THE Sudanese Communists Party (SCP), since its foundation in 1946, has adopted a peaceful and democratic road to achieve the objectives of national democratic revolution in Sudan. Peace and democracy are always interlinked in its struggle and programmes. 

During civil wars in Sudan (twice between South and North Sudan, the war in Darfur, the war in the eastern Sudan, and current conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the SCP position was against war and for peaceful resolution and settlement through civil democratic means.

In facing the several military regimes and dictatorships, the Sudanese Communist Party always adopted peaceful means of resistance, depending on organising and mobilising the masses through demonstrations, political strikes and civil disobedience.

The success of December 19 2018’s revolution against the Islamic fundamentalist regime of Omar al-Bashir was the latest manifestation of accumulated peaceful struggle during 30 years of strife. 

However, the December revolution stands as unfinished due to compromises and forged partnership between the petty bourgeois leadership and the Military Security Committee of the Bashir regime. 

This partnership was just a temporary tactic to sabotage the revolution and hinder its radical programme of change. The objective was to weaken the revolutionary forces and drive wedges between its factions and prevent the transitional government achieving targets set in its programmes agreed and signed by all factions. 

On October 25 both SAF and RSF executed an internal coup, dissolving the transitional government and establishing a military dictatorship that ruled by decrees. The resistance committees immediately called for demonstrations which were met with extreme acts of violence including shooting civilians.  

The current war in Sudan

The resistance to the new coup caused a split among the factions of the coup. The RSF declared that they were deceived, and the coup was to serve the Islamists’ agenda to return back to power. 

This rupture allowed intervention of international and regional forces to side with whom serves their interest better. A settlement called “consensual agreement” brokered by Freedom and Change Forces, initially accepted by both SAF and RSF in the beginning, collapsed when the future of the latter was discussed. 

The army, controlled by the Islamists, wanted to bring the RSF under its control and hence monopolise power. The RSF resisted that as it endangers the investment and wealth of its leader’s family, gained by the power of the gun. The conflict returned to its original basis, a struggle for wealth and power and serving foreign interests at the cost of the people. 

The geopolitical position of Sudan as one with the longest coast on the Red Sea and neighbouring seven countries, made it a bone of contention between various international and regional powers. The competition is mainly between Russia, China, Turkey and Iran on one hand and the US,  European Union and United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the other. 

The agricultural and mineral resources (gold, uranium and others) are of high interest to many countries. The UAE and Egypt have both had interests in Sudanese foreign trade for a long time during the Bashir regime. Because of the international embargo on Sudan from 1989-2019, both countries invested in or benefited from agricultural projects and products. The UAE is also interested in owning or building ports on the Red Sea. 

The US and allies wanted the war to continue to weaken the democratic and revolutionary forces in Sudan who call for true independence from the capitalist hegemony and its infamous prescriptions of structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and World Bank. 

Peace prospects

The Sudanese communists believe that peace will not be possible without the unity of all national and democratic forces that would exercise pressure on warring parties and attract international solidarity with the Sudanese people through stopping supplies of armaments and other logistic and diplomatic pressure on both warring forces, SAF and RSF. 

The democratic civil and peace-loving masses in Sudan are struggling to attain a resolution to the war based on the pivotal progressive tenets of the December revolution programmes and accords, agreed upon and signed by almost all political and civil bodies that participated in ending the Islamic Movement rule, and by organising the Sudanese masses in urban and rural areas, in displacement camps and diaspora dwellings and in the areas controlled by either force. 

It is a difficult uphill trek, yet, in order not to repeat past unsuccessful experiences, we must take this bitter pill, and put an end to the vicious circle of democracy, military dictatorship and revolution that blighted post-colonial Sudan. 

The Sudanese people call for the solidarity and support of all peace-loving democratic and progressive forces, to exert pressure on international and regional states and organisations to assist in stopping the war and availing humanitarian aids. Peace, stability and national sovereignty are paramount and necessary tools for a prosperous and democratic Sudan for the benefit of international and regional peace.

Rashid Elsheikh is a member of Sudanese Communist Party and Sudanese anti-war activist.