The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock and the Washington Post (Simon & Schuster: New York, 2021)
Afghanistan was thrust into the international media spotlight and public consciousness in August, when the United States and its coalition partners fled the country as the Taliban walked into the presidential palace, establishing itself as the ruling authority. While Afghanistan may finally be free of outside military occupation, Afghans are still suffering the deadly consequences of 40 years of U.S.-led subversion and war. Today, tens of millions of mostly poor and rural Afghans are at risk of dying due to lack of food, with the United Nations estimating 97 percent of people could be below the poverty line by next month. This is all largely a result of international sanctions and the United States freezing Afghanistan’s sovereign assets.
Despite these dire conditions, however, U.S. media outlets have moved on from Afghanistan after declaring it a colossal “failure” and publishing military and government officials’ memoirs and accounts of “lessons learned.” Encapsulating this kind of shortsighted thinking is long-time Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock’s first book, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. While the author delivers a thorough chronological history of the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan from the U.S. perspective, he largely fails to criticize the war aside from what has already been known for the entire history of this settler-colony: That its ruling military and government officials lie in pursuit of their narrow self-interests.
Of course, with a title as such, the book has received many comparisons to the Pentagon Papers, the leaked reports on the U.S. war on Vietnam that the New York Times published in 1971. Beyond the title of the book, Whitlock is clearly inspired by what has often been lauded as a great show of strength for the U.S. “free press”: Revealing systemic lies the highest ranking U.S. government and military officials have told throughout a war that had no clear objectives. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
If the reader is aware of this history, along with the other U.S.-waged or -backed wars across the globe today—in places like Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and now Ukraine—much of what is presented as revelatory may seem obvious. This is not to take away from the importance of the “Afghanistan Papers,” the nearly 10,000 pages of once-classified material, made publicly available courtesy of Whitlock and the Washington Post. Nor is it to deride the significance of the injustices that the U.S. government and military have inflicted upon Afghanistan and the region. Rather, it is to make the point that while the elites in Washington continue to hold much of the world hostage in what’s shaping up to be the most violent imperial decline in history—with nuclear ramifications that could bring about an end to life as we know it—this is a story that is becoming all too familiar.
That politics in the United States is a game for the elite—who are willing to do and say anything to maintain their power—is more common knowledge than Whitlock may think. This is evident with that only one-quarter of people in the United States say they trust the government. With this in mind, many readers will not be surprised to learn the Pentagon fabricated stories to justify the long war in Afghanistan. That military commanders made grandiose claims of the “progress” they were making on the battlefield. That consecutive White House administrations allowed for cycles of escalations and different iterations of the war to continue. And that elected officials—both Democrats and Republicans—have always come together at times of apparent bitter divides to direct the public’s attention away from such wars.
With that said, Whitlock misses an important opportunity to specify that—despite this seemingly impenetrable web of lies, deceit and deception—it is not so much the fault of the U.S. public for not being more aware. A majority are poor or working class, an entirely different class to Whitlock’s own. Nor is it that they are a docile group of sheep that can persistently be misled, as he frequently makes it seem. In fact, the vast majority of the U.S. public, struggling to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck, seem acutely aware of the levels of sophistication to which the U.S. government will go to pursue the narrow material interests of an elite few in Washington.
The issue does not lie in ignorance, which—following Whitlock’s logic—is something this book should have addressed. What prevents people from stopping the next U.S.-waged war is the same capitalist dictatorship in Washington that everyday Afghans have been made to bear for 40 years. It is the same class leading the war on poor and working-class people in the United States, marring any chance of popular democratic action against such wars.
Whitlock is clear that with the source material he relied on to craft his narrative, the book is by no means a definitive history of the war. Regardless, this narrow framework has the effect of placing Afghanistan—along with its rich history, culture and people—in a vacuum. In spite of the book’s thoroughness and detail, by the book’s final chapter, a reader with no prior knowledge of Afghanistan would be left with much to learn of the ongoing war, if economic sanctions are considered the next phase of the U.S. war on Afghanistan.
