Sudan’s Revolutionary and Popular Movements by Muzan Alneel, Rania Obead, and Khalid Sidahmed, MENA Solidarity, April 2025, 47pp
Sudan’s latest civil war has been raging for nearly three years now. Both sides of the war have systematically used rape, executions, starvation and denial of medical aid as weapons of war.
Imagine the horrors of Gaza, spread over a far larger arena of war, but with not one, but two genocidal armies committing war crimes. An estimated 150,000-250,000 people have been killed, while 14 million are forcibly displaced.
This excellent pamphlet provides readers with a quick guide to the conflict, its background in the revolution of 2018-19, and how the solidarity movement can intervene. Its conclusion that the popular resistance to military rule must not side with either General Adelfattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces or Muhammad Dagalo, aka Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces is undeniable.
Both the SAF and RSF have engaged in years of plunder of Sudan’s resources, especially oil and gold. Both connived to overthrow Sudan’s Transitional Government in October 2021, denying the people any semblance of democratic civilian rule. Both have massacred civilians and targetted the popular revolutionary forces, the Resistance Committees, wherever they have taken control. The SAF, not the Sudanese state controls 82% of Sudan’s externally held assets, while the RSF sells stolen gold via Libya and the United Arab Emirates.
The pamphlet exposes the active involvement of neighbouring Egypt and Ethiopia, the Gulf States, and in the background imperialist powers, the US, EU, the UK and China. Weapons fragments from all these countries have been found on the battlefield. In particular the new rivalry between Saudi and the UAE could intensify the conflict as they back the SAF and RSF respectively. Killings more than doubled in 2025 with fears it could escalate into a regional conflict. Donald Trump’s dubious ‘peace’ mission, at best will see a carve up Sudan’s wealth with little benefit to its people.
2018-19 revolution
The Sudanese Professional Association was the result of the ‘Arab Spring’ cohort of revolutionaries. Formed in 2016 by workplace reps for ‘doctors, teachers, lawyers and journalists’ unions, the SPA doubled in size in December 2018. Coordinating much of the resistance and in particular the general strike calls, it sustained a two-day general strike against the Transitional Military Council on 28-29 May 2019.
But what made this strike remarkable was that it was ‘ordinary workers who pushed for escalation, defying the hesitations of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC)… and the SPA leadership itself’. The challenges of the revolutionary struggle created ever newer organisations, in this case ‘Escalation Committees’ of rank-and-file members wanting the union to up the ante.
Co-ordination between the unions and social movements dates back to 2013 or earlier, but the famous Resistance Committees (RC) took this to a higher level. Repression by Omar al-Bashir’s regime forced activists – mainly students, unemployed youth, young professionals – to go local and the authors show that this strengthened their ties to the neighbourhoods. By Spring 2019 the popular RCs were able to form city and state-wide, eventually national co-ordinations, combining with the workers’ movement to bring the dictator’s 30-year reign of terror to an end.
Since then, activists began to fight for concrete changes alongside the revolution’s demands for ‘peace, freedom, justice’. For instance, one community forced a goldmining company to abide by environmental and safety rules – it could go further by fighting for better conditions and pay for the miners themselves.
In one chapter Muzan Alneel outlines how today’s civil war drove the creation of new popular organisations in response, the Emergency Rooms. Originally spontaneous, these centres, or hubs bring together medical professionals and donated supplies to provide free services to the wounded and diseased. Operating in warzones and neighbouring states alike (14 of Sudan’s 18 states have witnessed fighting), these have developed to organise women’s centres, nurseries and schools, and soup kitchens for residents and refugees alike. They are run by volunteer activists or directly by the Resistance Committees.
Make the revolution permanent
The decentralised network that powered the revolution proved less able to determining what should replace al-Bashir. As the new regime switched from repression (3 June 2019 massacre) to concession (transitional government) and back to repression again (October 2021 coup), the revolutionary movement could not remain united. As the authors point out several times, what was missing was a revolutionary workers’ party. But what should such a party fight for?
While the authors are critical of the Sudanese Communist Party, particularly its participation in Colonel Gaafar Nimeiry’s junta in 1969-71, they retain some of its DNA. They call for working class leadership of the movement, while restricting their demands to bourgeois democracy.
A new revolutionary party must, however, weave in socialist demands – the struggle for workers control and expropriation of goldmines, oilfields and the main levers of the economy. Tax the rich to rebuild public services and infrastructure, provide jobs for the youth and equal wages for women. Only then can the Sudanese working class and poor throw off the shackles of capitalism and spread the revolution to the region.
Revolutionaries can develop the Resistance Committees and Emergency Rooms further, drawing in wider layers, especially workplace groups and unions – the SPA is too narrowly confined to the professional workers to lead a revolutionary charge. They need to grow into councils of action with delegates from all communities and workplaces.
Just as decentralisation needs its opposite, centralisation, to develop, so too non-violence also needs its opposite, a defence organisation, to survive and grow. It is understandable that a movement operating under military dictatorship and civil war needs to avoid clashes in its infancy. But even here, any kind of popular movement or activity needs to be protected from militia violence. Such defence guards can also provide training and cadres for a workers’ militia when the time to seize power arrives.
One final caveat about this pamphlet concerns the correct attitude towards the SAF and RSF. While the movement should give neither of these forces their support, the RSF remains the deadliest enemy. It emerged from the Janjaweed, renowned for their racist brutality in Darfur that killed 200,000 Black Africans, and is now accused of last October’s genocidal massacres at El-Fasher.
A workers’ militia on its own could not overthrow one army, let alone two. Revolutionaries will need to fraternise with soldiers, looking for moments when they can be turned against their officers. This may be possible with regular soldiers of the SAF but is likely to be suicidal if tried with RSF militia.
But these are discussions for the future. MENA Solidarity activists of the Sudanese diaspora have done us a huge favour by publishing this pamphlet. It should be widely read and discussed with a view to building political solidarity and proletarian internationalism.
