The Sudanese Resistance
By Noon Elsharif
Western media coverage of the Sudanese war is vastly different from Sudanese media coverage. The war is framed as a ‘power struggle’, which fails to highlight the primary aggressors to the nation and the external factors contributing to the continuation of the war. International actors continue to exert their influence and meddle in Sudan’s sovereignty while salivating hungrily at its natural resources. The US, the UAE, Israel, and the European Union among others have contributed to the suffering of the Sudanese people by directly or indirectly funding and ignoring the crimes of the militia, whether that is before or during the war. At the same time, we see these same actors continuously express ‘concern’ over the humanitarian situation in Sudan with vaguely similar statements from representatives like Tom Perriello every other week, that serve no purpose other than to enforce the ‘power struggle’ narrative that people in Sudan fiercely reject, as if their viewpoint of the war is through a narrow peephole that only allows them to see one consequence of the war. This narrow viewpoint is (more often than not) completely intentional.
Everyone wants Sudanese suffering to end, and while focusing on the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan is important, failing to recognize the political circumstances and the internal and external dynamics that allow this catastrophe to exacerbate is counterproductive. The people must start pointing their fingers now and highlight the intentional failure of Western media to represent the situation in Sudan accurately.
One of the most overlooked aspects of the war in Sudan is the active voice and participation of Sudanese civilians. Thousands of men and women, across all regions and ages have joined the national army, and their primary aim is to rid their country of the Rapid Support Forces. I call this movement the Sudanese resistance, because it is, at its core, a national resistance movement against invaders that have systematically and continuously terrorized innocent civilians since they started their war on the Sudanese population. The members of the Sudanese resistance understand how much of a crucial point in history this is for Sudan as a country, to the point where those who have previously marched against the Sudanese army in the revolution, now actively support it. These brave soldiers understand what’s at stake, and what will become of Sudan if it falls into the unforgiving hands of the RSF.
As one might expect, these facts do not reach Western news, because it would go against the framing that the West has set, which allows them to remain neutral and to continuously urge ‘warring parties’ to cease fighting, as if the war is a backyard fight between two high-schoolers. As we’ve seen, the lack of action from Western countries is widespread and expected, because if the average Sudanese civilian has no part to play in the war, then the responsibility of stopping the war falls on the warring parties. This type of framing allows the RSF to act with impunity, and to have its political status elevated with the Sudanese Army, an institution ten times its age, with ten times more credibility. It then becomes crucial to highlight the reality on the ground for the average Sudanese civilian, who has already suffered losses beyond comprehension, to convey to the international community that the Sudanese resistance is present and mighty, and will defeat the terror militia with or without their help.
