{"id":51025,"date":"2025-07-06T10:29:47","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T07:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=51025"},"modified":"2025-07-06T10:29:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T07:29:47","slug":"the-opportunism-of-the-scarecrow-narrative-between-ending-the-war-and-politically-exploiting-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/06\/the-opportunism-of-the-scarecrow-narrative-between-ending-the-war-and-politically-exploiting-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opportunism of the Scarecrow Narrative: Between Ending the War and Politically Exploiting It"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amjad Farid Al-Tayeb<\/strong><\/p>\n

The remnants of the Forces of Freedom and Change, with their shifting alliances, along with other elements of the \u201cFramework Agreement\u201d coalition\u2014like Ibrahim Mirghani (a founding member of TASSIS now), the Popular Congress, Mohamed Latif, Babaganuj, and every other opportunist\u2014continue to adopt and promote a narrative crafted by so-called intellectual geniuses. This narrative portrays the ongoing war in Sudan as their mythical \u201cArmageddon\u201d against Islamists. In it, Hemedti and his militias appear as secondary players in a battle against what they call \u201cthe army of Islamists,\u201d an entity they appeal to the world to fight, linking it to Iran, Hamas, ISIS, al-Qaeda, or even Hussein\u2019s army at the gates of Kufa\u2014if necessary.<\/p>\n

This narrative has two main purposes. On one hand, it allows them to justify their authoritarian collusion with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in pursuit of power\u2014a collusion that began during the misleading campaign to pass the Framework Agreement with all its explicit and hidden agendas. It also helps them defend the UAE\u2019s support for the RSF\u2019s massacres and displacement of Sudanese citizens, framing this foreign aggression on Sudanese sovereignty and people as a legitimate struggle by a \u201cbrotherly state,\u201d as they say, against the specter of political Islam. This narrative plays on the accumulated fear of Islamism in Western imagination\u2014an imagination that requires little provocation to offer financial and political support, as long as it carries an anti-Islamist label. It mirrors Israel\u2019s use of the Iranian nuclear scarecrow. This is the first function of the narrative: a pretext for domination.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, this narrative allows them to blackmail wide segments of the Sudanese elite: retired (or rather inactive) politicians, businessmen, paid journalists, isolated civil society groups, embassy staff, international organizations, and remote-working \u201cSudan specialists\u201d who never hesitate to act as snitches, full of invention and fertile imaginations. These are the same people whose books failed to confront the Islamists when they were in power\u2014and in fact, often aligned with them when it served their interests. Today, they see in this narrative a chance to whitewash their records through imaginary struggles that require nothing more than echoing the herd\u2019s nonsense. Especially since, in their minds, victory is inevitable\u2014as long as it is tethered to the UAE and the RSF militias, whose weapons must, according to their intellectuals, remain in place to counter the weapons of the \u201cMuslim Brotherhood.\u201d This, despite the obvious fact that confronting weapons with weapons only yields war\u2014an outcome Sudanese people know all too well. And so their slogan \u201cNo to War\u201d becomes nothing more than a false banner\u2014a new Shirt of Uthman.<\/p>\n

Then come the deals: whoever wants an anti-corruption commission, let them have it. Whoever seeks the Ministry of Energy, take it. As for the prime minister\u2019s office\u2026 that fight is postponed, and speeches around it abound, claiming it\u2019s only for \u201cthose waiting their turn.\u201d This is the narrative\u2019s second function: a pretext for opportunistic blackmail and bargaining.<\/p>\n

In adopting this narrative, both the Hemedti alliance and the Hamdok alliance (steadfast in their foundations) converge\u2014each claiming to represent the will of the Sudanese people while ignoring the glaring contradictions in their story. Sudanese people\u2019s rejection of this war does not stem from complex historical injustices in the state’s foundation but from the realities of atrocities being actively erased: from El Geneina to Khartoum, from Nyala to Wad Madani, from Al-Amarat to Zamzam Camp.<\/p>\n

