Upstream - Sudan Pt. 1: The Unconscious Revolution w/ Mohamed Khougali

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

In this episode we're joined by Mohamed Khougali for a conversation exploring the history and politics of Sudan from the perspective of a Sudanese psychotherapist who participated in the 2018-2019 revolution. Mohamed Khougali is a socialist who was part of the Sudanese revolution of 2019. He's the author of Politically Unconscious: The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution, published by Iskra Books. He is currently residing in Germany, where he started the Black Radicals to incorporate the Black Radical Tradition into the German Left.  The conversation opens with an overview of Politically Unconscious and then dives into Mohamed's work as a psychotherapist and his approach of praxis psychotherapy. We then take some time to orient ourselves to Sudan geographically and give some important context around its regions before we begin to explore Sudanese history. We discuss Sudan's history beginning with the Anglo-Egyptian colonization period which lasted from the late 19th century to 1956. He discusses how this period shifted property, governing, and class relations in Sudan and paved the way for Sudan's contemporary conflicts. We discuss the resistance to colonialism and the formation of the Sudanese National Liberation Movement which later became the Communist Party of Sudan. We go on to talk about Sudanese independence, the quick overthrow of its new parliament by its first dictator, and then the emergence of neoliberalism in Sudan.  Mohamed then talks about the financialization of Sudan—Khartoum in particular—and how this shaped and reshaped property relations and the lives of people in both the cities and rural areas. He talks about rebellions in the South and the West, the formation of the Jangaweed, which later turned into the Rapid Support Forces (or RSF), and the immiseration, racialization, and violence that resulted from these processes. We end by discussing the 2018-2019 revolution, how it was seized, and where Sudan is now. Further resources: Mohamed's psychotherapy practice Politically Unconscious: The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution, by Mohamed Khougali Black Radicals Related episodes: Feminism for the 99 Percent (Documentary) Atlantic Slavery and the Plantation System w/ David McNally The Democratic Party w/ Cecilia Guerrero 250 Years of Bourgeois Democracy w/ August Nimtz Listen to our ongoing series on Palestine This Missing Revolution w/ Vincent Bevins Intermission music: "Ana lstu ri'deedan" by Atbarawi We'll be off for the next couple of weeks for our summer break, so unless you're a Patreon subscriber this will be the last episode until August 10th. For Patreon subscribers, we've got an episode for you next week and then we'll be taking a break there also until mid-August. We've got some really exciting episodes planned for the weeks we're back so stay tuned!   Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Every single exploitative system, not just in capitalism, I believe, has said something to rationalize its existence. Human beings, genuinely speaking, have sort of an unlimited reservoir of just rationalizing the stupidest, most horrific, most horrendous, most egregious sort of crimes and things that you can think of. And I think in Sudan, this ongoing revolution, is not just saying that it's bullshit. Like, we don't agree with it. But accepting that by saying it's bullshit, we enter into direct warfare. And, you know, this might be like class warfare or whatever it is, but we enter into direct warfare. That's why it seems like irrational because it's irrational in two sense, in a sense that it's denaturalizing like certain, like claims.

But it's irrational because you're entering into warfare against something that is actually so dangerous. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. Since 2023, the African country of Sudan has been embroiled in civil war,

with massacres committed what feels like every day by the rapid support forces, or RSF. Violence is happening on a genocidal scale with horror stories being reported by news outlets. But there's not usually any context provided, and if there is, it's not much. We're generally left without a clear sense of where this violence comes from in a more structural sense and what economic and political forces are really behind it. In this episode, we're joined by Mohamed Kugale to provide this much-needed context and for a broader conversation exploring the history and politics of Sudan from the perspective of a Sudanese psychotherapist

who participated in Sudan's 2018-2019 revolution. Mohamed Kugale is the author of Politically Unconscious, The Psychic Aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution, published by Iskra Books. He's currently residing in Germany, where he has his own psychotherapy practice and where he started Black Radicals to incorporate the Black Radical Tradition

into the German Left. And before we get started, Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support, you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable, and helping keep this whole project going.

Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Mohamed Khugale. Mohamed, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you for having me. As the cliche goes, long time listener, first time contributor. But thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure, right?

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a pleasure to be talking to you. I'm really glad that we were able to do this. And yeah, maybe just to start, if you could introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us a little bit about the work that you do. Yeah, hi, my name is Mohamed Kugali. I am from Sudan originally. I was part of the Sudanese Revolution. And I worked with Escobics to produce a book about the Sudanese Revolution and the history of Sudan. what kind of experiments we were doing during that time. I'm currently in Germany. Yeah, my background is a little bit in psychology. And this book that we're talking about today is going to talk a little bit,

contextualize the current moment, talk a little about psychology, and the revolution in Sudan. So it's good to be here talking to you. Beautiful. Yeah, thank you so much for that. And maybe to start, why don't you give us a 20,000-foot view? of the book. Just give us an overview. And of course, the book is about your experience doing psychological practitioner work in Sudan. And it's about the history of Sudan. It's about the current

sort of conflicts that we hear about in the news and everything in Sudan. And there's a lot packed in the book, which we will get into. But maybe, yeah, just to start a broad sense of what politically unconscious is about and what drove you to write the book. I think that would be helpful just to kind of orient us right off the bat. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the book is split into really four sections. The first section talks about basically the history of the left in Sudan. The second section talks about what we were talking about,

which is the psychological work that I was doing in Sudan, at a psychotherapy. And the third part of the book talks about why we're in this current moment in Sudan. And then the fourth book, which was an experimental, philosophical sort of part of the book, which is supposed to represent sort of the conversations that we were having during the revolution. So that's briefly what the book is about. And I think, honestly, like most people who write books, or most authors, they're not privileged enough to dictate how their book is received. Naturally, of course, right?

But if I did have that privilege, at least for me personally, how I would like the book to be received and perceived, is that it was during a moment of revolution across, you know, North Africa and West Asia and stuff like this. And for example, this book is an expression or like a sort of documentation of the experiments that was done among like tens of millions of people, people in Tunisia, in Sudan, in Egypt, and so on and so forth, in Libya and so on and so forth.

As tens of millions of people, imagine like the sort of interesting conversations that were having, interesting, you know, experiments that they were conducting, sort of the analysis that they were drawing from and so on and so forth. And I think, you know, if my book was to be humbly sort of read or perceived or received in this way,

I think this would be at least very glad that, you know, you might disagree with the book or you might agree with it or whatever it is. But to see from that angle, at least, maybe it's a little bit romantic, I think, for me. But, you know, there were tens of millions of people, who, you know, overthrew sort of decades of tyranny and, like, you know, structures that, yeah, I don't know, like, they seem insurmountable.

And they did it. They were young and they were creative and, you know, really, really inspiring. And so hopefully this book is just one of like tens of millions of people who, who conducted an experiment during that time. And one of the focuses in your book is descriptions that you bring in from your psychotherapy practice. And it's a form of therapy that you refer to as praxis psychotherapy. And I just want to read a passage from the book real quick to give a sense of that and then maybe ask you to expand on it a little bit.

So you write, to transform society and individuals reproducing themselves within society, praxis psychotherapy centers the concept of emergence. An integral part of the therapeutic relationship is the symbiotic dynamic. between myself and the client that seeks to dissolve the quid pro quo. The therapeutic relationship in praxis psychotherapy should be seen as an exploration of the reproductive process of the client and the therapist. As seen in the above-mentioned case studies, which we'll get to, the therapeutic process was able to explore the relationship between individual and society

and to encourage emergence. And so very fascinating and a lot of things in there that, you know, I'm sure our listeners are really interested in hearing more about and unpacking, especially this concept of emergence. And so before we dive into the history of Sudan that you outline in the book, I think it would be worthwhile to spend some time talking about praxis psychotherapy and getting a sense of your experience doing this work. and the context within which you're practicing it.

And I know that you are hoping to begin practicing again in Germany, where you're based now. So, yeah, maybe just tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, for sure. These words read back, I think, is kind of, oh, who wrote these words? But, yeah, I mean, practice psychotherapy. It's basically whether we know it or we don't and whether we want to know it or we don't, I think, you know, all of us exist on top of, you know, mountains of contradictions. You know, every day in life we exist in sort of, we reproduce ourselves through like, you know,

structures and, you know, such as of social reproduction, which are these structures and how we relate to them and how we reproduce ourselves through them. There is major contradictions in these. And in these contradictions, in therapy, I think it's not just about knowing what these contradictions are because it's not a matter of education. Sometimes even when we do know about these therapies or these sort of dynamics or these contradictions, it doesn't mean that we're going to change. It doesn't mean that it's going to do anything really.

It might just, you know, sort of allows a brief moment of like grief, for example, despair, melancholy and stuff like this. But it doesn't mean that we're going to change these things. And so in practice psychotherapy, it understands these moments or tries to hone in into these moments, analyze them, and sort of start a process of emergence. And its process of emergence is not just about the current moment of conflict. It's an emergence, you know, that hopefully starts from the current moment of contradiction, but also it's a lifelong sort of process that sort of leads to like a sort of a revolutionary sort of horizons. Maybe an example might sort of better explain

what that is because it might seem a little bit abstract. Before again to the example, I think for anyone who's experienced in therapy or like had therapy or went to like some psychological or you know, psychotherapeutic help or whatever it is, you come to contact with two main therapeutic modalities. That's generally the behavioralist and humanist. The behavior list is sort of mechanical. It tells you if you change this, if you do mindfulness, if you sort of change your behavior is you might change your emotions and it's sort of like transactional and like sort of of mechanical understands you know the human being is like a somewhat in you know limited dimensions the humanist suggests that there is innately in the person gravitational towards the good

whatever the good is it can be like pro-sociality you know it has like an understanding of the nature of man or if humans as eternally or essentially essentially good And their understanding of, you know, this nature of man or nature of human, it might be, well, meaning, for example, it can be like, because we needed to work with each other throughout history forever, you know, that means that humans naturally are sort of pro-social. So we naturally have inside us this inclination to be like good, prosocial, you know, agreeable, all these kinds of things. It's like what might be called, quote-unquote, an anthropocentric, on top. of man or whatever it doesn't really matter what that is but it's just it looks at a certain biased reading of history and says that humans are basically based on this reading of history of humans I think I'm sure people who've gone through

this or may have experiences but at least for me this wasn't satisfactory during the revolution and especially you know as a moment where now we're revolting so you couldn't in a moment of revolt you couldn't either say okay how do I neutralize and be like, okay, go back to the quid pro quo, for example, or like stay like, go back to a certain normalcy or whatever, because you're really in a moment of revolt. And simultaneously, I couldn't say that there's something inherently sort of good about humanity and inherent,

because you're fighting, like quite literally, the paramilitaries and the military and so on and so forth. You know, it's a matter of life and death. It's not like, oh, yeah, all of us here, Kumbaya sitting and we can like dance and have fun, you know, humans are. So, you know, like these need to be needed to be challenged at the time. I mean, maybe I can give an example if that's not too long. Well, yeah, I would love to hear an example.

