This statement was written by members of Black Rose/Rosa Negra’s International Relations Committee and endorsed by member organizations of the International Coordination of Organized Anarchism (ICOA).
Black Rose/Rosa Negra continues to work closely with members of the Anarchist Group in Sudan (AGS), supporting their organizing and education efforts on the ground.
With the fall of el-Fasher, the world has seen a terrifying glimpse of the unfolding genocide in Sudan. Out of the authoritarian reaction against the 2019 Sudanese revolution, twin monsters have emerged which are devouring the country, leaving bloodstains large enough to be seen from space.
More than 150,000 people have died in Sudan since the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) began fighting a civil war in April 2023. The war has forced 12 million from their homes and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In the RSF’s assaults, Black, dark-skinned, non-Arab people are being targeted again and again, betraying a racist and genocidal intent behind their quest for control.
The capture of el-Fasher by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has seen large scale sexual violence carried out against women and children. Healthcare facilities and workers are being targeted. There are reports of young women being rounded up and assaulted. These patterns mirror what we have seen in past genocidal campaigns.
While the news is dominated by the genocidal rampages of the RSF, on the other side of the front lines the SAF has been carrying out killings, disappearing activists in prison, and allowing Islamist gangs to grow and terrorize the people. Although there is more stability in the SAF-held areas, it is the illusory stability of a blood-drenched dictatorship.
In the face of these ongoing atrocities, we hold up the memory of our four comrades from the Anarchist Group in Sudan who were martyred in el-Fasher: Faisal Adam Ali, Radwan Abdel Jabbar (“Kahraba”), Adam Kibir Musa and Abdel Ghaffar Al-Tahir (“Al-Sini”). We call for active solidarity with those struggling for peace in Sudan. As our comrades said,
“Direct struggle against power carries a steep price: our lives and our freedoms. Your comrades in Sudan chose not to remain silent — that is the nature of revolutionaries. We want peace and call for peace and the rejection of war, yet the most horrific expressions of racist authority in Sudan, imperial domination, and international rivalry are manifesting themselves. Therefore we ask you to expand support campaigns worldwide: our comrades have a right upon us — their defense of el-Fasher is a defense of all revolutionaries.”
Governments that claimed to support a ceasefire, including Egypt, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others, have failed in their promises and have done nothing to protect Sudanese people. What happened in el-Fasher was expected because no meaningful action was taken.
When Sudanese people try to flee for safety from the terrors of conflict, they face hostile borders across North Africa, Middle East, Europe, and anywhere they turn. The border policies of countries that refuse access to Sudanese refugees, condemning them to starvation and massacre, must be seen as a key component of the ongoing violence. And in a moment when Trump is simultaneously ending Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese while welcoming white Afrikaaners as supposed victims of a fantasy “genocide” in South Africa, the racist underpinnings of this border system cannot be denied.
Still, the Sudanese people are resisting barbarism and carrying forward the fight for freedom even in these conditions. Despite the harsh conditions, the resistance is alive in Sudan, through the remnants of the revolutionary neighborhood councils, independent militias, and soup kitchens. Our comrades in the Anarchist Group in Sudan represent a revolutionary militancy that was forged through the revolutionary struggles before the civil war began in 2023. Those outside Sudan should work to not just oppose the war, but to make practical connections with the independent organizations of the dominated classes in Sudan. We specifically call for Anarchist solidarity and support to the Anarchist Group in Sudan.
The war in Sudan could not continue without the involvement of external power. For generations Africa has been the site of colonial contestation, with foreign governments dividing up the natural resources of the continent for their own benefit. The colonial approach to Africa continues in full force to this day. However, with the decline of the US’s global hegemony, the space is now opening for newer regional powers to scramble for a piece of Africa. The main external engines of the bloodshed in Sudan are Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which support the Sudanese Armed Forces, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE – home of Dubai and Abu Dhabi), which supports the RSF, and appears to be the biggest foreign power in the Sudanese civil war.
The UAE sends limitless supplies of drones to the RSF, and what it takes home in return is very clear—about $2.3 billion of gold taken from Sudan in 2022, along with agricultural products and other natural resources. While Sudanese starve and die, there are billions of dollars of gold being smuggled out, funding another profitable war for global capital. The UAE’s complicity in genocide in el-Fasher is clear, and it does not come as a surprise from a country that was still using Black African slave labor up until the mid-20th century, and continues to rely on the super-intensive racialized exploitation of Black and South Asian migrant workers.
While the RSF has no offices or embassies, the UAE has political and business interests around the globe. With tourism accounting for 13% of the UAE’s GDP, global public opinion can have a material impact on their economy and force them to rethink their foreign policy decisions. The UAE knows that it needs to continue diversifying its economy away from reliance on oil revenue, and so invests heavily in improving its public image to encourage tourism and investment. For example, the “Dubai chocolate” craze was carefully promoted by the UAE government so that when people think of “Dubai” they think of luxury and exotic treats, not of a repressive dictatorship built on slave labor at home and genocide abroad. Working class organizations can target the visible outposts of UAE interests to draw attention to their role in anti-Black genocide, puncturing their fake self-promotion narrative and causing a powerful economic impact.
Of course the UAE is not the only complicit actor. Our comrades have reported that UK-made weapons have found their way into Sudan, likely via the UAE. We must pressure all states to enact an arms embargo on countries that are supplying the warring sides in Sudan. The UK also has a historic complicity, as the anti-Black racism of the RSF forces builds on the legacy of Britain’s divide-and-conquer colonial rule in Sudan.
Through the Palestine solidarity movement, we have seen that the real key to international solidarity is building the organized power and political consciousness of the working class. Without the power of mass organization, international solidarity becomes the same small circle of activists moving from issue to issue, “raising awareness” without creating a material impact. The docker strikes in Italy were made possible by decades of class struggle. But the dedicated, slow, rooted organizing of class power through many struggles built the capacity to put meaningful international solidarity into practice. The most effective thing that we can do for freedom in Sudan is to fight for revolution at home against the global racist imperialist war machine.
With the global solidarity of the dominated classes and our revolutionary organizations, we can support our comrades struggling for freedom and survival in Sudan, stop the genocide, end the war, and continue the unfinished work of the Sudanese revolution.
Signed by the following members of the International Coordination of Organized Anarchism:
Black Rose / Rosa Negra (USA)
Midada (Switzerland)
ACG – Anarchist Communist Group (Britain)
Embat (Catalonia)
Die Plattform (Germany)
UCL – Union Communiste Libertaire (France)
OAC – Organización Anarquista de Córdoba (Córdoba, Argentina)
FAR – Federación Anarquista de Rosario (Rosario, Argentina)
OAT – Organización Anarquista de Tucumán (Tucumán, Argentina)
ORA – Organización Resistencia Anarquista (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
OASC – Organización Anarquista de Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, Argentina)
La Tordo Negro – Organización Anarquista Entrerriana (Argentina)
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And by the Anarchist Group in Sudan