Sudan Dossier: The Neighbourhood Committees and the Revolutionary Charter

Questions by Marwan Osman and Eberhard Jungfer

Editorial

The following interview with Osman Abdallah was recorded in May 18th, 2024, and then transscribed and edited.

After more than 15 months of war, there are 25 million on the brink of hunger, more than 10 million people displaced. Credible estimates now give a death toll of up to 150,000, but the numbers could be even greater. The military factions are blocking food deliveries. It is a war of military and militias against the people who made a revolution. Still, the survival of the neighbourhood committees is essential for any attempt of delivery and distribution of aid.

Sudan’s neighbouring countries, like Egypt, Ethiopia, and Chad do fear the revolutionary spirit, and this is the main reason why they support the belligerent parties and are prolonging the war. Especially UAE is interested in clearing the territory by expulsion, extracting the gold, and starving the revolutionary population.

Yes, it may seem that the Resistance Committees and the Revolutionary Charter are just history. But for us, these Neigbourhood- and Resistance Committees are World Heritage. If there should be an African Spring in the near future, be it in Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, or in Egypt or Tunisia again, the Back reference the the Sudanese experience will be essential.

This is why we think that this interview is a contribution not only to history, but for the future of revolutionary movmements, which will necessarily come from the grassroots.

^{Omdurman, the office of the Banat Neighbourhood Committee became a cemetery}

How the RCs Came Up

Our first question is how the idea and the process of building committees like neighbourhood committees and Resistance Committees (RCs) came up? This topic might be interesting also for movements in other places in the world. This is why we should not only discuss about the high times of the RCs, but also about the beginnings, the problems, and the commitment which was necessary to get things in motion. So the first question is, how did the committees start?

Let me just answer how I actually lived this. My story and the other stories, like, for example, in our neighbourhood since 2012. There were some marches here and there because of the economic conditions that emerged after the independence of the South. And then there was the culmination of that in 2013 uprising. And during that period, it just erupted without planning.

There were so many marches in 2012^[1], but sporadic here and there one day and another day. They were all called by the political parties, the Communist Party and other parties, different coalitions, and most of those marches were outside of the neighbourhoods. So mostly we went there as students and we met in those places. Before 2013, you know, they were cracking on us very heavily. We used to just march for like ten, 15 minutes and then run away. We had no concept against the police violence.

In 2013, in our neighbourhood, there were just you and your friends, and we knew each other anyway. We were just defending the area.

Then in 2013 it started just spontaneously. There was no planning for this. But we were able to hold back the police from going into our neighbourhood for some days. And this was really a new experience for us. We felt that we were powerful and this was very different from the other marches, because in our neighbourhood, you don't have those people who normally come from the political parties and the like, the seasoned activists that are guiding the marches and tell you what to do and so on. In our neighbourhood, there were just you and your friends, and we knew each other anyway. We were just defending the area. The government and the police were very hostile. So we wanted to get in contact with other neighbourhoods around us, just to know when the police were coming towards us, to know in advance, because the police would come in from one side or another. So we needed to get in contact with those people. We needed to know people whom we could actually trust.

You know, our social networks are not big. First of all, you know, in Sudan, your friends are from the neighbourhood. That's always. But if you manage to go into high school, your friends will also be from the locality. The primary education is just in your neighbourhood, but the secondary education is in the locality. So you get to know people from the locality, if you go to high school. And if you go to university, you get to know people from all over Sudan. So those are our social networks, and so we used those networks. We also went to some political activists from political parties in our neighbourhood. We knew them, people from the Umma Party, from the Baath Party and also from the Communist Party. And we told them that we wanted to get in contact with activists in the other areas. But in our case, they were reluctant to get us in contact with the others. I think they wanted to keep those connections as secure as possible. At that moment, I was really angry about their response. But later I understood, because, you know, at the end of 2013, most of the people that we went to and whom we asked for connections., they got arrested for many months. They were in danger, you know.

Then we got in contact with the other neighbourhoods, mostly from our networks of higher education, like secondary school and university. But, in the neighbourhood, there was no committee in the sense of a committee. There were those let's say circles of 10 to 15 people. And in the same neighbourhood, there were three, five, seven of these circles, and they were in contact with each other. Like one ot these circles was basically people who played football together every weekend. And they were living together, and we played against them from time to time. So we kept connections with them. But we never had a committee together.