Maybe to relate it more so to like a global minority or like a quote unquote Western or whatever audience. At the moment, we see what's going on in Palestine and Gaza. And you might have like a conflict with people in your. family or your surroundings who you've always thought as progressive. They might be so progressive in any other way, but as soon as you start talking about resistance, for example, of the global south, you know, resistance of like anti-imperialists, they sort of, you see them as holding like positions that are so reactionary. I mean, sometimes can even be like dehumanizing, you know

what I mean? And in your head, for all of us, this doesn't make sense, right? It's like this person who was like, didn't mind me coming out all hours of the night, for example, let's see if our parents or sort of had like a sort of a liberal understanding of like sexuality or like gender politics or what have you, right? It's like something that's that's quite antithetical to like how I understand this person to me. And I think during this moment to understand the immediate contradiction is like you have a left that's coming of age during a genocide in Palestine.

And so they're radicalized through like basically anti-imperialism and they have such an intimate understanding of racism, right? and you see it in front of your eyes, like the disparities of, like, treating different human beings differently and so on and so forth. And then you have basically come into contact with like an old sort of, old, what some people might call sort of bourgeois or like liberal feminism or like these kinds of liberal ideologies or whatever. And I think, yes, there might be like conflict ideology,

but resolving them, for example, from like a praxis psychotherapeutic point of view, it's not based that we're ideologically different. It's trying to understand it. So, for example, understanding, it, for example, in Germany or where I'm based, for hundreds of years, women's belonging to Germany, even like women who are quote unquote white or quote unquote German or whatever, depended on the closest male relative. And this was only abolished in the 20th century. Until 1970s, basically women had to basically get permission from the closest male relative

in order for them to be employed to enter the workforce. So even not just like access to labor, but access to your belonging in Germany depended not just an ethno-nationalism but patriarchal ethnonationalism. You had to, depending on your closest male relative. Of course, with it comes like different things like a very Victorian ethics about like

sex and sexuality and concepts of gender and all these kinds of things. And so what immediately in by and large the feminist movement until the 70s and even I would say till today, but let's say till the 70s, they saw it naturally as being like well, the only person that's stopping my belonging to Germany

is because I'm not equal to my let's say husband or my father or whatever and this had like real consequences for example in the 70s if you're married to like a Palestinian in Germany even though this was abolished caseworkers would be like in other few to even access the welfare

they might even challenge that because they'd be like okay since your partner is Palestinians why don't you go back to Palestine or what they might call Israel or like if they're from Sudan or whatever it is You know what I mean? So, like, there was real sort of material, sort of hindrances towards this, like, patriarchal relationship. Now, the feminist, like I was saying, the feminist movement by and large suggested that

my main goal, which is on the capitalism, the ethic is equality. So I need to be equal. Now, when you choose equality without looking at race and without looking at the question of nationalism and stuff like this, you want to be immediately sort of like, you know, I want to have belonging because I'm German, not just because. my husband is German or my father is German. And so that sort of feminist movement took the shape of like, you know, equal pay, equality within belonging, you know, and these kinds of things.

And then they saw basically when you neglect the question of race and the question of nationalism, which what this does, if you just focus in patriarchal in the form of equality, like I want to abolish patriarch in the form of equality, you're going to be equal to someone who's been destroying the global South and like, you know, exploiting the, the, racialized labor and so on and so forth, right? They start even, it's not just ignoring. It starts naturalizing certain things, such as like, you know, our culture is better, this feminism has to be seen in a certain way.

And, you know, long story short, it gets like to a certain form of like, not just equality, but also equality mixed in with, like, racism, if that makes sense. And then you come, like, the clashing of, like, you know, a pro-Palestinian left that came into being or like a left that came into being like through pro-Palestinian and like the Palestinian and like the Palestinian and like an all sort of like a historic mainstream feminism that sort of neglected the question of race and then you basically you start seeing people who you otherwise think of like super progressive having like super backwards opinions and like you know anti-imperialism sorry for the long uh sorry for the long example but generally that's you know

fusing like politics and psychology together, I think is what I meant to say. Yeah, no, that's that's super interesting. And I think that the difference that you're highlighting is really important. And it's something that we've thought about quite a bit on this show in terms of this idea like of equality under capitalism being sort of the progressive liberal ideal when it comes to, for example, in this case, like what women are allowed to and are not allowed to do, versus looking at the structures that are imposing that. And then I think the more like Marxist feminism or a feminism for the 99% I think is what one of our guests, Tithi Bhattacharya calls it.

It brings in not just, yeah, like race, but also class. And it challenges the structures of patriarchy and of racism and of imperialism and all of that in the demand. you know what I mean? So I think that, yeah, no, I think that was a really excellent example and something that I've thought about quite a bit. So there's a few directions that we can go here. And I think that I'm going to ask you about some of your specific patients, I think, a little bit later, although I think I could bring it up here. I do want to actually get into the history, the sort of history side of the book as well, because you do a really great job of sort of combining this like psycho therapeutic perspective and then also like really getting quite deep into the history.

And I learned a lot about Sudan that I had not known at all before I was introduced to your book. So just a quick quote that I wanted to pull from the book. And then again, I'll ask you to sort of unpack it and give us a better sense of the history. So you write that, to understand the current conflict in Sudan beyond the manichean binary of good army versus bad army, it needs to be historically contextualized. And so I think we can always go so far back in history and there's always context to be added to everything in order to make sense of it. But I do think it would be helpful to start our dive into Sudan's history quite broadly

for folks who may just be beginning to understand Sudan what's happening there right now. And to start with some context. So I love it if you could maybe situate Sudan for us geographically to begin with and give us a sense of its sort of internal regions and the dynamics between those regions and, you know, Khartoum as the capital, Darfur, West Sudan, etc. So, yeah, maybe we can start there.

I think, okay, to understand just very, very brief, facts, but like they're very, very important as well for like just understanding Sudan. So Sudan, before the split of North and South Sudan, it was the biggest country in Africa, the 10th biggest country in the world. The area I think that everyone hears about is Darfur. And Darfur for measurements is bigger than Germany, just the area of Darfur. So, you know, that's to say that Sudan is quite a big country. Of course, it was bigger before the split between North and South Sudan, but it's quite a big country.

Like, it's directly underneath Egypt. And I think also importantly for the history that I lay out in the book, it's literally just what separates Sudan from Saudi Arabia is just the Red Sea. So that's important for like, as you can see, like right now it's like underneath Egypt. On the northwest side of it is like Libya. Then you have Chad, you have Ethiopia, you have Eritrea. I'm sure I'm missing a country somewhere. But just to give people an understanding, it's like a big country.

And of course, South Sudan is another country that's attached to it. It's quite a big country, which has like a lot of geopolitical consequences for better or for worse. Inside Sudan, one thing that we have to understand, and I think most people who live in Sudan or most people who know about Sudan would say this as well, I would imagine. Khartoum, which is the capital of Sudan, is a completely different area than the rest of Sudan. In fact, I made the case in the book that Khartoum itself is a country and Sudan is a different country. And the reason why I say this is to understand that Khartoum is like the hub of

accumulation in Sudan. Everything goes by it like everything is accumulated there, it's brought there and you know, and so on and so forth. And I even go a step further in the book and say that the destruction of other places in Sudan is necessary for the maintenance of. the dominance of Khartoum, and even beyond that, not just the dominance politically and otherwise, but also to reproduce Sudan, to have reproductive labors, you know, such as anything from, like, petty traders, domestic laborers, like, to reproduce Sudan itself as a city or, for my case, as a country, let's say, you need a destruction of the other parts of Sudan. So that's generally to give, like, a small sort of insight on, like, on Sudan.

itself if that's helpful. And maybe situate Darfur for us real quick too. Yes, yes. So Darfur is in like I said, it's quite a big region. I believe I mean, the census is really

not the greatest in Sudan, but it's the west of Sudan generally is the second most populated region in Sudan. So there's like a lot of if not the first, I'm not sure the census is not the greatest, but it's a very, very populous area in Sudan. and it is an area that has quite a lot of history.

