Coup & Resistance

On October 25th, after having toppled the thirty-year brutal dictatorship of Omar El-Bashir in 2019, Sudan returned to Square 1. A military coup headed by General Abdul Fattah El-Burhan, head of the Transitional Sovereign Council, ceased power. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, head of the Transitional Government, and most members of his Cabinet were arrested. This has effectively ended the fragile power sharing arrangement of the last two years, and derailed the transition to full civilian rule. As Sudanese observers note, Burhan’s move simply crystallizes a postponed, unavoidable confrontation.

The coup is perpetrated by military generals (Burhan and Hemedti), the two Darfur armed rebel movement leaders who signed the Juba Peace Agreement last year (Minnawi and Ibrahim), and a faceless band of Bashir regime remnants and sympathizers, with suspected support from Egypt and UAE. Members of the banned Islamist Congress Party that ruled Sudan for three decades until the fall of Bashir have never stopped plotting to undermine the Transitional Government’s work to rehabilitate the economy and seek justice for victims of war and other crimes committed during his reign. Last month, this trio of army generals, disgraced rebel leaders, and Bashir operatives led a modest counter protest in support of the military, and created a narrative that the Sudanese are split over whether civilians or soldiers should govern. The massive nationwide demonstrations on October 21st in support of full civilian rule discredit this narrative.  

Following the coup, demonstrations immediately broke out in Khartoum and other cities. Yesterday, PM Hamdok and his wife were released but remain under house arrest. Most Cabinet members are still detained at an undisclosed location, and more arrests of political leaders and journalists are taking place. The Sudanese street remains adamantly against the coup, flooded with the young revolutionaries, working day and night to block roads with barricades and burning tires. The Sudanese Professionals Association has called for complete civil disobedience, and waves of strikes have begun – doctors, lawyers, teachers and bankers, among others, are on strike. Sudanese ambassadors continue to publicly denounced the coup from different capitals around the world, and rallies are organized in Washington DC, London, and other major cities. 

In tragic but classic exercise of brute force, protesters are being shot dead on the streets of Khartoum. Hemedti’s Rapid Support Force and other militias are combing neighborhoods, terrorizing and killing members of the resistance committees. Burhan and Hemedti’s bloody record of atrocities in Darfur is well known. They showed how far they can go in the Ramadan massacre of June 3, 2019. No doubt they will cause as much bloodshed as necessary to hold on to power. They have the guns. Revolutionaries have their goal of “freedom, peace, and justice,” and the determined peaceful resistance that brought down mighty Bashir two years ago. Resistance is far from futile!