It was completely different from 2012, because it was based on the neighbourhood. There were no activists from outside or seasoned politicians. There was much trust.

Now as to the shape of the committee as a committee. The contacts started in the city when it was safe to get in contact with everyone. And after the crackdown of the 2013 uprising, those connections have remained. And I think that many of the political activists tried to enrich those networks and to keep them going. And I also got into such activities in 2016, like trying to support many of those circles and to train them to be committees and so forth. But they were small. Then in 2018, when the masses started again, there was this base. And then it went very fast, because we had this base. It was completely different from the previous bases in the 2012 and so forth, because it was based on the neighbourhood. There were no activists from outside or seasoned politicians. There was much trust. They had very strong tactics to defend themselves, so they could last for long. And one last thing I would say is that with those networks in the neighbourhood, it was the first time for me to have this activism with people like the non-regular, unorganised labour and all the people like in the barbershop, in the neighbourhood. Many of the people in my neighbourhood are working in the industrial area as free labourers, let's say, freelancers. I had not been able to get in touch with them in 2012, for example, because we were moving as students. But since 2013, because it was the neighbourhood now, it was a different circle and it was more powerful. There was much trust and there was much in common between the people. We could do many things together and yeah, it was different.

So back to the question, how the committees started. In some of the documentation of the political parties you can find that they wanted to work on this, but it were the actual conditions on the ground that enabled this. It started in 2015. And the conditions flourished in 2018, because it was way more spread not just in Khartoum, not only in the areas of 2013. And from there it took on. And then it got its shape in the Sit-In. So the first meetings of the committee as a committee with all the members and so on, happened inside the sit-in area. Before the Sit-In you could have two, three, four, five groups from the same neighbourhood, but they didn’t actually have serious connections or contact with each other because everyone was working in his circle of confidence. But after the Sit-In, you know, now we had committees of plus 40, 50 members.

Services or Politics?

Maybe that, at the beginning of the formation of the committees, they were not playing this political role? Obviously they were providing services, like gas, cooking, organising bakeries and so on?

No, I think it was political from the beginning. But what developed throughout the time was their political independence from the coalition and the FFC.^[2] But they were political from the beginning. I do remember that, for example, during the Sit-In, FFC were asking the RCs^[3] in our areas because they wanted to organise some events and workshops and public speeches in the neighbourhoods. They didn’t do this through their political party members because those had way less penetration in the community than what the committees could do. But the committees decided what the event would be like. There would be a representative from the committee to talk about the revolution, to talk about themselves as the committees, apart from the FFC, although we were in coalition, and so forth. So it was political from the beginning. Or take the organisational development of the committees, for example, in our area Karari^[4]. There was like this organisation that brings all the committees together. It was like a coordination body for all the committees in Karari, which is one of the seven localities of the capital, Khartoum. So, when this organisation came up, it was a political struggle against the FFC, and FFC didn't want to have this organisation coming up. And there were many meetings between the representatives of the FFC and more than 50 representatives of the committees. The committees were saying, yeah, we are in coalition with the FFC, but we will not have a political voice only coming from the FFC. We want to make our own coordination body to talk in the name of the committees, and we will name someone to be our contact with the FFC, and so forth.

The committees were saying, yeah, we are in coalition with the FFC, but we will not have a political voice only coming from the FFC. We want to make our own coordination body to talk in the name of the committees

So it was political from the beginning, but the political themes of the committees were starting from the needs of the neighbourhoods. And this is a point of strength. It wasn't a weakness like non-political. Working on the gas, the food, the transportation and so forth. They were not just working on servicing those things. For example, in our area in Karari, when there were austerity measures in the transitional period, and the gas prices went up. The government sent a letter to the coordination body of Karari asking them to help in organising the distribution of the fuel. But the committees and the coordination body decided that this is not the policy we would be working on. And they drafted a paper on how they thought the fuel should be distributed in the area, and not just distribution, but also the pricing of the public transportation and so forth, and what they could help with in that. So it was political from the beginning, but they always say that when there is a crisis, humanitarian work is the work to access the community. But it is for a political cause. So we had the Covid. We had austerity during the transitional period and now we have the war. But it was always political. And the culmination came with the charters and with the full independence from FFC afterwards.