And not just like, you know, old history, like, you know, let's say pre-modern or before the 20th or 19th or 18th century, but like even during like this moment and, you know, the British colonialism on the Ottoman Empire, there was like a long history in Sudan and, you know, a lot of like, let's say, groups who migratory patterns. And it's a very, very complicated.

an interesting region, very populous. And this is where you hear, when people hear about the gold being extracted from Sudan, for example, this is the regions that we're talking about. I mean, the region itself is not just gold, but there's like a lot of crops and, you know, agriculture and so on and so forth. So it's very sort of rich in minerals and foodstuffs. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. great. I think that's really helpful to just kind of help people visualize and understand a little bit of the geographical layout and stuff before we get it more into the geopolitics. So in the book, another quote I'm going to pull, there's a lot of quotes I'm going to be reading at you, so I hope that's okay, your own quotes. You write, The Age of British Colonialism marked Sudan's formal entry into an epoch of irrational revolution. And so, we're going to dive into the history of colonization and all of that. But before we get into that and the dynamics of the colonial period, I really want to get a better idea of what you mean by

irrational revolution. I thought that was a really interesting term or phrase and it pops up multiple times in the book. So yeah, maybe we could unpack that a little bit. What I mean by the irrational revolution is basically something that goes against, of the grains of what we think is rational, particularly under capitalism. And I think this has like multiple layers to it. I mean, the first layer is sort of, I think a lot of people, a lot of historians, let's say, or a lot of historic perspectives, you know, view capitalism as like this sort of somewhat uniquely rational system or, you know, mode of social relations or mode of production. And with it comes like, you know, there is a certain understanding, even though maybe some people might not

be able to, like, articulate it fully, but, like, we do have, like, this word called rationalism that hovers over our sort of thinking or our mind, and it constantly sort of allows for processes of, like, destruction and process of exploitation and accumulation and stuff like this to continue. I mean, one small example that I can give is, like, if your boss comes in and goes, like, I don't know, the economy. is not doing so good right now, or because of fiscal imperatives, or because of, I don't know, whatever, AI and technology or whatever it is, we're going to lay off this many people. And, you know, when they say it, they say it with such an apolitical matter of factness that,

you know, you're like, well, I guess that's it. Then, you know what I mean? If it's physically, I don't know, responsible to do this for the economy so that we can grow our GDP, or like if it's if this is what like technological development looks like if this is just the rational thing so what's happening here is like a statement that is being made that is for the destruction of like a lot of people's lives actually but that's made in such a matter of fact sort of you know there's no other way of like doing this except for this rational way of doing things and it takes on a form like different forms right and here is what I mean about

the irrational revolution. And what I mean by it isn't just necessarily like challenging these claims, these sort of quote-unquote apolitical claims. But knowing that the reason why we usually don't challenge these claims is because we're implicitly or explicitly, know that if we challenge them, we're going against an actual fight.

Like it's going to be like maybe sometimes all out to warfare or whatever it is. A good example at this right now for me in Germany, right? Which is like, if you're like me, who's like a recent migrant to like Germany or like a European party or whatever, you have to go through like this integration courses.

Now these integration courses, they tell you like they're rational. You know, they rationalize it through different ways. They're like, okay, you need to integrate into this country. You need to learn the language. You need to do this, right? When you go into these integration courses, they'll say things like,

oh, Germany has been colonized by four different countries until 1991. and, you know, we've managed to industrialize to this level. Look at these sort of poor African countries who have, like, gained independence since the 50s, and, like, basically, nothing has happened because basically they're savages. I mean, they don't say they're savages,

but, like, you know, there's an implicitness. Now, if I'm to look at it and be like, okay, your rational claims that we need to do this so that we can integrate is actually bullshit. I'm basically not going to be able to be welcome to Germany even. I'm going to be kicked out and potentially not even, kicked out but like you might even be withdrawn from like the sort of body politic you might be sort of

not have access to like the welfare systems you might not be doing this and so on and so forth and there's just just one example when i say about the sullenis the sort of what's going on with the irrational revolution and why it's like an expression of irrational revolution is because every single exploitative system not just in capitalism i i believe has said something to rationalize his existence a human beings generally speaking, have sort of an unlimited reservoir of just rationalizing the stupidest, most horrific, most horrendous, most egregious sort of crimes and things that you can think of. And I think in Sudan this ongoing revolution is not just saying that it's bullshit, like we don't agree with it, but accepting that by saying it's bullshit, we enter into direct warfare.

and you know this might be like class warfare or whatever it is but we enter into direct warfare and that's why it seems like irrational because it's irrational in two sense in the sense that it's denaturalizing like certain like claims but it's irrational because you're entering into warfare against something that is actually so dangerous in that sense yeah that's i suppose what i what i meant by it it makes me kind of think a little bit of the quote it's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. I forget who said that, but, but you know, it's this idea of irrationality

kind of flipping that idea on its head. And yeah, speaking of which, since we've kind of laid the foundation, I think, for understanding some of these concepts before we get into the actual revolution and where that began and everything, let's talk about, yeah, like you wrote, that formal entry into this period of irrational revolution, which stretches very far back in Sudan's history.

So I'd like to start here with the Anglo-Egyptian colonial period and giving us a sense of Sudan's current conflict through analyzing how colonialism shaped and shifted. Primarily, I think what you talk about in the book that I thought was the most interesting was the property relations, the mode of production, and the class dynamics in various regions of Sudan, how they were shifted and brought into conflict through colonization. So yeah, I'd love it if you could just give us a sense of how colonization

shifted all of that. There's two things that I concentrate on, and of course there are multiple dimensions in which one could explore colonialism in Sudan and so on and so forth. But you're right, I do concentrate on mainly primarily sort of capitalist property relations

or let's say property relations, and I focus on like governing structures. And for the colonial governing structures, and I think perhaps many people might be familiar with this when it comes to like British colonialism of India, and other places, of course, which they use something called indirect rule, right? An indirect rule, as maybe the name suggests, is that basically the British government came in and gave certain members of the elite privileges.

And these privileges were basically awarded to these people, ceremoniously or otherwise, in order for them to sort of keep at bay the sort of resistance and to have like some sort of a legitimate government structure so that it doesn't, like there's a layer between the colonial rulers and the general population. And this served quite well, I would say, because there is a layer, right? Like these people also sort of help justify and mitigate

and sort of somewhat naturalize colonialism. Kind of what Phenon referred to as the Comprador class. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And I think I'm going to get to why I focused on this aspect, but the second part of it is property relations. For me personally, I'm a political Marxist. For me, I think capitalism should be defined by the property relations. One of the biggest definitions of capitalism or like how we understand capitalism, I think, as opposed to like feudism is through capitalist property relations.

what this means basically is maybe I can give a good example is like imagine there's like a piece of land or whatever that people have continued to reproduce themselves through or like have migrated past and you know this land sort of holds somewhat meaning to different people differently and then people come on top of this sort of negotiate how they sort of relate to this land so they can be like okay seasonally we allow these I don't know pastoralists to walk through and have their cows or whatever sort of graced the land. And, you know, in this sense, it sort of creates not just a relationship that's social, but also a relationship that's with the land itself and the land is like re-fertilized through

like the stomping of like the whatever these sheep or these horses or whatever it is. And the relationship to land or the property relations to land is like somewhat, let's say, negotiated. Now, when it comes to capitalist property relations, the land is experienced. explicitly sort of divided or like belongs based on concepts of like who can improve the land better and who wastes this land. And so the Catholics will come and say, for example, because I can improve this land better than you, I get ownership over this land.

And it might be justified as such. And this might be one of the ideological justifications. But there are also mechanisms to sort of legitimize this. well. One of these mechanisms is actually what I don't know, someone like David McNally would refer to as like, you know, the mapping or surveying as like a technology of colonialism, where you come now and you sort of divide the land based on like meters, inches, square meters, kilometers, or whatever it is, and you divide them specifically in order for you to develop this land in a very specific way. And so like it no longer becomes just like claims of who improves

better, but also the measurement of land itself changes epistemically. You know what I mean? And this is an interesting process. In Sudan, for example, just an interesting way of looking at it, right? People in some regions of Sudan used to measure land by like, let's say, taking a rock and just throwing it as hard as they can. Whether the rock lands, that would be one edge. And then it did this same process, however many times. And so you had like this arbitrary notion of like what land, and then you distribute this land based on life. like I said, the negotiation processes. Once the conversion happened to like this capitalist property relations,

now you're starting to ask for deeds to lands, which people obviously don't have. But then the deeds, this is why it relates to like the governance. Instead of asking for deeds, they sort of say, well, okay, now this land we have made it since the administration or the Anglo-British administration of Sudan. this land we have given it to this and that elite in Sudan or this indirect rule system is what I focus on in Sudan specifically. It was important historically to focus on these two sorts of ideas in colonialism.

And like I said, there's many more and perhaps there's more interesting ones. But for me personally, it's because during independence, there was debate within some members of the left. that suggested that we need to have a broad church coalition to fight against colonialism. And there was others that were like, just similar to Phelon, who were like, well, actually, hold on a second. If we align ourselves with these elites or whatever, it sort of diminishes our communism or diminishes our ideological commitment. Because you're aligning with someone who basically are, you know, have been helping the British or, like, you know, the British has used as like tools or however, we can't. For this current moment that we're living in, it's important to think about this is because look how far back people were thinking about the better of two evils.

You know what I mean? I mean, we think about it in the context of like, I don't know, in America, maybe like Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris or whatever, but this has existed for, not just for a while in America, but even in colonialism in Sudan, where this faction was like, oh, actually it's much more important to the worst evil is like colonialism. and then here you have like, you know, these elites we can work with to get rid of colonialism. But in fact, what it showed is, at least my historic reading of it, aligning with these elites is never a good strategy to get the best of two evils.

We have been living in this strategy, not just in America since Trump was elected or whatever. We've been living in this strategy for decades at least and across the world. We shouldn't naturalize that. I think maybe I don't say this in the book, but at least these were my reflections of writing it. And the property relation thing is because the British have set up this system, it was later exploited by also, you know, we'll get to this history later on. It was later exploited to basically dispossess even more people after independence,

not just by the British. So yeah, sorry for that long, sorry, but yeah. No, super interesting and important. and it's a topic that comes up all the time, this idea of the national revolution or seeking independence through nationalism versus having more of a class orientation. And in a lot of my readings and research when I was doing our Palestine series, it's something that came up as well was like this tension between like, okay, what forces need to be allied with? And in Palestine, there was also a Comprador class in a sense. There were elites and there were class divisions. And one of the issues there was like with the Palestine Communist Party way back when was trying to decide like who do we create alliances with in order to get rid of the like Western colonists.

So it was just a theme that I feel like has kind of come up over and over again. And you mentioned the British colonial aspect. I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the role that Egypt played in and colonialism as well, because I think that's also a significant part of the story. So for the national question, I think, is something also that it's a difficult one to think through, I think. And I don't vote people for choosing one or the other, but at least for the case of Sudan, I don't know, for me, for me, it's convinced me that, you know, having like this, okay, it's not, not might be the best now, but it might be better for the future.

It just is, for me, it's not convincing. But that's maybe some other time we can talk about this. Yeah, for the role of Egypt, Egypt itself was a very important, let's say, colony for Britain. It plays a very important role. It's like a very important colony for Britain, even before that when it comes to Napoleon and the French or stuff. but also like afterwards with like the alliance with nassad and the ussars.

