More than five months now since Generals Abdel Fattah El-Burhan and Muhammad Hamdan Hemedti’s coup crashed the transition to civilian rule in Sudan, and turned the transitional period into a deadly uneven street battle between unarmed heroically brave young men and women determined to resist with peaceful means, and a ruthless killing machine of security, police, and militia forces. More than 90 people have been killed in Khartoum alone since October, thousands have been injured, and unknown numbers are detained in undisclosed locations. Leading the fight for a new Sudan, the resistance committees are sticking to their three noes: no legitimation, no negotiation, and no partnership with the coup leaders. They plan to continue the street protests until the military returns to ‘the barracks.’
In the meantime, the country is in a political stasis anchored in the unbridgeable distance between Burhan, Hemedti and their few supporters, on the one hand, and the civilian opposition, on the other. The coup side has the guns, but the overwhelming popular rejection of military rule is denying them legitimacy and ability to form a new government. Burhan and his ‘Minister of Finance’ lurch in the dark from one disastrous decision to another with no plan or discernible logic. Inflation is intolerable, the security situation in Khartoum is terrifying, and Darfur continues to bleed with real or orchestrated tribal violence.
A unified civilian front has yet to materialize although everyone is calling for it. Almost every resistance committee, political party, and professional association has a proposal for Sudan after defeating the coup, with details for elections, improving daily living conditions, and drafting a new national constitution. All agree on the general goals. Yet, no individual or party has managed to consolidate these proposals into one document, and the political parties show no sense of urgency about the need to defeat the coup itself first. In the absence of a unified alternative leadership, Burhan and Hemedti’s de facto rule hardens in place and leads the country further into ruin. The protests by themselves are not likely to bring down ‘the Palace,’ not without an unbearably high human cost. The two men have no qualms about murdering as many as it takes to remain in power. Khartoum now is looking more and more like a war zone, with barricades on major roads, and teargas canisters and bullets debris scattered all around. Every day that passes by gives Burhan and Hemedti license to wreak more havoc in every sector – from the economy, to security, to education. They are betting that sooner or later general sentiment within the older generations will turn toward accepting a nominally civilian government as economic hardship worsens while more young people die in the protests.
The question is how to end the political stasis. The youth of the resistance committees hold the brightest hope for Sudan’s future. They have built an impressive set of organizations and spent a great deal of time in deep thought and dialogues about issues of freedom, peace and justice. Their horizontal internal structure is ideal for a durable democracy. But, there are more than 5,000 of them spread out across the country. The moment calls for a small civilian leadership body to present the pro-democracy alternative and to take over. The committees must mobilize beyond the street protests to lead a complete national disobedience campaign that dislodges the country out of its current stasis.
After having thrown El-Bashir out of office, the choice now is between getting on with the task of rebuilding the country or letting it go down in flames by insisting on punishing Burhan, Hemedti, and Bashir loyalists for all their unforgivable crimes. The dilemma is that to resume the transition to civilian rule, the coup leaders must be peacefully but quickly removed from the political scene, which may require granting a safe exit to two known war criminals, and perhaps even a few of the National Congress Party’s worst offenders. To many, this represents a betrayal of the December Revolution’s ideal of justice – justice for the martyrs, the raped, the disappeared, and their families. But, justice has many facets. It is time to think of this ideal in a different way that still honors the memory and sacrifice of those who are lost or injured for life. Calls for hanging Burhan and Hemedti rest on a punitive, vengeful concept of justice. The martyrs’ sacrifice can be meaningfully honored by embracing the idea of constructive justice focused more on realizing their dreams of building a different, more just, country. The martyrs’ dreams are lost as long as the perpetrators are allowed to remain in power and reinstall all the elements of Bashir’s regime while civilians are busy picking at each other’s proposals for a new Sudan.
Freedom, Peace, Justice!
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