Sudan: Down with Military Rule

Statement by the Revolutionary Socialists

Once again, the people of Sudan have proven their resilience against the military by organizing a widespread wave of strikes and demonstrations to counter the coup by Burhan and Hemeti. Hundreds of thousands of workers and professionals across all sectors, from oil and ports to doctors and teachers, from Khartoum Airport staff to employees of central banks, have gone on strike.

This new wave of the Sudanese revolution faces a military killing machine that will use all bloody means to maintain power. In reality, the constitutional document agreement signed in the summer of 2019, which inaugurated the so-called transitional phase, did not touch the power of the army leaders and the class interests they protect. This class alliance includes generals who control vast farms and mines generating billions of dollars (Hemeti being the most significant owner of gold mines in Sudan), Gulf capital (especially Saudi and Emirati), and the traditional Sudanese bourgeoisie.

In fact, the transitional period has bolstered these interests through new liberal austerity policies that have resulted only in hunger and poverty for the majority of the Sudanese people, while senior generals responsible for massacres in all regions of Sudan remain far from accountability or trial for their crimes (even Bashir has only been tried for financial corruption so far).

On the regional level, the Sudanese state and its security apparatus have become servants of the interests of the anti-revolutionary quartet (Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE), from a peace agreement with Israel to exporting Sudanese soldiers as mercenaries serving the wars and interventions of these countries, to security and intelligence cooperation with Sisi’s regime in Egypt.
Let us remember that the movement that toppled Bashir was a broad, popular movement that included demonstrations and strikes across all regions of Sudan. The demands of this movement crystallized around three main axes. The first axis was economic, in response to rising prices, new liberal austerity policies of Bashir’s regime, and the spread of unemployment and hunger.

The second axis was against the Islamic military dictatorship in Sudan. Thirty years of military dictatorship with an ideological and political Islamic facade were, in actuality, nothing but a massive machine for killing, rape, burning, and detention in the name of religion and for the benefit of senior military officials and their allies. Ending military dictatorship and achieving democracy was a fundamental pillar of the popular movement, especially by professional associations and Sudanese university students.

The third axis of the revolution was the uprising of marginalized sectors of the Sudanese people—ethnically, culturally, religiously, and geographically. Wealth and power in Sudan are concentrated in the northern region, reflected in the concentration of educational and health services, economic investments, electricity networks, and transportation. It also reflects an attempt by the military authority in Khartoum to impose cultural, religious, and linguistic hegemony on all sectors of the Sudanese people by all means, from ethnic cleansing to imposing Islamic law by force of arms. The revolution of the marginalized in Darfur, Blue Nile, Kordofan, the Nuba Mountains, East Sudan, and the southerners living in the north is a primary component of the Sudanese revolution.

As we have seen over the past two years, nothing has happened under the authority of the Transitional Council but regression after regression in all these axes.

Why did all this happen despite the relentless popular struggle? The answer lies like the traditional Sudanese opposition parties that presented themselves to lead the revolution and represent the masses in negotiations with the military. The leaders of these parties are an integral part of the same class interests that the military fiercely defends. These leaders do not want a victory for a popular revolution that overthrows the ruling class in Sudan. They only want to use popular pressure as a bargaining chip with the military. Even the Sudanese left, represented by the Communist Party, has always been trailing behind the “civil” bourgeois parties and unable to play a revolutionary role as an independent platform for the uprising masses, enabling them to overthrow the class interests strangling the Sudanese people for decades.

The Sudanese masses need revolutionary forces independent of traditional parties and capable of managing the struggle until achieving a genuine, not just formal, victory as occurred in the first round through the constitutional document agreement—a victory deserved by the bravery and courage of the rising Sudanese masses.