• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays
 | Dahlia Abdelilah Baasher Sudan Untitled nd | MR Online Dahlia Abdelilah Baasher (Sudan), Untitled, n.d.

A language of blood has gripped our world: The Twentieth Newsletter (2025)

By Vijay Prashad (Posted May 16, 2025)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on May 15, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |
Human Rights, Imperialism, Inequality, WarAfrica, Global, SudanNewswireTricontinental Newsletter

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Over the past weeks, international focus has no doubt been on the escalation between India and Pakistan, which we will write more about once the dust settles. Though none of the armies crossed the border or the Line of Control, concern is nonetheless understandable: both countries wield nuclear weapons in their arsenal. Now, there has effectively been a return to the ceasefire of 1948, which has lingered in the decades since without a proper and full peace treaty. International attention has also rightly remained on the genocide in Palestine, with Israelis tightening the total siege on Gaza, perhaps as vengeance for Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza on 27 January 2025 in total defiance of the genocidal war.

Meanwhile, some conflicts, like the ongoing war in Sudan, have been almost utterly forgotten. That is the focus of this newsletter, built through conversations with humanitarian workers and Sudanese political figures. The argument that this war is bewildering and that there are no easy explanations for it is a reflection of the racism of our reportage that sees conflicts in Africa as inexplicable and interminable. There are, of course, causes for the war, which means that there are ways for it to end. One must set aside the language of blood that has gripped our world and find instead the political details within which reside the possibility of peace.

Rashid Diab Sudan Untitled 2016

Rashid Diab (Sudan), Untitled, 2016.

Two years ago, the fragile but hopeful peace in Sudan was broken when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—both arms of the Sudanese state—went to war with each other. The second anniversary of this war was commemorated on 11 April 2025 with a ghastly RSF attack on the Zamzam refugee camp in North Darfur. As Hawa, a mother of three who survived the attack, recounted, ‘bombs were falling on the hospital… Those of us who survived left with only our children on our backs’.

By 16 April, the camp—which had once housed half a million refugees—was destroyed, leaving hundreds dead and the rest to flee to nearby El Fasher and Tawila. In two years of fighting, at least 150,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million—over one fifth of Sudan’s population of 51 million—displaced. This ongoing catastrophe appears utterly senseless to most Sudanese people.

Everything appeared differently on 11 April 2019, six years before the Zamzam massacre, when longtime President Omar al-Bashir was deposed by a mass movement and, eventually, the military. The protests against al-Bashir’s government first began in December 2018 over inflation and an escalating social crisis. Unable to answer to the people, al-Bashir could not sustain his rule—even by force—particularly when the Sudanese military turned against him (as the Egyptian military had turned against their country’s president, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011). Al-Bashir was overthrown by what later became known as the Transitional Military Council, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan with the assistance of Lieutenant General Mohamed ‘Hemedti’ Hamdan Dagalo.

Galal Yousif Sudan A Peaceful Revolution 2021

Galal Yousif (Sudan), A Peaceful Revolution, 2021.

The groups that led the protests on the ground formed a coalition called Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC). The FFC included the Sudanese Communist Party, National Consensus Forces, Sudanese Professional Association, Sudan Revolutionary Front, Women of Sudanese Civic and Political Groups, and many Sudanese resistance or neighbourhood committees. Pressured by FFC-led protests, the military signed an agreement in mid-2019 to oversee a transition to a civilian government.

With the assistance of the African Union, the Transitional Sovereignty Council was set up, composed of five military and six civilian members. The council appointed Abdalla Hamdok (born in 1956) as the new prime minister and Nemat Abdullah Khair (born in 1957) as the chief justice. Hamdok, a quiet diplomat who had done very important work at the Economic Commission for Africa, seemed well suited for his role as a transitional prime minister. Khair, a lifelong judge who joined the protest movements against al-Bashir, struck the right tone as a competent head of the judiciary. The door to a new future seemed to open for Sudan.

AbuObayda Mohamed Sudan March of Millions 2021

Abu’Obayda Mohamed (Sudan), March of Millions, 2021.

But, before long, Sudan fell prey to the pressures of its own history. In 2021, after several failed coups, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took power, ostensibly to defend the transition but in reality to bring in al-Bashir’s people back from isolation and into government. Revolutions are frequently interrupted by returns of the old regime, whose grip on the armed forces and on society is never so easily shrugged off. The two military men—al-Burhan and Hemedti—knew that any pursuit of justice against the government of al-Bashir would strike them hard, since they had been the hammer of his regime (Hemedti’s forces, known colloquially as the Janja’wid—or ‘devils on horseback’—were implicated in human rights violations during al-Bashir’s campaign in Darfur). Equally importantly, the two men and their coterie had material interests at stake, including control over the Sudanese gold mines in Darfur and Kordofan.

With men such as these, fear of the gibbet and hunger for greater bounty are paramount. A genuine transfer of power requires a complete break with the old society, which is difficult to achieve unless the military collapses or is thoroughly reconstructed in the image of the new society rather than with the elements of the old. Both al-Burhan and Hemedti pushed against this transition and—with swift repression against the mass movements, especially trade unions and communists—secured power in Khartoum.