While Whitlock and the Washington Post have clearly gone to great lengths to make thousands of pages of once-classified Pentagon documents not only public, but digestible to the average reader, an important connection that could have further raised the reader’s consciousness was missed. Since it’s a story that’s been told before, what could possibly be missing from what has been lauded as the “definitive U.S. history” of the war?
By the book’s end, the average reader is likely to be left wondering why so many government and military officials were committed to lying about the justifications for the war and how it was actually playing out on the ground. What could have possibly been the driving force behind so many cover-ups and false narratives throughout? Could it be that the answer—either brushed aside or outright ignored by Whitlock and the Washington Post—has much to do with profit? Ultimately, Whitlock fails to answer the why question of the war, missing a crucial opportunity to provide a further clarity.
But, then again, that was not the book Whitlock set out to write. He delivers what has come to be expected from highly paid journalists at privately owned newspapers: A misleading narrative that U.S.-waged wars like those in Vietnam and Afghanistan only end when journalists like himself decide to put pen to paper. And not when the people living there—Vietnamese and Afghans alike—have no choice but to fight back.
This book is a vital resource that thoroughly details the atrocities U.S. government and military officials knew they were committing—and seemingly got away with—throughout the war on Afghanistan. Whitlock and the Washington Post certainly do not deserve condemnation for trying. But one can only hope that as conditions worsen for the poor in Afghanistan and the United States alike, Whitlock and the Washington Post will become stronger, more formidable opponents to future U.S.-waged wars. However, readers should be warned: Do not bet on that.
Patterson Deppen serves on the editorial board at E-International Relations, where he is editor for student essays. He is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network. His writing has appeared in TomDispatch, The Nation, The Progressive, E-International Relations and other outlets.
Cover of Slave Revolt on Screen by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall / credit: University of Mississippi Press
Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021)
Chris Rock’s 2014 film “Top Five” is a scathing critique of Hollywood and its sometimes open, sometimes underhanded censorship of critical movies. Rock’s character, “Andre Allen,” emerges as a movie star because of his role as the ridiculous, crime fighting “Hammy the Bear.” Resentful of being known for only this goofy role, Allen produces a film called “Uprize,” playing the role of the Haitian rebel vodou priest, Dutty Boukman. However, “Top Five” grossed $25 million, while the animated film, “Madagascar,” in which Chris Rock played “Marty the Zebra,” netted $200 million. This shows the powers that be have no interest in amplifying the message of arguably the single most important event of the 19th century: The enslaved can rebel and they can win!
“Top Five” was used as an example in the recently published book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games. In it, historian Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall explores how the 1804 Haitian Revolution has been misrepresented and censored on screen.
Poster for 2013 film, “Tula: The Revolt”
For example, funding was blocked for an epic film, “Tula: The Revolt,” which highlighted the mass revolt and its forward-thinking leadership, namely Toussaint L’ouverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe, Sanite Bélair and Capois La Mort. Starring actor Danny Glover, the film sought to answer the question: “Why has this monumental achievement been so erased from our history and from our consciousness?” Sepinwall writes the film aimed to suggest “enslaved people were capable of formulating their own resistance plans” (p. 53). However, Glover was unsuccessful in raising funds to produce the film at the level other Hollywood films have been produced.
It is here that Karl Marx’s 1848 quote-turned-maxim is more relevant than any other: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”
Beyond a Great White Hope
Sepinwall contrasts the different historiographies that guided both mainstream, underground, and unfinished and unfunded films.
Poster for 1948 film, “Lydia Bailey”
McCarthyism acted to dilute producers’ ability to convey a new image of Haiti and Black leadership in the 1948 film, “Lydia Bailey.” After years of censorship as well as calling key actors and producers, such as Michael Blankfort and William Marshall, to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film became a shadow of its former self when it finally hit the screen.
Poster for 1933 film, “Emperor Jones”
Paul Robeson’s role in “Emperor Jones” (1933) is severely curtailed by racism, causing one African-American critic to call Eugene O’Neill’s play “a travesty of the Negro race” (p. 29).
A major thread in this book is Hollywood’s insistence on having a “great white hope” character who paternalistically shows the enslaved how to fight. The professor cites “Burn” (1969) and the French miniseries, “Toussaint L’ouverture” (2012), as but two examples.
