In Sudan, we went from revolutionary hope to despair

This piece feels impossible to write.

I have lost count the number of times I have sat down with intention, laptop perched on the kitchen table, buzz of London traffic filtering through the walls. Each time, without fail, my breath turns shallow and my body seizes up, a visceral reaction to a pressure self-imposed, urgent and unforgiving, weighing down like a boulder on my chest. 

“You must find a way to show the people how bad it is”, my mind urges. “Convince them. They need to know, so they are spurred into action. If the people know, maybe fewer will die…”

But another part of me, cynical and bitter, thinks otherwise. “No amount of ‘knowledge’ shall spur the ‘people’ into action, Yassmin. You know how they value the life of the Sudanese…”

So it goes. Seven weeks have gone by since fighting broke out in Khartoum, ostensibly between the belligerents, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Seven weeks since Sudanese people - in the country and around the world - have been violently catapulted into the kind of total chaos and uncertainty only the collapse of a state’s governing structure can achieve.

''The 2019 revolution had sowed fields full of fierce, fragile, furious hope. Hope for a nation that was free, peaceful and just. A nation which rose above colourism and politicised ethnic divisions. A nation free of foreign meddling and interference. A nation governed by women as much as it was by men. Those heady days of 2019, the hope vibrant and infectious, feel like several lifetimes ago. I look back on the pieces I wrote then with a sharp grief. The worst has come to pass.''

Every aspect of this crisis feels surreal, almost unfathomable. And it is a crisis, not a civil war, as described by some. Sudan is not beset by an organised conflict between the populace, divided along political, racial or ideological lines. This is a struggle for power, a deadly battle for the soul of a nation. But the nation may not survive the very war being waged in its name, a war trapping Sudanese people in the middle, squeezing the population to painful deaths.

Only four years ago, in 2019, Sudan bore witness to an inspiring, peaceful revolution. The nationwide movement succeeded in toppling the long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir. Analysts and punters knew it would be difficult for a civilian government to properly take root, given the soil had been poisoned for so long by the previous regime. But the revolution had sowed fields full of fierce, fragile, furious hope. Hope for a nation that was free, peaceful and just. A nation which rose above colourism and politicised ethnic divisions. A nation free of foreign meddling and interference. A nation governed by women as much as it was by men.

Those heady days of 2019, the hope vibrant and infectious, feel like several lifetimes ago. I look back on the pieces I wrote then with a sharp grief. The worst has come to pass.

The worst, being bombs dropped by the Armed Forces on its own capital city, taking out power, water and critical services, including hospitals. The wanton destruction of our cultural memory: libraries, national archives, museums, even the zoo. The wrenchingly tragic stories of impact on the most vulnerable, such as Mygoma orphanage, where over fifty orphans have died since 15 April.

Severe malnutrition and dehydration stole the lives of innocent babies in cribs, their tiny bodies wrapped up in white cotton for burial, a collective undoing. Pregnant women gunned down as they run to safety, their bodies left for their children to hold, their babies brought into the world via caesarean, new life birthed from a corpse. For so many, home has mutated into a living nightmare. The worst has come to pass, and there is no end in sight.

“If I tell you more statistics, will that change how much you care?” I seethe at leaders through my screens, politicians who equivocate and bluster. Over 1.3 million people have been displaced from their homes. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been killed, with tens of thousands injured. Property has been systemically destroyed; medical warehouses, grain silos, storefronts, a society’s critical infrastructure mere collateral in the belligerents’ war.

As rainy season approaches, we all wonder how much worse it can get.

And yet, and yet, and yet. I walk through the streets of London, and the pain of Sudan feels absent. I watch a Ukrainian flag flutter in the wind as I sit on the steps of Trafalgar square, my eyes fixed on the blue and yellow cloth flickering to the right of Nelson’s Column. I think of the swift political action that rightly allowed those citizens to flee to safety when war broke out in February 2022, the welcome afforded to other refugees less than 18 months ago.

As of writing, the petition asking the UK government to create a Sudanese Family Scheme visa, a safe passage for Sudanese to seek refuge in Great Britain, has less than 28,000 signatures. In comparison, the petition to hold a referendum on removing the London Mayor has almost three times as many.

But for so many of us in the diaspora, signing a petition feels like one of the few tangible actions available to us. Raising funds is not straight forward: unless channelled through a large humanitarian organisation, there are few ways to get money to your own family members on the ground.

Even for those of us (like myself) with the ‘right’ kind of passport, reflecting the geopolitical power of old colonial empires, our ability to help our very own families is hamstrung by the perceived ‘value’ of Sudanese people, as defined by the aforementioned old colonial powers. Never mind that the modern nation state of Sudan wouldn’t have existed without British interference. Never mind the fuel thrown onto the fire by foreign actors funding the generals. Never mind that for all of global grandstanding on support for democracy and the United Nations Convention on Refugees, the Sudanese people find themselves almost completely alone, dependent on neighbours who are already struggling with their own domestic challenges (Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt).

It all feels so utterly, deeply, disgustingly unfair.

There are the stories that reassure, glimmers of something other than despair, whether the tales of resistance committees organising to get citizens to safety, or the dark humour of those who are going through the worst. But I must be honest with you, between my prayers and the morning WhatsApp messages to check that my family members are still alive, I feel such deep, black, all-consuming rage. The madness of a wounded animal who knows not how to make the pain go away.

Because I don’t. I don’t know how to fix it, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to save my family, or my homeland, or any of the millions of people who are caught in the deadliest of crossfires. For someone who has spent their life organising, agitating, believing in the power of civilian citizens to change the course of history, the powerlessness of these past few weeks has been utterly immobilising. So I sit at my kitchen table in my flat in London, and I cry. I pray, and I cry, and I write these words in the hope that it moves you, it reminds you that we are people, and that regardless of the colour of our passports, our lives matter.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese-Australian author and social justice advocate. She is a regular columnist for The New Arab.

Follow her on Twitter: @yassmin_a

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com.

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.