Reem Aljeally Sudan Entwined 2022

Reem Aljeally (Sudan), Entwined, 2022.

When a gaggle of ruffians forms a group for any country, it should worry all its people. In 2021, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States formed the ‘QUAD for Sudan’ with the alleged purpose—they announced—of returning the country to democracy. Sudan sat on the knife’s edge of geopolitical intrigue as accusations began to fly about how the counter-revolutionary military in Sudan had begun to develop close relations with Russia. In 2019, al-Bashir discussed a deal that would have allowed Russia to build a naval base on the Red Sea, which would have given the country a foothold on the African continent. The fall of al-Bashir jeopardised the base’s existence, which was again reopened when his old team returned to power. This brought Sudan into the crosshairs of the growing conflict between the West and Russia, as well as among the Gulf Arab monarchies.

When a country gets caught up in other countries’ entanglements, its own problems become hard to discern. Within the ruling clique of the military and the al-Bashir remnants, a disagreement began to swell over the integration of the armed forces and the division of the spoils. On the surface, they seemed to be arguing about the timeline for a return to civilian government, but in fact the dispute was about military power and control over resources.

Salah Elmur Sudan The Road to the Fish Market 2024

Salah Elmur (Sudan), The Road to the Fish Market, 2024.

These internal power struggles eventually boiled over into the 2023 civil war, an inevitable struggle that has all the hallmarks of a proxy war, with the SAF backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the RSF backed by the United Arab Emirates, and other outside actors pulling strings behind the scenes. Talks continue here and there, but they are not moving forward at all. The war seems to have its own logic, with the SAF’s 300,000 troops unable to make major gains against 100,000 highly motivated RSF soldiers. Endless resources from gold sales and outside support could keep this war going on forever, or at least until most of the world forgets that it is taking place (like the forgotten wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and along Myanmar’s frontiers).

The United Nations keeps making statements as various human rights groups plead for further pressure on both the SAF and RSF. But nothing has been forthcoming. Even the peace talks are divided: the Emiratis and the Egyptians are brokering some in Cairo while the Saudis held others in Jeddah and the British decided to create yet others in London. It is not clear who is talking to whom and about what.

Amna Elhassan Sudan Hair and Love 2019

Amna Elhassan (Sudan), Hair and Love, 2019.

The most active attempt to broker a peace deal came from the African Union (AU) in January 2024 with the creation of the High-Level Panel for Sudan (HLP-Sudan). The panel is chaired by Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, a Ghanian diplomat who was the African Union-United Nations special representative for Darfur and head of the AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) from 2012 to 2014. He knows both generals and is aware of the complexity of the situation in Sudan. The other two panel members are Dr. Specioza Wandira-Kazibwe, a former vice president of Uganda, and Ambassador Francisco Madeira of Mozambique, a former AU special representative to Somalia and head of the AU mission in that country. The HLP-Sudan is working with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—East Africa’s regional body—to get the two sides to the table for a ceasefire agreement and then ultimately a deal.

Importantly, the HLP-Sudan met with a range of people from across the country’s political spectrum, including members of political parties, the military, and civil society groups. Many of them were signatories of the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, which also included warring factions from Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. But the negotiators face a problem amongst the civilian sections. In October 2023, deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok formed the Taqaddum (Progress) coalition, which brought civilian voices to the negotiating table. However, over the course of the past two years, dissention broke out over allegiances to one side or the other, and so in February 2025 it dissolved. Hamdok then formed a new group, Sumoud (Resilience), which wants to remain equidistant from both sides. In March, al-Hadi Idris, a former member of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, formed the Ta’sis (Founding Sudan) coalition, which then nominated Hemedti of the RSF as its leader. Even the civilian groups effectively broke along the lines of the civil war.

Ibrahim El Salahi Sudan The Mosque 1964

Ibrahim El-Salahi (Sudan), The Mosque, 1964.

Last year, I spoke with Hamdok, who seemed exhausted by the long war and the futility of the negotiations. Ever the impassive diplomat, Hamdok felt that wars can exhaust armies and force them to negotiate. He knows his history: Sudan won its independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956 but then entered its first civil war between the north and the south until it ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement; the decade of peace that followed (helped along by oil revenues from the south) is now a distant memory; a second civil war between north and south ran from 1983 to 2005, which resulted in the 2011 referendum that partitioned the country into Sudan and South Sudan; finally, a terrible conflict in Darfur began in 2003 and slowly came to a conclusion in 2010, eventually leading to the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. At the time, the chant against al-Bashir was tisqut bas: ‘Just fall’. He fell. But the ground continues to shake.

Sudan’s people have not seen peace in generations. Hamdok’s hope is a hope against history, but for a future.

