note: originally posted one day ago by /u/StripedSweaterrrr on /r/GenZeDong link
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You might have heard of a coup being carried out in Sudan on Monday. While at glance it just seems like an ordinary post-colonial Africa thing, it's very important for all communists to keep their eyes on the situation, so I wanna lay it out for my comrades.
In 2019, the Islamist shiteater Omar Al-Bashir was finally deposed after 30 years of rule. He, himself was a military man who came into power after a coup and never displayed an ounce of economic or political understanding. His policy was essentially "(Salafi) Islam good, if not (Salafi) Islam, then bad". He was an Arab supremacist, was never interested in the rights of African tribes (they were not Islam you see). Sometime in the early 80s, oil was discovered in southern Sudan by no less than stinky American oil detectors, when Bashit came into power he kicked the Americans out (not because they were Americans but because they weren't Islam) and attempted to nationalise the oil fields. Silly Omar forgot that all the years of brutally oppressing and neglecting southern Sudan were gonna bite him in his juicy ass because the Americans then went ahead and funded southern separatist militias as payback.
The southern militias came up with the genius idea of supplying Western African Darfuri militias with weaponry to distract Omar. You see for a looooong time, Darfuri Arabs would let their cattle feed on Darfuri African's crops. African tribes asked lots of politicians to do something about it and the politicians said "ew Africans". The plan was that the African Darfuris rebels would commit murder, run into Chad and regroup with the southern rebels. It was a very good plan because it worked, Bashitty didn't know what to do until he did. He was gonna make his own militia made up of Darfuri Arabs and give them a cool name "The Rapid Support Forces," he was gonna give them sexy weapons and extra camels and let them do whatever they want and no one would notice because it wasn't the official Sudanese military right??? He even found a perfect leader with a great villain backstory and a great name. 'Hemedti'. His whole family was killed by militias and from that day on he swore revenge.
The RSF was super good at murdering, pillaging and general terrorising, Omari wasn't gonna hold them back either. (Fun fact: they found a cute side-gig as the EU's bouncers. The EU funnelled money into the RSF in the 2010s to get them to hold up East African refugees). African Darfuris began to escape into Chad where the UN could no longer ignore the issue there. Somewhere far away 2 towers fell and Arabs were being hatecrimed. America saw an opportunity to get back at Barshirry some more. "Genocide!! Stinky Arabs are committing Genocide" cried Colin Powell, and Angelina Jolie was on her way. Suddenly all eyes were on Bashibby. Sudanese people were confused, did we really just let genocide happen? Americans wouldn't lie about a genocide right? All Sudanese knew their African brothers were being oppressed, hell we're African ourselves, but why was the world denouncing us for a conflict we ourselves were suffering from? Why would they call a conflict a genocide? Why didn't they denounce Bill Clinton when he bombed our biggest medicine factory? Why were we being sanctioned, Bashuri has offshore accounts? Why aren't you actually helping southerners instead of just trying to get back at our military dictatorship? That's the story of how the entire country, African and Arabs, civilians and soldiers, pro-Bashir and anti-Bashir, all became fervent anti-imperialists. Seriously, you won't find a single soul ever speaking positively on liberalism or the West.
Anyway, the two worms in Omar's head couldn't figure out what to do with this strong wave of anti-imperialism, so they did what they do best: (Salafi) Islam. Unfortunately, Salafism is not a good economic policy, doesn't pay for bread, so protests broke out in Atbara, the city of iron and steel! The Sudanese Professionals Association, a coalition of unions, came out to organise the protests. The military knew that if Babooby went they did too, so they put on their best communist accent, joined the protest and put him behind bars. The four biggest opposition parties could finally come out of their hiding hole. The Ummah Party, progressive "Islamists" with a socialist faction. The Democratic Unionist Party, the conservative secular social democrats. The Sudanese Congress Party, progressive secular social democrats. And The Sudanese Communist Party, sexy Marxist-Leninists. The Ba'athists also came out of hiding, they are Ba'athists. Sudanese politics is entrenched in anti-capitalism (if you speak Arabic feel free to message for cool books), the only way Salafis and Saudi bootlickers ever managed to get in was by force. If elections were to ever occur, without question, explicit anti-imperialist anti-capitalists would take up the majority of seats, if not all. Not to predict the future since it's so uncertain but seeing as the Sudanese people are sick of Islamism and the social democrats flip flop on a lot of issues (particularly Israel), I think there would be a real chance for the SCP.
Here's where the current issue started.
The military trashed Al-Bashir to save themselves, but they never thought about all the militias the Bashir created, ones that were very bloodthirsty like the RSF. "No matter, come join," said Abdel-Fattah Al Burhan, the new general who's totally not a war criminal. His logic was if the military and the militias stuck together they couldn't alllll be thrown to the ICC. Well, now the military forces were composed of people with conflicting interests. The Sudanese army became Egyptian buttboys, Abdel-Fattah Al Burhan and Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi liked making friendship necklaces together and plotting against Ethiopia and their cool new dam. Hemedti found new friends in Russia who liked gold mines just as much as he did. And everyone started a new hobby of seeing who could sell the most land to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The FFC (Forces For Freedom and Change, SPA rebranded basically) split up (never formally), there was one faction that was desperate to do anything to relieve crippling sanctions and debt, even if it mean normalisation with Israel. The other faction sat in the corner and waited for November 2021, when constitutionally the military had to give up their leadership to civilian politicians. Way after the world stop paying attention, protests continued, against the military, against normalisation, against imperialism.
On October 21st, millions marched to commemorate the anniversary of the October Revolution of 1964, which toppled an older military council (there's the devil and then there's the Sudanese military). This clearly scared the shit out of Burhan because for some reason the Sudanese people were still super anti-imperialist, and still, unions and the SPA had the ability to organise. On Monday of this week, a little bit after a US envoy was hanging out with Burhan, the military arrested tens of civilian ministers including the Prime Minister, announced a ban on unions and said it would place independent technocrats to take control. Burhan also said the Prime Minister was at his house, totally not kidnapped, and they were chatting earlier in the day, idk I thought that was pretty funny.
Millions march again, the whole country is in civil disobedience. Now we wait...
I've seen people liken it to the Arab spring or other African coups. It's not. The protests have and will always be clearly organised and non-violent, plus unlike 2013 Egypt, the military is fractured, they've all got different daddies they have to please and they don't have the numbers to fight against each other. There's a tendency to ignore Sudan and place it under the same lens as you would any other sad little sandy country. The Sudanese people are so inherently anti-imperialist and we're being led by every colour of socialism (with an extra emphasis on Marxist-Leninism, seriously, the SCP is no joke they have people everywhere).
If you need it to be any more obvious, Israel said Burhan's leadership would be good for them.
Don't buy into the West's condemnation, they also know what civilian rule means. It means hundreds of anti-capitalists in the Sudanese parliament. It means no one stopping refugees from running into Libya, across the Mediterranean and it means one less country to exploit. And they're not gonna stop Egypt, KSA or the UAE from funnelling money and weaponry into the military's greasy greasy hands. It was easy to demonise al-Bashir, he was an Islamist Arab supremacist who built nice villas for himself, when he nationalises oil fields all you have to do is point that out. But when an atheist Darfuri communist nationalises our gold mines then what do they say?
continued in comments
But otherwise you're welcome
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Eh, I think 1 is kind of scattered and has some pacing issues. Watching it feels like they wanted to dress up like hooligans and drive around too fast. The charm of 3 is that it's fuckin' weird, in the same way Fallout is.