Up till now, following the military coup, the regional and global imperialist powers have expressed different positions. Many countries have come out with public statements condemning general Al-Burhan’s move, while others have remained silent or taken a deliberately ambiguous stance.
The majority of European countries and the US administration have officially condemned the coup. But Russia and China objected at the United Nations session called to discuss the issue, citing the pretext of non-interference in the sovereignty of other countries. The truth is that their interests would conflict if they were to support outright condemnation.
While the Chinese regime has publicly remained mostly on the fence so far, it has a longstanding relationship with the Sudanese army and an array of investments, trade, and infrastructure projects in the country. Sudan’s strategic location on the Red Sea is key to its Belt and Road Initiative.
Russia has important military interests that it wants to pursue in Sudan, in particular its naval military base on the Red Sea coast in eastern Sudan, whose construction was suspended during the previous months due to the objections of a number of civilian leaders that such a decision should be taken only after the election of the Legislative Council.
Over the last few days, some newspapers have reported that Al-Burhan is again talking positively about the military base in part to thank the Russians for their support. In an interview for the Russian “Sputnik” agency, al Burhan confirmed Sudan’s commitment to the construction of the base, praising the country’s “long-standing and continuous” military cooperation with Russia.
The same Legislative Council, which stood as a stumbling block to Russia’s ambitions, was also delaying the completion of Sudan’s diplomatic relations with the Israeli state. The pursuit of normalisation with the Israeli state is an important goal for Al-Burhan, who met with ex-Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Uganda last year, using this relationship and Israeli support to exert pressure to obtain international legitimacy from the US.
Beyond the economic motivations, the murderous generals were driven by their desire to be exonerated for their past crimes, including their role in the Darfur genocide, by getting Sudan removed from the US State Sponsor of Terrorism List. Although the civilian leadership was not in principle opposed to throwing the Palestinian struggle under the bus in the pursuit of such imperialist support, it was in favour of a more cautious approach that factored in the overwhelming opposition to such a deal among the Sudanese people themselves.
From a regional point of view, the regimes in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt are the main supporters and the ‘back kitchen’ of the military coup, and a number of reports over the last days have mentioned the underhand contacts between the two parties.
The Egyptian side sees the military coup as the surest way to promote its agenda in the region — starting with the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which constitutes the greatest geopolitical threat to al Sisi’s regime at present. But it also helps to protect investments by the Egyptian army in Sudan and other economic interests held by the Egyptian elite within the country. More fundamentally, in the context of simmering anger within Egypt and the bubbling up of significant workers’ strikes there in recent months, victories for the revolution in Sudan represent a direct threat to the authoritarian rule of al Sisi, raising the spectre of a return of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt itself.
Al-Burhan also believes that he can play off regional interests by leaning on the so-called “eastern camp” — Russia and China. This prompted the US government to try and speed up a resolution of the matter, despite the fact that the coup is in line with the interests of some of the US’s regional allies in the region — the UAE and Egypt. And of course any strengthened Russian military presence in the Red Sea region is a threat to US interests.
On the other hand, the rejection and condemnation of the coup by the European Union is mainly to protect its overall interest in securing the Mediterranean from migration flows, which Sudan’s deposed Prime Minister Hamdok gave assurances about during his visits to EU countries over the last two years.
Other factors should also be considered. Sudan, during the Islamic fundamentalist regime of Omar al Bashir, posed a continuous international and regional threat to imperialist interests. These included the attempted assassination of Hosni Mubarak in 1995, the bombing of two US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, the bombing of the missile destroyer USS Cole in 2000, in addition to the support for armed movements in neighboring countries and the protection of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and ‘Carlos the Jackal’.
So in addition to the immediate political, economic and military interests that all sides of the international and regional powers aspire to in the region, it is important to consider the big powers’ concerns that with old regime forces left unchecked in the driving seat, things could again get out of hand.
Last and not least, most imperialist countries are now panicking, fearing that rather than pushing Sudan’s revolutionary movement back, the coup has reignited it on an even larger scale, with potential implications going way beyond Sudan’s borders.
Masses reject new compromise
In any case, the presence of two partially competing armed movements in power, in the form of the army and the Rapid Support Forces’ militia, combined with different and competing regional alliances and interests — in addition to the RSF’s continuing economic and military expansion and its building of foreign relations away from traditional state institutions in countries like Yemen and Libya — reveals the picture of a fragile alliance which can explode at any time, especially if it is put under sustained pressure from the streets.