The elite of Hollywood always sent a clear message: They would never endorse a film depicting revolutionary violence against the white slave-owning class, lest this generation of Toussaints, Jean Jacques and Cecile Fatimans are inspired to emulate this historical example of reclaiming their own self-determination.
Poster for 2012 film, “Toussaint L’ouverture”
Chapter 7, “Haitian Reflections of the Revolution’s Legacy,” is perhaps the most politically problematic and imbalanced chapter in the book. The four films Sepinwall reviews are “Dimanche 4 Janvier (Sunday January 4th),” “Moloch Tropical,” “GNB v. Attila” and “Haiti, la fin des chimeres (Haiti, the End of the Thugs).” They all share an anti-Aristide bent. This is curious considering Roger Noriega, the Clintons, the Bushes, the U.S. State Department and U.S. intelligence services always shared this same worldview against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, twice orchestrating coups against his government and kidnapping him (See “Aristide: The Endless Revolution,” 2005).
The Role of Video Games
The California State professor’s final chapters make the case that what has been banned on the big screen has reached millions through a most unlikely medium: Video games. Sepinwell reviews “Playing History 2—Slave Trade” (2013) and “Freedom!” (1992) as examples of video games that are “callous approaches to the subject” of slavery and revolution (p. 186). She reviews “Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry” (2013) and the work of Muriel Tramis and Patrick Chamoiseau as “counterhegemonic commemorations of slavery” (p. 207).
Screenshot from video game “Assassin’s Creed” / credit: GameSpot
Haiti is again trending, for all of the wrong, stereotypical and racist reasons. The mainstream media incessantly using terms like “crisis-ridden,” “helpless,” “pitiful” and “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” are nauseating for those who understand the only break Haiti needs is from U.S. imperialism. At this critical time, Sepinwall’s scholarly study has a great deal to teach us about those who have used cinema to challenge age-old white supremacist views on Haiti.
Just as Chris Rock’s character, “Andre Allens,” seeks to emerge from under and from within white supremacy, so too does an entire history that culminated in 1804, a history that—more than ever—threatens to unlock answers for the future.
Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels to Haiti to stay with the mass anti-imperialist movement. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.
Book cover of Striking from the Margins (Saqi Books, 2021)
Editor’s Note: Toward Freedom uses “West Asia” to describe what is referred to as the “Middle East,” a term with colonial roots.
Striking from the Margins edited by Aziz Al-Azmeh, Nadia Al-Bagdadi, Harout Akdedian and Harith Hasan (London, United Kingdom: Saqi Books, 2021)
The tumultuous state of West Asia has been a contentious topic within many academic and social circles for centuries. Over the past half-century many academics, politicians and strategists have put forth initiatives, programs and policies focused on reconstructing the region.
For far too long, Western countries have seen West Asia as an underdeveloped expanse of land and resources controlled and governed through antiquated religious and social policies. What separates Striking from the Margins from other discourses on the region is its commitment to addressing the misconceptions that often keep people from understanding the relationship between West Asian countries and the Western ones that occupy and use their territory mostly for economic benefits.
Book cover of Striking from the Margins (Saqi Books, 2021)
The Disconnect Between East and West
One of the reasons such a disconnect exists between those living in West Asia and the Western countries, whose tax dollars finance the implementation of interventionist policies, is due to a lack of understanding regarding West Asian governance. While the United States’ two-party system is imperfect, it offers an often-predictable outcome that effectively reinforces the country’s status quo as a leading economic power across the globe. On the other hand, many countries in West Asia face a more challenging set of circumstances to develop their economies. For example, in the early 2000s Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s government was not only dealing with warring Shi’i and Sunni factions seeking power within Iraq, but also Islamists and U.S. troops fighting to control the region. Research done by Greek political scientist Stathis Kalyvas shows a combination of sectarian conflict along with “a short war between U.S. troops and Shi’i militias” led to Iraq experiencing “a collapse of state capacity.” (pg. 37) Such a collapse has continued to make it difficult for the country to rebuild and develop. This book effectively outlines the circumstances that have kept certain West Asian countries from modernizing.
