This is the second installment of a two-part series of interviews with people organizing in Sudan conducted in May 2024. Read the introduction and the first interview here.

If you would like to help grassroots civil society and mutual aid groups at the frontlines of relief efforts in the parts of Sudan most impacted by state violence, donate to the Sudan Solidarity Collective.

— Rabab Elnaiem, Nisrin Elamin, and Sara Abbas

The Refugee Camps Under Siege

Tahani Ajak, a writer, teacher, and volunteer who grew up in Sudan and South Sudan, lives in a refugee camp for South Sudanese in White Nile State, close to Sudan’s border with South Sudan. She runs women and youth discussion groups in the camp, helps mothers secure food and other necessities, and writes about life in the camps, shedding light on the grave abuses suffered by refugees at the hands of the Sudanese state and their neglect by humanitarian organizations.

Until 2011, when South Sudan declared independence from Sudan after decades of struggle, the South Sudanese were citizens of Sudan, albeit ones who faced deep-seated structural racism and a plethora of other intersecting oppressions, including being excluded from positions of power, deprived of educational opportunities, and subject to the forcible extraction of resources from their ancestral lands. Millions, many of whom were born and raised in the north, moved to South Sudan in search of justice, equality, and a better life in a country of their own.

But in 2013, war started again in the newly independent nation, forcing millions to flee and cross the border into neighboring countries, including Sudan. Now holding the status of “refugee” instead of “citizen” and with little material means, many had nowhere to go but the camps. Others moved to Khartoum and other cities and towns across the country in search of work or education or to be near relatives. When the current war started in Sudan in April 2023, it devastated those in the city already living on its margins, as Ajak has written. Here she talks about the revolution, the war, and life in the camps.

Due to the unstable conditions of war that prevailed for many years in Sudan, my father moved often to find work. My family and I lived in different villages and cities in greater Sudan — its north, south, east, and west. I grew up in the midst of a diverse Sudanese life that saturated me with its beautiful richness, in cultures that shaped my conscience and expanded my knowledge about the nature of life in the country. I grew up embraced by the warmth of the Nile, which divides Sudan from Halfa, in the far north, to Nimule, in the far south, surrounded by stories my grandmother told about the ancestors, which she recounted to us under the magic of the moon hanging over the city of Malakal. That magical moon and the shores of Buri Abu Hashish, the dignity of Jebel Kujur, the sweetness of a cup of coffee under the Taka Mountains, and dancing to the rhythm of the mardum and the waza are among the things that motivated me to write, to stay close to people, and to reflect on how they live.

For me, the December Revolution of 2018 is part of an ongoing national project, a struggle that has existed since the founding of the Sudanese state in 1956. The state’s founding was accompanied by the emergence of many popular national liberation movements against the unjust governments that assumed power in the years that followed. State violence peaked with the National Islamic Front’s coup in 1989, which pushed Sudan into a spiral of darkness and greatly increased the suffering of the people. During the 30 years of that regime, the circle of war expanded to encompass all parts of the country.

When the revolution came in 2018, it embodied hope for me and for all Sudanese. It was preceded by student struggles when I was at university, struggles of resistance to military rule. The fight has always been about standing together in the face of injustice, so that we can build a new Sudan that accommodates everyone and establish a civil state in which the values ​​of freedom, peace, justice, and equality are achieved across the society. The December Revolution took place in order to rebuild the Sudanese state along different lines.

The war that began on April 15, 2023, is a real threat to that project and represents a departure from the path of the revolution and its achievements. It threatens people’s lives, their stability and security. All over the country, it proves destructive to everything that was built by the people’s struggles and by the martyrs who gave their lives and blood as a dowry to achieve a free and democratic Sudan.

I believe there is always a way out of the dilemmas that the country experiences. The conflict must be stopped first and a comprehensive peace achieved, and then we must correct the mistakes accumulated from both the recent and the distant past and adhere to the path of the revolution and the peaceful mechanisms it brought to resolve longstanding crises. The most important of these mechanisms are outlined in the cultural and political documents from the struggle itself, including the 2023 Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People’s Power.

For me, freedom is a right, not a gift. There was a roar emitted by the masses of Sudan, a roar that made all the streets and alleys of Sudan’s cities and villages buzz. This roar was a popular demand for the realization of a civil state and a farewell to the darkness of dictatorial rule forever.