In this context made up of such discrepancies in foreign interests, the main international imperialist forces are trying to push for a return of the situation as it was before the coup, and have engaged in ‘mediation’ aimed at working out a solution that can be acceptable to the putschists. This is despite the fact that such a compromise has been vocally rejected by millions in the streets, and that the statements of the Resistance Committees have repeatedly made clear that “There is no negotiation possible with the coup council”.
From the point of view of the street, Al-Burhan politically dug his grave by overturning the constitutional document of agreement between the civilian-led “Forces of Freedom and Change” and the Military Council. But truth be told — unlike what imperialist pundits argued back then — this agreement was already fiercely opposed by the revolutionary forces at the time it came about, and was even nicknamed the “blood agreement”.
After the sit-in at the General Command was bloodily dispersed on June 3, 2019, the civilian opposition had called for the fall of the Military Council and for its members to be put on trial, in the context of a huge revolt sparked by the massacre — including a general strike and a “Million March” on June 30. But they then sat down and negotiated with the Military Council and imposed on the street this document of partnership with the military brass. This took a severe toll on the Sudanese people and the protest movement on the streets. Now, after this constitutional document has been torn apart, it brings us back to the starting point — which is the need for organised resistance and for the overthrow of this murderous council.
The threat of a military coup to take full control of the government by Al-Burhan and his clique has been present since the very first moment the statement of the takeover against Al-Bashir’s government was read in April 2019; but the repeated struggles and the defense of the streets by the revolution have aborted all their attempts to monopolise power in the last two years.
During the previous period, all the events in Sudan have pointed to conspiracies by the Military Council. During all that time, the Military Council deliberately built narratives to obtain a mandate for itself — by stirring up tribal and regional strife, by launching criminal gangs to threaten the security of ordinary people and make them feel fearful, by co-opting some tribal and civilian leaders to challenge the civilian government and demand military rule (as it happened when a sit-in was organised by tribal leaders in Port Sudan in the east, cutting off the main road that supplies the country with basic needs such as medicine, flour and gasoline — a sit-in that was quickly lifted hours after Al-Burhan’s coup on October 25).
However, the masses have been very aware of these ploys, and despite the generals cutting off the internet and all kinds of communications inside the country and controlling the internal media to promote their coup, revolutionary disobedience quickly broke out. At the time of writing, the protests and strikes continue, and the Resistance Committees are working towards coordinating another “Million March” demanding this coup council be brought down.
The civilian political elite that has been leading the country over the previous period is responsible for having nurtured the atmosphere that has allowed the military counter-revolution to reach this point. It was they who gave the military council opportunities to escape responsibility when they signed an agreement with it; it was they who imposed terrible economic policies on Sudan’s workers and poor; it was also they who drew up a peace agreement that was not effective in any way except in preserving the interests of the leaders of the different armed movements.
Through his coup, Al-Burhan has turned against them first, by arresting all the political leaders of the Forces of Freedom and Change. But despite the pressure Al-Burhan is currently facing from the street to release them, this pro-capitalist elite will be the first to compromise and agree to new negotiations that will allow the coup plotters to escape punishment — which is what is currently implied by the international mediation contacts between the two parties. This, undoubtedly, will lead to renewed anger in the streets, especially in the event that any agreement is accepted that maintains Al-Burhan at the top.
One can sense at the present time a battle behind the scenes over who takes over the leadership from the street. The recent statement from the Forces of Freedom and Change clearly shows their insistence on jumping over the struggles of the Resistance Committees, and diluting the solidity of the anti-coup resistance by returning to sit with the military council. Tellingly, the Forces of Freedom and Change has not called at any time for the annulment of the agreement document signed with the generals two years ago.
There is also conflict over how the revolution should be escalated, who decides what should happen, and who, from the point of view of the civilian leaders, decides to call it off. This will put these political forces in the crosshairs of the Resistance Committees if they insist on holding back the fire of this revolution. It is clear from efforts undertaken under the guise of international mediation, that the former are favourable for external bodies to come in to impose a road map in conjunction with the military council, and that they will push this approach domestically.
In the midst of foreign and domestic plots to lure them into new betrayals, it is clear that the Sudanese masses have only their forces, energy, determination and organisation to rely upon to achieve their revolution. The coordination and extension of the Resistance Committees (including among workers and rank-and-file soldiers), and the enlargement of their activities to all matters of daily life, is the best way to strengthen the movement from below, in order to bring down the military coup regime once and for all — along with the multiple capitalist and imperialist interests that are circling like vultures around it.