The Role of the Students

Please let us come back to the relationship between students and ordinary people in the neighbourhoods, because the students, as I think, had an important role. They knew people from all over the town, and the whole country, and at the same time, maybe they didn't loose their contacts to the neighbourhoods they lived in. And at the same time they had their discussions in the university campus. So could you elaborate on this, the relationship of ordinary people with students, and academics and professionals?

Yeah. The students were always the blamed ground for politics in Sudan even before this, for example during the 1990s, when the political parties were not able to work in public, they were able to work through students. So now the same thing happened. Because of the long dictatorship period of the Islamic rule in Sudan, there was this detachment between the political parties and ordinary people. So you got involved in politics only either in the campus of the university, or if you already came from a political family. These were the ways to get into politics.

In 2012 and 2013 the marches came into the neighbourhood, and there was austerity. The people had their incentive to go against the government. Like I remember the first incident in my neighbourhood. Some guys from the neighbourhood were organising the breakfast. It's not very early in our culture for breakfast. So it's midday and they do it together. They go and buy the stuff and they eat together. And the price was very high. So they decided, okay, this is too high. They went into the street. There were seven of them. The police came. They got into a fight with the police and that became their cause. Now it was the feeling that it was their cause. But they heard nothing from a political parties. It was their cause against the police, because they were very brutal against them and against their families, and the tear-gas inside the neighbourhood, and so forth.

There were some expectations that you had some experience or some networks, and that was true. This helped first of all in organising them

The role played by the students. I had already graduated by then. I graduated in 2008, but I was a student. So I had those networks of people from different localities, people from political parties, people like activists from different civil society organisations. I came to know about those networks in university. So the guys knew that you were a guy from the university, so they asked you for specific things, like, for example, to be honest, one of the times in 2013, they asked me how to make, you know, the Molotov. I don't know if you know it. Yeah. I didn’t know how to make it, but they said you are a student of University of Khartoum. How can it be that you don't know how to make it? So there were some expectations that you had some experience or some networks, and that was true. This helped first of all in organising them, like the distribution of the tasks for example. And also if there were needs of coordination with other areas, as I said, and later on, before the sit-in and during the sit-in, also the coordination of logistics. Contacts, writing, such things, you know, and you find different people with different skills. Not all the students have all the same skills. But all those skills were originating from student life, because it had been the only politically active arena in the society for a decade or so before 2013. But the students wouldn't have done anything without, you know, those freelancers. This is the thing that made 2013 and 2018 something completely different from anything else. You know, the students and the unions, they were always trying to do something against the government, but they were not able to do anything without this non-formal labour. Yeah. And without the shape of the committee.

Participation of Women

Let us ask one more question about this period of the beginning. It is about the gender relationship. What about self-organisation of women? And what about the communications between women and men in these early structures and then later when the whole thing really flourished during and after the Sit-In?

Yeah. You know that the gender issue is quite diverse in Sudan. I think the experiences you will find are quite diverse. That's why I'm very hesitant in generalising that. But in my experience, in my area, one of the most prominent members of the committee is a woman, who was active since 2013 and still is. Uh, she's 50 plus years old. And now in our area, no one knows her name any more because we call her Om-Althouar. The mother of the revolutionaries. Because she was very central to organising us because she's a little bit older, but she was very confrontational. I remember that she had a big fight with someone because he tried to protect us. Like, you know, the police came and he opened the door for us to go in, and she said, why did you let them in? If they start running now, they will not do anything. Let them face the police. And one of us is her son. And during the shooting, he took a bullet in his neck. So in our locality, we had those women of 50 plus. But also we had the younger, like in our age. And they were very helpful basically with the medical assistance when there were many injuries and so forth, but also when we needed to move something logistically. And if there were some problems or security difficulties, they would find their ways, they knew what to do around those things. So in every level, in every period, they were quite active. When this coordination body of Karari came into being, they were central in many of the positions and they were our representatives with the government, with the FCC. During the transitional period there were those service committees, which was a body that the government opened. And actually, they started to do their meetings in the mosques. And this was something completely new. You know, the mosque normally is segregated. You have places for men, places for women.