Striking from the Margins is not a dissertation that seeks to “fix” the region. Instead, the authors push for a reconceptualization along with reasonable policy changes that would be more economically beneficial to those regions. Understanding the type of social, religious and economic pressures West Asian countries face is pivotal to building stronger and more equitable partnerships between those countries and Western ones. In the book, two of the authors, Aziz Al-Azmeh and Nadia Al-Bagdadi, effectively highlight the hypocrisy of interventionism, along with its role in destabilizing West Asia. They offer a diligent overview of state formation in the region.
In writing that “the modern state in the Mashreq arose from the needs of internal reform arising in response to global, arguably colonial pressures from outside and from internal processes of modernization, starting with the Ottoman reforms of the 19th century” (pg. 8), the authors offer a concise historical context regarding state formation in the region. But when they go on to state that “the most artificial state” and yet the strongest in West Asia is Israel (pg. 8), the blatant contradiction between regional support and global impact becomes evident. On one hand, powerful states in the region historically gained their legitimacy through a combination of regional support, resource management and tribal warfare. However, the most powerful country in the region, Israel, is not supported by neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. It instead maintains legitimacy through a “client state” relationship with the United States. Thus, Israel possesses an imbalanced stronghold over the region when it comes to warfare. When discussing West Asia and the constant demands for reform in the region, it is important to explore the role Israel and the United States have played in maintaining the economic status quo.
Religious Fundamentalism and Global Capitalism
In lieu of adequate research most people tend to assume that religious fundamentalism is the leading factor stifling the development of West Asian countries. However, research suggests economic inequalities are the leading cause of instability in the region. Kalyvas writes “$1,000 less in per capita income is associated with 41 percent greater annual odds of civil war onset, on average.” (pg. 30) The Gulf Cooperation Council consists of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Together, they represent a regional, intergovernmental, political and economic union designed to integrate multiple economies and bolster infrastructure across member countries. The issue is such integration comes at a significant cost for the “migrant workers [who] have been fundamental to patterns of urban growth and capital accumulation in the Gulf.” (pg. 57) Hanieh explains “a large number of temporary migrant workers… from South Asia and, to a lesser degree, the Arab world… make up more than half of the Gulf’s total population of 56 million.” (pg. 57) Even though these workers account for more than 59 percent of the labor force within the Gulf, they have been denied labor, political and civil rights. Much of the political and economic capital used to support growth across the region is not helping the people who need it the most.
In closing, several competing entities influence the economic, social and political infrastructure of West Asia. The most important are the countries in the region, specifically those that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as non-member countries like the United States, who have a vested interest in the maintenance and development of certain programs and countries in the region. The value of Striking from the Margins is its subtle refusal to put forth a heavy-handed, neoliberal proposal on how to “reform” West Asia. Instead, it offers proper context for readers to take a step back, thoughtfully assess the situation and envision new ways to embark on such a difficult development process.
Timothy Harun is a writer and actor based in Los Angeles. He holds a B.A. in journalism from Hampton University.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.
Country-wide anti-coup demonstrations were underway once again in Sudan on Monday, December 26, a week after the previous “March of Millions” on December 19, during which 499 protesters were injured by the security forces in the three cities of Khartoum state alone. Sudanese have been protesting across the country against the power-sharing framework agreement signed earlier between the junta and right-wing political parties, and calling for the complete overthrow and prosecution of the leaders of the October 2021 coup.
Of the nearly 500 people who were injured on December 19, 226 had to be rushed to hospitals for treatment, while others were treated by medical volunteers on the field, according to the Association of Socialist Doctors.
Another doctor’s group, Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD), estimated the total injuries treated in hospitals to be 155 in Khartoum State, and added that two of them with gunshot wounds had to be stabilized with surgeries. One protester is reported to have lost an eye.
Deliberately “targeting the eye,” “aiming tear gas canisters directly at the head,” and stun-grenade attacks on protesters who were already blinded by and choking on tear gas were systematic, CCSD added. Most of the injuries, 120 of them, were in the country’s capital Khartoum city, followed by its twin cities of Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri (North).
Demonstrations were also reported from at least 16 other cities outside Khartoum, including Wad Madani, capital of Al Jazirah state, Port Sudan, capital of Red Sea state, Atbara in River Nile state, and even capitals of civil war-affected states of South Kordofan and South Darfur.
