A revolutionary movement for democracy has taken hold in Sudan, led by young people


December 26, 20218:04 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
EYDER PERALTAT

A huge network of resistance committees has transformed public protest in Sudan, challenging the new junta.

EYDER PERALTA, HOST:

We're going to begin this hour with a remarkable protest movement on the African continent. That's my usual assignment, and I was recently in Sudan, a country that has seen huge change the past few years. Much of it has been driven by young people, who are on the streets again, following a military coup. There are only about 20 protesters standing in the middle of a dusty street in Khartoum. Rayan Nour is one of them. As cars zoom past, she's holding a handwritten sign. She's wearing a business suit and a bandana printed with little marijuana leaves.

So this is just a silent protest.

RAYAN NOUR: Exactly. You just have a sign.

PERALTA: What does your sign say?

NOUR: (Non-English language spoken) - the world is ruled by a woman who fights.

PERALTA: A woman on the streets, wearing pants, protesting, was unthinkable just a few years ago. Sudan is a country long governed by Islamic law, but a revolutionary movement for democracy has taken hold here. In 2019, mass protests forced Sudan's dictator Omar al-Bashir from power. A new military junta is again being challenged. Nour is one of the organizers.

NOUR: It's highly coordinated, and then you have so many committees to organize all these things - media, the field, making sure that these streets are barricaded.

PERALTA: Kholood Khair runs a think tank in Sudan. She says their whole lives, young people watched how the Islamist regime used a vast network of informers to keep Sudanese in check. And inevitably, Khair says, they learned.

KHOLOOD KHAIR: What the resistance committees have done is effectively take over that structure to use it for resistance. And that's why they were so effective in defeating - unseating Bashir in 2019.

PERALTA: Now in Sudan with little notice, tens of thousands of protesters can flood the streets. They paralyzed the country in hours and are confident this will ultimately dislodge the new junta and lead it to a democracy. It's worked before, they believe, so why wouldn't it work now?

KHAIR: And the vision is that politics actually takes place at the grassroots level and not in the sort of agreements and handshakes that are happening between senior officials.

PERALTA: At first, the movement was led by the highly educated - doctors, engineers, teachers - but they were easy targets for the government. So taking inspiration from the regime they hated, young people created resistance committees. Every block, every building now has a committee working independently to call people to the streets. As Nour and I talk, an older man gets close to listen to our conversation. Is he intelligence? I ask Nour.

NOUR: Well, it doesn't matter. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. But we're everywhere too.

PERALTA: We meet Nour again the day after the small protest.

NOUR: Hello.

PERALTA: How are you?

NOUR: I'm good. How are you?

PERALTA: She gets in the car wearing a different suit and her trademark bandana. This time, every resistance committee in Khartoum has decided to head toward the presidential palace. It's bound to be chaotic and violent.

NOUR: So you're just literally paralyzing the street.

PERALTA: The resistance committees are mostly run by young people like Nour. She says this generation was built for change.

NOUR: My mom always taught me to not let anyone take my rights away from me and for me to get that by my hand if I had to and not wait for anyone to get it for me.

PERALTA: That's how they toppled the dictator. When we start walking toward the presidential palace, barricades have already started going up. Older women are building them using pavers from the median.

NOUR: They have joined us. They weren't here. We were here. Like, the first protest - it was called in the newspaper - was like, (non-English language spoken), which is the whores and the gays - protest of the whores and the gays. And I was like, OK, whores, gays, let's go (laughter).

PERALTA: We walk past burning tires, past drummers and poets, and as we get closer to the palace, the crowd builds into the thousands. And without warning, security forces make their move.

The military has shot tear gas through all of downtown. Blocks and blocks are just covered in tear gas.

Some protesters collapse, overcome by the tear gas. Others hit by canisters are bleeding. We see one older man running, wiping tears from his eyes.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: We are looking for freedom for our children, for our kids. You will find us everywhere. You will never - you will never sleep. No one, no one, no one above this nation.

PERALTA: Amid the chaos, Nour is calm. Her voice never rises. She never runs. Why keep doing this because the more you keep doing it, the more the chances that you will die?

NOUR: So you're living here. What are you going to do? Are you going to just cope with that, or are you going to do more and get to what you are protesting for since the beginning?

PERALTA: You're also 24 years old.

NOUR: Yeah.

PERALTA: Like, I don't know. Like, you have life.

NOUR: Yeah.

PERALTA: Right?