So in every level, in every period, women were quite active. When this coordination body of Karari came into being, they were central in many of the positions and they were our representatives with the government

So in those meetings in some of our committees in Karari, the representatives were women and, you know, even the elders of the area. The only problem which we saw now and then was when we needed to do meetings very late at night. But in my community we solved that easily, with meetings in houses. So if it was very late, we went to a house where the families of the women would be okay knowing that their ladies would be there. But this was different from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. In a neighbourhood connected socially already, there were no big problems. Most of the families are there for two generations now. We know each other in and out. Yeah, but if you go to other neighbourhoods that are like 30 to 20 years old, maybe they are not comfortable with letting their women around or something. You will find different stories from Khartoum, for example.

Finding a Political Voice

If you allow me to move to the Sit-In period and after the toppling down of Omar al-Bashir. What I want to ask, why did the RCs accept the Transitional Document? Obviously, it was very colonial, and it did not serve the themes of the Sudanese people who took it out to the streets.

Uh, first of all, I don't think they accepted or rejected, because they didn't have, let's say, their political tongue yet. If we look into the history, as I told you, the committee is in the sense of a committee that has 40 plus members getting its shape during the Sit-In time. So there were those meetings in the Sit-In and in the neighbourhood, discussing what the definition of the committee was, who should be in or who should be out, who decided if you were a revolutionary and would be accepted or not. There were those things and it took some time. During these early stages, and also until the early stages of the transitional period, there were the coordination bodies that collected many of the committees. So during this time there was all this organisational effort. So there was no front or a tongue that could talk in the name of committees or revolutionaries or anything like that by then.

In the beginning, informal powers were working way more efficiently, because there were no formal powers, as the organisational structure was not yet formulated

People were talking in the Sit-In and in the discussions in the Sit-In, and writing on social media. Informal powers were working way more efficiently, because there were no formal powers, as the organisational structure was not yet formulated. And even when this organisational form was formulated, in the early months of the transitional period, we had the form but we didn't have the political identity yet. I remember how it was in Karari in general. We started from what the FFC said that they would do during the transition period. About transitional justice, about the parliament and about the peace agreement and so forth, and then all the marches from August until December 2019, all those marches were just asking the government to fulfil what they had already written in the documents of the FFC.

So you see, here again, we didn't have complete political independence. We had the execution, independence in the sense that we decided when to do the march, what to say in the march. But actually, we were never saying anything that hadn’t been said by the FFC previously. And this went on until December. And in December there was a very critical march. The idea was that, now we needed to stop and see. We counted what this government had done from what they had promised. And from that moment the debates started internally, formally, in the meetings about the position of the FFC and the government. There was a big meeting which was open for the committees of the whole locality. And at the end of this discussion, there were two choices. Either we were to overthrow the government right away or to work to overthrow the government if they didn’t make the parliament in some period. The position was already against the government. But some of the people wanted to give the government some period to deliver on the parliament. Other people said, oh, they didn't deliver till now, they will never do. So those were the stages of independence until coordination bodies were established for all committees, and this was on the 21st of October 2021, which was only four days before the coup. There was a big march, and the march was fully in coordination between all the committees. They were fully against the FFC and the government.

^{Demo October 30, 2021, 5 days after the coup}

I think it was obvious that FFC was hijacking the revolution, starting from creating these other committees called change and service committees, like an alternative to the RCs, in order to empty the neighbourhood committees from it is revolutionary meaning.

Yeah, but to have a political struggle against the government is something completely different than saying you need to topple the government. Those are different things. We had those struggles against the government, for example, even for administrative law, as a major administrative body in the locality. How it should be shaped. We had a sit-in in our locality and through that we forced the government to bring out a list of administrates that were there. And then we decided we'd name the alternatives. And we insisted on this and the committees were strong enough to reach this agreement with the FFC that whoever they wanted to name in those new committees of service and in the administrative locality, the resistance committees should approve him, that he is not part of the previous regime, that he has no history of corruption, that he is well accepted from his own locality and so forth. So there was this struggle, but this struggle was localised, in some topics, in some areas. It was a struggle against the government and we were pushing in this way and we went on marches and so forth. But this was something completely different from saying we will topple the government, because toppling the government, you will need to answer what is the alternative. And that was the big question that led to the Charter.

