Since April 2023, Sudan is engulfed in a war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which both have confiscated the 2018 Revolution from Sudanese people. At an international level, calls for a “Free Sudan” have mirrored those for a “Free Palestine,” often in disregard of any Sudanese political specificities. We asked Muzan Alneel to reflect on this slogan so as to transform it into a political vision truly specific to Sudan.
It is no secret that the slogan and call of “Free Sudan” has spread recently, as a result of efforts to highlight the atrocities of war inflicted on the people of Sudan, at the same time when the call for a “Free Palestine” has received considerable global public support. Freedom of all people requires that we are emancipated from coercion and empowered to decide on our social and economic conditions, which is the ultimate goal of any revolutionary project worthy of such categorization. This is also a central and critical goal of any materialist analysis that seeks to explore and demonstrate how each call for the freedom of any people can only be understood within the context of their reality. Contextualizing freedom hereby becomes a foundational step of realizing freedom, and defining the hurdles to freedom becomes a necessary step in detailing the path to achieving it.
An effective effort to free Sudan, to free Congo, to free Haiti, to free Palestine, must therefore seriously address the questions of what hinders freedom, who has the power/capacity and interest to achieve it in each of these struggles.
This effort must be disciplined by materialist analysis, and it must refrain from painting all struggles with a broad brush that blurs the important details of each reality. Such analysis will explore the base economic structures of each society, as well as challenge the superstructures shaping the realities of their struggles. Doing this will undeniably make it difficult to lump them all under simple slogans that attempt to maximize external support. However, we must here make a choice between prioritizing ease for the outsider, or effective advancement of the revolutionary project within the realities of those living the struggle.