NOUR: Yeah. I do, but in order for me to go to that life, I need this life to settle for me.

PERALTA: Things may not, as she put it, settle for Rayan Nour soon. There was another big protest yesterday. Security forces used tear gas and live bullets to disperse activists. Some of them say the U.S., a country known for pushing democratic values, doesn't have their back. I talk to young people like Nour all the time in my work, and I hear that a lot. When they find out I'm American, they often tell me that they feel abandoned by the U.S.

Sudanese activists want the U.S. to support their push for democracy

December 26, 20218:04 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

NPR's Eyder Peralta speaks with Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, about the ongoing conflicts in that region.

EYDER PERALTA, HOST:

To give a better sense of the role of the U.S. in the region, we are joined now by Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. He's the Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa. Ambassador, welcome.

JEFFREY FELTMAN: Thank you very much for having me.

PERALTA: So what do you tell these young Sudanese people who say the U.S. has abandoned them?

FELTMAN: Well, our interest in Sudan is to have a stable Sudan, to have a stable Horn of Africa. The only way that you're going to have a stable Sudan is if the democratic aspirations of the people - the people that you've been interviewing, that you've been meeting - if those aspirations are met. So we are supporting the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people as the only means to forge a stable Sudan.

PERALTA: So in Sudan, there was a deal struck between the civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and the military. And the U.S. very much backed this deal. Why does the military have to play any role in Sudanese democracy when it's clear that the citizens who are out on the streets don't want them at the table?

FELTMAN: I mean, I agree that what has to happen now is that the civilian confidence in this transition - the civilian confidence in what happens between now and the elections, which are scheduled for late 2023 or early 2024, has to be restored. So how do you restore the civilian confidence that the transition's going to meet their aspirations? And that's through the military taking certain steps, like stepping back from some of the political decisions, confirming that they will be transferring the head of the Sovereignty Council, sort of the main constitutional body in the transitional phase, to a civilian next summer, to stop the type of violence against peaceful protesters, to lift the state of emergency. There's lots that the military needs to do now to be able to help restore the civilian confidence that their democratic aspirations will be met through this transition.

PERALTA: But why not let the civilians do that? Why do the - why does the military have to play a role?

FELTMAN: The reality is if you go back to those inspiring demonstrations back in 2019 that you referred to when they - when the civilians came together in peace to overthrow a dictator - to overthrow Omar Bashir - the constitutional declaration that was agreed upon between - by those that were looking to get rid of Bashir and afterwards was sort of an arrangement between the civilians and the military, an arrangement where the military could not pick the civilians, and the civilians recognized that they were not going to be able to sideline the military through the transition period. I mean, the goal, again, of - is to get to elections, have a civilian-led transition that leads to a democratic Sudan after elections in late 2023 and 2024.

And so that constitutional declaration that's supposed to govern the transitional period has a civilian-military arrangement in it. The problem now is that the civilians, for very good reason after October 25, don't trust that the military is going to fulfill its part of that - those transitional arrangements. And that's what we're trying to do - is to find ways to encourage the military to take the steps that would restore confidence in that civilian-military partnership and would restore the civilian role in that civilian-military partnership.

PERALTA: So let's move on to Ethiopia. On Friday, the U.S. said it was ending a trade deal with the country, citing Ethiopia's gross violations of human rights. What makes you think that the sanctions will make any difference, that it'll change the course of what's happening in Ethiopia?

FELTMAN: Well, I mean, the trade privileges that Ethiopia enjoyed up until January 1 are based on legislation that has conditions. The legislation says the countries that engage in gross violation of human rights will not enjoy these trade privileges. So it's a statutory requirement that the administration took. Our overall point has been that it is time now to end this war. There have been too many civilians killed, too many displaced. The human rights atrocities are appalling. And there's been insufficient humanitarian access to millions of people in northern Tigray now for months.

The Tigrayan Defense Forces - these are the forces that moved within 200 kilometers of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a few weeks ago - those forces are back in their home state of Tigray. That was the demand of the government and, frankly, was the demand of United States, as well. That should trigger an end to the conflict. That should trigger a shift to negotiations. That should trigger an end to the human rights abuses and full humanitarian access to those who need food, medicine, fuel, cash, et cetera. So right now, that's what we are pushing for - is to push for the reality that the Tigray Defense Forces are back in Tigray to end this war.

PERALTA: That's Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. He's the U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa. Thank you, Ambassador.

FELTMAN: Thank you.

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