Egypt itself is a very important country and the politics of Egypt influence what's going on to Islam majorly. And so when we talk about, you know, the colony of Egypt and the British rule, for example, because of certain historic events, it's sort of this is basically where the history of it gets a little bit complicated, but it's basically where Britain. sort of launches its colonial excopades or whatever you're going to call it, like colonial missions into Sudan. And even later on, you know, when colonialism proper happens in Sudan, which is from the late

19th century to the mid-20th century, happens. It happens from a guy called Kitchener, for example, and he basically, he was stationed in Egypt, and he sort of does his influence heavily about what happened in Sudan. and the rebellion, the Mahadist rebellion, which we didn't talk about, but the Mahdi's rebellion that took place in Sudan, also in the late 19th century. And so Egypt at the time cannot be separated from like the British Empire. And in fact, the British Empire sort of saw Egypt as like how to expand into Sudan southwards. Also, it wasn't just the British, but also the Ottomans also used Egypt as the anchor and then sort of ventured into Sudan. with help from like, you know, the Egyptian sort of Ottoman Egyptian rule at the time.

So Egypt sort of plays a big role generally when it comes to Sydney's politics. I don't know if that's helpful. Maybe there's something that I wanted to zoom in on. Yeah. No, no, no. That's great. Yeah, I just wanted to introduce that element. We don't need to spend too much time.

I'm digging into it just yet. But so, yeah, you mentioned that rebellion. And so we have colonialism. We have the British through Egypt and things. through this sort of like Comprador class that they've created, sort of shifting the older sort of modes of production and the older property relations in Sudan, creating this sort of version of capitalism, like colonial capitalism, I guess you could call it in Sudan leading up to the 19th century. And of course, we know that whenever you have colonialism or imperialism

of any kind, you have resistance to that, right? And so I would love to hear a little bit about the various forms of resistance that were bubbling up during colonialism and then kind of leading us into the Sudanese independence and what happened in the immediate aftermath of Sudan's independence. So there's two periods which two attempts, let's say, that Britain tried to colonize Sudan or colonize it for briefly and then it stopped, which is at the late 19th century after the ultimate sort of, there was like a period where there was like a switch between the Ottoman and the British sort of conquering Sudan, there was a revolt. And in this revolt, it was called the Mahadist revolt. It's from like 1881 to 1889 or something like this, but like during the last years of

the 19th century. And this revolt, basically it was led by a person called Muhammad Ahmed Abdullahi, or his name is Mahdi or the chosen one. it's difficult to talk about this history because like when people talk about this history they sort of present this person as like this implicitly or explicitly this sort of pre-modern sort of influence only purely by Islam this sort of like only that but like their influence is just you can't make sense of it it's just like you know this person is just fighting for fighting sake it's just weird to read about them in like history books this particular person. But for all intents of purposes, this Muhammad Ahmed Abdulah,

Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, he basically revolted, not only revolted. I mean, this person savagely enough managed to unite many different groups from various, not just ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, and certain ideological commitments, and so on and so forth, but across geography, managed to unite them a feat by the way that was not even attempted or could not even be attempted by the colonial powers

because it's so difficult but managed to unite them and then fought off the British army and it was only after the British army sort of used what I think Andréas Mom talks about how it was

the steamboats that sort of cemented Britain's place through the technology of the steamboats but it wasn't until the steamboats that arrived that sort of slaughtered the Mehadist revolt but they actually defeated

the British and essentially kicked them out, and for many years they even wanted to expand against the rule and what they thought was unjust and so on and so forth. So this was one of their major, a major epic in Sudanese history and, you know, something that's, it should be seen as a very strong anti-imperialist movement. But we see how people are portraying sort of, you know, anti-imperialist of today. Imagine how they're portraying them back then, so it's very difficult to read between the lines when it comes to this history.

After they were destroyed in 1889, I believe I'm not too sure, but towards the end of the 19th century, and then Anglo-Egyptian colonialism proper or Anglo-Egyptian administration, as it was called in the papers, proper commenced until basically in 1956. There was a lot of, typically, when these things happen, when colonialism happened,

the question of nationalism becomes sort of front and center. now that this property relation is here, now that these borders are here, now that we're facing something that has already defied these borders and have already enclosed certain things and stuff like that, and identifies these enclosures, and identifies these sort of borders based on sort of nationalism or, let's say, ethnicity or like race or whatever, or racism or whatever. So now you yourself, the national question, the race question, the ethnic question, or whatever,

comes like front and center because like, okay, these people come here justified through a, you know, a difference between us and them. And then this difference sort of like, has like a lot of questions. These questions, we tend to interpret them as like, quote unquote, national questions or questions of national liberation and stuff like this. There was a lot of this going on in this period from the late 19th century to 1956. During that time, at the beginning of this period, the British rule was very severe. Like there was a protest, the second most major protest after the Mahedist revolt,

or the second major revolt, let's say, was in 1924. And in 1924, basically people were calling for national independence. They were calling for, like, Sudanese people to be heads of, like, you know, main institutes of social reproduction, of the heads of, like, governments and, you know, and so on and so forth.

You know, employment should be given to Sudanese people. for like these kinds of demands the british basically said how even dare you it was under this organization called the white flag it's like how even dare you make this like claims of like national whatever this sort of completely crazy claims and basically after the revolt they completely crushed it they crushed it by sort of stopping education there was like education progress between soudan for example in lebanon which is quite interesting. They were in like various educational centers around the country.

They said the biggest threat to their sort of existence, colonialism or the British colonialism, was basically education, was these educated elites, so to speak, the people who were participating in what we called the national question. After they crushed them majorly, what happened was, of course, World War II. Now, World War II was devastating for the imperial forces because it meant that they couldn't sort of press on the necks of the colonized masses as hard as they did before because now they were facing a new threat,

a threat close to home, let's say. And so they sort of eased up the refreshions and also they wanted people to join like people from the Global South who, you know, let's not forget some of the biggest losses that happened was in China when it comes to World War II. I mean, what happened there was completely crazy.

So like they needed people from the Global South to participate in this war so they couldn't repress them as much and so on and so forth. And they allowed literature. And, you know, the communist sort of very smartly, the USSR, decided to like sort of distribute some of their literature and this question became national question of independence and stuff, became more sort of strong. During the period, basically there was like the Egyptian National Liberation Movement sort of

had influenced some or like had some sort of these people in it who came to Sudan and wanted to, some of them were already in Sudan, who wanted to like talk about this question and politicize around this question. Simultaneously, there was like, you know, at least what the official record said, there was like a British soldier station there who was like running Marxist circles. Basically, you know, they came together to create the Sudanese National Liberation Movement, which later became like the Communist Party of Sudan. And so this is roughly speaking, just like, you know, what happened during that period of colonialism

and how the national question was important. And yeah. And maybe just give us a sense of like when Sudan gained independence. And then we'll get sort of into, I want to talk about the period of numeri. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it, numeri correctly, but I just want to, yeah, give us a sense of like the timing around like formal independence and and then like what happened after that. And then we can get a little bit more into like the neoliberal period, I guess. So to carry on from where I left off is basically this Southernese National Liberation Movement was created, which later became the Southern Communist Party.

This is here, which is important to link one of the questions that you asked me earlier, about, for example, why I chose to look at like governance structures under colonialism. One of the main leaders, one of the most famous and I think one of the most significant leaders of the Communist Party or the Communist Movement, in Sudan was a guy called Abdul Khaliq Mahjub, I talk about a little bit in the book, not too much, unfortunately, but a very fascinating figure. He sort of is the second and the most significant president of the Straitanist Communist Party, and he engages this question of national liberation and what should we do, what we talked

about earlier, I think you mentioned in regards to politics. Palestine, I mentioned in Regas de Sudan, where he says, well, if we support unconditionally this sort of broad church approach in order for us to bring about liberation, you know, national liberation or national independence, then the problem becomes we fall, we sort of dilute our politics and we engage with like the sort of top down politics of like, you know, engaging with these elites and stuff like this. And he said no, actually, I would much rather sort of engaged with like, you know, women liberation movements, student movements, peasant movements, and so on and so forth.

This is where we need to be. And in fact, he found it objectionable that there was like disproportionate numbers of like these sort of elite educated persons, Sudanese persons, in the Communist Party of Sudan itself. Like, he took objection to this. And beyond this, he took objection to even their position of like viewing these poor people as like, you know, this sort of helpless religious. this poor who sort of are driven by the sort of humors of whatever God they follow. You know, these kinds of things.

And he took objection to these, rightfully so, to these like sort of attitudes and this sort of class position and the politics. By focusing on sort of the working class, more importantly than the question of national liberation, I regard him as a very, a real, for taking that courageous stance. and doing something about it and achieving actual electoral goals and sort of being present in like the working classes and organizing these things

because he didn't choose the national liberation question is a feat that should not be sort of underestimated. And the reason why I bring him up in the story or this narrative or like this history is because imagine in the context of colonialism, like we're under colonial rule and stuff like this and you have this crazy Marxist or communist goes like, yeah, guys, I know you guys want to do independence and all that, but there's no way I'm sitting in the room with these people who are like a decade ago

or like negotiating between us and like the things. It might sound radical after the fact, but during that moment of like intense emotions and intense sort of like grief, of course, right? Like it's direct British colonialism. You have this person that was like, no, actually, we need to. We need to focus our things elsewhere. This, for me, is a point worth highlighting. After independence, basically, I think every country has, like, a national hero, whether it's, like, George Washington or something like that,

or like Winston Churchill or something like that. In Sudan, we have, like, one of these liberal heroes, his name is Al-Azheri. Ismail a Zahiri. And Al-Azhi is, like, a liberal sort of dude who comes to power, and basically, you know, through, like, a lot of maligning and stuff like this, is overthrown by the first dictator. of Sudan shortly after independence. So Sudan's like first parliamentary period after independence,

independence in 1956, was short-lived. There was a dictatorship, which is Abu. Abud was the first dictator. And basically, Sudan post-independence history is kicked off with the bang of a dictatorship of the overthrowing of the parliament, more so than with like the dissolving of like the British, the British colonialism, in my opinion. But yeah, yeah, basically, I hope that makes sense. Tell us about Ayam al-Numairi.

