Writer and feminist activist Reem Abbas on the personal costs of the war between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces.
The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated, and represents more than just an end to violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people.
The weakness of central state institutions has enabled the paramilitary Janjaweed to carve out its own power base. An attempt to muscle in on this power by the army has led to the current crisis and leaves hopes of a transition to civilian rule in tatters.
Despite its foreign allies and legitimizers, the military has failed to crush the new self-organized peoples’ committees. The popular revolutionary forces have held power in the streets for more than 1000 days and the resistance cannot be easily broken.
Examining the recent and brutal attempts to suppress the Sudanese revolution, Magdi el Gizouli looks at the efforts by the regime and its various factions to seize the initiative from the streets. In recent months the ruthless figure of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (aka Himeidti), the leader of the infamous Rapid Support Forces, has moved into the centre of Sudanese politics. However, will the ‘neighbourhood committees’ be able to translate their revolutionary zeal into mass political action that can unite rural and urban discontent and challenge the regimes hold on power?
The “Tripartite Agreement” signed between Ahmed Abiy of Ethiopia, Mohammed Abdullahi Farmajo of Somalia, and Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea is a “Trojan Horse” deal that could eventually destabilise the entire Horn of Africa region.
A popular uprising of hundreds of thousands on the streets of Khartoum toppled the most brutal of all generals, President Omar al-Bashir, in 2019. But the military prevented the civilians from ruling alone and a hybrid civilian/military transitional regime was formed until Burhan returned all power to the military after the coup in October.
Darfur’s rebel groups say they are fighting for the black farmers, but most have not controlled areas for long since their formation early this century.
Calls for economic sanctions to be imposed on Ethiopia fail to recognise that they have had not had the intended impact elsewhere in the region, only increasing the hardship of ordinary citizens.
Cartoons
Sudanese women are well aware that their access to basic human rights and justice are conditioned upon the presence of a civil and democratic system of governance that respects women’s rights and humanity. Only under such a government can women be part of legal and political reform processes that will contribute to bringing about meaningful change.
The best support that the Sudanese revolution can get from international allies is for them to reject and fight their own governments’ efforts to force a government of killers on Sudan for the second time.