The Opportunistic Narrative of the Scarecrow in Sudan’s War: Hijacking the Anit-War Advocacy

 

The Opportunistic Narrative of the Scarecrow in Sudan’s War: Hijacking the Anit-War Advocacy

Amgad Fareid El-Tayeb

The remnants of the Forces of Freedom and Change, with their ever-shifting hues, alongside the elements of the “Framework Agreement” coalition—figures like Ibrahim Mirghani (a founding member of theoro-RSF Ta’asis alliance), The Islamist Popular Congress party and others who have joined the fray—persist in endorsing and propagating a narrative crafted by self-endorsed intellectual giants who depict the ongoing war in Sudan as their mythical “Armageddon” against Islamists.

In this narrative, Hemedti and his militia are relegated to a secondary role, pitted against what they call the “Islamist army,” against which they rally the world, linking it to Iran, Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and even the army of Al-Hussien at the gates of Kufa, if need be.

This narrative is double-edged. On one hand, it provides a pretext for their authoritarian collusion with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in pursuit of power—a collusion that began with the deception to push through the Framework Agreement, with its overt and covert substance. It also serves to defend their common patron; United Arab Emirates, which supports the killing and displacement of Sudanese people, framing its aggression against Sudan’s sovereignty and its people as a legitimate struggle by a “sisterly nation,” against the specter of political Islam. This taps into the cumulative fears of the Western imagination, which requires little prodding to offer material and political support for such delusions, as long as they brandish the banner of anti-Islamism, much like Israel wields the scarecrow of Iran’s nuclear threat. This is its first edge: a pretext for domination.

 On the other hand, this narrative enables them to blackmail vast segments of Sudan’s elites including—retired (or rather, idle) politicians, businessmen, paid journalists, civil society activists who are disconnected from their society, some embassies and international organization local staff, and researchers pontificating on Sudanese affairs from the comfort of their homes, yet never hesitating to act as snitches through fabrications and fertile imaginations. These are the same figures whose pens and acts fell short of confronting the Islamists “Kizan” during their rule, often aligning with them when it served their interests. They now see this narrative as an opportunity to whitewash their records with a proclaimed struggles, requiring little more than parroting the herd’s drivel. They believe victory is assured, tied to the UAE’s patronage and the “Janjaweed” hordes, whose weapons they deem essential to counter the “Muslim Brotherhood’s” arsenal, as their ideologue proclaimed.

 All this disregards the obvious truth that pitting arms against arms yields only war, with all its calamities, which the Sudanese have tasted bitterly—a flagrant contradiction to their falsely raised slogan of “No to War,” a mere tattered banner, a bloody shirt. After this, those seeking to lead an anti-corruption commission can take one, those eyeing the Ministry of Energy can claim it, but those aspiring to the premiership must wait, for the struggle over it is deferred for now. This is its second edge: a pretext for opportunistic extortion and bribery.

This narrative is embraced by both Hamdok’s coalition and Hemedti’s “Ta’asis” alliance, each claiming to represent the Sudanese people’s choices, oblivious to the glaring contradictions within their narrative. The Sudanese people’s stance on this war is not tied to the complexities of historical grievances in the formation of the Sudanese state but is a direct response to the atrocities they seek to obscure—from El Geneina to Khartoum, Nyala to Madani, and from the high-rises in central Khartoum to Zamzam IDP’s camp.

What they propose ignores reality, as if politics for them unfolds on Mars, not in Sudan, where the Sudanese live and witness daily horrors. This reality is shaped by the RSF militia, bolstered by its armed might and the influence of its UAE patrons, who provide political backing.

 Hemedti is by no means a representative of the marginalized peripheries’ grievances; he is one of the tools of their suppression, impoverishment, and plunder. Nor is he a “new John Garang,” as Nasreldin Abdel Bari and Yasir Arman tried to portray him in Paris 2024—a task now taken up by the boys of the SPLM-Alhilo. Their claim of opposing Islamists in Sudan is exposed as false when we see their ranks filled with them and their ongoing collaboration with the RSF, still led by the staunchest remnants of the Islamic Front. This is not to mention their continuous servitude to the UAE, which supported Bashir’s regime until weeks before its fall (see the media reports of hundreds of millions of dollars granted to Bashir’s regime in March 2019, just before his ouster in April of the same year).

This is a cognitive muddle and epistemological fallacy that ignores what is happening on Sudanese soil:

•       The RSF occupies civilians’ homes and expels them, yet they justify this, questioning how they could leave and where they would go.

•       The RSF rapes hundreds, if not thousands, of Sudanese women, yet they issue statements condemning these acts while fabricating incidents to blame the army.

•       The RSF commits genocide and racially motivated killings against the Masalit, documented by the world and their own militia’s hysterical racist chants, yet they blame the victims, accusing them of instigating violence.

•       The RSF shells displacement camps, and their “civil society” organizations rush to label these camps as militarised bases.

•       The UAE bombs power stations, water dams, and civilian infrastructure with its drones, yet Hamdok speaks of a media campaign against the UAE, which he claims honors the Sudanese.

This war is not an extension of a historical imbalance in the Sudanese state’s structure, that do require redress. But as a result of a fascist militia—the RSF—attempting to seize power by force, backed by a decrepit political elite providing justifications for the war through their paid work in the RSF’s offices, to manage their political alliances, as per Yousif Ezzat testimony about Taha Ishaq. The war’s continuation is a product of UAE aggression, seeking to impose a new colonial model in Sudan through its military mercenaries (like Hemedti and his militia) or civilian agents (like Hamdok and his coalition).

True, the Islamists are exploiting the catastrophe politically to rebrand themselves, aided by their opponents’ unparalleled stupidity and misguided biases. But the same applies to the remnants of the Freedom and Change elite in “Taqaddum,” “Sumoud,” and “Ta’asis,” with their singularly aligned biases. This war must not be turned into a battleground for settling ideological scores under the guise of stopping it—this is an investment in blood no less heinous than those firing the bullets.

This war must end on principles of justice, retribution against criminals, and the restoration of inherent rights, not slogans paving the way for power-sharing and dividing spoils. God has not destined the Sudanese people to choose between two evils. The true measure of these parties’ stances lies in their alignment with the people’s interests, security, and dignity. Regrettably, the remaining Freedom and Change elites have chosen to justify the killing of Sudanese people, the looting of their property, the rape of their women, and a foreign state’s assault on their nation’s sovereignty. Let them blame no one but themselves for the people’s outrage, having dared to wade through their blood, honor, and sanctities.