you mentioned that the ports, and as you know, Sudan don’t have that sophisticated port, so maybe all of these regional forces are aiming to access S export and trying to build a new part on their interest, on their direction. One of the most important things is the gold and Sudan producing or people working on mining, maybe the regular or regular mining, producing more than hundreds of tons yearly in Sudan. And most of these tons and gold were controlled by RSF and by the general Heti himself. So United Arab Emirs were very interested in this gold and didn’t even want to get it with the normal regulations of the state. They just wanted to smuggle it and then that make them support RSF and having direct relations between them and that this started with the previous regime and then continue with RSF.
The other thing that we have the natural resources, which is also very interesting for the international access to control it. And we had, this is funny thing, but proxy, we witnessed that RSF and some brigades of Sudanese armed forces were fighting alongside the Gulf countries forces in Yemen that also were very interesting for these countries. We had some competition between different access, especially maybe even at that time, United States or Russia, because Russia wanted to get access also in the airport in Sudan, which is threatening the United States interest and maybe the national security and that area security as well. Because if we had this port and we had the other side ports like Yemen, g Putti and Saudi Arabia, but also we make some competition around these things in those areas, we had some also ideological competition. The government was trying to be an ally with some of the international access and government just to have very long leasing contracts for the Sudan real estate land in 90 years, 99 years for the government and for the interest of the government at that time just to collect money to run the country. And then of course when they don’t have any kind of resource, very good resources to cover the deficit and the deficit of the budget of Sudan. Yeah,
Blanca Missé:
Wow. So what I’m hearing is that on top of having to deal with the fight for their political rights against neoliberalism, against the privatization of the land, against the necessities of life every day, and these two rival factions, the RSF and the Army, the Sudanese people also have to deal with all these foreign powers. We’re trying to build new ports, privatize ports, seize the gold, get access to natural resources. So there is also a situation where the independence of Sudan as a country is also being at stake in the midst of all of this conflict. And one thing that I want us to touch upon is the huge humanitarian crisis happening in Sudan right now, right? Because we have heard a lot and rightly so about the impact of the Israeli genocide on Palestine and also of Putin’s war in Ukraine, the number of displaced people, number of folks dealing with food insecurity, lack of medical care, housing. But the situation on Sudan is of a magnitude that I think many folks in the western world are not seizing, and also because it’s not reported in the mainstream news. So I wonder if you just want to let us know what is happening right now in Sudan in terms of the humanitarian crisis and the basic fight for survival of the civilian population?
Ibrahim Alduma:
Thank you so much for this question. I think this is very interesting and very important after the two years just to know that the April 15th was the second anniversary of the war in the study in Sudan. And when I came here to the United States hearing that it’s a civil war, it’s a civil war, people just narrating that this is a civil war and I think this will reduce the attention to Sudan, just people fighting as usual. And this is not the right thing that happening in Sudan. When the war started in Sudan, it was the sharing, fighting on power between two generalists. But as soon as that they started RSF turned to attack civilians in Sudan while donor protect civilians. So when they started RSF are literally occupying people houses in Harum and then they expanded to Al Jazeera. They made about four or five genocides against village and the people resisting to save their people, to save their families, to save their lands in Al Jazeera.
And then they repeated the same genocide in, and now they are repeating it only four days ago, they made the genocide in Zza IDB camp in north, therefore, which use the only state that under SelfControl now, and it’s the only safe haven for the whole civilians in therefore it contains more than 2 million families. They were all displaced this week and they killed more than 500 people, women, children, and men. And now they are coordinating those area for men over 18 and under 70. They will not be able to get out of this place and all the people cannot do anything regarding them. They are lacking the main and the basic needs for surviving. They’re lacking the medical support, they’re lacking everything. Even those emergency response rooms who are like, we are serving those people with the lack of funding and lack resources for them now, they can’t access this place to fund these people.
There are a very small number of organizations still functioning there despite the cordon of RSF against civilians and innocent people in therefore, but they are suffering now. And we can bring to the context now the stop of USAID funding, which he was covering a lot of resource and a lot of needs for the local emergency response agencies and the other local organizations. So what I can say briefly, the situation and the humanitarian situation in therefore now and in Sudan in all over Sudan is horrible. It’s very difficult for people to survive or to find the lifesaving materials and things.