You write about this period and how it's often imagined fondly in the imagination of the Sudanese, but how in reality you write, quote, these famed Numairi years, not only privileged few, but damned many, and laid the foundation of financialization that produced the exploitation and destruction that we see continuing today. So tell us about this guy, Numeri, how he came into power, and how his government introduced neoliberalism into Sudan, and how this shaped Sudan's economy in relationship to both countries in the region and also what we need to understand happening there in order to understand the current conflict.

And I know that was a lot there. so sorry. Yeah, get ready for monologue. Oh, man, this is how deep should the rabbit all go. One of the ways in which maybe to contextualize this and something I've been thinking about actually quite recently is when general scholars think about the neoliberal period and how he came about,

I think we tend to think about it through like, certain personalities. One of the latest books was Quinn's Syllabodian's book, Hayek's Bastards. So we have like these images of people in our minds, like these sort of neoliberals or these free marketeers or whatever you want to call them.

And there's a particularly historic trend, I think, in recent years and perhaps even older. That's all the focus is on these people and like the events that were happening around them. And this is basically how neoliberalism, to understand how neoliberalism came about a little bit better. And that's interesting history and it's sort of definitely, you know, for sure, informative. I personally think that when it comes to neoliberalism, we have to understand it primarily through the question of race.

I think this is a very, very important, even though like the work of sort of someone like Melinda Cooper, when it comes to like fiscal policies and the counter-revolution and stuff like that is interesting. But the question of, she does highlight the question of race, and granted a lot of people do highlight the question of race. But the question of race is so integral to understanding neoliberalism, not just in the American context and the European context, but also in Sudan. And this might sound a little bit bizarre and peculiar and stuff like this,

but I get into it in a little bit. One of the things that we can understand during the period of, let's say, the post-war period, post-World War II period, is that there was sort of somewhat generous reforms in Europe and even in America, there was like a movement, you know, however stunted it was,

but there was a movement for like a general welfare system and there was a genuine change in like how things looked socially politically, you know, and there was like some sort of some distribution, wealth distribution. I don't think this is disputed. But I think what's also not disputed is how this came about

and obviously the backs of like racialized people or, you know, someone might say that racialized people have not been as privileged in this system as, you know, people who belonged and so on and so forth. We can think about, for example, people from South America in the U.S., for example, or African Americans in the U.S., for example. We can think about Turkish workers in Germany, for example. But this was also in Sudan, which is a surprising history, right, because we tend to think

about the global South as being excluded from this period. But actually, for various reasons we'll gain to, what I'm going to, what I'm going to, what I called the famed nimmeri years, when you talk about people who are sort of have a belonging to, you know, Khartoum in particular, are not racialized in a certain way and so on and so forth, they do see the Nimeri period as like a windfall. In fact, you know, when I talk to my dad, for example, during that time,

he tells me, you know, or even at a time a little bit afterwards, he tells me that, first of all, education was free for them, but they used to protest if they didn't get the type of dessert that they wanted in the canteen at university and stuff like this. So, you know, this period did provide like a certain privileges for some, of course, for some, in a lot of places,

not just in a global minority, but also in the global majority. However, here what I try to concentrate in Sudan is the question of race. During this period, how this industrialization or how this windfall came was after

1973. To contextualize it, basically the dictator that we're talking about now whose name is Nimeri is been in power since 1971 to 1981

to 1985, basically. Now, one of the most significant things that happened geopolitically that sort of, you know, brought about

what we might call this neoliberal change that cannot be understood outside of racism, is the 1973 Yom Kippur war where basically the Zionist entity destroyed the Arab forces and the Arab forces basically decided in retaliation to divest from the West and reinvest somewhere.

Now this reinvestment happened to take place in Sudan for the same reasons that we talked about earlier, Sudan being one of the biggest countries in the world, it's just like across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia, it's relatively geopolitically like it's surrounded by like a lot of neighbors. and so it's mostly an agrarian population, it's fertile land and so on and so forth. It had the ability to be a quote-unquote breadbasket for that region of the world, basically. And so what happened was, you know,

we read about the Yom Kippur War, I suppose, in history, and like one of the things that's highlighted is like the sort of divestment from the West and stuff like this. But one of the things that's not as much highlighted, for certain reasons, is where the investment went to or where did they try to invest. And this was Sudan trying to like create this breadbasket.

In one investment, for example, was like $5 billion at the time, which is a lot of money today. But at that time it was a huge amount of money. Now, when you think about this immediately, you're like, okay, a lot of investment is coming to Sudan. This is a brilliant, a good thing and something that we should encourage. But we have to understand how this investment happened or how it played out. Now, this investment wasn't to upskill labor.

it wasn't to create industries and so on and so forth, or to produce and complicate sort of production processes and stuff like this. But rather it intensified, and this is the second part of the colonial dimension, it intensified capitalist property relations. Now, Numeri went overdrive by saying that, okay, we need to create cash crops, we need to produce cash crops to send them abroad and so on and so forth, and this is how we're going to, you know, enrich Sudan and, you know, get wealth and all these kinds of things.

He was right for one class of people, which is the capitalist class or the proprietary class, because who you enfranchised who you made rich was those people who enfranchised Western companies. So if anyone who goes to like, I don't know, North Africa, but in Sudan specifically, you'd see that you have so many cars in the street and most of these cars are basically like, Arnachian, no Mitsubishi or like from South Korea or Japan or whatever it is. So that particular moment, instead of sort of divesting money into like education and creating like complicating the production process and industrializing through those methods,

he literally opened the way so that these capitalists can import these big, huge technologies of farming equipment and logistics. so that they can quickly sort of create like mega sort of projects of farming complexes and so on and so forth or agricultural complexes and so on and so forth. Now these agricultural complexes, what it does is destroy the topsoil of the land that we talked about earlier, which is like negotiated with with the people and the land and so on and so forth. Now, if you know farming, for example, topsoil is the most important part for a farmer who's not using these big machineries, right? Now if you're a farmer who doesn't have the capital to bringing these big machineries,

you're basically shit out of luck. A, first of all, the top soil is just destroyed, so you can't use that land. And B, Nimeri demanded even more of the people to produce sort of the claims to their land, the deed to their land. Now, those who couldn't produce it, like a lot of people who, I don't know, let's say, pastoralist or whatever it is, who couldn't produce it, no longer had access to this land, nor them, nor the animals that they had, they took care of or whatever. And also, not just pastoralists, but also people who lived on those lands, but they didn't have a deed to them,

that were sort of not in urban centers, let's say, what the British couldn't get, let's say. And so this is the first process of capitalist class formations. The second type of capitalist that he enfranchised were the ones who were able to basically take these cash crops and send them abroad or like, you know, sell them to, if they're Gulf countries or elsewhere. And so you have like basically this dynamic of like enriching two capitalist classes, the ones who are like bringing like these big technologies in franchise, who have like basically Mitsubishi dealership in Sudan, for example. And other ones who for example sell like sesame seeds from Sudan and ship them to like wherever, a Turkey, the European

Union, whatever it is. The agrarian population, is basically completely effed in the sense that they have no access to the land which has been devastated and they are kicked out of this land and a lot of them sort of become urbanized. They go to like urban centers and in urban centers, while you see a windfall of like a lot of people enjoying this sort of newfound wealth that's distributed them on the capitalist and Khartoum and like other urban centers, you see simultaneously a process where those people who are like devastated in like the rural areas who used to like depend on that land come to these urban centers and an intense process of racialization happens.

In fact, Nimeria talk about this in the book, started a phenomenon that's called Kasha where the armed forces will come and literally take people from Khartoum, Sudanese people for all intents and purposes, take Sudanese people from Khartoum and literally like take them with like, pickups and drop them in the middle of nowhere in like the urban places that they used to be who which are now destroyed an intense process of racialization now what do you see here you see of course there's like some sort of like wealth distribution you have like a new emerging capitalist class you have like you know with this wealth as well you have like some provisions for a lot of people but this is

limited and is also based on a process of exploitation for a large chunk of society and necessitate a certain intensification of like the racialization process. Not too unfamiliar to, you know, what other neoliberal sort of regimes, although not in this sort of history, but like the racialization process and so on and so forth, in other places, particularly in Germany, I suppose. But yeah. You're listening to an upstream conversation with Mohamed Kuali. We'll be right back.

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on the kifaheat, La laean haeat. I'ma'a-eferi a l'a-lid-a-l'da-o-a-an-a-an-a-a-an-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-on. That was Ana Istu Rididan by At Barawi. Now back to our conversation with Mohamed Kugali. And we want to share a content warning here. These next few minutes of the episode include descriptions of sexual violence.

I think it would be helpful to maybe bring this analysis down a little bit more to eye level by reintroducing your psychotherapy practice, actually. And in the book, you give us a sense of the impact. packs of neoliberalization on the Sudanese people by discussing two of your psychotherapy patients referred to as HM and FT. I think it could be really interesting maybe to hear a little bit about their two experiences of financialization or maybe one or the other, if you prefer, of their experiences of financialization or modernization and what this tells us about sort of the class dynamics shaping Sudan during this neoliberal period. Absolutely, absolutely. Maybe I'll caveat this

a little bit and say this is where the experimentation of the new psychotherapeutic modality came from where we're in this moment of revolution and we're talking about all these topics and you know like these things are coming up and immediately we're seeing that you know or I'm seeing that the old psychotherapeutic modalities are not working and so sort of I introduced the political with the psychological so to speak. But yeah, perhaps I'm going to start with FTE at first, but one of the case studies that I talk about in the book is a person by the name of FT and she's, you can get into the details of the book about her case specifically, but here I'll just outline a little bit. So at first, you know, she came to see me and,

you know, we had interesting, I mean, at first she was a little bit recluse and then once she opened up, you know, we started talking about like what I said earlier, which is like certain contradictions. that for her it seems irresolvable, and then we go into like more meaningful sort of analysis. And the contradiction for her was sort of like had something to do basically with this person that she was heads over heels for, she was like in love with this person,

but it wasn't reciprocated. And there were in sort of a relationship or a situation shape or it was an indefined area. And we started to start. talking about this and this was the moment that sort of for her was a lot of turmoil and you know brought up a lot of you know feelings and stuff like this and I always like talking a little bit more and we go more like the political history and like her history and her political history and so on and so forth and she told me that she was you know born and raised in like one of these uh golf

countries in this golf country for example we talked about you know how at the very young age her mom would take her in this sort of romantic rendezvous with someone that she was, you know, sort of seen or cheating on with her father. And, you know, we talked about this a little bit and, you know, why did you think her mom did this? And we also talked about there was a, you know, maybe for the listeners, it's a little bit sensitive information. But, you know, she also, you know, was sort of raped by her brother at a young age and so on and so forth. And when we explored this, for example, in relation to the political history, which it might

seem somewhat a little bit, you know, unintuitive, maybe even a little bit insensitive, right, when someone tells you about this thing and you're like, it's not immediate, obviously, but in a therapeutic relationship under certain ways. Like, we talked about basically how do we relate this politically, how do we make sense of it, which is a very delicate and difficult sort of relationship to cultivate, you know, but, you know, you know, you know, you know, such as the nature of like a practice psychotherapy, I suppose. And we talked about basically started off with like the rape. And there first immediately, one of the things that we had to denaturalized

was this sort of loaded way in which we see rape in the political context. Now rape is seen, for example, in this person raped this person because they were hopelessly attracted to them, because she was wearing something in particular, or like this conservative way of understanding it, you know what I mean? But actually, you know, rape is somewhat, when we explore it and we interrogate it,

it's more of, it's who you have access to in relation to the power dynamics that exist. You know what I mean? It's not necessarily an attraction. You know, it's not necessarily like, I know this might sound like something weird or whatever, but it's a violent act.

