The Craft of Neutrality in Beautifying Graves: Hamdok’s Alliances and His Comrades

 

The Craft of Neutrality in Beautifying Graves: Hamdok’s Alliances and His Comrades

 Dr. Amgad Fareid El-Tayeb

 “Knowledge is not innocent. It is saturated with power, and is always used in the service of or resistance to domination.” 

Edward Said, Orientalism

 In the current era of Sudan’s collapse, this statement resonates with unprecedented urgency. Words are no longer mere vessels of meaning; they have transformed into weapons in the very battle for existence. They are harnessed to justify sieges, normalize massacres, or fabricate a false political sanctity around alliances stained with blood. Here, veiled discourse proves more perilous than bullets, as it meticulously prepares the moral and symbolic groundwork for atrocities committed under the guise of neutrality or political realism.

 Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), civilian factions have descended into a state of profound political confusion. This confusion is evident in their shifting stances and has culminated in a bitter struggle for representation and legitimacy. The Somoud alliance—formerly Taqadum—led by Dr. Abdalla Hamdok, the former Sudanese Prime Minister who has resided in the United Arab Emirates since his January 2022 resignation, exemplifies this disarray. The alliance emerged as an entity purporting to embody the revolution’s conscience, adopting a theoretical discourse that advocates for neutrality. However, a close examination of its rhetoric and practices reveals a stark and undeniable bias toward the RSF militia, objectively contributing to the perpetuation of war rather than its resolution.

 

Attempting Hegemony Through Political Discourse

According to Gramsci, hegemony extends beyond mere domination by force; it encompasses the reproduction of meaning and the strategic presentation of alternative interpretations of reality that disguise bias as neutrality. From this perspective, we should critically analyze the Addis Ababa Declaration (January 2024), signed by Hamdok and RSF leader Hemedti. While the text includes phrases such as “stopping the war and protecting civilians,” its practical outcomes demonstrably granted political legitimacy to the formation of civilian administrations involving organizations from Hamdok’s alliance. These administrations operated under the control of a genocidal militia, thereby paving the way for the subsequent formation of the Ta’asis alliance. The Ta’asis alliance, which originated from Hamdok’s coalition, openly endorsed the concept of establishing a government subservient to the RSF—a transformation that not only treated the militia as a political partner but elevated it to a position of political leadership.

 The Addis Ababa memorandum was not a transient agreement but a foundational moment for a new hegemonic framework. It transformed the RSF from a militia accused of war crimes into a natural actor and legitimate political partner, as reflected in Hamdok’s alliance dealings. The press conference following the Hamdok-Hemedti agreement vividly embodied the agreement’s true nature: Hamdok sat beside the militia leader as Hemedti delivered an inflammatory political speech, attempting to present himself as a legitimate political actor fighting for justice and democracy, even as his forces were simultaneously engaged in rape, looting, and killing in Al-Jazira state.

The Somoud alliance, in Gramsci’s classification, assumed the role of the non-organic intellectual. It achieved this by reproducing political discourse designed to legitimize and support a new hegemony, one underpinned by Emirati oil money and the militia’s instruments of violence, rather than genuinely representing societal interests. In doing so, Somoud adopted an opportunistic and perilous role in the process of transforming an executioner into a legitimate political partner.

The hegemonic media apparatus affiliated with Hamdok’s alliance endeavored to establish a monolithic political correctness centered on its own position. It systematically targeted any dissenters through various means, including criminalization, image distortion, and the pre-emptive manufacturing of negative public opinion. This strategy aimed to sanctify Somoud’s positions, placing them beyond discussion and criticism, effectively making engagement with them a prerequisite for political correctness. The mouthpieces of Taqadum/Somoud unhesitatingly employed hate speech, media falsification, rumors, lies, and the incitement of ethnic and social polarization; all means were deemed permissible in the service of manufacturing the alliance’s perceived sanctity. Conversely, they deliberately overlooked the fascist and racist discourse adopted by RSF elements and the Ta’asis alliance, as it aligned with Hamdok’s alliance goals. Consequently, accepting such rhetoric and practices was deemed faultless, as these elements were merely considered tools. Values such as democracy, justice, peace, social coexistence, and acceptance of the other have, in Taqadum’s lexicon, become nothing more than hollow titles.

