Editor’s Note: Justin Lynch is a researcher and analyst in Washington, DC. He is co-author of the book “Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy.” The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more reviews to CNN.
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Four years ago, almost to the day, the Sudanese people celebrated the revolution that toppled dictator Omar al-Bashir. Today, the East African country faces the possibility of total collapse, similar to the chaos we are seeing today in Yemen or Libya.
On Saturday, rival military factions began clashing in the capital Khartoum. Both sides fought for control of the country’s airports, bases and military compounds. The violence quickly spilled onto the streets and across the country.
Some 45 million Sudanese are effectively being held hostage and are unable to leave their homes for fear of being killed in crossfire. At least 180 people died in the fighting, including three aid workers from the World Food Programme.
The conflict pits two bitter rivals and their powerful armed forces against each other. On one side, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.
There is no right side in this conflict. Both sides have been accused of a long series of human rights violations.
How did Sudan go from abandoning a despotic regime and creating a nascent democracy a few years ago to being on the brink of state collapse?
On April 11, 2019, Sudan’s longtime dictator Bashir was overthrown. The cause of his removal was months of protests led by Sudanese labor unions, which triggered a military coup by the Sudanese Armed Forces and Sudanese Resistance Forces. Both Burhan and Hemeti joined forces to oust their former leader.
It was a hopeful moment, because there was hope for democracy. I remember walking around the sit-in, a gigantic freedom carnival in the heart of Khartoum, which the protesters had blocked to demand change. It was electric.
But social movements like the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) – the union behind the protests – often struggle to translate the momentum of their demonstrations into real political power.
The reason is partly structural. Social movements like the SPA are often based on popular activism. A dictator can arrest one or two leaders of an organization, but not an entire country.
However, once the dictator is overthrown, these social movements often struggle to build the hierarchy needed for political negotiations. Like many other movements, Sudanese protesters have failed to translate their mobilization into political power.
Shortly after Bashir’s fall in April 2019, civilian leaders began negotiations with the military over the country’s future. The two sides were not equal. Because of these leadership challenges, pro-democracy forces struggled to negotiate with a disciplined military.
Any momentum that democracy advocates had gained during the negotiations was snuffed out in June 2019 when RSF soldiers violently dispersed the sit-in. More than 100 people were killed.
After the June massacre and power struggles, a transitional constitution was signed in August 2019, which gave the SAF and RSF most of the power in Sudan. Burhan was the head of state and Hemeti held a high political position. Elections were promised for 2022, but few believed they would take place.
The transition period began in August 2019, and I interviewed Abdalla Hamdok, the civilian prime minister, several times for a book I co-wrote about the Sudanese revolution. The way the constitution was written meant that Hamdok had limited power as prime minister. Burhan was the head of state and wanted to preserve the powers of the Sudanese armed forces.
Hamdok often told me that revolutions come in cycles. Bashir’s ouster in 2019 was a high point in the revolution, and he saw his mission as being to achieve as many reforms as possible before the low tide of counterrevolution swept him away.
Hamdok saw that the aftermath of 30 years of dictatorship had led to the deterioration of Sudan’s political and economic models. But Burhan and Hemeti blocked the major reforms that Hamdok wanted to implement.
Outside Khartoum, violence has intensified. Some areas of Sudan, such as Darfur, have seen a new wave of conflict between ethnic groups orchestrated by RSF troops. More than 430,000 people have been displaced by the conflict in Sudan, mainly in Darfur.
The soldiers made no secret of the atrocities they committed against civilians. I remember drinking tea with a soldier linked to the RSF in his home in Darfur, as he explained why he had recently participated in the burning of a village belonging to another ethnic group.
The soldier believed that a member of his tribe had been killed in an altercation. Forces allied with the RSF then took revenge by burning down a village that was home to 30,000 people. At least 163 people lost their lives.
Tensions between the Sudanese armed forces and the Syrian resistance forces escalated. Burhan viewed Hemeti and his forces as undisciplined usurpers of Darfur. Hemeti, for his part, believed that it was time for Darfur to rule Sudan.
Hamdok was about to start turning around the economy when Burhan and the Sudanese armed forces stepped in. As we wrote in the book Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy , the potential success of a civilian government was too great for Burhan. In October 2021, Hamdok was overthrown in a military coup.
After the October 2021 coup, the United States and the United Nations proposed a weakened version of Sudan’s transitional constitution, saying it was the best way to establish democracy.
The idea was to restart the transition period, but I and many others felt that this strategy was short-sighted and would not work. A return to a Burhan-led government was clearly not going to lead to democracy. If the plan ended in a coup the first time, why would it work the second time?
Some activists stopped working with the United States and came to view the UN mission as an obstacle to democracy because of these policies. I was distressed when I spoke with top American and foreign diplomats who also understood that international policy in Sudan would not work. They saw the flaws but felt powerless to voice their disagreement and were forced to implement decisions made at levels far above them.
What preceded this weekend’s clashes was a controversial piece of international politics aimed at unifying the Sudanese armed forces and Rwandan security forces. The idea was to create a single army, but neither Hemeti nor Burhan wanted to give up the power they had amassed.
The army’s unification plan did not work in similar contexts. It was a repeat of the 2013 and 2016 unification processes that took place in South Sudan and led to similarly bloody results. Instead, the fragile relations between Burhan and Hemeti deteriorated due to the pressure.
It is easy to look at the recent history of “revolutions” in countries like Myanmar, Tunisia, Egypt, and Sudan and conclude that they eventually backfire. I disagree. I have learned from Sudanese activists that the political destiny of a nation is an active battle.
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We can hope that one day Sudan will see its dreams of democracy come true. But for now, the Sudanese people only hope to survive that day.
The lesson from Sudan is that a revolution is only the beginning of change, not the end.