You know, and I think sometimes, you know, when we do see it because rape is, right now it's been weaponized to say that, all Muslim men are rapist and like to make sure, like, you know, create like this sort of white, angelic female character and, you know, in the imagination of the, that represents Europe in some way, whatever these racial discussions are, I don't need to get into them. But rape is sort of politicized in that sense.

But in fact, it's a very dominating thing. It's a very sort of, it's about access. It's about sort of exploitation. It's about a lot of these dynamics. So it might seem intuitive to some people, but that moment is important. You know, it's a moment that's like, imagine, you know, if you've experienced some sort of sexual violence, and you start the therapeutic process of psychotherapy and emergence with like, okay, let's start with some desire. It's rape out of something else.

What is that something else? And we cut through like a long political and psychological process, it seems to be coming from aspiration towards something. you know what I mean in an expiration towards power and aspiration towards this we have to understand for example we had to understand during that therapeutic lesson is basically they were in in these golf countries in these golf countries basically if you're a Sudanese with a Sunnius passport most likely you're basically a modern slave basically for in terms of purposes like they take your passport you can't leave your work you know sometimes you might not get paid for the work you do and the government is justifying these kinds of things and like you're not allowed to leave

you're not even allowed to leave your work without the permission of your they call it kaffil which is basically your guardian and stuff like this so by all intents of purposes you live in this reality that's very hostile this is basically like you have no autonomy and stuff like this we have to understand that reality as well in which not just her but her brother was also and members of her family were also reproduced under now in this reality there are structures in place that does not allow for the ease of resistance, you know, or sort of a luxurious resistance. The luxurious resistance I think about is like being able to protest. It's not really resistance.

It's like whatever it is, you know what I mean? And so one of the ways in which her brother sort of tried to change this relationship is by himself sort of aspiring to be like one of these cafes or one of these like guardians and so on and so forth. And so he exerted, one of the things is that he's exerted sort of his like, what I call sovereignty. But yeah, like the final thing I'd say about this is, I think in this therapeutic session, it's important, not just, it's very important for emergence and for us as society

and for like the client generally speaking, because it's not just a naturalness that happens. We need to understand these things and it's a difficult process and understanding these things. You know, it's a abolitionist because you don't say that there's an inherent defect in like a certain aspect of humanity that you need to ward off into like prisons and like the only use that they have for them is basically to be spectators so that you know what not to do which is usually basically going to be used to like destroy people or racialized and stuff like this but anyways i'm not going to get too much detail maybe this is like a trailer for like the book so if you're

interested in that version it's it's in there yeah yeah i think it's super interesting to to to hear you tell that story. And I think that you're right at first, at first glance, it does kind of sound a little insensitive to me in terms of like focusing on understanding the cause of the rape through a political lens purely, right? Because there's also that interpersonal or personal impact, right, the emotional and psychological impact as well. And so we're, I think, accustomed to focusing only on that in terms of Western therapy. And so I can see how there is this balance that you can kind of strike, right, where you're addressing people's emotional and psychological harm, while at the same time also contextualizing the

political aspects of that harm as a way to not just make sense of it and work through it in a way psychologically, but also as a way to intervene in these essentializing tendencies like you are kind of outlining, right? Like explaining these types of violent, transgressions as purely a defect in someone can lead to not really addressing the political causes as well, right? Like if you don't understand them, then you're leaving the door open for those types of horrible things to just keep happening, right? So, yeah, I do think it sounds to me like some kind of balance that would be difficult and

interesting to navigate as a practitioner in addressing those like political. political causes and also the psychological harm. And so, yeah, I think for me, it just sounds like a bit of a balance, right? And so I actually spent several years when I was growing up living in the Gulf countries in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, just because of my dad's work. And I remember when you were talking about this experience of the sort of like the slave-like experience of, let's say, Sudanese people who are living in these Gulf countries. I remember we were driving by, my family was driving by this apartment building. And either my mom or my dad, I forget,

who mentioned that a woman had fallen to her death from one of the windows and that it was in fact, like a houseworker or a servant, or, I mean, we could call her like some form of enslaved person. who was living in that apartment and was trying to escape out of the window because she was basically being held there captive. And I just remember every time we drove by that apartment, I would just get this like really intense feeling, just looking up at it. You know, I was very young at the time, but like, you know, being introduced to that sort of like horrific reality

and putting myself in that person's shoes, like you're trying to escape. out of a window and you know if you fall to your death maybe that's even better than your current reality it's a risk you're willing to take and so I was just I hadn't thought about that memory actually for for a little while and since you mentioned it it just kind of brought that back up and I think it's an interesting segue I think into the khafala system that you talk about in the book and so there's a passage that I'll read and then ask you to maybe tell us a little bit about this system. So you write, quote, like F.T, many were forced to immigrate to Saudi Arabia because of the policies of the Numeri regime, which were intensified by the dictatorship of al-Bashir and

Al-Turabi. These regimes expanded the free market and relegated many farmers to low-skilled, which you have in quotes, labor, leaving them little recourse beyond working as modern-day slaves in Saudi Arabia. So you gave us a sense of it already, but maybe could you tell us a little bit more structurally about migration to the Gulf countries, the Khafala system, and the conditions that, you know, many Sudanese immigrants face in these Gulf states? I mean, first of all, just to respond to what you said, man, honestly, some of my comrades and I, this one of the other experiments that we did in Sudan, we did like a small documentary,

nothing fancy, just like a bunch of us, talking to like these sort of workers from Sudan, who came back from Saudi Arabia and stuff like this. And like the story that you say, it's really, like I know people personally who the choice for them is quite easy because to risk life, try to get out a building. Because like they might be in a situation that is so complex that, for example, I don't know, their child is being taken by an abusive ex as like some sort of power play because she's seen someone else but simultaneously her position because it's not just about the exploitation that goes on in the immediate instance it's even the social relations behind the exploitation

and stuff like that like you know that the recourse that the stories that we hear and stuff like that and you know the people that are going through this it's really intense so so yeah man like i think this is something maybe it's worthwhile talk about perhaps some other time but yeah for your question about how the people ending up in like soudi arabia and other places and in the Gulf countries and its relation to the Nimeri regime to follow on from what I was saying earlier about like, you know, creating like basically these capitalist formations and then simultaneously devastating degarians who are made poor. And then when they come to, for example, urban centers, they would literally be racialized and kicked out and so on and so forth. A lot of

things happen. And it happened systematically. It happened, for example, when there was like a famine in West Sudan, for example. And the refugees who were, fleeing the famine coming to like places in Khartoum, they were kicked out of Khartoum, even though they were literally, I mean, they were Sudanese, for one thing, but the second thing is they were like, they're refugees, you know what I mean? And this was during the time where supposedly there was like a quote-unquote social modernity for Sudan, you know what I mean? And so the race question cannot be extrapolated from this thing in this process. Now, generally speaking, when these people did come to urban centers for those who weren't

kicked out or the ones who weren't, like, abandoned, because you didn't have an industrialization policy that sort of uplifted these workers or upskilled or complicated the production process and stuff like this, people were sort of doing arbitrary jobs. And these arbitrary jobs were a lot of the time in dislike when you know about domestic labor, for example, you understand that, especially in these forms that they took place in Sudan and other places, they're gray zones. like you don't have like a contract that says from this time to that time you do this and blah

no no they're gray zones based on pure power relations that are disproportionately for those people who are proprietors or those people who like get the labor of these domestic workers it's really a grim situation because like you're urbanized you don't have like a home or like somewhere to go to or even the communities that depend on your work so that you can even give money to them or send money back to the places that you left behind and stuff like this so you're in a you're in quite a sticky situation, you know what I mean? Like it's very, very bleak. In that reality, the exploitation is like intensified 10 times

or the possibility of exploitation, which really is exploitation, is intensified 10 times. A lot of people, what they end up doing is in the Gulf countries, what they found out was that there's an access of like cheap labor that was being sort of basically their dignity has been stripped away from them in Khartoum anyways or in urban centers generally, Kharton specifically. And so now these chief laborers would give an arm and a leg to go to like Gulf countries who, you know, industrialized in a certain way in relation to imperialism.