Nisrin Elamin:
Yeah. Thank you Ibrahim. I mean, I think just to sort of add on to that, the numbers are really quite devastating. I think the UN estimates that about 30 million people, which is more than half the population needs urgent food assistance. And both sides have been using food aid and kind of starvation as a weapon of war by obstructing food aid trucks from getting in and reaching the people that are most in need. 19 million children are out of school. The healthcare system has largely collapsed. People really haven’t been able, for the most part, been able to earn a living since April 15th, so of 2023, so that’s two years ago now. And so in the most recent weeks, in addition to the genocidal massacres that have just occurred in IDP camps in north that Ibrahim was describing, there’ve also been a number of dengue and other kinds of disease epidemics that are very difficult to control because of the lack of medication, lack of electricity, lack of clean water.
So even now that cartoon, the RSF has retreated from qto, people are, and the Jata people are returning to places that don’t have much infrastructure where sort of basic services aren’t running anymore and where even the agencies have for the most part not returned. So it’s a pretty dire situation. And in addition to all of this, 14 million people have been displaced several across Sudan, seven borders, but we haven’t really seen, at least to my knowledge, no country has issued expedited free refugee visas for Sudanese people. So for the most part, people are kind of trapped inside the country and are unable to leave. And I think as Ibrahim was saying, I think it’s very important to frame this war not as a civil war, but as a war against civilians. I like to think of it as an internationalized counter-revolutionary war that is meant to preserve the kind of current miniaturized, kleptocratic, ethnonationalist state, and really the interests of Sudanese military elites and their international partners. And so I think once we understand it as that, as a counter-revolutionary war that is meant to essentially make sure that the revolutionaries on the ground don’t get to build a kind of popular democracy from the ground up. If we understand it as such, then I think it’s also easier to figure out who the external forces are and how they need to be interrupted. Right.
Blanca Missé:
Yeah, I think this definition you just gave us is really useful, right? Because if we move from the framework of civil war, two factions fighting for power, which also by the media is always portrayed as Iran was saying, oh, there’s always war and what can we do? But if we say, well, this is a counter-revolution, right? A counter-revolution against a democratic political revolution. So you have two factions are actually, the war they’re having is not so much against each other. They’re fighting against each other, but they’re mainly fighting against the revolution, right? That’s their point of agreement. And they’re internationalized because they all have, these international partners are also trying to make profit of the country. Now, when I listen to this description and if we compound the analysis of the kind of war we have in Sudan, plus what you both have described right now of the very, very dire humanitarian crisis with the displacement, the food insecurity, the lack of medical supplies maybe will feel a little bit out of hope about a way out.
But I do know that both of you have been also talking about the fact that it exists today, process of organization of the civilian population from below some neighborhood committees, some forms of organizing that started the revolution and they’re still active. Nareen, you just mentioned the role of the Dock Workers Union in the port to prevent the privatization of the port and the earth selling of the port to foreign assets. So could you describe to us how are the civilian population, the working people in Sudan today being organized and resisting this tremendous war, and what are the role these committees are playing so our audience can understand that in the midst of this, there is still hope and there’s still folks we need to be in solidarity with, we can organize and we need to amplify their voices.
Ibrahim Alduma:
So if we witness that the Sudanese people and Sudanese working as Sudanese volunteers, as Sudanese robots have been active, as we mentioned here since 2011, they had the revolutionary of voluntary work, which was covering the gap of the government in doing their male responsibilities. Then they came the first revolution in 2019 in July, and then it was brutally suppressed by the intelligence. And then they started in 2013 also they had some processions also suppressed. And also we remember that the civil disobedience in 2016, and it was concluded with the 2019 revolution. This was building a very strong and consistent civil work and public work for Sudanese and even revolutionary work for Sudanese youth. And it was maybe one or two generations have been working together and handing over the experience between each other. They’re sharing their experience until we had the revolution of 2019. The same people, same resistance committees have been participating actively in revolution.
They are participating now actively in the emergency response rooms and then the other civil society platforms and the advocacy platforms. And we have also the media platforms and different aspects of platforms and civil society organizations, they are still active, but their voice is not amplified as well because we are seeing that too. The worrying parties are still militarizing the political horizon on Sudan and they’re occupying even the previous attempts to having a solution. And the negotiation attempts in Jah and Manama and with an iga, all of these negotiation tables were only contents of the worrying parties and the people that following the worrying parties. Now we have two aspects of political experience, Sudan, we have the aspect of those political components that they are just either support staff or RF, which they are part of them. And we have the independent political components, which they don’t have even the opportunity to participate in the political negotiations on these things.