I think it’s important to say that those who believe in freedom as a right for every human being do not stop extending that right within their own communities, especially among vulnerable groups, such as refugees who need support and assistance. South Sudanese refugees are the biggest refugee group in Sudan. Refugees in Sudan live in almost catastrophic humanitarian conditions and are exposed to many rights violations, especially the youth, who are now subject to a ban on freedom of movement to and from the camps. In this war, young people are a target for both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and are always accused by one side of belonging to the other. They face arrest, torture, and forced deportation. All of these conditions constitute compelling reasons for their escape from the camps. Given how strict the authorities are in not allowing them to leave, they choose the path of being smuggled out, which is fraught with danger and death. Last March, a fishing boat carrying six young South Sudanese refugees who had escaped from the Al-Radeis 1 camp, in White Nile State, sank. Two drowned, and the other four were rescued. Youths continue to try to flee the camp, regardless of the results, because life feels unbearable. Some individuals who care about refugees are fighting with whatever means they have to stand with the youth and extend a helping hand to them. Others write about the youth’s plight, in the hope of receiving help.

We who are doing this kind of work labor under difficult conditions. Sudanese authorities have banned many activities, subject us to questioning or arrest, and sometimes deport us from the camps. We face threats, confiscation of food ration cards, and exposure to violence. Yet what we go through still feels insignificant, because those we are trying to help risk losing their lives, so we continue to support the refugees and stand with them, whatever the consequences.

Children are really vulnerable in refugee camps. Their lives are at risk due to the presence of many diseases, the absence of health care, and the deterioration of their families’ economic conditions. But there are always those who respond to our calls and rush to provide support when the children of the camps are in need, when death snatches them from their mothers’ arms. This happened in the summer of 2023, when a measles epidemic struck the White Nile camps and more than 1,000 children died. We launched a call for support and received help in reaching UNICEF, which then called for a vaccination campaign to prevent more measles deaths among children in the camps. The campaign was implemented by local organizations and the Sudanese Federal Ministry of Health, which trained refugee volunteers from each of the nine White Nile refugee camps. This is how the children in the camps were eventually vaccinated. But the inhumane conditions are a constant threat to children, and things are getting worse.

Workers’ Organizing and the Revolution

Abdulrahman Ali, also known as Abu Lamees, is a blue-collar worker, husband, and father of five daughters. The postcolonial Sudanese state is the country’s largest employer, yet decades of austerity measures and privatization have eroded the public sector, with hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs in the early years of the al-Bashir regime. An expansion of the banking and service sectors followed. This shift in the Sudanese economic structure led to changes in education; skilled/craft education declined, producing a larger informal worker sector. Abu Lamees’s organizing in that informal sector represents a turning point in grassroots organizing with the formation of committees in the Bahri (Khartoum North) industrial zone consisting of multiple blue-collar workers’ organizations.

My connection to the Bahri industrial zone started in 1989, when I entered middle school. My father was fired from his government job and imprisoned by the Islamic Front regime. This forced me to become a mechanic’s helper at the age of 12 to help support my younger siblings.

Living most of my life under a totalitarian regime, I participated in the 2013 uprising. I was detained for about two months, and the experience sparked my interest in organizing. Whispers about the importance of neighborhood resistance committees resonated with me. I began participating in mutual aid and labor organizing activities within my neighborhood and the Bahri industrial zone. My involvement led local government officials to retaliate against me, using commercial licensing and fee regulations as a way to punish me in court and deter me from organizing.

The 2018 revolution further solidified my commitment, when the youths chanted, “The revolution is a union and a neighborhood committee!” I became involved with the resistance committees of Shambat Al-Aradi, fighting against members of the Salvation regime. My activism then expanded to the Bahri local council and the Bahri industrial zone committees.

The Bahri industrial zone committees are built around advocating for the workers and businesses burdened by high taxes. By siding with the workers against the administrative unit, the committees gained the trust of the community. They act as the voice of the people, fighting for their rights through frequent open meetings to identify and address local issues.The committees operate independently of the government, interacting with authorities only to claim rights. Even under the transitional government, they had to fight hard to secure basic rights for workers, like access to the health center in the Bahri industrial zone, which had been converted to administrative offices by the former regime. The committees’ struggle paid off, and the center was rightfully restored. The workers’ dream of upgrading it to a model hospital remains unfulfilled, however.

The resistance committees are part of the larger Bahri neighborhood committees. The Bahri industrial zone committees are composed of various advocacy and grassroots organizing groups: Bahri industrial zone resistance committees, Bahri Industrial Zone Craftsmen’s Union, Bahri Industrial Zone Small Industries and Crafts Branch, and Bahri Industrial Zone Craftsmen’s Cooperative. The Bahri industrial zone committees also collaborate with numerous unions and organizations in other industrial zones across Khartoum and other states. They have held meetings and workshops to establish a coordination body for all industrial zones, involving representatives from seven zones within Khartoum State.