This pattern of political practice has fostered individuals and groups who are “more royalist than the king” in their unwavering defense of Hamdok’s alliance. These defenders do not ground their advocacy in analysis, information, or objective knowledge; instead, they reiterate and promote the alliance’s justifications as absolute truths beyond debate, even when these justifications are used to condone violence or repression. The defense of Hamdok’s alliance (initially Taqadum, then Somoud) thus resembles a solidified ideology, detached from its actual content. It appears to be a mere attempt to affiliate with what is portrayed as the surviving political faction, even at the cost of justifying the shedding of Sudanese blood. In this context, Hamdok and his comrades occupy a position akin to Hassan al-Sabbah, the leader of the Assassins, in a political alignment that signifies not consciousness but its absence. This alignment is driven by an overwhelming desire to belong to the center of symbolic correctness. Consequently, political positions are transformed from instruments for change and the presentation of visions into sacrifices for belonging and certifications of political and social acceptability. Some utilize these positions to expunge the stains of their political past, while others seek to secure a marginal seat within what they perceive as the epicenter of moral authority. Still others cling to them as a means of self-reassurance in adopting stances that may currently be rewarding but whose dire consequences will inevitably unfold over time. The illusory escape for these individuals lies in reassuring themselves with the Sudanese proverb “Death with the group is a wedding,” without acknowledging the existence of alternatives to political suicide. Naturally, external support, international mobilization, and the ingrained “foreigner complex” within the Sudanese elite’s psyche have played a pivotal role in establishing this center of symbolic power, which the political herd—in its three divisions—eagerly seeks to join.

Media Propaganda and Manufacturing Political Acceptance

Noam Chomsky posits that the essence of political propaganda lies in “manufacturing consent” through the meticulous control of what is articulated and what is deliberately silenced. The discourse propagated by “Taqadum/Somoud” regarding “protecting civilians” by demanding a ban on military aviation serves as a stark illustration of this principle. This narrative amplifies the role of government aviation as the sole instrument of violence, while consciously obscuring the ground massacres, indiscriminate shelling, looting, rape, and ethnic killings perpetrated by the RSF militia. These atrocities are either downplayed or superficially addressed. Indeed, certain members of Taqadum/Somoud went so far as to directly rationalize these crimes, as was evident in their justification of the occupation of homes and civilian facilities in Khartoum. A similar pattern applies to Hamdok’s alliance’s discourse concerning the Emirati role in the Sudanese conflict. This discourse frequently resorts to fabricating untrue comparisons to divert attention from Emirati aggression, even ignoring and attempting to suppress any discussion of Emirati violations. These violations include not only supporting the militia in its war but also detaining Sudanese citizens on its soil without charges or legal justifications, solely based on their political positions regarding their country’s affairs. This includes prominent politicians such as Engineer Mohamed Farouk, a co-founder of the Forces of Freedom and Change alliance.

This deliberate distortion of facts was not merely theoretical; it manifested in concrete instances. In May 2023, the Civil Front to Stop the War (a component of Taqadum before its fragmentation) issued a statement erroneously attributing rape crimes committed by RSF individuals to the army. It subsequently retracted this statement under public pressure, acknowledging the unreliability of its cited information. This incident was not an isolated error but part of a recurring modus operandi: amplifying or fabricating alleged army violations, in stark contrast to obscuring the well-documented and systematic violations committed by the RSF. Once again, Taqadum/Somoud fulfilled its role in a propaganda campaign designed to transform an executioner into a legitimate political partner.

