Nicolas Croes, Per Olsson
ISA Belgium, ISA Sweden

Released on 21 November, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok signed a power-sharing agreement with General Al Burhan, the leader of the military who dissolved the transitional government and arrested several sitting ministers on 25 October. This coup d’état, by playing the role of the “whip of the counter-revolution”, revived a dynamic of popular mobilization and strikes. The new, internationally brokered agreement hopes to achieve the goal that a bloody repression had failed to do: to stabilize the situation for the benefit of capitalism and of the ruling military clique.

On the ground, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), the main union platform and opposition movement, described the agreement as “an attempt to legitimize the coup.” The echoes from the demonstrations leave little room for doubt: “We do not want any compromise, any partnership, any negotiation”, declared Tasabih Ismail, a Sudanese woman demonstrating at the call of the neighbourhood-based Resistance Committees (which originally appeared during a wave of street protests against al-Bashir regime in 2013).

THE ARMY GETS SCARED

The October coup, the mass mobilization that ensued, and the recent masquerade around Abdallah Hamdok’s return, have not come from nowhere. These events follow the impressive popular uprising triggered in December 2018 by the threefold increase in the price of bread decreed by the then government. The country had been ruled for thirty years by the dictator Omar al-Bashir, author of a previous military coup in 1989, by the army and the ruthless security services.

Very quickly, the mobilization spread to the whole country and became more radical. In February 2019, the Algerian masses followed suit and the “perfume of 2011” started to spread — the year which saw the fall of dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak in Tunisia and Egypt, and a powerful wave of mass revolutionary movements across the region.

On 6 April, 2019, a mass sit-in began outside the army headquarters in Khartoum. The army general staff then tried to blow a fuse by getting rid of the dictator, removed by a coup and imprisoned on 11 April. The remnants of al Bashir’s regime hoped that like in Egypt, a change at the top would help them regain a certain control of the situation.

As in Egypt and Algeria, the armed forces constitute the fundamental part of the state institutions of Sudan. They control most businesses, gold mining, food production and textiles. According to Khartoum University economist Reem Sanjak, the military manages as much as 82% of the state budget.

But the military is not the only one to have learned from the Egyptian experience. From the point of view of the masses, this experience demonstrated the impasse of cosmetic changes at the top of the state if they do not alter the very foundation of the regime — since the Egyptian revolution stopped halfway and led to a return of the military dictatorship three years later. In 2019, therefore, to the dismay of the military, the masses continued to mobilize through strikes and mass demonstrations in both Algeria and Sudan after the fall of the dictators.

POPULAR AND WORKERS’ RESISTANCE

Finally, on 17 August, 2019, a Sovereignty Council was formed, chaired by the future coup leader Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, and whose prime minister was the former UN economist Abdallah Hamdok. This government aimed to find a compromise between the military, representatives of “civil society” (grouped together in the Forces for Freedom and Change) and leaders of various dissident armed groups.

This collaboration, decried as “the agreement of blood”, was fiercely denounced from its birth by the revolutionary forces. It was promised that this agreement would pave the way for a democratic breakthrough and civilian rule in 2023. But for the military, the purpose of the deal was to buy time, consolidate state power and strengthen its control over the country’s economy.

Since then, the economic situation — deepened by hyperinflation and increasing food shortages — has deteriorated dramatically, as the FFC leaders have lost their credibility. It is in this context that the military junta, determined to protect itself from any judgement for its past misdeeds and massacres committed under al-Bashir, and fearing its fortunes and properties would be encroached upon, tried with the recent coup to capture all power for itself.

However, the generals did not anticipate a massive revolt would develop against their coup, convinced that people were too exhausted by the economic crisis which gripped the country. The military hoped to torpedo the organization of the anti-coup resistance by cutting off internet access on the first day of the coup, but the resistance was carried out regardless, with ingenuity through the Resistance Committees and union structures — structures prohibited by decree after the coup, but without much effect on the ground.