We'll come to the charter. But before the charter was introduced, there was knowledge production in the market, and it has been manifested in the slogans at that time, if you remember.

Yeah. The slogans. It comes organically. I think the natural course of things is that when the Charter came, it made use of what the committees and the marches had said previously and that's just normal and natural. But the Charter came in a completely different situation.

The Revolutionary Charter

OK let us now talk about 2022. Perhaps we might ask you how the political structure grew and how you started with the charter and the coordination on a sort of nationwide level. And what could you do and which were the means to overcome the differences between various situations all over the country.

Okay. So, for the first part of the question about the the development of the organisation and formation of the committees - as I said, those coordination bodies started from the Sit-In and then also after the beginning of the transitional period, because by then there were those marches asking the government to deliver on what they had said previously. Everything that has to do with the committees comes from a concrete necessity, not from an idea. So, the concrete necessity were those marches, that needed to be coordinated in a broader sense by the committees. Before the Sit-In itself, you needed just those cells in the neighbourhood, and they would get their planning from the SPA^[5]. They would say, okay, this day we will have a march, the next day at night you should do this and so forth. The committee had a more executive role. But after the dispersal of the Sit-In, and during the transitional period, they became independent in the execution of the marches, so they needed to decide whether they would do a march and when? What would be the route? What would be the slogans of the march and so on. And this needed coordination among multiple committees. During that time we started with those coordination bodies. It started with just one office, which we called Medan, which was the office for, let's say, marches or physical activities. So you had representatives from the different committees. They only had the mandate to plan and execute the marches. Any other activity was done separately by each committee in its area.

Coordination bodies: It started with just one office, which we called Medan, which was the office for, let's say, marches or physical activities. Later, those coordination bodies started to have representatives who could discuss the answers and the questions which were needed to have a stand against

Later, for some time, the committees had to have some political stand against different political events happening in the country, for example, like the peace talks, also the Hajj. The way that the police were still facing the marches. And also the delay of the parliament and so forth. So they needed to start writing and position themselves. And by then, those coordination bodies started to have representatives who could discuss the answers and the questions which were needed to have a stand against. These questions then would go through the representatives to the RCs, and they would do the discussions. They would decide and their positioning would be communicated through the representatives in the meeting of the representatives. And then came the need also for the media. We needed a unitary media front. And through this came out the coordination bodies, which connected multiple committees together. This was during the first period, let's say in the transitional period. And then, after the coup in October 2021, the first Charter came out from the RC of a rural area called Mayrino. Mayrino published a charter right away. I remember, in late November. They published it, but they also sent it to all the coordination bodies of the committees all over Sudan. And they asked them to get engaged and sign into the Charter or deliver their comments on the Charter if they wanted.

So we decided to build one Charter for Khartoum and then go and discuss it with the other states

And from that moment, I remember, for example in Khartoum, in early January, there was a meeting for the Medan office, which was the coordination body for the marches, for the whole state of Khartoum. And they started discussing and some of them said, ah, by the way, we are working internally to make a charter. And others said they too were doing so, and at that moment they came to know that there were almost eight charters in Khartoum only being developed by different coordination bodies. And we decided maybe we should unify our discussions because everyone of them had this plan. So we decided to build one charter for Khartoum and then go and discuss it with the other states. And for this purpose the coordination body of the state named representatives from every coordination body in each of the cities in the state of Khartoum. And this, let's say, office, made by the representatives from those places, they were the ones who were discussing the Charter.

They put all this in a draft, they discussed it together as representatives, and sent it back to the committees. They took the time to discuss comments, and sent it back again. Then you do the same thing again. You put the differences. You discuss the differences. You propose a way to mitigate the differences, you send it back and forth and so on. So this was the mechanism

So they started by bringing out all those drafts. And then it was a really simple process. Bring all the drafts, list all the topics that were mentioned in all the drafts, regardless of the position or the context. What were the topics that were discussed? Then there was a table on each topic. What was the position of every committee? Some committees didn't say anything about this. Some committees said this, some committees said that and so on. They put it all in draft zero. They exposed the differences like maybe some topics had different answers from different committees or some topics were not discussed by other committees and so forth. They put all this in a draft, they discussed it together as representatives, and sent it back to the committees. They took the time to discuss comments, and sent it back again. Then you do the same thing again. You put the differences. You discuss the differences. You propose a way to mitigate the differences, you send it back and forth and so on. So this was the mechanism. But in one topic there was a different mechanism that was used, which was the survey. It was about the topic of the parliament. There were different proposals of how the topic of parliament, revolution or parliament, would be formulated.