Work in the Bahri industrial zone falls within the informal sector. In this sector, the workers often double as the employer, running small-scale businesses that are largely overlooked by the government. The state’s attention turns to these workers only when it seeks to extract exorbitant taxes from their meager earnings, offering no services or rights in cases of illness, disability, or old age in return. Moreover, the government does nothing to ensure safe workplaces. Many workers resort to begging or rely on the generosity of their colleagues in their old age. They receive no social security or any other entitlements from the state, despite the hefty taxes and levies imposed upon them, often collected by force.

Prior to the 2018 revolution, workers in the Bahri industrial zone were largely kept in the dark about their rights, a deliberate act to maintain control. They were exploited by pro-regime labor organizations and unions, who used them as pawns for political rallies and conferences, enticing them with false promises like land ownership in exchange for exorbitant membership fees. Crumbling infrastructure, a lack of environmental regulation, and the devastating impact of frequent flooding on the industrial zone were ignored. Those who dared to challenge the regime’s seizure of the workers’ health center faced harassment and even more taxation. The persecution of the founding generation of anti–Salvation regime activists and the targeting of their livelihoods often forced them out of the labor market. The revolution and the relative freedom in the ensuing transitional phase brought about a change. Through ongoing discussions and workshops organized by the Bahri industrial zone committees, workers became increasingly aware of their rights, setting in motion the process of forming more robust labor unions that would represent their aspirations and defend their rights.

The continued activism of the workers, even in the face of renewed oppression following the Oct. 25, 2021, coup, is a testament to the growing consciousness among the Bahri industrial zone’s workforce.

Throughout history, even the longest wars eventually come to an end. The devastating effects of war will only serve to ignite the determination of the Sudanese people, both men and women, to rebuild their nation on the foundations of freedom, peace, and justice. In this process of reconstruction and development, skilled labor armed with knowledge and understanding of its rights and responsibilities will always be the spearhead. Postwar Sudan will be a far cry from its prewar state. The workers will play a pivotal role in shaping a nation worthy of the Sudanese people, rising from the ashes of conflict.

The Resistance Committees Between Revolution and War

Ra-ad Sahaba, born and raised in Mayerno, Sennar State, is a 33-year-old father and a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People’s Power. Ra-ad holds a degree in English literature and works as a blacksmith. He spoke about the history of the resistance committees, their methods of working in local communities and connecting with other committees and political entities, and their vision for ending the war.

My political resistance work officially began at the start of my high school education and grew significantly after I entered university. It was not difficult to find the motivation to engage in political resistance against the existing regime. My generation was born and raised during the oppressive rule of the bloody Salvation regime, witnessing atrocities from the very first moment of our lives. People died due to the extremely high cost of health care, which had become part of the private sector, exclusive to a certain class of people and completely inaccessible to the ordinary citizen. We saw a crumbling health care system that lacked the most basic components and an extremely weak education system, with a curriculum designed to serve only the regime’s policies while charging very high tuition fees for students in both public and private institutions.

We witnessed the struggle to obtain essential services such as drinking water and electricity despite the many taxes imposed, including zakat [an obligatory annual charitable donation by every Muslim with means] and other levies, while the regime’s cronies enjoyed privileges and exemptions from almost everything, to the detriment of the economy overall. The suffocating security forces were directed against anyone who opposed the regime and its pervasive corruption. Many citizens lost their jobs, were displaced, or were killed simply for demanding their basic rights and the necessities of life. Add to that assassinations of Sudanese individuals who were not in agreement with the regime, among other targeted crimes. All these atrocities pushed me to take a side. It was never difficult to find reasons to engage in resistance against the regime.

In terms of the resistance committees, the name might be somewhat recent, but it was not new to the Sudanese people to form such bodies to confront and challenge corrupt regimes. The Sudanese people have long created formations to organize and coordinate, including the Anti-Colonial Front, the National Liberation Movements, the Anti-May Regime Front, which brought down the military regime in 1985, and other revolutionary organizations throughout the history of the Sudanese state. The resistance committees in their current form started during the 2013 uprising and evolved, reaching their peak during the glorious December Revolution.

A resistance committee is a horizontally structured body with a fraternal and revolutionary nature, characterized by democracy and grassroots revolutionary discourse. It is distinguished by the spirit of collective work, with collective leadership. It is far from any political affiliation, though members may take part in political parties. Being politically committed to the pro-people stance is one of the conditions for maintaining membership. Anyone who deviates or retreats from the committee’s people-centered, anticolonial political stance, especially the nonviolent approach to resistance, is expelled.