From the very first day of the coup d’etat, the labor movement left its mark on events. Mass strikes quickly spread across Sudan in virtually all sectors of the economy, joined by many small businesses and traders, bringing the country’s economic life to a halt. As we reported in previous articles, millions of people repeatedly took to the streets, erecting barricades and revolutionary checkpoints across towns and villages, and heroically braving the deadly violence and mass arrests from the coup regime forces (over 40 people have been murdered since the coup).

On 13 November, again big new demonstrations were held across the country. More than half a million people took part in Khartoum’s main demonstration and the march stretched on for more than 12 miles. This was in response to the action of General al-Burhan in setting up a new 14-member ‘Sovereign Council’, with himself at the head.

The process of the last weeks of struggle also propelled one of the main players in the revolutionary dynamic to the fore: the Resistance Committees which, in nearly three years, have formed a vast network across the country, grouped together in various local coordinations.

These committees bring together a very large number of people, mostly young and politically unorganized. In addition to driving the mobilization, these committees have filled the void left by the collapse of the very corrupt “popular committees” of the old regime (which took on as many tasks of a municipal nature as they did the monitoring and spying of the Sudanese population). The equitable distribution of items in short supply such as bread or fuel has been notably managed by the population through these Resistance Committees, as have been a range of other tasks.

NO TO THE NEW POWER-SHARING DEAL! THE STRUGGLE MUST CONTINUE!

This is not the first time that the violent whip of the counter-revolution had provoked a powerful revolutionary upsurge. While the will to strike a decisive blow against the junta was certainly not lacking among the countless Sudanese revolutionary activists, it has been, however, sorely lacking at the head of the “civilian” parties and organizations, while the SPA leadership did not formulate a clear plan on how to the movement could take power away from the hands of the military.

As for western governments, the United Nations, the African Union — who have all condemned the coup — their aim never was to oust the junta, but to return to the situation of rotten compromise that was prevailing before the 25 October coup. This is why they have systematically called for “moderation” and “restraint”. Their main concern was to contain the revolution to prevent it from going too far.

Not only would this risk destabilizing Sudan, but a successful revolution could set an example for people in other countries in the region (especially neighbouring Egypt), which represents a mortal danger for imperialism. This is the decisive factor that has prompted the US and others to urge the generals to take a step back.

On the one hand, the army top was compelled to partially climb down on its initial ambitions for a fully-grounded coup because of the resistance movement that confronted it in the streets and in the workplaces — it was subsequently looking for the politically cheapest way out of the troubled situation unleashed by its own coup.

On the other hand, from the point of view of Hamdok and the so-called “international community” (i.e. the imperialist powers who have been standing behind him and behind the scenario of his return to premiership), the new power-sharing deal is an attempt at a “safe landing” of the mass movement, under the guise of a return to the “democratic transition” framework.

Yet from the point of view of the revolutionary movement itself, this is a new indigestible deal with the counter-revolutionary coup plotters, which addresses absolutely none of the underlying problems that led to the coup in the first place. It essentially vomits up again the same disastrous policies carried out by the pro-capitalist civilian politicians who colluded with the military and the imperialist powers behind the 2019 agreement.

The Sudanese people are fiercely opposed to any such compromise with the junta, especially since it has just been fully demonstrated that such a compromise does not work. This explains why mass protests have continued since the announced deal. The credit of Hamdok, who has saved his own position and the ruling system’s interests at the expense of the wider movement, has taken a new serious beating.

Over recent weeks, the revolutionary masses, through the Resistance Committees and the most militant trade unions, have demonstrated they can pose a genuine alternative power to that of the military and the ruling elite, which rests with the armed forces and with the paramilitary “Rapid Support Forces” (a feared and violent militia whose leaders have acquired a larger influence in the country’s economy following al Bashir’s fall).

If these Committees could also spread to the workplaces and the military rank-and-file, through the continuation of the struggle they could become the leading political force of the mass movement, posing the real possibility of bringing down the military once and for all. The old order would give way to a new one based on the self-organization of the masses.

The Committees must be able to extend their power to take over the management of the country by clearly posing as an alternative form of government, with a program of taking charge of the strategic sectors of the economy by elected popular and working class committees, the refusal to pay the debt to imperialism, the expropriation of the junta’s fortunes, and the democratic and socialist planning of the economy to meet the needs of the entire population of Sudan.