It is crucial to emphasize that the preceding analysis does not constitute a defense of the army but rather an endeavor to interpret reality objectively. The profound disparity between the army and the RSF militia in this conflict requires minimal corroboration; the spontaneous movement of people from RSF-controlled areas towards government-controlled areas in search of safety unequivocally demonstrates this difference. Furthermore, the evidence extends beyond anecdotal observations: data from independent reports, such as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), attributed 77% of violations against civilians to the RSF militia in its November 2024 report. Similarly, the Insights Center, in July 2025, attributed 88% of civilian killing incidents to the same militia. This striking quantitative disparity cannot be dismissed except through a deliberate system of consciousness concealment—the false consciousness that Somoud attempts to propagate through its claims of neutrality. Indeed, “Taqadum/Somoud” further exacerbated this through the discourse of some of its leaders and members who publicly defended the RSF militia’s presence in the political arena, asserting that it represents social incubators (Taha Osman Ishaq – Forces of Freedom and Change press conference in Cairo – August 2023), defended Hemedti as a man of peace who genuinely desires an end to the war (Taha Osman Ishaq – TV interview with Ahmed Taha on Al Jazeera – February 2024) or Bakri Al-Jack, the alliance’s official spokesperson, who even called for the Sudanese army to surrender to the RSF militia, drawing a parallel to Japan’s surrender in World War II (TV interview with Al Jazeera – June 2024). Or additionally, Hamdok and Khalid Omar Yousif repeated statements defending the UAE and justifying its support for the militia and its direct aggression against Sudan. The list of such examples is extensive and seemingly endless, yet it undergoes no critical evaluation and evades any political scrutiny. Instead, any criticism is attacked by portraying it as an assault on the Sudanese revolution (utterly innocent of them) under the banner of a pathological obsession with the myth of the alliance’s political sanctity, a sanctity that falsehood cannot approach from any direction.

Internal Orientalism: Edward Said and the Scarecrow of Islamists

Edward Said meticulously demonstrated how dominant discourse constructs a negative “Other” to legitimize control and violence, simultaneously presenting the self as its antithesis. In the Sudanese context, Taqadum/Somoud embodies this role by deploying the scarecrow of Islamists. Instead of confronting the grim reality of the RSF militia’s involvement in ethnic massacres across Darfur, Khartoum, and Al-Jazira, and its perpetration of killing, displacement, rape, and looting against civilians, Hamdok’s alliance deliberately redirects attention toward “Islamists” as the absolute evil. Here, Somoud’s proponents attempt to exploit the Islamists’ bloody history during Bashir’s era and the widespread popular resentment that fueled the revolution, harnessing this sentiment to justify the militia’s actions and crimes. This logic treats Sudanese suffering abstractly, as if it were mere cinematic scenes on television screens rather than tangible agony that irrevocably altered people’s lives overnight. The theorists of Taqadum/Somoud conveniently overlook that the resentment against Islamists primarily stemmed from actions strikingly similar to those the militia is currently undertaking, and that the crimes committed by Islamists during Bashir’s rule cannot, under any circumstances, justify the militia’s present atrocities. Indeed, the very existence of the militia stands as one of the most egregious crimes perpetrated by the Islamists and their regime.

This internal orientalism endeavors to forge a logic of exclusion: anyone who does not align with the “Somoud” camp is automatically categorized as an “Islamist” or a “war advocate.” The consequence is the marginalization of any independent critical voice that deviates from its political approach, thereby transforming the conflict from a substantive debate about the foundations of justice, peace, and accountability into a battle over verbal identity. In this struggle, Somoud and its mouthpieces monopolize the right to define who is legitimately entitled to speak in the name of the revolution and peace, and who is not.

