When the quick paramilitary support forces of Sudan (RSF) examined the majority of the capital of the Jartum country in the first days of the war, the civil society initiative led by Hadhreen youth maintained its open kitchens.
It was risky. Innumerable examples of RSF violence against civilians and looting have been recorded since the Sudan War began in April 2023.
Hadhreen did not escape that violence. A spokesman described Al Jazeera an episode in August 2024 when the RSF raised supplies of a kitchen and arrested the supervisor.
The destination of the supervisor was unknown until after the RSF was expelled from Jartum by the Sudanese army on March 27.
“We discovered that the arrested supervisor, whose only ‘offense’ was to provide meals to defenseless citizens through the kitchen, was martyred in the detention centers of the fast support forces,” Hadhreen told Al Jazeera.
The recapture of the Jardum Army last month appeared so that some were a turning point in the devastating two -year war war that has torn Sudan since it broke out on April 15, 2023.
But it is not only the RSF that has attacked civil society activists in the field.
Earlier this year, several workers in the emergency response rooms (err), the base networks that have led the humanitarian response that the war broke out, told Al Jazeera Point of his grout grout bone.
At that time, Al Jazeera looked for comments from the Nabil Abdullah army spokesman but did not receive an answer.
Then, civil society actors inside and outside Sudan are skeptically observing, insecure of their role in a postwar Sudan, or if they will be marginalized as they have been for two years.
With social and political polaros that make neutrality impossible and the conditions in the field that worship activists, many of them said that the civil society of Al Jazeera is being strangled in Sudan.
Sudan Youth Activists
The recent history of the resistance committees led by Sudanese young people began in 2010 when they actively worked in political consciousness, the registration of voters and the construction of the nation.
They play in the center of the stage during the 2018/2019 revolution that overthrew Omar Al-Bashir and really stood out in October 2021 when two generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the army and the RSF Mohamed Hamdan ‘Civasti’ Civasti ‘Civasti’Ststalo.
Resistance committees organized protests, highlighted the abuses of the State Security apparatus and coordinated resistance and defense efforts with local governments and international actors.
When the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and RSF broke out on April 15, 2023, these committees became Errs, acquiring the central response to the needs of civilians, filling the void left by the State.
It was “a deliberate decision to focus on addressing the basic survival and humanitarian needs of people” that led to thesis errors, Al Jazeera, an independent Sudanese researcher and consultant.
As of October 2024, a United Nations dispatch communication said there were at least 700 errs in Sudan, providing food, health services, child care or what their communities need.
But while Errs’s number was increasing, “the operational space for civil society has been significantly reduced,” said Hadhreen spokesman Al Jazeera, adding that: “SAF and RSF have imposed significant obstacles in our operations.”
In the field, the danger for activists trying to support people is real and immediate.
“These actors and groups cannot participate in political discourse or political action,” says Wanni.
“If they do, they will be labeled immediately as affiliates on one side of the war or another. They will be attacked, harassed or arrested and unable to do their humanitarian work.”
Activists have to “negotiate” with one or both parties so that they can carry out their humanitarian work: “negotiation” that is demonstrated as collaboration on one side or another.
Hadhreen spokesman says that organizations volunteers have “questioned, detained and faced severe threats … kidnappings, looting and murders.”
The impossibility of neutrality
In October 2023, a civil political bloc emerged: Taqaddum, headed by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and including political parties and civic society, as well as armed factions.
At first, it was seen as “neutral” and the best alternative to the two armies at war, but that was unearthed when Taqaddum found Itelf accused or pro -rsf bee and that political parties within it did not include the entire civil society.
Then, in February of this year, a political tremor shook Sudan when the RSF said it was going to form a parallel government, claiming that there would be a civil governance in the areas that controls in Sudan.
He took part of Taqaddum with him, the separatist group appointed Itelf Taases (Foundation). Its members have tasks in the parallel government, which was officially declared on Tuesday.
The rest of Taqaddum has formed Somoud (resilience), its members reject the establishment of a parallel government.
Analysts have told Al Jazeera that this division could work for the benefit of Sumoud, since it could distance themselves from the RSF and connect better with Sudanese civilians.
As the political class outside of Sudan, Sudan seems to have tasks on the sides, civil society activists in the field that wish to remain neutral face a heavy personal cost.
While the civilian and political activist Mohamed Elhadi believes that a fundamental step towards a better future is a genuine civil response that rejects both factions at war, concerns that are not possible in the current atmosphere.
“Both parties have armed the rhetoric of war … the government described the voices against war as [RSF] Supporters, while RSF supporters argue for peace are aligned with the maintenance of the state of colonial anger inherited from Sudan and their historical privileges.
“The … polarization … [has] He made it easy to discredit the independent civil efforts that advocate peace, with calls to end the conflict of dismissal as aligned with foreign interests, ”adds Elhadi.
“In Sudan, nothing can be said, ever about the government or on the [RSF]; You can never say what you think, ”says Abdurahman, 28, who volunteers to teach English to the displaced people of Sudanese people in Cairo.
“If you talk about what you are seeing there, you will be arrested, or maybe they kill you and nobody will know,” Abdurahman sighs, remembers neighbors, friends and his brother -in -law, RSF tasks.
This war, says Elhadi, is seen by civil society actors “as a deliberate attempt of anti-Civilian forces to obstruct the democratic transition of Sudan”, one that, even when the capital is released, looks into sight.
The future
Despite their vital role in the organization in the field, Sudanese civil society groups have been marginalized in negotiations on the future of Sudan, locked in a more “humanitarian” role in the procedural and post -war process. Rhythm and table. Rhythm and table. Rhythm and table. Rhythm and table. Rhythm and table.
In addition, every time conversations are made, logistics Hindranians and military restrictions on free movement are that those present are predominantly people who fled the country and that may not be able to communicate with precision the pressing need or those still of those who still follow.
However, analysts argue that any negotiation on Sudan must include the civil society society that has the ability to organize in the basis that a political class, which has been largely in Sudan for two years, will not have.
But civil society is not a homogeneous entity that can advance to a negotiating table, and as such, it is also a responsibility to ensure that the consultant of civil society and civil society is heard, Abdel-Rahman El Mahdi, argues.
He believes that civil society lost public trust in the last 20 years as fragmentation and lack of lesson of resources such as the potential for civil society to play a significant role in … future transition processes. “
However, part of the problem can lie with international actors who have approached the Sudan Archive in search or “rapid results” and easy interlocutors, the MAHDI continues.
As such, he argues, “international actors need to change their short -term interventions approach to a long -term strategy to support civil society in Sudan.”
But “the only way in which civil society forces can have something to do with future negotiations,” says Wanni, “is whether they make sure it happens. Nobody will invite them.”
