Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A collection from the Transnational Institute (TNI)

“Didn’t ‘we’ [Britain] leave them with a viable country, functional state and infrastructure. What more do they want and when will they take responsibility for their own shortcomings?” a British journalist asks on Twitter.  Key points: “ There has been a historical tendency to separate matters of the economy from the political process in analysis and reporting on Sudan (and in Africa more generally).” “[T]he failure of the civilian technocratic government to disband the economic and political project of the Islamist military establishment. “Sudan’s 2018 revolutionary imaginary, fluid and expansive, was brought into being through the uprising’s main slogan: ‘Freedom, Peace and Justice’. In all of their iterations, these three words came to mean different things for different groups subject to violence and marginalization by the state in different ways. “In large part driven by externally supported processes, the importance of labor-based identities in shaping political struggle has ...

‘ The decaying American empire ’ argument is disputable. The comparison with the collapse of the Soviet Union misses the different economic structures of the two countries. The US economic power has not been experiencing a long term stagnation, for example.  Actually, the argument should be the way around: in 1980s there was no ‘whip of external necessity’ compelling the US to outcompete the Soviet Union. The latter was not an economic threat to the US. Today China is the ‘external whip’ but to an already more powerful American economy – a dynamic one in terms of capital-intensive industries, productivity and an array of industrially-advanced allies and subordinates.

“Far from being caused by personal rivalry, this conflict is rooted in the long history of the region and Sudan’s never-ending economic and social crisis. The conflict between the North and the South claimed between half a million and a million lives from 1955 to 2002. And herein lies the cause of the fighting tearing Sudan apart. To understand it requires going back to 2011. The secession of South Sudan and the rise of guerrilla movements within the North’s Muslim populations had weakened President Omar al-Bashir’s authority. His increasingly unpopular Islamist regime had been in power since the coup of June 1989 and was rotten with corruption. The regime sent the Janjaweed to fight in Yemen on behalf of the Saudis – who paid handsomely – and then tasked them with repressing the northern guerrillas of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), first in Darfur and then throughout the country. From the day after the coup, there were obvious tensions between the two forces, e...

So many Germans did ignore the genocide against the Jews. So many stood by when the Rwanda genocide was taking place. So many have ignored the Rohingya genocide. Responses to genocide are often determined by where the crime is committed, and what the victims look like .

Massacres in Ardamata From MEE: Fighters from a Rapid Support Forces unit stand on their vehicles during a rally, in Mayo district, south of Khartoum, on 29 June (AP)

Summary “Western diplomats privately accused the pro-democracy movement of not being pragmatic. This on account of its slogan, ‘No Negotiation, No Partnership, No Legitimacy’, which accurately sums up the movement’s position towards the junta that was killing its members on the streets of Khartoum.  The Western attempt to restore a civilian-military partnership also gave Dagalo the opportunity to reposition himself as a supporter of ‘democracy’.” The Western regimes’ old-new tradition of supporting ‘stability’. “An estimated twenty-five million people – more than half of Sudan’s population – are in desperate need of relief due to a humanitarian crisis made worse by the fighting.  But rather than safeguard the integrity of relief, the global aid response has elected to administer its operations from SAF-controlled Port Sudan. This has predictably led to bureaucratic impediments, visa denials, and the acute diversion of aid by the SAF, as well as by the RSF.” “Neither Washi...

Official figures from that day indicate that of the roughly 1,700 migrants who attempted to cross the border, 133 were able to claim asylum; 470 individuals, like Basir, entered Spanish territory, but were forcibly returned to Morocco. At least 37 people died, and 77 people remain unaccounted for. The event quickly came to be known as “ the Melilla massacre ”. “I suppose we weren’t human any more, we were just like animals.” —Basir, a 24-year-old Sudanese man

Lessons from the struggles in Sudan, Syria, and Palestine

Wagner Group's capabilities have been honed in Syria, Libya and elsewhere in Africa

Resistance Committees plot a way out of the war

The best approach I have seen so far to what is happening in Sudan. Gunshots in Khartoum

A protracted conflict between the SAF and RSF is a possibility Related الذهب وإسرائيل وفاغنر أم الديمقراطية والإسلاميون؟

Another spillover of a failed revolution, uneven development, marginalisation …and genuine democratic restructuring of society. The absence of prevalent and radical forces that are able to unite the nation and establish a fair distribution of wealth.. The complex character of such a situation in different parts of the world is the focus of Michael Mann’s The Dark Side of Democrac y. “Class conflict has always been important in the development of modern society.” A weak class conflict invites all sorts of other conflicts. It even lays the ground for ethnic conflicts and genocide.  Counter-revolutionary and reactionary forces and regional powers always have interests in playing a role in exploiting and redirecting conflicts.  Dirar has vowed to use weapons to liberate the Beja people , who are native to eastern Sudan, from “historical marginalisation” by governments in Khartoum.  Related Lessons from European history “I will argue that class struggle and its institutio...

Fellow Citizens A wicked and unjust war is now being waged by the ruling and propertied classes of this country, with all the resources of civilisation at their back, against an ill-armed and semi-barbarous people whose only crime is that they have risen against a foreign oppression which those classes themselves admit to have been infamous. Tens of millions wrung from the labour of workmen of this country are being squandered on Arab slaughtering; and for what: 1) that Eastern Africa may be ‘opened up’ to the purveyor of ‘shoddy’ wares, bad spirits, venereal disease, cheap bibles and the missionary; in short, that the English trader and contractor may establish his dominion on the ruins of the old, simple and happy life led by the children of the desert; 2) that a fresh supply of sinecure Government posts may be obtained for the occupation of the younger sons of the official classes; 3) as a minor consideration may be added that a new and happy hunting ground be provided for military ...

“We paid the price twice” for Bashir’s dictatorship, says Amjed Farid, the opposition activist. “We got rid of the tyrant who was supporting terror, through a popular revolution that we paid for with our blood. And now we are paying the price for this tyrant, even though we were his first victims.” “Is this justice?”

“No negotiation, no compromise, no partnership” with the military

This cliché of invoking the ‘international community’ is again not helpful. The authors ignore what the ‘international community’ – the big and regional powers’ stands towards Egypt and the Yemen war, for example.  The Sudanese must rely on themselves. They trace back to Al-Bashir era Related Deans suspend studies indefinitely

1. A saying attributed to Saint-Juste:  “ Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs.“ What applies to Egypt and Syrian, applies to Sudan.  2. The call by two Sudanese trade unions for a general strike must be supported. 3. The general strike must go beyond stopping the economic machine and challenging the military; it must create organs of power. A crucial revolutionary action the revolting Sudanese did not create two years ago. 4. The compromise with the military was a plunder. 5. No trust in the foreign powers that call for the release of “the civilian leaders.” They are for a compromise and ‘peaceful’ arrangement. They are the same powers supporting the Egyptian dictatorship and supported the recent coup in Bolivia. The same powers that talk about ‘civilian rule”, send the IMF and the World Bank to prolong the life of the current regimes and perpetuate the conditions that breed social conflicts, uprisings, migration, etc. My comment from July 2...

Paying the price of the alliance with the army Related Sudan is being rewarded for its revolution with blackmail People’s own struggle achieves in months what NGOs cannot achieve (or hinders to achieve) for decades. Activists react ad Sudan ditches “Islamist laws” A background