Leadership of “Sumood” and the Evasion of Strategic Questions

By: Othman Jalal

(1)
What about Dagalo? This strategic question—with all its branches—is the real “fuel,” in modern slang, that media outlets should direct toward the leaders of the Sumood coalition. Suppose their ready-made answer is that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were created by the National Congress Party to protect President Bashir’s regime. This is intellectual laziness, even though it implicitly condemns the former regime. A truly revolutionary stance, consistent with the slogans of the December revolution—of which they claim to be founders—would have been: the Janjaweed must be dismantled; no militia should rule a state.

If that is the case, then why did the leaders of Sumood stay silent when Hemetti was brought into the top leadership of the military component after the revolution, even though they knew his forces represented the greatest distortion of the Sudanese Armed Forces? Why did they ignore his elevation to Deputy Chairman of the Sovereign Council—despite the fact that such a position does not even exist in the constitutional document?

Why did they sign the political declaration with him and agree to the formation of the transitional government in August 2019? Why did they not call immediately for a joint meeting between the Sovereign Council and the Cabinet to abolish the 2017 RSF amendment law, reinstating Article (5), which ensured their technical subordination to the Chief of Staff and political subordination to the Commander-in-Chief?

They might argue that such steps fall under the military component’s authority. But did these leaders record any objection at all to the deep infiltration of the Dagalos’ militia into the institutions of the transitional period? Did they not understand that the success of any transition requires symbolic representation of the actual national military leadership, not an ethnic, family-based militia that should have been dismantled before the revolutionaries even left the sit-in at army headquarters?

(2)
The Sumood leadership fed the revolutionary street shallow populist slogans such as “Hemetti the brave, feared by the Islamists.” But when this criminal violently dispersed the sit-in at military headquarters—and before the martyrs’ blood had even dried—these same leaders embraced him again and signed a new “partnership of blood.” They entrusted him with critical portfolios such as peace and the economy. His economic “solutions” included gems like: “We have no goal,” and “Either we crush the dollar or it crushes us.” The hall erupted in applause.

These slogans led directly to the Dagalos drying up the dollar market, looting future generations’ wealth in gold and minerals, and building a military-economic empire with a network of domestic and foreign alliances—a parallel state. Worst of all was the evolution of the Sumood leadership’s silence into full-blown personal and partisan business partnerships with RSF companies.

(3)
Did the partnership stop at economic interests? No. The Sumood leadership developed its alliance with Hemetti into a comprehensive political project, crowned by the infamous Framework Agreement of December 2022. That cursed document granted the RSF administrative and technical independence from the army, and it legalized their commercial and economic activities. Meanwhile, the same document banned the Sudanese army from engaging in any economic activity.

The Sumood leaders pushed even further. They described Hemetti’s forces—drawn almost entirely from the Attaoua ethnicity—as the “core of the new Sudanese army.” Then they agreed with him to delay integration of the RSF into the army for ten years—enough time to tip the balance of power in favor of the militia, after which the Sudanese Armed Forces would be merged into the RSF instead, turning it into something like the “Royal Sudanese Army.”

This was the plan of the criminal Mohammed bin Zayed and Hemetti, with the Sumood leadership serving as the Trojan Horse for this disastrous scenario.

(4)
Why didn’t the Sumood leadership, after signing the preliminary Framework Agreement, raise the slogan: “Either the Framework or a nationwide revolution”? Why did they instead adopt: “Either the Framework or war”?

Because they knew the street had abandoned them, cursing them after discovering that their revolutionary masks concealed an insatiable hunger for power. They also realized that the army leadership insisted on broad political consensus before signing the Framework Agreement.

So the coalition of escapees and the desperate turned to aligning with Mohammed bin Zayed and Hemetti, agreeing with them on seizing power through the military coup of April 15, 2023.

(5)
But do the Sumood leaders understand the historical lessons of Sudan’s military coups?

The Umma Party once relied on the military and handed power to General Abboud in 1958, hoping to maintain influence. Then the leftist bloc tried the same with the May 1969 coup. The Communist Party attempted to seize full control through the July 1971 coup led by Hashim al-Atta. Then the Islamists followed the same path in 1989.

What were the outcomes?
Political parties were sidelined and excluded from the very regimes they helped create, and military rulers entrenched themselves in absolute power—until the people overthrew them in mass uprisings supported by the Armed Forces.

(6)
Do the Sumood leaders truly expect that an alliance with Mohammed bin Zayed and Hemetti would lead to a democratic, civilian state that could inspire the Arab and Gulf region?

Did they expect that—had Hemetti’s coup succeeded—he would champion democratization in Sudan?
Did they imagine he would voluntarily step down if the Sudanese people rose up against him, as Abboud, Nimeiri, and Bashir were forced to?
Or that the “Attaoua Army,” their imagined new force, would side with the people in an uprising the way the Sudanese Army did in 1964, 1985, and 2018?

A deep moral and strategic reflection on these questions would lead the Sumood leaders to one conclusion: they are still standing on the wrong side of history. Correcting this strategic error begins with severing ties with Mohammed bin Zayed and Hemetti and aligning themselves with the Sudanese army and people in the Battle of Dignity, until the Dagalos’ militia is fully defeated or forced to surrender.