So then the representatives decided that they would make a survey, and if they would reach above 70% of agreement on one of the options, they would put that option on the charter. If not so, they would not put any position because they knew that there would be other rounds with the different states. And so the survey was done. We had so many problems with the communication and the internet, but overall it was above 2000 answers from committee members who had answered the survey. And then the final result came with less than 70% in favour of any of the options. That's why the charter of Khartoum doesn't say how the parliament would be formulated. And many people took this as a critique point. You didn't even say how you would build the parliament, although you were talking about this all the time, against the transitional government. Yes, we didn't because we were not Sudan, we were just Khartoum. And we were not able to agree on this. And we knew that we would be discussing this with different states in Sudan.

So that was how the charter that I was somewhat involved in had been built. I am talking about the charter of the state of Khartoum, which is called the Charter of the People's Revolution. And then there was the charter of Madani.^[6] You know, the states were way faster than Khartoum. Khartoum had way more middle class, way more political inclines and so on. So deliberation took way more time. And everything should be very rigid in terms of organisational structure and so on. But in other areas outside Khartoum, there was way more cohesion and homogeneity. So when we finished in Khartoum, there were like seven states which had already done their collective discussions about a unified charter. There was Madani, Kordofan^[7] and so forth. And they already had this charter of multiple states and they were waiting for the big one which was missing, the one of Khartoum.

So we finally reached a stage on the national level, in late 2022, maybe October, November. In Kartoum there was the same process again, as has been described before

Then the second round started for the Charter of Sudan. I wasn't involved in the early stages. I was involved way later, after it was formulated. I was just involved in the post discussions because when you do the charter, then you have to discuss it with your locality, not only the committee members, and you have to do debates and so on. So we finally reached a stage on the national level, in late 2022, maybe October, November. In Kartoum there was the same process again, as has been described before. In Khartoum we have this heavy burden of political movement and middle class and so on, there was very much a sense of the need for political independence from the political parties and FFC. This was like the definition of identity of the committees in Khartoum. We were independent of those political parties because of what they did in the transitional period. That's why in Khartoum, the main idea was that we would never even discuss whether to open the charter to other parties or not. So it was the charter of the RCs first. […] A later section in the charter came up which is called the general terms of the charter. It says that this charter is open for every civil society organisation, for every political organisation and so forth. But signing into this charter is not a pathway to power, and it will not get you any, let's say, position in the parliament or the transitional government and so on. And it puts many restrictions on how you can claim a representation of a political party or any civil organisation because we have those experiences during the FFC with people who say we have this civil organisation and we want to be part of whatever. So there are strict conditions about that.

Let us pass on to the early months of 2023, before the war. Do you think the political process with the Charter was doing well, in the sense of the revolutionary transformation? And do you think there was something like a race between the revolutionary movement and the generals?

Yeah, this chapter was something really challenging. Generally I think that everything that goes wrong for the committees comes from dark points in our consciousness about the overall social problem. For example, we at the centre in Khartoum didn’t know much about the actual social difficulties in different rural areas or in the North or in Darfur and in those places. We knew little about this. And we started to know more during the transitional period. You know, there was a tour for the committees of Khartoum. They organised this tour. They split in two groups and went on two routes through Sudan, visiting all the states, getting in touch with all the committees. And they made some organic contacts and they started to know about new things. There were so many things happening in different places in Sudan and it was a nice thing that the committees were able to get the news first hand from people who were actually driving those struggles in those areas. So this was, you know, also a route in developing our consciousness about the overall societal problems in Sudan. And also the people in the rural areas started to know what was happening in Khartoum, way more better than what they used to know before. And this was going forward during the time.

