The (Taggadum) RSF Covenant.. Something out of Nothing (1-2)

On Wednesday, January 3, two outstanding figures from the Coordination of Civil Democratic Forces (TAGGADUM) heralded the people of a historic opportunity to end Sudan’s last war, according to one of them, based on the declaration signed between the Coordination and the Rapid Support Forces in Addis Ababa, in January 2024.

The news reports quoted Dr. Abdullah Hamdouk, leader of the coordination, as saying that the declaration he signed alongside Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo is an opportunity for peace that everyone must seize. Yasser Arman, the leader of the faction that broke away from one of the wings of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in northern Sudan, which was separated from the parent Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, wrote to its owner, the late John Garang, and the “leader” of one of the wings of the Forces of Freedom and Change coalition, that the announcement is also a historic opportunity to overcome bitterness and end the dispute and turn over the war page…etc.

Testing the statements, no matter how eloquent they are, the facts of the two leaders have a recent bond with historical opportunities, so to speak. Dr. Abdullah Hamdouk assumed leadership of the executive apparatus in Khartoum, not Addis Ababa, thanks to the popular revolution that overthrew the rule of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019, and the brigade of leadership of the state apparatus, with its army and rapid support, was handed to him to run from an office overlooking the banks of the Happy Nile.

The bravery of thousands of youth facilitated this historic opportunity, and between them and Dr. Hamdouk there was a covenant that saved souls. They did not break their promise even after the split of the Freedom and Change Alliance, who became bitter rivals. Then the army and the RSF Coalition turned against the Freedom and Change Alliance government on October 25, 2021, whose ranks were broken from within. Their redemption was renewed with one soul after another, until Dr. Hamdouk himself broke this covenant on his part on November 21, 2021, then he pulled away his hands from the whole matter in January.

He said at that time that he was unable to reach the desired agreement that he had envisioned and decided to leave the arena to others.

Thousands of others rose to support the leader Yasser Arman, about ten years before that, the blind was carrying the hobbling, in the “Hope and Change” campaign as a candidate for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in the 2010 elections. This was the course of the democratic transformation within the historic opportunity represented by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which ended in a referendum on the self-determination of South Sudan and then its independence in 2011.

The groups of women, youth, students, displaced people, and the poor rose to support the leader Yasser Arman at the time, hoping for a democratic transformation. However, Yasser Arman preferred to miss the “historic opportunity” that was assigned to him, and he withdrew from the elections at a time when its struggle intensified based on the calculations of the mother SPLM at the time.

Naturally, each of the two leaders had circumstantial reasons and incidents to justify their departure from the era of the masses in an hour of crisis, and each returned in his own way, searching for another historic opportunity and promising them. This time from their private flirtation with Rapid Support Leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo in a political salon in Addis Ababa, without the presence of audience. So what is this “historic opportunity” included in their covenant with the commander of the Rapid Support Forces?

to be continued….