And I'm sure people are familiar with this. But they would go to Saudi Arabia, for example, work as basically like the situation that we talked about and that you talked about as like modern slaves. Because that, even though that was more destitute, at least, least at times the money was a little bit better and you know you can send money back with like you know hard car we call it hard currency like with currency that's not Sudanese that's more stable and so on and so forth this was a much more sort of a better thing or a better way of reproducing yourself than staying in Sudan so a lot of these people migrated to a lot of places but mainly Saudi Arabia mainly Gulf regions and in these Gulf regions they just basically became

modern-day slaves. And so here you track like, you know, something, a war between the Zionist entity and the Arab nations that happened in 1973, precipitates like events, political decisions that are made and like how we reproduce ourselves through reproducing society to like a situation in which that money that was invested into Sudan, they didn't only just get it back in the form of cash crops. And in fact, investment in the sense that some of the largest enclosures in Sudan, the largest ones, belong to like Gulf countries. For example, the number one telecommunication company in Sudan belongs to Kuwait, or part of it belong to Kuwait. The biggest sort of sugar producer or company belongs to like a lot of these sort of national wealth funds or like, you know,

Gulf citizens and so on and so forth. Like a lot of these plots of lands, like they already now belong to Gulf countries, but also beyond that, beyond the natural resources and stuff like this, they also got shit loads of labor and not just labor, but like basically degraded labor, labor that's been like sort of stripped of his dignity thanks to like these policies and like these political decisions that are basically reproducing the Gulf countries as we're speaking. So that's how these things relate to the Nimeri regime

and you know how we got to the situation with FT, the client that I spoke about earlier. Let's set us up with some content. for what's currently happening in in Sudan. And I'm wondering if you can begin by maybe describing the dynamic between Khartoum and states outside of Sudan and Darfur historically, like the stratification of society along ethnic lines, the arming of the Janja weed, and what we need to understand about that history in order to understand the 2003-2005 genesis. side in Darfur and the violence that is also now currently taking place.

So maybe set us up for all of that. To like sort of bring all what the history that I mentioned, just briefly to set us up for like, you know, what's happening right now and RSF and the Sunnis revolution and so on and so forth. When we talk about these, what I said last, which is like now we see the process of basically people outside of Kharton, their top soil being done. destroyed, their sort of modes of systems being destroyed. In return, their social relations are being sort of separated because a lot of them had to migrate to like the urban centers.

And in urban centers, they're being sort of undignifiedly stripped from like any sort of, let's say, labor power or whatever it is that they own. I mean, you know, they're still labor producers, but, you know, it's very difficult for them. And then those who are lucky to find jobs there, they found jobs there. Of course, you know, a lot of them were kicked out. and then some of them had to move to like Saudi Arabia and like Gulf countries. So this generally the picture. What does this mean? That means that the maintenance of a domestic labor force in Khartoum,

the maintenance of like the hub of accumulation, like all these sort of cash crops coming to Khartoum either or being sold abroad and like, you know, going to like these circuits of accumulation in Khartoum, that's related to circuits of accumulation in like Gulf countries. You see here an image emerge where, Sudan is sort of slowly being elevated through literally the skulls and the destruction of like places outside of Khartoum, like these places such as Darfur and so on and so forth.

There's an interesting process that I touch upon in the book, which is that during this time, because you haven't industrialized the workforce, it doesn't just mean the workforce, but also the military in which the later dictatorship depended on itself wasn't being industrialized. The problem with this is you have a military that's slowly sort of ailing and slowly sort of like, slowly sort of like, not dwindling, but like, you know, it's not as robust, it's not as strong. It doesn't have that defensive capabilities and so on and so forth. As it as like modern nations or modern things do have. And there simultaneously is a rebellion mounting from South Sudan. Now, this rebellion from South Sudan, along with the sort of competition.

complicated process of racialization, sort of needed to be crushed when, this is after Nimeri, when sort of Omar al-Bashir, who is the dictatorship that people may know most famously, but the one that we overthrew who came into power from the 1989 till when we overthrew him in 2019. Now, when he came to power, he saw this sort of resurgence, so like this sort of rebellion from the South led by, like, Jong-Garan. Because they didn't have, like, a strong army, what they did was conscript. They conscripted the poor in their masses.

In fact, this was one of the most, you know, it wasn't the fact that it was a dictatorship, but this was one of the most unpopular policies that they did, of course, naturally, because you're just plucking people from the streets, you know, literally sometimes in public transport, appointing them like to basically as canon for there, right? And the reason why they did this is basically the army, it was just facing losses after losses after losses,

from basically a guerrilla movement by, John Geren. And yeah, they wanted to like basically attack it. The only way they knew how to wasn't through like industry or whatever, but through finance. Their mode of like what I call the mode of industrialization through financialization. And they basically spend a lot of money to conscript these people and like send them to war, canon for their. Now simultaneously, this was somewhat successful, somewhat not successful, but it was deeply unpopular.

It was untenable, but also. So they knew that any resistance from any other part of Sudan is going to be the end and the collapse of Khartoum. That cannot happen under any circumstance because of how much blood they had in Khartoum, like for a lot of reasons, of course, for interest and stuff like this. And so what they did was basically ensure that one of the most populous places in Sudan, which is West Sudan and Darfur and so on and so forth, didn't have rebellions. what it did there basically systematically is disenfranchised for example the already legitimate the quote unquote legitimate forces such as like the police

and stuff like this like literally take weapons from them they systematically placed people from Khartoum and people who were assigned by the government and stuff like that that were government loyalists to make sure that they sort of like the quote unquote the African of course this is at top of like the racialization process the quote unquote African

sort of doesn't come into it was the Arab-Syrenees, not the African-S Sudanese, that should be empowered the Arab-Sudinese. And at the time, in order for them to cement their sort of grip in that region, which is the west of Sudan, so that they don't have any rebellions from that area, they empowered Arab supremacy groups. These Arab supremacy groups basically were people like what we call the RSF today. The RSF is basically an offshoot of something called the Jinjouid, who basically, I think if people follow Sudan somewhat, it's like the group that's responsible for what is known by the USFDHAI. some as like the 21st century's first genocide against the people of Dot For.

This was in the news in 2003 and such. And so you see how like this history sort of unfolds. And this is where you have the RSF. And so that's what happened with the RSF. Now all these are multi-layered. You have the layer of race. You have the layer of like, you know, dispossession and disenchanting the majority of the grand population, the devastation of like property relations and blah, blah, blah and so on and so forth.

of course one of the major things is obviously this is like economically sort of wrecked havoc and this was so devastating for the Sudanese population and it's a Sudanese population that I think 70% of the Sunnis people were younger than the dictatorship itself like it's a young population and they're just what they're seeing in front of their eyes is just it cannot be good this goes back to the irrational revolution what people say the most rational thing about or the most rational ideologies about capitalism, how I understand it, is that it tells you that there is a quote-unquote social contract

that if you, Robert, if you and I sort of were to do the exact right thing at the exact right moment, and if we continue doing this right things, for example, let's say, I don't know, work at the age of 18 and retired age of 62, whatever it is. 62 sounds really nice. I think it might be more appropriate to say 72. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

You're saying that the next generation. Yeah, the next generation would be better, right? So let's say Robert and Mohammed, they've worked since this day to that day, and this basically, like, rationally or whatever, this is like a social contract with the state, and it's going to ensure this the future is going to have better outcomes. The irrational thing about it, like no one believes this. Like no one really believes this.

But we work as if we believe it. You know what I mean? All of us, even though we don't believe this, we have pensions, even though we know that pensions are increasingly, blah, blah, blah, like this is a long story, but increasingly, literally, we pay for it by increasing our rents, through indirect ways. We pay for rent, we do like all these kinds of things.

We work as if like we believe in this rational thing. But that's because if you don't believe in this thing, what happens? A revolution in Sudan, right? In Sudan, for example, not only did we stop believing it, which a lot of people stopped believing in it, but we worked as if we stopped believing in it. We're like, all right, this is done. Do you know what I mean? And we got up and we rose and we sort of, this was the continuation of an irration revolution.

It's manifested today in the form of basically saying that we don't believe in a social contract anymore. We don't believe that all generation is going to provide anything for us. We don't believe in anyone that's going to provide anything for us. We don't even believe that there's something to do that is going to make our outcomes better. what are we going to do? Yeah, you know, we'll see what happens. It starts slowly, but you overthrew the government, basically. Maybe we can stop here and then we can get into like the current moment when, you know,

if you want to ask about what I said. I wanted to, if possible, go back just a little bit and we don't have to get into too much depth about this and you already covered it a little bit. But before we get more into the revolution, I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the rapid support forces or RSF. You talked a little bit about how they emerged out of the Janjaweed. What is their relationship to the UAE and like related commercial ventures and anything else that we need to understand them? Because that was a really interesting part of the book that I wanted to just sort of pluck out if possible before we proceed on with the revolution

and going from sort of the late 20 teens and on. The financing of the Arab Supremicist Group, like I said, was sort of financing the Jinjahid, which was the precursor of like the RSF. Now the Jinjahid were basically Arab Supremis groups, fascists who went around and they sort of got their name by they used to go into villages with sort of like making a lot of noise and so on and so forth and going inside and killing, murdering, raping.

doing the most atrocious, you know, things you can imagine. They were very known as like these sort of fascist violence, you know, like they're really, really disturbing, like when you hear about these stories, right? And really disturbing stories, you know, don't need to get into them. But, but yeah. So these are the people that the government was financing, the Khartoum government was financing, the military of Khartoum is financing under the dictatorship of Amr al-Bashir.

Now, when there was eventually rebellions, from West Sudan, these people who sort of exterminated these rebellions with great prejudice. They didn't care, civilians, non-civilians, whatever. This is why they were supported by the government in Kharton or the dictatorship in Kharton. Now, you know, the head of them was a guy called Musa Hilal. This was before they sort of had like a rebrand into the RSF, the rapid support forces, which is who we hear about today is like the paramilitary that's destroying a lot of places across Sudan, but in West Sudan specifically.

