Authors: Max Bearak
Affiliation: The Washington Post’s Nairobi Bureau Chief
Organization /Publisher: Washington Post
Date/Place: December 20, 2021/Washington, D.C., USA
Type of Literature: Article
Word Count: 1582
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/20/sudan-revolution-protests/
Keywords: Dictatorship, Revolution, Sudan, Hamdok, Military
Brief:
The author expresses the people’s antipathy of the three years of endless revolution in Sudan that is despairing their hope. The thirty-years-long dictatorship was challenged in December 2018 by the pro-democracy demonstration which then faced a massacre. The protest movement of young and energetic people was spearheaded by a want for a more dignified life and a functioning, entirely civilian government. The military removed the Islamist bastion of dictator Omar Hassan al-Bashir in April 2019, and his former officers took power themselves; the new chant became “Freedom, peace, and justice, the revolution is the will of the people.” But the protestors are pessimistic because the suspicion is that they are moving from one military regime to another, and the worry becomes debilitating and the disappointment crushing, and the time spent feeling like time wasted. The anxiety among the people is increasing as 40 percent of young people are unemployed, and the development indicators are below Afghanistan and Syria. The military’s release of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was from an external pressure to restore the pre-coup status quo, which was necessary to unblock the suspended aid of a billion dollars. The protestor Khaleda Rehman mentioned that “we are more awakened with the revolution, yes, but only to our own suffering.” Mohamed Ali Bakur, a member of the revolutionary party “Forces of Freedom and Change”, sees the military as a necessary partner in achieving the revolution’s ultimate goals and stated that the revolution has no leader, no vision, no consensus — it is just chaos, and crisis after crisis. The author identifies the helplessness spreading among the people who have reached the point and drew the general understanding that negotiation with the army is necessary because the situation is sliding back into the past. The faces may change, but nothing else will ever change until the people are in power.
By: Razia Wadood, CIGA Senior Research Associate
