By Miguel Lamas, a leader of the IWU-FI
20 April 2024. One year has passed, on 15 April, of the armed struggle between the two military sides that are disputing Sudan and its riches, gold. Both sides are fighting each other, but are savagely repressing most of the working people of Sudan.
The conflict, which pits the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdelfattah al Burhan, vs the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, has led to 9 million people displaced and countless civilians killed or seriously wounded.
In reality, both sides of the military largely caused most of the displacement and starvation suffered by half of Sudan’s population of 45 million through the brutal repression of the civilian population. Most of them are not involved in the conflict but are driven out by the military entering their homes, raping women and stealing their belongings, or suffering aerial bombardment of their homes.
El Salto reports that the army and militias in Sudan are at war with the population fighting for democracy.
2019 Popular Rebellion and the counter-revolution
In 2019, a popular uprising took place in Sudan. It ended the 30-year Islamic military government of dictator Omar Al Basher. There were promises of democracy and free elections. In 2021, a new military coup unleashed repression against the population. Since April 2023, a large part of the population has been without food, healthcare, and education because of the chaos. Thousands of health and education workers were fired, because they were the vanguard together with the youth of the “revolutionary committees of resistance”, of the monumental struggles against the dictatorship.
“Revolutionary committees of resistance, formed by grassroots neighbourhood organisations, still exist after leading the rebellion of 2019 and overthrowing the 30-year dictatorship.” Today they persist in much of the country as local networks of survival and mutual aid, channelling efforts in collecting food, cash, and medicine to help those in dire need. Since April 2023, there has been chaos, causing food shortages, crop paralysis, lack of healthcare, and disrupted education.
Gold mining and imperialist plunder
This social disaster that Sudan is undergoing, a country of Arab origin and language like Palestine, is not unique to Sudan but affects other African countries -former European colonies until the 1950s. And now they are all suffering from semi-colonisation by foreign and imperialist companies that take over their wealth through associated, subordinate and armed local organisations. Besides the European companies, there is also the penetration of American, Israeli, Arab, Chinese, and Russian companies that are fighting for the natural wealth of Sudan.
Sudan is an Arab country, and it was a British colony up to 1956. In 2011, its southern region, with a population of different ethnic groups and languages similar to the African populations of southern and central Africa, became independent, with a population of about 11 million inhabitants. The independent south was home to most of the oil production that was Sudan’s principal source of wealth. But in the northern sector that remains Sudan today, gold wealth was discovered some 20 years ago.
Although figures vary widely, and there is no state control over gold mining, there is talk of 233 tonnes of gold exports last year. This places Sudan among the world’s leading gold producers and exporters. But there is little or nothing left for its people.
This gold is largely being taken by companies such as the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, now reconverted into African Corps, through the company M-Invest, which belonged to the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgeni Preghozin, who died in Russia, apparently assassinated by Putin. But that company remains very important in the extraction of gold from Sudan and takes it to Russia. The FAR paramilitaries who dominate the main gold mining territories are the allies of the Russian company. And also, companies from the Arab Emirates, which are also allied with the FAR. Meanwhile, the SAF government, which dominates other parts of the country, is more allied with Israel and the United States.
Besides anti-popular repression and military-to-military warfare, gold mining, with massive use of mercury, is destroying agriculture and driving 25 million people, more than half of Sudan’s population, into hunger. First, the 9 million people displaced from their homes by the invasion of one of the military factions, almost all of them left with nothing, no money, no food, and no work. The refugees arrive in places, whether in neighbouring countries or in Sudan itself, often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and where they receive almost no help either because they are a deprived population.
The need for international solidarity with the Sudanese people
The great experience of struggle of the popular uprising from 2019 to 2021 showed, on the one hand, the enormous strength of the working people when they organised, unite and mobilise, but also that the bourgeois parties and the military factions seek to pact with one of the European, Arab, or Russian imperialists, to preserve the capitalist order and the plunder of the country of which they are also beneficiaries with that order. They flouted promises of democratisation over and over again. This semi-colonial capitalism is today largely centred on gold, and its population is devastated by hunger and destitution. The economic demands of the people face the historical crisis of the country. A real democratic solution can only arise from an alternative leadership of the working people and youth, to reorganise the revolutionary committees of resistance, to achieve in the future the overthrow of the two factions of the military dictatorship, to expel the plundering Russian, European, Zionist, or Arab mining transnationals and to achieve a solution and a government in favour of the workers, the youth, and the women of the people.
As the International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI) we call for international solidarity with the current struggle of the Sudanese people for their survival. Together with the solidarity with the Arab and African working people and youth and their unified struggle to put an end to imperialist capitalism, to the bosses’ governments and dictatorships in Africa, as well as to the genocidal Zionist colonialism of Israel in the Middle East. From its origins, imperialist capitalism with slavery and colonialism led the African continent, including its Arab North, to the worst poverty, plunder, and oppression in the world.