So if we found an opportunity, those people are trying their best to find an opportunity to participate in the peace process from the beginning and not let the spirit to the warring parties get to resolve it. And having political agreements like just the previous political agreements and resharing the power again and Recontinue ruling against the civilians again. So a lot of people are calling for the revolutionary goals, freedom, peace, and justice and inclusivity. So those people are still calling for inclusivity, but I don’t know the way of getting in if we didn’t have any kind of support, international support that I guarantee some tables and packs and the majority for those people to participate in the peace process.
Nisrin Elamin:
Yeah, thank you. Just to add to that, I think just to take a step back, the resistance committees that Ibrahim was just talking about date back really to about 2013, right? We talked earlier about the protests that occurred in 20 11, 20 13, and 2016, and the ones in 2013 were very much led by kind of these kind of emerging neighborhood resistance committees. And they’re essentially these consensus-based collectives that are based at the neighborhood level that operate fairly autonomously and reflect the sort of political and social class of the neighborhood that they emerged from. And before the war, there were about 8,000 of them across the country, rural, urban, many coordinated at the sort of local and regional national level, but again also operating fairly autonomously. And we saw in 2022, sorry, revolutionary charters emerge that really laid out what a popular democracy from the ground up could look like.
And also actually at the very beginning of the war, there was a kind of vision to end the war that they put out as well. And so I think we’re looking at young people who are, I mean it’s quite intergenerational as well, but people who are very politically astute, who have been organizing now for over a decade to fill the gap left behind by a kind of absent service providing civilian state. So before the war beyond protests, they were also coordinating flood relief efforts, covid prevention efforts, all kinds of things. They were mobilizing against government land grabs, and often in conjunction with unions and other kind of opposition bodies. And so I think it’s important to note that as soon as Alba was ousted in April of 2019, the counter-revolution kind of started. I mean you could argue even before then, but we really saw there was a transitional government that was formed between military elites from within and Bashir’s inner circles, which included Heti and Al Bohan heads of the RSF and the Army who formed a transitional military council and then kind of a partnership or transitional governments with civilian elites, many from the diaspora who really kind of sidelined those more radical elements of the revolution, namely the resistance committees, but also many other kind of more working class constituencies in the formation of that transitional government that was meant to move Sudan towards democratic elections in a couple of years.
And so it’s during that transition that we really saw handpicked civilian elites turn outwards and sort of adopt a very neoliberal economic agenda that was meant to pull Sudan out of isolation. After decades of Clinton era sanctions, we saw them cozying up to international financial institutions. The Abrams Accord was signed in 2020, which is a normalization with Israel agreement in exchange for about $1 billion in annual funding from the World Bank. And then you saw Aku that was orchestrated together between the RSF and the Army in October of 2021, in part because they were worried that their economic assets would be kind of turned over to civilian oversight. So as Rahi mentioned, the RSF controls a lot of the gold in Sudan. Sudan is the third largest producer of gold. And then on the other hand, we have the army which controls about 200 companies in wheat, cement, gum, Arabic real estate, et cetera.
So a good portion of the economy is controlled by these military elites. And I think that’s partly what we’re seeing play itself out here in addition to gold. I think another commodity that is being traded in and through this war is livestock, but also gum Arabic. And I want to emphasize livestock in particular because through it we’ve seen over the last two years, millions of heads of livestock move from RSF controlled territories through army controlled territories to export terminals at the border with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And it’s as they move, livestock traders are given the freedom to move and are protected. So we see the RSF and the Army essentially collaborate around that. And as Sudanese people starve and as people fleeing war and humanitarian aid is being obstructed or attacked, I think that is a important example of how the army and the RSF are willing to cooperate when it comes to extracting profits through this war, but not when it comes to addressing the humanitarian crisis.