The day marked the fourth anniversary of the start of the December Revolution in 2018. By April 2019, the mass protests had led to the overthrow of dictator Omar al Bashir who had been in power for nearly three decades. The Revolution did not stop, however, and continued the struggle against his inner circle of generals who had formed a military junta.
While maintaining control over much of the economy and foreign policy, the military ceded some power to civilian leaders chosen by the FFC parties for a period under this deal, before taking it back in a coup in October 2021. Soon after, the FFC parties opened another round of negotiations with the junta, and signed the framework agreement on December 5. This is said to be the first step toward a final agreement to pave the way for another transitional government.
In the meantime, relentless mass-demonstrations have continued since the coup. Led by Resistance Committees (RCs)—a network of over 5,000 of which are organized in neighborhoods across the country—hundreds of thousands have been taking to the streets several times nearly every month under the slogan, “No negotiation, No Compromise, No Partnership.” Thousands have been injured and over 120 killed in the crackdown on these protests.
On December 19, protesters in Khartoum, carrying portraits of those killed in the repression and waving national flags, once again marched to the Presidential Palace—the seat of coup leader and army chief Abdel Fattah al Burhan—amid the barrage of tear gas, stun grenades, and live bullets fired by security forces.
The marches in the capital city originated from 12 different locations and pushed toward the Presidential Palace along six separate routes, with some protesters reportedly getting as close as 1.5 kilometers (close to 1 mile) to the junta’s seat of power.
In an attempt to prevent the protesters from the capital’s twin cities of Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri from joining forces with those marching towards the Palace, security forces blocked the bridges over the Nile with large containers well before the start of the demonstrations.
“Early in the morning, the police had barricaded all the main roads of Omdurman with barbed wire and armored police vehicles. All over the city, the police were deployed in massive numbers. They fired hundreds and hundreds of stun grenades on the protesters,” said Osama Saeed, a member of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), who was among the protesters rallying in Omdurman.
He further claimed that many of the tear gas canisters were filled with stones and crushed glass, which, on exploding, sprayed shrapnel, injuring several at once. 82 different injuries were recorded in Omdurman, according to the Socialist Doctors. One young woman is reported to have lost her eye.
No Credibility
“[A]dherence to international human rights charters, especially charters of women’s rights… and protecting… freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression,” were commitments the coup leaders had made in the framework agreement with the FFC. The agreement assures that the “transitional authority” established after the final agreement would be “a full democratic civil authority without the participation of the regular forces.”
However, “the FFC political parties have signed six documents with the junta. None of them was respected by the junta,” Fathi Elfadl, national spokesperson of the SCP, told Peoples Dispatch. “Every time mass movements force the military to retreat, they buy time by signing such agreements with right-wing parties, and then violate them,” he added.
While the agreement makes way for a civilian prime minister and cabinet, Elfadl said that the real levers of power will nevertheless be held by what is envisaged in the agreement as the “Security and Defense Council.”
The agreement states that this body, consisting of the leaders of the security forces and of the six armed formerly rebel movements—those who signed the Juba agreement and went on to support the coup after getting a share in state power—will be headed by the Prime Minister. It declares that the civilian head of state is the supreme commander of the armed forces.
However, coup leader al-Burhan clarified to the media soon after signing the agreement that the “civilian Supreme Commander of the SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces)” neither “presides over the army chief” nor appoints him, but “only approves recommendations made to him.”
The agreement “prohibits regular forces from engaging in investment and commercial activities, except for those related to military manufacturing and military missions.” However, the army chief cautioned, “Do not listen to what politicians say about military reform… no one will interfere in the affairs of the army at all.” Matters of military reform are in any case only stated in principle in this agreement. The modalities will only be spelt out in the final agreement.
Regularizing a Notorious Militia
The formation of a single unified army and the disarmament and dissolution of all militias have been key demands of the pro-democracy movement since 2019. This is especially applicable to the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which carried out the massacre of June 3, 2019, and whose members are the soldiers who committed the atrocities in Darfur during the civil war under Bashir.
