{"id":52679,"date":"2025-08-10T20:36:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T17:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=52679"},"modified":"2025-08-10T20:36:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T17:36:27","slug":"al-burhan-to-bernard-henri-levy-this-is-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/10\/al-burhan-to-bernard-henri-levy-this-is-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Burhan to Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy: \u201cThis is Democracy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abdullah Ali Ibrahim<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summary:
\nA delegation from the Communist Party in Atbara visited the Minister of Infrastructure in the Nile State to propose a solar energy initiative to address the city\u2019s chronic water supply issues. This step prompted a political backlash from members of the \u201cSumud\u201d bloc \u2014 a group with which the Communist Party has had a deep rift since withdrawing from it during the early days of the Sudanese revolution, after the signing of the Constitutional Declaration in July 2019.<\/p>\n

In July, French philosopher Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy visited Sudan to observe the ongoing war \u2014 a familiar intellectual habit of seeking out conflict zones, studying them, and writing about them. During his visit, he met Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan\u2019s Sovereign Council and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, in Port Sudan.<\/p>\n

L\u00e9vy raised the stalled democratic transition, which has been in limbo since the December 2018 revolution. \u201cThere was a heavy silence,\u201d L\u00e9vy recalled. \u201cThen the General rose and beckoned me to follow him to the end of a barren, dimly lit garden, accompanied by a handful of young armed soldiers. He walked to the corniche where Port Sudan residents come for fresh air. Some young people recognized him. Dozens, then hundreds gathered. Applause erupted, along with joyful chants of \u2018Long live Sudan!\u2019 followed by an endless round of selfies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is democracy,\u201d Burhan declared, raising his fist. Then, in a grand yet casual gesture to those present, he told L\u00e9vy: \u201cRemind those ignorant propagandists that Kamal Idris, a distinguished law professor, has been appointed prime minister and will form a 100 percent civilian government.\u201d<\/p>\n

To observers, Burhan\u2019s remark about Kamal Idris seemed more like a pleasantry for L\u00e9vy than a genuine political announcement. If it had been serious, there would have been no need to bring L\u00e9vy to the Red Sea shore to witness, firsthand, this spontaneous public rally \u2014 Burhan\u2019s visual proof of \u201cdemocracy\u201d wherever he goes.<\/p>\n

No such Idris government exists; it appears more a symbolic gesture akin to the military\u2019s idea of democracy, which differs sharply from the civilian vision that emerged from the revolution. For the generals, such gestures may serve as a bridge to civilian factions that opted out of the war entirely, calling it \u201csenseless,\u201d a power struggle between two intoxicated generals. By embracing this framing, those civilians waged their own political war \u2014 between the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) and pro-military factions, including Islamists \u2014 reminiscent of old campus rivalries.<\/p>\n

While Sudan\u2019s civilian elite remained fixated on liberal democracy, many ordinary citizens developed a different mood, shaped by witnessing \u2014 at great cost \u2014 the collapse of the state at the hands of actors who blurred the lines between politics and organized crime. Their skepticism toward war does not stem from indifference to democracy, but from a desire to see it realized within a functioning state, not in the shadows of empty political charters.<\/p>\n

American journalist Anne Applebaum, writing in The Atlantic (August 4), noted that while Sudan\u2019s political elite still cling to the language and preconditions of liberal democracy, Sudan\u2019s reality reflects the \u201cend\u201d of liberalism. Visiting Ahmadiya, a war-affected village, she found that the once-theoretical phrase \u201cthe end of the liberal world\u201d had become a lived truth: liberal order had collapsed without an alternative, leaving chaos, opportunism, and nihilism in its place.<\/p>\n

This post-liberal reality was unleashed in Khartoum in April 2023, during a violent, chaotic evacuation. Those Applebaum interviewed often broke down in tears, even two years later \u2014 a grief rooted in the same void Burhan sought to counter for L\u00e9vy with his street-level performance of \u201cdemocracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two recent incidents shed light on the contrast between elite \u201cliberal\u201d politics and the popular post-liberal mood. In one, journalist Mohammed Latif, head of Tayba Press, posted a video blaming Sudan\u2019s electricity crisis on the pre-2019 Islamist regime, now seen as ruling from behind the scenes. While asserting his liberal right to criticize the government, he downplayed the war as a cause \u2014 even though Rapid Support Forces (RSF) drone strikes since January have destroyed major power stations, including at Merowe Dam, which supplies 60 percent of Sudan\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n

In the other case, the Communist Party\u2019s Atbara branch proposed funding a solar power network to run the city\u2019s old water plant, bypassing diesel generators and cutting costs. The state\u2019s infrastructure minister welcomed the idea. Yet, the moment the party issued a statement (July 31), \u201cSumud\u201d affiliates attacked them \u2014 citing the party\u2019s past denunciations of \u201csoft landing\u201d deals with the military and its call for \u201cradical change.\u201d Sumud leader Rasha Awad mocked the party for working with what she called the \u201cremnants of the Islamist regime\u201d in Port Sudan, accusing them of legitimizing a government that \u201csteals aid from the mouths of the hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

These examples reveal a political elite still committed to pure oppositional politics, as if in a pre-war liberal order, while much of the population struggles in a post-liberal vacuum. For them, blaming government corruption is necessary \u2014 but insufficient if it ignores war as the immediate cause of suffering. In today\u2019s Sudan, a leader offering tangible relief \u2014 even from a government deemed illegitimate \u2014 risks elite censure.<\/p>\n

When Burhan took L\u00e9vy to that impromptu rally, it was not a misstep; it was a calculated gesture. Just as a picture is worth a thousand words, so too was this scene meant to serve as living proof \u2014 however debatable \u2014 of his brand of \u201cdemocracy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abdullah Ali Ibrahim Summary: A delegation from the Communist Party in Atbara visited the Minister of Infrastructure in the Nile State to propose a solar energy initiative to address the city\u2019s chronic water supply issues. This step prompted a political backlash from members of the \u201cSumud\u201d bloc \u2014 a group with which the Communist Party …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52679","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\/52679","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=52679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52680,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52679\/revisions\/52680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}