I think it’s important to think about the counter-revolution as having started before this war, but also to think about this humanitarian crisis and the food crisis in particular as one that started decades earlier through these kind of neoliberal privatization policies that continued throughout the transition. And that there are, for example, right now, the resistance committees have transformed to some degree, or at least it is out of the resistance committees, that these emergency response rooms have emerged, and they’re the ones who are at the forefront of relief efforts, coordinating communal kitchens and emergency health clinics and turning defunct schools into shelters, et cetera, with very little support. And we’ve also seen groups like the Farmers Alliance of the DITA and Manal who are trying to get people to come back to their land through a we must plant campaign where they’ve distributed seeds to about 1,500 families. And the purpose of that campaign is not just to allow people to feed themselves by planting subsistence crops in their own compounds, but also to make sure that people return to their land so that the war does not become a pretext for more land grabs by either domestic or foreign interests.
Blanca Missé:
Thank you, Rin, because I think what you are saying is that in the midst of this political revolution against the dictatorship for political rights, this resistance committees that began to get coordinated and formulate as what you label a popular democracy, they were also asking to control the social and economic resources of the country, right? And you mentioned 2021, a moment where the RSF and the Army got together to squash that possibility to protect private interest, the ruling elite interest, and then you give the example of how they even collaborated to allow livestocks circulation all the way to exportation to ensure the profits keep entering. So there is definitely a strong class dimension of what’s happening in Sudan that is combined with the political democratic rights and the demands to live with democratic rights for all. Now, you mentioned that experience of living in an extractive economy, it’s not something new that it has always been part of the life and the social fabric and the economic fabric of Sudan. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the legacy of colonialism in Sudan and how the ruling elites have shaped the economy way before this wave of struggle. Can you give us a little bit more insight?
Nisrin Elamin:
Yeah, I mean, for me, I think it’s important to start thinking about the roots of this war as the post-colonial state was forming in the 1950s. Essentially, when Britain left in 1956, they sort of handed us an extractive war economy, or rather an economy dependent on the extraction of cash crops like cotton, but also a political system that was kind of reconfigured to serve the interests of a kind of northern and central Sudanese, Nubian and Arab identified elite. And so for example, at Independence, 800 administrative seats were handed over to Sudanese elites, and these include top military officials, government scheme managers, like agricultural scheme managers, police top police officials, et cetera. And of those 800 seats, only six of them went to South Sudan, which at the time was the size of Texas. Now, of course, it’s an independent nation, and I think that encapsulates in many ways, sort of the ways in which the systemic marginalization of sudan’s, large peripheries, I don’t like to call them peripheries because they’re very, very large areas, but it does, I think that word tells us a little bit about the relationship between the center and these other regions of the country.
And so one of the first kind of forms of resistance that emerged in response to that kind of pseudonymization process, and I should say that the composition of the parliament was similarly unequal, maybe not quite as stark. And so people in places like South Sudan, ur, especially where there are large non-Arab populations arid grievances against this kind of imbalanced lack of political representation. And so we saw South Sudanese resistance fighters or resistance emerge quite quickly first in the form of nonviolent labor protests that were suppressed. But then later on, people also took up arms because South Sudan was essentially subsumed by the northern elite run government as a kind of internal colony, if you will. And people were demanding more political representation, equitable resource distribution. And those same demands were made many, many times throughout the decades and often were met with state violence instead of concessions.
So I think for me, it’s important to always go back to that because I think a lot of people will put the blame on the bashi regime, which it absolutely deserves to be there. But the NIR regime before it, and even regimes that go further back are also to blame in sort of sustaining this extractive economy and also in constructing a kind of elite run ethnonationalist kleptocratic state that to this day really has not been challenged in any significant way. And I think what we’re seeing, at least for me, one of the things that I am hopeful about is that the resistance committees are in many ways, and the emergency response rooms during this war are in many ways organizing in the absence or sort of parallel maybe to the state and are demonstrating to us that we can very much function. In fact, we would probably function much better without the miniaturized states. And so to me, that does give me some hope, as bleak as the situation is, as far as we are right now from even the potential of a popular democracy, there is I think some hope for me because the legacy of the revolution has really been kept alive. You see the organizing continue in the most devastating and dangerous and difficult of circumstances.
Ibrahim Alduma:
Yeah, thank you, Naim, for mentioning a lot of things. I just wanted to start out, the colonial was built the capacity of some sese civilians and Sese employee to serve their interests and give them some privilege over the other people. So they started building these employees, and when they got out, they just left those employees at the new manifest state, which they were not capable to be manifest state. So they were incapable to manage the country without supervision of the colonial at that time. That’s why we had a lot of courses started. When the first school of Abbo in 1642, it was 1964, that was because of the civilians came to the military to take over the rule. This is the first school in Sudan. So they were not capable to run the country, and they were not interested in the people’s interest, so they were not representing the people.
