One Year After The Massacre, Has Anything Changed In Sudan?
Today marks a painful first anniversary for Sudan. Last year on June 3, the regime’s Rapid Support Forces and National Intelligence and Security Service launched a one-sided war against peaceful protesters in Khartoum. The resulting massacre shocked the world’s conscience and briefly put Sudan’s crisis in the global spotlight for the first time in years.
The darkness that engulfed Sudan’s capital was not new to the country. For nearly 30 years, Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir’s government called Khartoum its untouched stronghold, a long-time garrison city from which the regime poured raw military power, political manipulation, and outright hatred into brutal policies and increasingly powerful paramilitaries who were unleashed on the country’s minorities and lower classes.
Countless massacres have been committed by regime forces across the country since the early 1990s. To many people outside of Sudan, Darfur is synonymous only with genocide, not the western region’s complex history that is both hard and beautiful to behold. Other lesser known parts of Sudan with equally rich histories, like the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, have been submitted to identical atrocities as those in Darfur.
So, the June 3 massacre was not unexpected, but it was still horrifying. After Bashir was removed from power in April, it was obvious that he left behind a fundamentally unchanged regime. Government forces continued committing war crimes in Sudan’s oppressed hinterlands, humanitarian aid was still denied to millions of Sudanese in need, and militiamen poured into Khartoum. The slaughter was even predicted months beforehand. Despite the glimmer of hope brought about by determined protesters, who displayed incredible courage, smarts, and restraint, the recipe for carnage was made in broad daylight.
Perhaps this is what made the Khartoum massacre feel particularly brutal. The regime had oppressed its citizens in the capital when needed, sometimes to a terrifying degree. But the true horrors of the scorched-earth warfare that has decimated Sudan’s periphery had never been felt in Khartoum.
The massacre was the cloak finally falling off the regime’s shoulders. Left standing was the worst kind of government: a hydra-headed monster of murderous security forces who worshipped their own power above all else, and saw ideology as a mere tool to advance their capturing of more power. Their purpose was never really about making Sudan an Islamic state. It was never really about Arabizing the country. Sure, many regime leaders cared deeply about these twisted visions, but the corrupt desire for power and wealth outweighed them in the end. The Khartoum massacre put the last of all Sudanese, regardless of their ethnicity, class, religion, or political leanings, in the crosshairs. It was the final declaration of war on the entire citizenry.
That and the massacre being live-streamed for the world to see, before the regime plunged the entire country into a communications blackout.
News of what transpired in Khartoum reached the outside world anyways. The sprawling protest encampment outside of the military’s headquarters was burned to the ground. Rapid Support Forces soldiers pelted fleeing protesters with grenades and gunned them down. Women were dragged off by regime paramilitaries, gang-raped for hours, and then cast onto the streets. Militiamen tossed the murdered into the Nile River like it was second nature. Paramilitaries murdered, tortured, and pillaged their way across the city.
When Sudan’s internet came back on a month later, images of the massacre flooded out. By that point, protesters had already surged back into the streets, only to be met with more violence. The only thing that had changed was their mood. Inspiration had been replaced with exasperation. Hope had been replaced with seething anger. Coupled with minimal international pressure, it was just enough to bring the regime slinking back to the negotiating table. After 30 long years, the hydra-headed monster finally blinked.
A transitional government was eventually formed: half regime leaders and half civilians. Sudan has been walking on a very fine tightrope ever since.
Has Anything Changed Since The Massacre?
Like all things in Sudan, today is incredibly complicated. Many Sudanese are mourning what was lost one year ago. Others are celebrating that some aspects of life have improved, while knowing that Sudan’s revolution is far from finished. Many feel both of these realities tugging at them. Some are protesting. Even more Sudanese feel like absolutely nothing has changed at all. Like the deck is still being stacked against them.
Uprooting this extremist regime was always going to be a monumental, decades-long undertaking. For years, many people inside and outside of Sudan aimed their ire at Bashir. He was the symbol of everything that had gone horribly wrong. The fall of an oppressive symbol certainly matters. It shows that change is possible. Deep down though, everyone has always known that the real work would begin post-Bashir.
Today, Sudan is barely into this new reality. Bashir himself is locked away in prison for corruption, but he has still not faced a courtroom for the far more serious war crimes and genocide charges against him. There is a good chance he never will. His powerful successors are seizing more and more control within the transitional government. The investigation into the massacre itself is still bogged down in bureaucratic obfuscation. Justice delayed really is justice denied.
Most concerning is the meteoric rise of the Rapid Support Forces commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka Hemeti, in the transitional government. Conservative estimates put the size of his paramilitary force at 50,000 strong. Hemeti wields his own foreign policy that is separate from Sudan’s, and his troops are busy trying to show that they are Sudan’s real military power. But the Rapid Support Forces are not invincible. As their power grows, they are facing more attacks from other security agencies, including the still powerful army, and are being defied by protesters who know that the paramilitary group must disarm and demobilize. In most of Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces are viewed as a hostile occupying force, not a legitimate governing institution.