While Bashir stands trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, his footsoldiers, organized as the RSF, not only continue what has been called a depopulation campaign in mineral-rich Darfur, but also police the protesters in Khartoum.
This militia, which controls over a billion dollars in finances, is headed by the military junta’s vice-president, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemeti, who will continue to be a powerful figure in the Security and Defense Council.
The framework agreement states that the RSF “will be integrated into the armed forces according to agreed timetables”. However, it also recognizes the RSF as a separate entity, terming it a “military force affiliated with the armed forces.”
Saeed said that the agreement is in effect regularizing the RSF as “a special force of the army,” which will effectively continue to operate autonomously instead of ensuring its Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) as demanded by the pro-democracy movement.
He added that the agreement also makes a mockery of another central demand: the prosecution of all military generals and officers responsible for the massacre on June 3, 2019, and for all other atrocities, including war-crimes, committed since 1989 after the Bashir’s coup.
“Transitional justice,” the agreement states, “is an issue that needs the participation of the stakeholders and the families of the martyrs, provided that it includes all those who have been affected by human rights violations since 1989 until now.”
This is a “manipulation of the whole concept of justice, shifting the burden on to the victims and families of martyrs,” said Saeed. “What they are essentially saying is, the state is not responsible for any crimes, only individuals are. If someone got shot while protesting on the street, it is not the responsibility of the state, but of the individual soldiers or police or militiamen carrying out this action. So victims must cooperate with the state to help identify them. But the state and its high command will always be protected.”
‘The Juba Agreement Has Failed’
The implementation of the Juba peace agreement is another commitment in the framework agreement that the SCP and many other sections of the pro-democracy movement are radically opposed to. While the leaders of the armed rebel groups who signed the agreement have made peace with the army and the RSF in exchange for a share in state power and even went on to support their coup, peace has remained elusive for the people in the war-affected regions.
Since the Juba agreement in October 2020, hundreds of thousands have been displaced and several hundreds killed in massacres by the RSF and other militias it backs in Darfur, whose governorship has been handed over to a former rebel leader Minni Minnawi.
Communal clashes have also been engineered by the junta in the Blue Nile State by pitting tribes against each other, allegedly with the connivance of Malik Agar, a former rebel leader who signed the Juba agreement.
“The Juba agreement has failed. It is not only the Communist Party and the Resistance Committees seeing this – everybody knows. The displaced people living in camps, the refugees, are all suffering the further deterioration of security since the agreement. Massacres, rapes, and other atrocities are worse than before the agreement,” Elfadl said.
“We don’t need this agreement between leaders of military and armed groups. We need an agreement between people who have a real interest in bringing peace – between the representatives of the displaced people living in camps, the Resistance Committees and the civil society in Darfur. None of them were represented in the agreement.”
These groups, he said, must be brought together to address the roots of the conflict in a new agreement, addressing the question of facilitating the return of displaced people to their lands, the distribution of resources, and the disarmament of RSF and other militias. Without this process, he insisted, peace can never be realized in the troubled peripheries of Sudan.
Without addressing these contested issues of peace and justice, the agreement rushes headlong into an election at the end of the transitional period, which is to conclude two years from the date of the appointment of the Prime Minister.
Foreign Powers, Right-Wing Parties and the Junta Combine Forces
Saeed calls it the “Egyptian model,” referring to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who, after taking power in a military coup 2013, went on to legitimize his power grab by winning a “sham election” with over 96 percent of the votes in 2014. He has been Egypt’s authoritarian ruler since. Egyptian intelligence agents are “always around al-Burhan. They now even have an office in Sudan’s military headquarters,” Saeed said.
The Egyptian state, as well as the neighboring Gulf countries that are backing this deal, see the December Revolution as a threat not only to their interests in Sudan, but also to their own regimes domestically, he explained. These autocratic regimes, he said, fear that a successful revolution in Sudan might inspire the people of their own countries to revolt.
The United States, United Kingdom and European Union countries backing this domestically unpopular agreement also “prefer a military dictatorship” that they can use to advance their own interests in the country, located in a geopolitically crucial place on the Red Sea, Saeed argued.