And one of the main things also from the colonial legacy that the highest authority in Sudan was always the executive authority. So the general attorney, now, the current general attorney of Sudan was appointed by the head of the military. So now the highest authority, the military, mainly because they make the course and the executive authority. So we don’t have very effective and powerful legislative, and we don’t have any effective or powerful judicial authority that made also very difficult for the people to fight for their rights and to find some people representing the interest of people. And this also continuing the legacy of colonialism that not serving the people, but serving the main interest of the highest people, which is the military as ministry mentioned, that they are occupying more than 50% of the Sudan, economic and Sudan investment companies and entities.
Blanca Missé:
Thank you, Brian. So we have thrown a lot of information to people who are listening to this podcast. And I think something we need to talk about before we part ways in this wonderful interview and discussion is what do we want people to do with this information? In which ways the US and the Canadian government are complicit or embedded in the current oppression and violence of the Sudanese people today? And how can working people in the US and Canada stand in solidarity with their siblings in Sudan? I think if we could give our audience here some ways to get involved, some things they need to start thinking to position themselves in the world as living in the United States or in Canada today, I think that will be very important. So we can also give a sense of agency for working people in the US and how they can connect with working people in Sudan.
Ibrahim Alduma:
So first thing that the ongoing war in Sudan is destabilizing the whole region. As you know, Sudan has borders with nine countries and it has borders and Sudanese part with East Africa, ho Africa, north Africa, and Sahel. So all of these countries are affected by the conflict, the ongoing conflict in Sudan and this conflict are mainly affecting the Sudanese civilians and affecting the land and affecting the whole economic situation in the country and in the neighboring countries. United States, new administration are very keen to take the leadership in resolving a lot of issues and conflicts around the world, and also to protect America from a lot of, so when we think of this, we can think of the first thing, the national and international security. We see that people are affected by the genocide of war parties, especially RSF. And we see that people, we have human trafficking around the Sudanese borders to fight inside Sudan and getting money to get back to travel or wherever they want to go.
And we have gold smuggling and without regulation. So we have a lot of international problems at that area. So participating in conflict and fostering for Sudanese that will stabilize the whole region at that area. And also benefiting for Sudanese and benefiting for the humanitarian and human rights of those people who are highly affected by this war. They didn’t choose to and they didn’t sign up for. So I think one of the main things that American and Canadian people can do is just understanding the situation in Sudanese, not a civil war, as we mentioned in the beginning, is the war against humanitarian and war against economy and war against the whole stable country and stable continent in that area. So I also went to mention something here that we had several meetings with congressmen in Washington DC during this week and during the Sudan advocacy week just to raise the awareness and to raise the attention and interest of race people.
Now all of the Canadian people are represented by those people. So if you could just do something related, they just take an attention about Sudan, that’s something happening in that country in Africa. And you can, if you do something, an initiative to call your representative to just tell them to support some of the bills of Sudan, like for example, Sudan Accountability Act, which will end the immunity of those who committed crimes in Sudan during the previous decay and in the ongoing war. So if you can support, your representative could support the Sudan Accountability Act, which will be presented for voting in the next period in the Congress here. And also America can support the other bill of American involvement in Sudan. And also they stop selling the weapons and defense arms for United States of Emirates, United Arab Emirates as they are not the final positioning. They are passing these weapon, the American weapons and the other countries weapons like China weapons to RSF, to committing genocide against people, against civilian people in Sudan. So I think American and Canadian people are allowed to do, just call your representatives to do something regarding this, to pay attention on Sudan. And that would put some pressure to the United States leadership to take the leadership to resolve these problems that are happening there. And also if we could ask to appoint and especially invo for Sudan, that will be very effective for running and to managing the Sudan file around the executive administration of the United States, and that will be very helpful in fostering the peace of Sudan.
Blanca Missé:
Thank you. Ray, do you want to add anything about what working people can do in the US to support Sudanese revolution today?
