Sudan’s Karzais Have Forgotten Nothing — and Learned Nothing

By Osman Jalal

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National self-criticism is essential for drawing lessons, as successive waves of failure in Sudanese history are not new. During the Funj Sultanate, a delegation that included tribal leaders and merchants visited Egypt in 1812 and asked Muhammad Ali Pasha to overthrow the Funj state and annex Sudan to Egypt. This was realized in 1821. The result, according to this narrative, was the humiliation and enslavement of Sudanese people for sixty years, until liberation at the hands of Commander Muhammad Ahmad Al-Mahdi in 1885.

Another setback followed when some leaders communicated with the British and requested the overthrow of the Mahdist state during the era of Caliph Abdullahi Al-Ta’aishi. This was realized in 1899 after nearly twenty thousand of Sudan’s finest sons were killed. Winston Churchill wrote of them in The River War: “They were the bravest men to walk the earth; they were destroyed but not conquered by the power of the machine.” Failures of weak national resolve continued alongside British invaders, leading to the suppression of Abdul Qadir Wad Habouba’s uprising in 1908, the capture of Mahdist commander Osman Digna, and the fall of the Darfur Sultanate and the killing of Sultan Ali Dinar in 1916, consolidating absolute British rule.

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Another failure came with the “delegation of submission” that visited Britain in 1919 to congratulate King George V on victory in World War I over the Ottoman Caliphate and to pledge loyalty and obedience to the British, portrayed as makers of renaissance and builders of civilization.

Failure was repeated when a delegation of Sudanese notables — including members of the bourgeois class such as tribal leaders, Sufi leaders, and merchants — submitted a memorandum to the British Governor-General Sir Lee Stack condemning the 1924 White Flag Revolution led by Ali Abdel Latif, Obeid Haj Al-Amin, and Al-Maz. The memorandum called for the continuation of British colonial rule until Sudanese people could acquire the tools of administration and eligibility for self-rule. This, in the author’s framing, reflects a state of civilizational fascination with and submission to the foreigner, which evolved into what thinker Malek Bennabi described as “colonizability.”

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History, the author argues, repeats itself — but in an upward spiral shaped by the laws of historical development. He claims that current “Somoud” leadership is following the same historical failures by seeking external backing to secure power and personal gains, beginning with, in his description, submission to the agendas of foreign ambassadors.

He further claims they facilitated the arrival of the international political mission led by Volker, which he alleges helped shape an alliance between the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) and Hemedti, leading to the exclusionary framework agreement and the slogan “The Framework or War.” The author alleges that the same alliance later planned to seize power through the April 15, 2023 coup attempt. He adds that when, in his framing, the Sudanese army and people thwarted this plot, the leadership continued seeking foreign support, including calls for a no-fly zone against the army, deployment of an international protection force under Chapter VII, and restrictions on Sudanese gold exports to limit the army’s ability to procure weapons — measures he claims aimed to force negotiations leading to power-sharing arrangements with the Dagalo militia.

He further alleges that a delegation led by Khalid Salk and Bakri Al-Jak requested that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons form a committee to investigate alleged chemical weapons use by the Sudanese Armed Forces during the war.

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The author argues that such statements indicate that the leadership has lost faith in the Sudanese public and has adopted the position: “Either we and Hemedti rule the country, or the country burns.” He claims they may go as far as appealing to the UN Security Council for military intervention in favor of the Dagalo militia or seeking a US-led military coalition outside international frameworks to defeat the army and people, then return to power on foreign military support — drawing comparisons to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq.

He questions where the “Karzais” of Iraq and Afghanistan are today, arguing they were used to serve external agendas and then discarded. He cites a quote attributed to Napoleon describing collaborators as “the most despicable people… those who helped me occupy their own countries.” He concludes with a reference to the Bourbons, saying they “forgot nothing and learned nothing” from history.

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The author concludes that the foreign tours of “Somoud” leaders reflect political isolation and moral embarrassment for their alleged regional backers, and, in his view, demonstrate their political decline and separation from Sudanese society. He argues these developments signal that victory in what he calls the “War of Dignity” is approaching.

He calls on the Sudanese public to increase mobilization into Popular Resistance camps, fight alongside the army until the militia is defeated or surrenders, strengthen social solidarity within neighborhoods, and intensify civilian efforts to restore basic services such as electricity, water, education, and healthcare. He concludes by calling for unity in pursuit of liberation, reconstruction, and victory.