Their narrative ignores facts, as if politics were unfolding on Mars and not in a Sudan that people experience daily. This reality is shaped by the RSF militia, empowered by its weapons and the political influence of its UAE sponsors. Hemedti is in no way a representative of Sudan\u2019s marginalized peripheries. He is one of the tools used to oppress, impoverish, and exploit them\u2014not a \u201cnew John Garang\u201d as Nasr al-Din Abdel Bari and Yassir Arman tried to portray him in Paris 2024. Their job is now handled by youth from the SPLM. Their claim to oppose Islamists is further undermined by the fact that their own ranks are filled with them, and their continued alliance with the RSF\u2014which still retains core elements from the former Islamic Front. Not to mention their ongoing submission to the UAE, which supported Bashir\u2019s regime right up until its fall\u2014see the reports of UAE\u2019s hundreds of millions in aid in March 2019, just a month before his ouster.<\/p>\n

This is epistemic confusion, completely ignoring the situation on the ground in Sudan:<\/p>\n

The RSF occupies people\u2019s homes and expels them.<\/p>\n

Their spokespersons justify it by asking: \u201cWhere else should they go?\u201d<\/p>\n

The RSF rapes hundreds, even thousands, of Sudanese women.<\/p>\n

Their allies issue press releases that distort the facts, fabricating incidents and blaming the army.<\/p>\n

The RSF commits genocide and racial violence against the Masalit\u2014documented globally and even recorded by RSF members themselves in racially-charged frenzy.<\/p>\n

<span;>> Yet these groups blame the victims, accusing them of initiating the violence.<\/p>\n

The RSF bombs IDP camps.<\/p>\n

Their \u201ccivil society\u201d rushes to declare those camps as military sites.<\/p>\n

The UAE strikes power plants, dams, and civilian facilities with drones.<\/p>\n

Hamdok responds by lamenting an anti-UAE media campaign\u2014while praising their supposed generosity to Sudanese!<\/p>\n

This war is not the natural extension of historical imbalances in Sudan\u2019s state structure. It is a violent coup attempt by a fascist militia\u2014the RSF\u2014to seize power, supported by a decaying political elite that justifies the war while working out of RSF leadership offices to manage their political alliances. The war continues due to UAE aggression, which seeks to impose a new colonial model on Sudan\u2014using military mercenaries (like Hemedti and his militia) or civilian proxies (like Hamdok and his cohort).<\/p>\n

Yes, the Islamists are also exploiting the catastrophe for political gain\u2014trying to repackage themselves. Their opponents, foolishly and shortsightedly, have made that possible with their misguided alignments. But the same applies to what remains of the Freedom and Change elite\u2014whether in Taqaddum, Sumood, or Ta\u2019sis\u2014all guided by the same flawed compass.<\/p>\n

This war must not be turned into an ideological battleground for settling scores under the guise of stopping it. Such conduct is blood profiteering, no less vile than the violence of those who fire the bullets. The war must end based on justice, accountability for crimes, and restoration of rightful claims\u2014not in slogans that prepare for power-sharing and division of spoils, as if the people of Sudan are forever doomed to choose between two evils.<\/p>\n

The true measure of each party\u2019s position must be its alignment with the people’s interests, safety, and dignity. Tragically, what remains of the Freedom and Change elite has chosen to justify the killing, looting, rape, and foreign aggression against their homeland. They have no one to blame but themselves for the people\u2019s anger\u2014an anger they have earned by their indifference to Sudanese blood, honor, and sovereignty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amjad Farid Al-Tayeb The remnants of the Forces of Freedom and Change, with their shifting alliances, along with other elements of the \u201cFramework Agreement\u201d coalition\u2014like Ibrahim Mirghani (a founding member of TASSIS now), the Popular Congress, Mohamed Latif, Babaganuj, and every other opportunist\u2014continue to adopt and promote a narrative crafted by so-called intellectual geniuses. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51026,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51025\/revisions\/51026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}