Each state has a coordinating body for all the resistance committees within it, and these coordinating bodies communicate across states. Communication among the resistance committees is more than just mere organizing and coordination of political action or revolutionary movement. Issues particular to one state are also discussed in other states, so that all can benefit collectively from these experiences and use collective thinking to make decisions after extensive discussion at the grassroots level.

The committees also expose many crimes committed against the Sudanese people that the ruling regime hides from the media, such as assassinations, arrests, and enforced disappearances of political and human rights activists. This is not very different from what representative bodies, professional unions, and civil organizations that are allies of the resistance committees do; all believe in the dreams and aspirations of our people.

Communication with political parties is more indirect. The degree of coordination between us and a political party varies based on its previous political stances and the party’s closeness to the masses and their issues. Many non-elite members of these political parties are also involved in the resistance committees and are committed to our political and revolutionary line; often they take political stances that are completely different from those of the elite leadership of their political party and are much more aligned with the glorious December Revolution and its goals.

The fall of the Salvation regime in April 2019 was followed by the June 3 massacre of people who had participated in a sit-in at the military headquarters in Khartoum. Violations by the security committee of the former regime continued, along with suppression of the movement and of the resistance committees’ activities. The military council that appointed itself the ruler of the state in April 2019 made it necessary for the revolutionary movement to find and innovate a formula that could achieve the dream of a civil democratic state — freedom, peace, and justice for which thousands of Sudanese people have sacrificed their lives. All past attempts failed to achieve this. It was necessary to develop an appropriate mechanism to reach this goal, crowning the long and arduous struggle of the daughters and sons of Sudan.

This mechanism lies in the people governing their own state as laid out in the Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People’s Power, which ensures broad participation and the fair distribution of wealth. The process that resulted in the charter began in the small city of Mayerno, Sennar State, where all the resistance committees across the state participated in launching the first local charter. The resistance committees thoroughly discussed the charter with local citizens.

Then the resistance committees across the states of Sudan continued the work, resulting in the Political Declaration of the resistance committees of Wad Madani, capital of Gezira State, and the Political Honor Charter from the joint committee in North Kordofan State. These two state charters formed the Revolutionary Charter for People’s Power, which was completed in February 2022 after intensive communication among the resistance committees to merge their experiences into a single charter.

The resistance committees in Khartoum issued the Charter for the Establishment of the People’s Authority in early 2022. As the goals of the December Revolution have always been the common factor that unites the resistance committees and other revolutionary forces, such as TAM [The Alliance of Demand-Based Campaigns], it was essential to translate these goals into a unified charter that every citizen could see themselves in. This was accomplished [in early 2023] despite difficulties and obstacles and with the significant support of Sudanese people in the diaspora.

The war that began on April 15, 2023, has shown that its sole goal is to permanently suppress the December Revolution. The Sudanese people and their revolutionary resistance forces demonstrated their resolve not to allow this to happen, however, proving that the December Revolution continues and will be victorious. Yet the reality is that this cursed war has significantly hindered the realization of the Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People’s Power and forced the resistance committees to fulfill their humanitarian duty toward the people who have suffered and continue to suffer greatly from the violations committed by both sides of the war. Our members are occupied with relief and mutual aid work through the establishment of local emergency rooms, which assist citizens in war zones and areas of displacement. Despite safety concerns during wartime, the resistance committees have still managed to put forward a separate document articulating their view on ending the war called “The Political Vision to End the War,” which was issued on Oct. 10, 2023.

The path forward begins with this comprehensive postwar political vision for how to establish a suitable foundation for completing the glorious December Revolution and implementing what the Revolutionary Charter for Establishing People’s Power calls for. The charter represents the compass for achieving a state of freedom, peace, and justice.

After the failure of all previous experiments by the governments that came on the heels of wars or revolutions, the authority of the people is the only guarantee for building a just state that can permanently eradicate the roots of those crises and wars. The people’s authority ensures fair representation and distribution of power and wealth and acts as the guardian of the country’s resources.

The responsibility for forming the people’s authority rests with the resistance committees, through the establishment of a temporary revolutionary council at the local, state, and federal levels to avoid fragmentation of civil institutions. The revolutionary council’s work continues until the formation of the transitional legislative council, which will oversee the drafting of the constitution and the selection of the executive body at all levels, including the prime minister. At that point the revolutionary council would immediately be disbanded.

To be able to exert real pressure on both sides of the war and their supporters, it is necessary to establish the people’s authority to address the international community, expose war crimes, speak on behalf of the Sudanese people, and to revoke any authority either side of the war claims over the country.