FFC used the void, they didn’t want competition in terms of politics, because politics for them is a relationship with the international community

When 2023 came, we had the Charter. And we had the streets. But we didn't have the political representation to talk with the international community. That's why the FFC politicians felt safe. They were the ones who could talk to Volker^[8] and to the big countries. Volker wanted to talk to the committees, but they knew that there was no one who could claim representation of committees. So, FFC used the void, they didn’t want competition in terms of politics, because politics for them is a relationship with the international community. Local politics for them is that you don't need to actually gain the people, you need just to cripple them so they don't bother you. They didn't make the lawyers’ document about the constitution in response to the Charter, as has been argued, but in their own course of formulating the new government.

Those positions from the RCs against the RSF were fuelling the tensions. We wanted a coalition which would dismantle the RSF. But we didn't have the political power to build this coalition faster than the route that the FCC was taking with the international community

But in a way the RCs played a role in bringing up this war and not in a bad way, I think. On their marches the RCs were always calling for the dismantlement of the RSF^[9] militia. And this was the core point between the FFC and the RCs. We were saying we need to dismantle the RSF and they were saying, no, you are silly. This can never, should never happen. And you know, all the critique and the position of the RCs against the RSF was reflected inside the military. There were many small clashes here and there between the military and the RSF. And those clashes did not come from the central chain of command in the military. It was really a resentment inside the military against the RSF. They had problems with the RSF for many reasons, but it was also fueled by the arguments and the public pressure from the RCs. The rank and file people in the military were very strongly bonded in their neighbourhoods and with the social networks. And so I would claim that those positions from the RCs against the RSF were fuelling the tensions. During that time, Burhan^[10] wasn't in favour of getting in conflict with the RSF, but the RCs were pressing to dismantle the RSF.

Politically, we were thinking that through the Charter, we needed to make a big coalition. And with this coalition, we would build a new government with a political program, part of which would be to dismantle the RSF. But we didn't have the political power to build this coalition faster than the route that the FCC was taking with the international community. And because the FFC wanted to do everything just fast enough to keep control, they lit the match on the problem between the RSF and the military.

The Charter has a chapter with the concept of organising big marches, going to the parliament, installing the representatives. Do you think this was realistic, taking power by Marches of the Million?

For the committees, if you consider the age median and also the struggles they have been through, nothing for them is impossible. Yes. I'm not talking about myself, but this is quite possible. I think it was realistic, but not in this theatrical way that now was proposed. To be honest, I think this is a weak point in the representation of the Charter. Not in the way, but how it actually was delivered. If you read the Charter you must keep in mind the workshops that were done by the Committee of the Charter. You would find them saying that this process should be done locally. So in your locality you should have meetings to decide what to represent, who your representatives should be, and then those representatives would be in contact with the representatives of the other areas and so forth. And then when this culminates to the third level, so you have the locality, the state, and then you take this to the national level. If you come from the state level, then you will have enough political power to set up marches big enough. So they go to the legislative building. It's something just yet theatrical. But the point is that you can crack down the state apparatus itself to show where the actual power lies, and then there will be some transition of power, as it always happens in Sudan. When the top of the authority feels that the authority is going down, then transition happens in a way or another.

The problem was the time. Because everything was heated up already and every other trajectory was moving fast, the FFC was moving fast, the RSF was moving fast, the international community was moving fast. And we had set goals to ourselves that needed much work, and a high level of cohesion

So, realistically, it was possible if it was done. Coming from the localities as it was planned. But the problem is not easy. The problem was the time. Because everything was heated up already and every other trajectory was moving fast, the FFC was moving fast, the RSF was moving fast, the international community was moving fast. And we had set goals to ourselves that needed much work, and a high level of cohesion. And I think this is the main point that we were hit by. You know, the cohesion. The FFC, as I told you previously, didn't want to gain the hearts or the minds of the people. They just wanted to make them unable to work together, and destroy the cohesion. So our goals were not unrealistic, but it was already a long-shot, given the conditions that we had. But if, for example, we had had the conditions of June, July 2019, I would say we could have done it in one week, literally.

The RCs During the War

Let us ask about the situation of war. What has happened to the RCs? How did their role change during the war? And what is left after more than one year of war?