This abstract discourse of values is employed by Somoud/Taqadum to generate considerable noise from Abu Dhabi, Nairobi, Kampala, extending even to seminars held at Chatham House in London, where they vociferously advocate for the necessity of banning aviation to protect civilians. However, this demand is abruptly silenced once the RSF militia acquires anti-aircraft weapons and air defense systems. Yet, simultaneously, their valiant zeal for protecting civilians remains conspicuously absent in El Fasher, where a siege has persisted for nearly a year and a half, failing to even elicit a formal demand for aid delivery or an end to the starvation siege imposed by the militia. Thus, it appears that in Taqadum/Somoud’s political calculus, civilians attacked by the RSF militia are not sufficiently “civilian” to warrant demanding their protection!

This approach aligns precisely with Hannah Arendt’s profound analysis of the banality of political practice. The irony lies in the fact that “Somoud’s” discourse does not originate from a conscious evil conspiracy as much as from a political bureaucracy relentlessly focused on preserving its own existence at any cost. In this frantic pursuit, it has tragically forfeited the capacity for moral judgment. When the alliance declares that banning aviation is a “participatory process,” fully aware that its outcome grants a decisive advantage to a militia responsible for genocidal crimes and mass rape from Geneina to Wad Alnoura, we witness what Arendt termed the “banality of evil.” This transforms human tragedy into a mere agenda item on a political paper or a workshop funded by the British or Norwegian government—or, even more disturbingly, the Emirati one—which simultaneously contributes funding to fuel the militia’s military operations. It is perplexing that those affiliated with Hamdok’s alliance do not pause to question how the same funding can simultaneously contribute to fueling the militia’s war and their own pursuit—if sincere—for peace. And if they can deceive themselves into accepting this profound paradox, how can they possibly convince the masses of Sudanese who have been displaced from their homes by the war and have intimately experienced its woes? It is as if they are demanding that Sudanese forget their wounds without compensation and passively accept the very patterns that produced their suffering, under the perverse notion that death is a necessity!

 

The Organized Mediocracy of the Era of Political Decay

The consequence of these dynamics has been the descent of politics into a form of organized Mediocracy. In this environment, the claim of neutrality becomes a potent instrument for perpetuating tragedy and even justifying its escalation by distributing its burden across all parties. This is precisely what is unfolding now with fervent attempts to partition Sudan through the announcement of the militia’s government, a move that the alliance’s discourse promptly legitimized by promoting the existence of “two governments” in Sudan!

The fundamental dilemma is that “Somoud” does not offer a genuine project to conclude the war; rather, it reproduces the conflict under a different discourse, outbidding others to gain acceptance for its approach. However, the illusory neutrality it espouses is not a moral stance but a veiled strategy of bias. It relies on establishing a preconceived cognitive bias that deliberately disregards reality, facts, and events, all to advance a specific narrative that grants foreign powers (with the UAE serving as a prime example) the latitude to manipulate the alliance in redrawing regional power balances.

What the Sudanese arena truly requires to emerge from the current war catastrophe is not a false neutrality, but rather the moral courage to acknowledge direct responsibility for crimes. It demands a re-centering of political discourse on the victims, rather than on preserving elite political systems. Furthermore, it necessitates the establishment of a civilian position that does not borrow the discourse of arms but actively undermines it. This requires—as Gramsci taught—an organic intellectual connected to the concerns of ordinary people, not personal agendas; as Said demonstrated—a radical critique of discourse and the positions of its proponents; as Chomsky elucidated—resistance to mechanisms of misinformation and propaganda; and as Arendt revealed—the recovery of moral judgment amidst the banality of evil.

The Somoud alliance consistently portrays itself as the “surviving faction.” However, in reality, it perpetuates the catastrophe with a falsified civilian facade and a biased cognitive discourse. Its continued adherence to this path ensures that Sudan will remain trapped between the military’s hammer and the anvil of “false neutrality,” which legitimizes the use of weapons for political blackmail. Only a new stance that prioritizes the suffering of victims over the ambitions of the executioner can forge a different future. Otherwise, the Somoud alliance will merely be another manifestation of the banality of evil, further engulfing Sudan.