Warmly,

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Tricontinental Newsletter
Republicans move forward with plan to cut an estimated $715 billion in Medicaid funding
Obliterating the truth about Nazi defeat
  • Also by Vijay Prashad

    • Hundreds of millions are dying of hunger: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 30, 2025
    • How the International Monetary Fund underdevelopes Africa: The Twenty-First Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 23, 2025
    • A language of blood has gripped our world: The Twentieth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 16, 2025
    • Vietnam celebrates 50 years of the end of its colonial period by Vijay Prashad May 15, 2025
  • Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

    • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
    • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
    • Preface January 01, 2022
    • Introduction January 01, 2022
    • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
    • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
    • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

    Books By Vijay Prashad

    • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
    • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

    Monthly Review Essays

    • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
      Sam-Kee Cheng  | A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory smoking a cigar The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS dollar imperialism | MR Online

      1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

    Lost & Found

    • Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the New Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution
      Hugo Chávez  | Mural of Chávez in Caracas Univision | MR Online

      On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

    Trending

    • America is a scam
      America is a scam
    • The Trump regime has already cut $660 million nationwide for school lunch programs. Twelve million students are expected to lose food aid with new restrictions on schools accessing funds.
      Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more
    • Children in classroom, unidentified school, King County, Washington, 1909.
      Curriculum of Control: Capital’s Grip on U.S. History Education
    • The Phoenician Scheme
      Wes Anderson takes on Western Imperialism: ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ – Review
    • UNRWA USA’s Mara Kronenfeld
      ‘I’m not seeing the horror reflected in corporate media’
    • Citizens protest against U.S. attempts to control the Panama Canal, 2025. X/ @AlertaMundoNews
      Donald Trump and Panama: A return to 1903?
    • Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides at a recent news conference. Credit: Government of Alberta
      Alberta gov’t seeks to ban books to distract from scandals
    • Mural of Chávez in Caracas. (Univision)
      Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the New Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution
    • Closing of the electoral campaign march, May, 22, 2025 in Caracas-Venezuela.
      Immigration as a political weapon
    • Allies take place outside Glencore offices ahead of Annual General Meeting in Switzerland. Photo: screenshot
      Colonial mining fuels Israeli genocide: global protests target Glencore

    Popular (last 30 days)

    • Cpt. Ibrahim Traoré
      The rising star of Cpt. Ibrahim Traore – Burkina Faso’s spirit of Sankara
    • This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows six U.S. B-2 stealth bombers parked at Camp Thunder Cove in Diego Garcia on April 2, 2025. Though officially deployed for operations in Yemen, the presence of these nuclear-capable aircraft in striking range of Iran has raised concerns that the U.S. is quietly preparing to support a potential Israeli attack. Photo | AP
      Staging for a strike? U.S. quietly moves bombers as Israel prepares to hit Iran
    • Why does the US support Israel?
      Why does the U.S. support Israel? A geopolitical analysis with economist Michael Hudson
    • Wood gavel and open handcuffs symbolizing freeing judge decisions
      High Court opens door to police accountability
    • BAP demonstration in Washington DC gathered outside the Embassy of Burkina Faso, in defense of the Alliance for Sahel States, October 2024.
      Now is the time for all anti-imperialists and all justice loving people to stand unequivocally in defense of Burkina Faso
    • America is a scam
      America is a scam
    • Karl Marx
      150 years since the Critique of the Gotha Programme
    • President Maduro was unscathed from the attack (Hugoshi)
      ‘Neoliberal and authoritarian’? A simplistic analysis of the Maduro government that leaves much unsaid
    • Cristin Milioti in Black Mirror Season 7
      Black Mirror still absorbs
    • BRAIN DRAIN slideshare.net
      America’s great brain drain

    RSS MR Press News

    • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) May 19, 2025
    • LISTEN: Erald Kolasi on the podcast ‘Real Progressives’ (The Physics of Capitalism) May 19, 2025
    • On the brilliant Bob McChesney April 21, 2025
    • Andy Merrifield, author of Roses for Gramsci, at The Marxist Education Project April 20, 2025
    • NEW! ROSES FOR GRAMSCI by Andy Merrifield (EXCERPT) April 7, 2025

    RSS Climate & Capitalism

    • Carbon capture company emits more than it captures June 3, 2025
    • Some thoughts on Nature and the German Peasants’ War May 23, 2025
    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2025 May 19, 2025
    • Humans have observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor May 8, 2025
    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2025 April 10, 2025

     

    RSS Monthly Review

    • June 2025 (Volume 77, Number 2) June 1, 2025 The Editors
    • The Trump Doctrine and the New MAGA Imperialism June 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
    • The War in Ukraine—A History: How the U.S. Exploited Fractures in the Post-Soviet Order June 1, 2025 Thomas I. Palley
    • Big Pharma and Monopoly Capital: Four Dynamics in the Decline of Innovation June 1, 2025 Jia Liu
    • What’s going on June 1, 2025 Marge Piercy

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Creative Commons License

    Monthly Review Foundation
    134 W 29TH ST STE 706
    New York NY 10001-5304

    Tel: 212-691-2555