“However, the Americans and their allies see the power of the streets. They see that the military junta has been paralyzed by the mass movement, and is not able to run the country. The situation today is that there is a junta on the top, but there is effectively no government to administer the country. So the Western powers and their regional allies hammered the right wing parties of the FFC to sign a deal with the military in an attempt to stabilize power in the country by hook or by crook.”
The stabilization of what will essentially remain military rule by simply giving it a civilian face is the goal of holding such an election, he said. Without the trials of the generals involved in the coups and other crimes since Bashir’s ascent in 1989, without first ensuring peace in the peripheral regions, any election—conducted in the absence of the right to organize, assemble, and express oneself freely—will be meaningless, he insisted.
“Even if the communists win such an election, they will not be able to accomplish anything,” because state power will still be held hostage by the forces of the dictatorship, Saeed said.
However, a consolidation of the authoritarian state through the alliance of the military, right-wing political parties, and foreign powers is far from certain, given internal contradictions.
The FFC split last month, and its constituent parties and armed rebel groups are currently squabbling over who should and should not be party to the agreement. In the meantime, their attempt to divide the mass movement with this agreement – with which they hoped to take a section of people off the streets from the protests – has “clearly failed,” said Saeed.
Pointing out that even rank-and-file members of the FFC are taking part in the protests against this framework agreement, he questioned what authority FFC leadership had to negotiate with the military.
“To negotiate, there should be a balance of power. The FFC has nothing. They don’t have the backing of the mass movements. Their own cadres are opposing the deal. That is why their leaders are found every night in the house of the Saudi Ambassador,” he said.
“They are relying on the backing of foreign powers to negotiate, but foreign powers are only interested in stabilizing the situation, even if it is on the terms of the military, so long as their interests are served.”
And the interests of the foreign powers are not unified either, added Elfadl. The UAE, which has “very strong relations” with Hemeti and the companies associated with his RSF, secured a $6 billion deal to construct a port in the Red Sea soon after the framework agreement. “This definitely goes against the interests of Saudi Arabia, and of Egypt, which is very closely allied with Bashir and his loyal generals in the army.”
The contradictions among foreign powers backing the consolidation of power in Sudan are also escalating the internal contradictions, including between the army and the RSF, he said. “Army officers are wary of integrating RSF among their ranks. The RSF, on the other hand, has been recruiting officers suspended from the army for one or the other reason.”
Unify the Resistance
In the face of attempts by this alliance of forces with contradictory interests to consolidate into a unified authoritarian state in Sudan, the main task is to unify the resistance, Elfadl said. “What we are trying to do now is to build a network for cooperation and coordination between the political activities of the Resistance Committees and the task of organizing a trade union movement.”
The first phase of the December Revolution, culminating in the overthrow of Bashir in 2019, was in fact spearheaded by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), a coalition of trade unions, organized underground during his dictatorship.
However, after the formation of the joint civil-military transitional government, “we made a mistake,” he said. “The SCP and progressive movements had agreed that the next immediate task was to bring into force labor laws,” on the basis of which the trade union movement can be formally established.
“However”, with the failure to secure these labor laws under the former transitional government in which the military continued to have the greater share of power, “it proved to be the wrong approach. Since 1948, the working class and professionals in Sudan never had labor laws” to sanctify their unions. “Nevertheless, they called their general assemblies and organized their forces into a trade union movement, regardless of the law. This was the tradition, from which we had wrongly deviated recently.”
Arguing that “it is the right of the working class to organize themselves into unions,” Elfadl said, “we will organize the trade unions in accordance with the ILO conventions,” irrespective of labor laws (or the lack of it) in Sudan. The several separate strikes currently underway in the country makes the time fertile, and the task all the more urgent, argued Elfadl.
“This work must go hand in hand with the implementation of the proposals of the Resistance Committees for continued action on the streets. From this, the unity of action will emerge,” he said, adding that the SCP will strive to “unify the trade unions, Resistance Committees and the civil society on a common charter for the building of civil-democratic authority.”
Appealing for “international solidarity to stop the repression, and to force the junta to respect human-rights and the right to demonstrate”, Elfadl asserted, “the rest are tasks the mass-movement in Sudan is capable of achieving itself. It will defeat all the reactionary schemes, be it of international or local forces.”