Their oppression remains as brutal as ever. Just two weeks ago, Rapid Support Forces soldiers executed Awad El Wakeel, a 33 year old Nuba man, merely because he self-identified as belonging to a Nuba tribe. Speaking to a Nuba friend as I was preparing to write this piece, he brought up Awad’s murder as being particularly painful. “Why?” I asked. “Because this wasn't just a murder,” he said. “I think, in America, you call it a lynching.”
Millions of Sudanese from Darfur to the Nuba Mountains watch and feel these paramilitaries breathing down their necks every single day. For them, nothing has changed. There is no peace. There is no relief. There is no justice. The shortcomings of the transitional government certainly are most egregious in Sudan’s still oppressed periphery.
This isn’t to say that Sudan’s revolution is a failure. The civilian-wing of the transitional government is addressing issues the Sudanese people face. Underneath the leadership of the empathetic Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, a small string of victories has been building for months. Civilian leaders are busy confiscating billions of dollars of stolen wealth from fallen Islamic leaders, have outlawed female genital mutilation, and are pushing for basic freedoms for all Sudanese. Prime Minster Hamdok has even visited Sudan’s most oppressed regions to listen and help pry open humanitarian relief access to those most in need. A year ago, such a visit by a government leader was unthinkable. These are reasons to hope, but it would be generous to describe the activities of Sudan's transitional government as just the tip of the iceberg for what is really needed.
So, has anything changed in Sudan since the massacre one year ago? That depends on who you ask. It’s easy to point to changing laws and a more peaceful Khartoum and say yes, but only the Sudanese people are qualified to answer if they can feel these changes. Some Sudanese certainly have, and that’s a good thing. Many others across Sudan have not, which shows the revolution is far from over.
The Hardest Fights Lie Ahead
The successes and failures of Sudan’s revolution will be proven over time, but there will be key moments when we see how much really is changing. At some point, the very existence of the Rapid Support Forces is going to have to be addressed. The transitional government will have to make a decision concerning the secularism versus Islamic law approach to governance, and that will have implications that touch every corner of a society that appears ready to shake the yoke of the Islamists of. In the Nuba Mountains, where Sudan’s strongest armed opposition movement has bogged down tens of thousands of genocidal regime troops and secured a fragile ceasefire, the raging security forces and their begrudging Khartoum masters are going to have to make serious concessions for peace to work.
These moments and many more will be fraught with tremendous risk. They will show if the regime-wing of the transitional government and their attached business moguls are going to allow progress that severely weakens their own power, or if they are simply biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to drag the country back into full-blown military rule. History says the generals and security heads will resort to mass violence when they feel that the time is appropriate. Time will tell.
But far away from Khartoum is the most frustrating aspect of the slow pace of Sudan’s revolution: those most in need of change will probably be the last to see it, if they ever see change at all. Hundreds of thousands of Darfuris living in displacement camps for well over a decade still cannot go home, and there are signs that the Rapid Support Forces are making that reality permanent. Peace seems unlikely in the Nuba Mountains, where regime forces are escalating attacks on the Nuba people. Reparations to these communities seems even less likely, as the transitional government needs tens of billions of dollars just to move Sudan’s economy out of a death spiral and into a fragile state. It is in these parts of Sudan that the revolution feels non-existent.
As if this was not going to be challenging enough, the coronavirus pandemic is spreading rapidly through Sudan, slowing down the revolution even more. Sudan’s long-term prospects appear to be gloomier than they were just a few months ago.
The clouds may yet part. The younger generation of Sudanese grew up only knowing regime rule. They have tasted freedom. For many of them, there is no going back. They are willing to risk everything, including their lives, to move Sudan forward. And while the old guard regime and their attached business interests haven’t changed at all, even the generals and security heads seem to be aware that, at least in the short term, they should at least give the illusion of playing along to avoid another massive uprising.
And that leaves us: those who are looking into Sudan from the outside, both worried and hopeful, wondering how to help the changemakers. The Sudanese people have made it clear that they are taking control of their own destiny. That’s how it should be, but we have been asked to help in the Nuba Mountains, where the revolution remains unfelt.
In the background of everything you just read is Sudan’s next generation of leaders. Children living in the Nuba Mountains and nearby Yida Refugee Camp have grown up only knowing war. Most do not have access to a quality classroom. Their education will be what helps carry Sudan’s revolution forwards in the decades ahead.
Operation Broken Silence sponsors 24 Nuba teachers in Yida Refugee Camp. We’re the only organization in the world supporting teachers here. If you want to sustain these Sudanese changemakers during this time of uncertainty, I encourage you to join our campaign. If you can’t do that, help us spread the word.
About Us
Operation Broken Silence is building a global movement to empower the Sudanese people through innovative programs as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We focus on empowering Sudanese change makers and their critical work. Learn more here.
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About Mark
Mark Hackett is the Executive Director of Operation Broken Silence. He works with our Sudanese partners and oversees our daily operations.
Mark is one of only a few Americans to have been on the frontlines in the Nuba Mountains during the war.