Nisrin Elamin:
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I would prefer sort of hands-off Sudan approach in the sense that I think there have been very many negative forms of external intervention that need to be stopped. Ira, he mentioned, for example, the UAE, right? It’s one of the external actors that has invested the most in this war. There are lots of others, but they’re supporting the RSF and they don’t really produce weapons. The US and Canada provides the UAE with weapons, and they could be leveraging that to get them to stop fueling this war and extracting Sudanese gold in exchange for weapons to the RSF. So I think that’s one example I generally feel right before this war, there was a video that was circulating on Twitter of the head of the World food Program. David Beasley at the time, he also used to be a Republican senator, and he was standing in the middle of a Sudanese wheat field basically telling people that this is land that needs to be invested in that it could solve the kind of food shortages created by the Russian War on Ukraine, and that American private investors needed to come in and sort of start investing in this land.
And to me, that was an indication that as Sudan was kind of trying to cozy up with international financial institutions, that it was opening up this opportunity for the US to kind of start reinvesting. And if you look at Canada, for example, just during this war a couple of weeks ago, we were protesting in front of PDAC, which is one of the largest mining conventions in the world that happens in Toronto every year. And Sudan had sent a delegation to explore mining opportunities in Sudan in the middle of a war. And there have been companies like Orca Gold, like Talisman Oil, these are Canadian companies that have invested in Sudanese oil and other kinds of minerals, and basically funded the Sudanese government under BA to clear land that they wanted to extract resources from, meaning they gave the Bashir regime weapons and money to forcibly displace and kill people at the height of the Civil War with South Sudan and right before the genocide and UR began.
So they have blood on their hands too. I think a lot of Canadians and US citizens probably, or us folks think that we don’t have much to do with this war, but if we take a sort longer look, there have always been European and North American corporate interests in the region and in Sudan that I think we need to hold them to account as well. So a present example is there was a Canadian, Montreal based PR firm led by an Israeli ex intelligence officer called Dickens and Madson that represented the RSF after they committed a massacre breaking up a very powerful sit-in that overthrew ah, Rashid, and then kind of stayed in place for several months because their demands really exceeded regime change. And so it was right after that that this company started representing them to kind of clean up their image and to bolster the international relations with the UAE, and at the time it was Russia’s Wagner group in order.
And so they came into this war having had that backing and that support to kind of expand their relationships with international elites who are now fueling the war. So I say all this to say that there is a kind of corporate network of murders, as I like to call them, that have their tentacles not only in Sudan, but also in Palestine. If you think about the weapons industry, weapons that are being sold to the Israelis, but also in the Congo, if we think about the companies that are selling arms to the Rwanda, national Rwanda Defense forces. So I think that’s one of the things that I want people to start doing, is to connect the dots and to recognize that when we’re calling on our universities to divest from companies that are funding these really defense forces, for example, look and see whether or not those same companies are also funding or selling arms to the UAE, because then that can be a sort of broader campaign to say, okay, we’re going to be divesting from multiple genocidal wars.
So I think that’s one. And then finally, two more things. One, I think the second thing I would say is that I would really love for people in the US to educate themselves about what is happening in Sudan. Not much is said in the news, but there’s plenty of information on social media. One of the people I recommend goes by BS on Blasts, Atan. She gives very regular updates on the war, Sudan Tribune radio, dga, there’s various, maybe we could put that in the show notes, but there’s various accounts that people can follow and also go to their websites because these are news agencies as well. And then finally support the emergency response rooms and the Farmers Alliance and some of these other civilian led mutual aid groups and organizing that is happening on the ground. We’ve been raising money through the Sudan Solidarity Collective, which is a group that I’m a part of that’s based here in Canada for the emergency response rooms, but also for the We Must Plant Campaign of the Farmers Alliance.
And most of it is from small donors. Most of our donors are 10 25, 70 $5 a month donors who help us sustain this support. So if people want to support, they can go to Sudan solidarity.com. We also have a series called Workshops for Sudan, which we just launched, which is modeled after workshops for za, and they really supported us in launching this. The next workshop is on May 5th, and it’s going to be led by Ruthie Wilson Gilmore. And so people can sign up for workshops for Sudan on our website as well, ww Sudan solidarity.com. Thank you so much.
Blanca Missé:
That was our Sudan episode of Solidarity Without exception with our two Sudanese guests who connected the dots between the interest of the US and other powerful capitalist forces in the region, such as Israel or the United Arab Emirates, and their continuation of the ongoing Contra revolution in Sudan. And also the need to support the resistance committees and unite the independent struggles of working people from Sudan to Ukraine to Syria to Palestine. Our solidarity efforts here in the US matter. Therefore, stay tuned for a next episode of Solidarity Without exception.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.