Okay. What's happening to the RCs now? It is new in its intensity, but not in its type. I mean, whenever we had a social crisis, for example, the austerity measures during the transitional period, or the Covid, the committees made those emergency rooms. By the way, the emergency rooms that are working now, they originated from the Covid period. When there is a conflict like a social crisis, the committees indulge into those social services. And this takes much of their power from political representation. And they look like humanitarian groups to the people who look into the political arena with this classic lens of politics, in contrast to humanitarian, they feel like the RCs are mutating or they are dying and they're resurfacing and so forth. But in the committees, to be honest, they feel they are the same people doing the same thing. In each and every stage, they represent the dire needs of their immediate society. So when this war came, most of the committees started working on the humanitarian agenda. At the beginning of the war, they had their political voices. Still, it wasn't as weak as now, but the reason why it went low was not only because they worked in the humanitarian field, but because of two factors.#

In the committees, to be honest, they feel they are the same people doing the same thing. In each and every stage, they represent the dire needs of their immediate society. They are still there, struggling under those conditions

The first thing is, people are scattered. And, you know, the RCs are quite related to the locality. People meet. Formal and informal meetings are the way the committees work. Now, the committees need to work through Zoom and WhatsApp and the like. And this is definitely not as efficient, you know, because the committee has a very low level of representation. It relies on deliberation and deliberation in big numbers. Needs the presence, not this tele operations. So this affected the way they can act, because now they are scattered in different localities.

The other thing, the communication itself is difficult, because, me and others, everyone is looking for safety for himself, his family, especially in the first month. And even if they find safety, they try to find a job to have some livelihood. So this was a big burden. Also, for the people who remained in areas, it wasn't easy to work in politics. Politics is way more dangerous than the devil himself. Like I was in my locality till the end of May. And I was arrested by the military intelligence. And the only accusation they had was that I'was a member of the RCs. [...] It was very risky to say that you are a committee member. And the same happens to the others in the RSF-controlled areas. So, in conclusion, I would say what happened to the RCs is that you can't see them. But I tell you that they keep their connection and activities through humanitarian efforts.

And they discuss politics, but there are still the obstacles with this low level activity or communication. It takes longer, the deliberations take longer, and it is no longer useful to say I'm with this or against that. You have to say what you want to do and what you are working on. And this is happening. You know, there were so many meetings before the war reached Al Gezira, but after that, things went into disaster. They are still moving but slower. And every locality has a different situation. In conclusion: They are still there, struggling under those conditions.

The two warring parties are targeting RCs members and they are hunting them down, RSF as well as SAF^[11]. In the light of this: Do you see this war as a counter-revolutionary act?

Realistically and from my own experience, I cannot say that the SAF is targeting RCs. Because I see the political gain that the leadership of the military is seeking from having good relationships with humanitarian groups, and the RCs, if they find a way, because they want to show themselves as a force that has a broad support. At least they don't want to be seen as targeting the committees. The point is that to be realistic with the military, there are factions that have a tendency to target the committees, and there are factions that would like to counter this. I'm saying that there are factions going this way and other factions going that way, and we are trying to navigate this. Because it's a survival mode, anyway.

No Chance in the Peace Process

I think we should talk about the peace process. Do you think there's any chance for the RCs? Or let's, put it the other way round. Governments like EU governments have a tendency to affiliate with FFC politicians and generals and this means no good perspective for Sudan, and it would be important to persuade politicians to take into account also the civil actors on the ground, especially the RCs. Do you see a chance for the RCs to be part of the negotiation process, which will go on sooner or later?

No, I don't see a chance in the negotiation processes that are bound to happen, which the Taqaddum^[12] and the international community is working towards. Because, as we all know, in the counterrevolutionary playbook, the first tactic is the absorption, right? Not confrontation. So I think all this is an absorption process and we've seen this since the inception of the Taqaddum. They tried not to bring in the committees and to genuinely take into consideration their position or their ideas. No, they are trying hard to find, or even to generate false representation.

Anyone who has no contact with the international community will have no influence on the political future of Sudan. So I don't think we will have a chance because it's not an inclusive process

And they say it frankly, it is like the train is departing and anyone who has no contact with the international community will have no influence on the political future of Sudan. So I don't think we will have a chance because it's not an inclusive process. It's just a manufacturing of representation. And because of that, I don't think we will have a chance.