Now, you know, when the rebellions from West Sudan came in the late 90s, early 2000s, this is when they went sort of crazy and destroyed everything, like I said, with great prejudice. Then this Musa Hilal fella, the head of the Janjahid, was promoted. And then in their promotion, what he found out was that he not only was he promoted to like a high station and like he was actually in charge of like certain borders and so on and so forth like an important job but he saw that you know the Khartong government wasn't as strong as he thought it was and in fact he started saying things outwardly to the press basically that maybe just maybe after the fall or after al-Bashir retires or whatever I don't know how you're supposed to fall up a dictator

but maybe then I can be president of Sudan and he ran for elections and like rigged parliament here elections and stuff like this. And so he had like ambitions to be basically the leader of Sudan. Of course, this meant like a swift sort of taken him out. Instead of replacing him with who we know today as Himeti, who's actually a relative of his, himeti is the person who's right now the head of the RSF. He was replaced in the early mid-20 teens, I think, if I'm not mistaken. and this group basically now the RSF,

they had bigger ambitions than just, you know, making sure to quill now the rebellion from West Sudan or to sort of quash it. Now they're sort of like signing contracts with like Saudi Arabia, for example, to go help them out in their fight against the Ansala Allah in Yemen, for example. They've even after the Ukraine war, I mean, this may be skipping a little bit too ahead. after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, they even started like sort of intensifying their deals

with like Russia and so on and so forth. So they had ambitions and like, you know, these ambitions were somewhat successful and, you know, they were becoming more and more enriched and so on and so forth. Now, what I do in the book is what you asked about, which is the question about the link between the UAE and the RSF, what I'm trying to show in the book in through like going beyond the munition sort of binaries, is this? that as I've tried to demonstrate here is the relationship between the capitalist classes, you know, both the enfranchise and the export capitalist classes, the relationship between them and the Gulf, including the UAE,

has been basically in place since decades, since before the RSF, since before Omar al-Bashir's dictatorship, since decades been in place. In fact, before the war broke out in 2023, there was a, major deal that was supposed to be sort of set between one of Sudan's wealthiest men and the UAE to start like the same project in a similar vein to start like a project a port in East Sudan to have like better access between the Gulf countries and Sudan similarly to like a nematic like the reason why I bring this up is because honestly for me personally if you're a person who supports the SAF over the RSF because it's the better of two evils or

or whatever it is, I have no beef with you. This is, of course, you know, the politically expediency and so on and so forth. But for me personally, as I've been saying or as I've mentioned earlier, the better of two evils doesn't get us anywhere. You know what I mean? At least for me personally, this is not my politics,

and I think more and more people are fed up, whether that's the case in like, you know, Kamala Harris v. Donald Trump or the case of like the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats versus the AFD or whatever it is. But even in Sudan, for me personally, choosing the SAF over the RSF, maybe it's politically expedient and maybe like they're the only

force that they can destroy the RSF today. But what I try to show in this history is that, A, there was always a link and this link was literally cemented and created with the solidarity between the capitalist classes in both regions. So if we want to tackle this meaningfully, we should direct our ire not just towards, you know, the RSF, but towards Sudan's capitalist classes. and not just towards the UAE, but the Gulf region as such,

the Gulf region, you know, and these monarchs or whatever who are capitalist as well, this is where our concentration should be on for the reasons that I gave in this podcast in the book as well. And this is why I draw a lot on like, Abdul Khalik Mahjub. Imagine he was at a time of difficulty during colonialism where he chose instead of the expedient,

political expedient decision of like, like, okay, all of us need to unite against this one enemy. Today we have a similar expedient decision, which is, are we all going to unite even with, like, you know, the SAF who have been destroying South Sudan for decades, devastating it, killing South Sudanese as if they weren't human, like in a really, really unbelievable magnitude, and destroying West Sudan for decades, who were literally responsible more than the English of kicking more people out of Khartoum than the English. Like, you know what I mean? These are the people that we're talking about. should we side with them so that we're against the RSF, because this is the greater evil over this. Sure, you can do that. And look, you're not getting any judgment for me.

But if people are interested in a different type of politics, I'm fed up about like this, which side is better or like lesser of two evils. And I think a lot of people are increasingly, whether it's about, you know, America, Sudan or whatever, I think this book is generally the case that I try to make. So there's just so much that we haven't really even had a chance to cover yet. And the book and of course just the history itself is so

rich and there's so much happening currently as well. So of course folks should get a copy of the book in order to go further into depth and get a sense of some of the topics that we haven't really been able to touch on or get too deeply into yet. But on that note though, just a real quick thing actually in order to make sense of what you just said a little earlier and to give some context around this RSF, SAF, better of two evils kind of discussion that you're bringing into the conversation. So in 2023, Sudan was thrown into a civil war that is being fought primarily between those two armed groups, the RSF or rapid support forces, which we just talked about, and the

SAF, which is the Sudanese official national military, who I believe actually orchestrated the military coup alongside the rapid support forces that came after the Revolution of 2018, which we'll discuss in a second actually. But just, yeah, before we close here, I just wanted to give some context around that and to help make it a little bit more clear for people who may not be familiar regarding what you were just saying. But yeah, actually, on that note, I think this is actually a good place to bring in the revolution. I know that you are part of the resistance yourself.

I'm just going to read a quote from the book here. And just so folks know, like the 2018, 2019 revolution, it toppled Al-Bashir's 30-year, am I right, saying 30-year dictatorship? And so you are part of it. So maybe give us a sense of your experience. And also, so you write in the book, while I understand those well-intended

who focus on the antagonist-slash-protagonist divide, the Sudanese revolution of 2019 was a continuation of the irrational revolution, which was Khartoum-centric and did not address conceptions of capitalist property relations or injustices that affect it all. The revolution of 2018-2019 was a resurgent moment for the irrational revolution. So maybe, you know, we sort of at the top, we talked about this idea of irrational revolution. Maybe we can kind of end a little bit with it as well by giving us a sense of. like what happened during the revolution, what were the successes, what were the failures, where is Sudan now, and what are your hopes for what could happen, what could end the violence,

and also going upstream from that, the source of the violence? Yeah, I mean, the revolution broke out. It was protest in late 2018s, in exactly December of 2018. and it continued until it depends on how you see these things but for a couple of years in 2019 we basically I think April 2019 we basically I have a picture actually when we stoned

the presidential sort of various but basically we overthrew the dictatorship and the revolution continued and stuff like this yeah I think the reason why we didn't we didn't address these things and like I said I don't blame us for doing these things I think one of the things that we have to be that for me is always an impressive

sort of thing to go back to is that the vast majority of people that were in the revolution were younger than the dictatorship itself, right? And this is an interesting and very, very, I think for me, very inspired. I always remember this romantically. But analytically, to understand this is that that means that what we thought was the sole problem of our political economic system, whatever it is, the biggest problems that we had in our society were basically stemming from this dictatorship. It collapsed for us meant like, you know, basically we're going to usher in sort of the kingdom of God, so to speak like a utopia or whatever.

And that didn't happen, A, but these were our assumptions, which is an important thing to think about. Now, this is, it's an important thing to think about because it sort of was maybe one of the reasons, at least for me and for a lot of people that I knew, it was the reason for our hubris. you know we're like oh man you know the dictatorship is like it's gone and like you know we overthrew it and like this is all that we needed to do and so on and so forth I think we at that moment we weren't really it was beyond it wasn't beyond the dictatorship you know it was like the things that I hope I sort of did a decent job of like outlining it in this podcast is as we can see there's so many things happening the toppling of one

person or like a couple of people and all this guy it doesn't absorb, like it doesn't sort of sanitize the system. It's not like, you know, some sort of lightning rod that's going to go through the system and like sort of cleanse it of all that's like whatever, you know, like all is evils or whatever. Of course, there's a lot of things I need to address. At that time, I used to hear people sort of say like this is the first time I hear about what was happening in Darfur. You know, there were people, it's not surprising, right, to hear during that revolution, at least some members,

some people in the revolution, they didn't know as much about Darfur or they knew less about Darfur than people who were outside of Sudan or didn't even visit Sudan or could even point where Sudan wasn't on the map. Of course, of course, the dictatorship suppressed any sort of voice of resistance.

Of course, like, you know, these things were completely kept under wraps and of course, like they tried to suppress it. Or even if they didn't try suppress it, they sort of naturalized the racialization process and rhetoric so much so that you wouldn't sort of see them as suffering. You'd be like, oh, these people, like, you know, how they say about cultures right today, right? It's like, ah, Mexicans are so hardworking to basically justify the fucking, and this is such a natural thing to hear, right? And it's even progressive say it's like, oh, yeah, Mexicans, they just, you wouldn't find an American doing this job because Mexicans are so hardworking. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about, pro?

like yeah they're obvious to getting fucking shafted you know like sorry to go on the tangent but it's so it's so it's so it's even seen as progressive to like see them in like a in this racialized way or whatever you didn't really think about their destruction he didn't really think about them during the revolution of course it was a lightning rod for us and this is the the personal political sort of the psychological the political sort of comes into is an interesting thing because it was for us important you know what I mean it was for us important to start something, but we factually didn't address all these layers that I mentioned earlier. I think also the reason why this is funny, I don't want to throw under the bus or something,

but after the revolution, remember, like, we were young, like in our 20s, I was in my mid-20s, you know, and it was exciting moments. There was like monotos and we were fighting around. It's like this paramilitary. It was like, it was a crazy, crazy time, right? It was really interesting times. after like you know sort of the discipline of age sort of it hits you you know what i mean i remember giving a talk about soudan and there's a person you know who was also part of the

sinai's revolution and you know he he basically said that the capitalist forces were afraid of we're going to change to dine into like a anti-capist country or like a socialist country or something like this like i'm sorry but like the revolution is glorious but we were never ever ready to overthrow capitalist property relations. We were never ever ready to address the racialization processes, let alone the processes of the capitalist property relations

and so on and so forth. These are really things that we needed to figure out before, I mean, we were in our 20s. You know what I mean? Like, I don't blame fault anyone for this. I think most of the people that were in that revolution in their 20s knew and were cut their

teeth, like and sort of were educated in that moment. Most of them and many people in their 20s, 100%, but still we were not ready. And that's where the quote comes from. I feel like I went on a tangent with that answering the question, was that okay? No, no, that was great, yeah.

Yeah. What I want to know before we wrap up is kind of like, I feel like we could talk for a long time about your experience during the revolution and what that was like is just the little taste that you gave us there was really fascinating. But what was the outcome and where is Sudan now is what I'm most interested in? And if there's anything that you want to talk about like the future and what you think,

I mean, you talk about this in the book, you know, but if you want to end on the note of like what you think needs to happen in the future for there to be sort of not just an end to the violence, but like a transformation of the society more broadly. but what was the outcome of the revolution? Where is Sudan now? I think the outcome of the revolution, like I said, with the hubris of us, we weren't prepared for, like I mentioned earlier,

but that meant that the people who were most prepared, not for a revolution, but the most organized in society, sort of claimed this moment of, let's say, a moment of rupture, right? And those were, of course, the paramilitary and the military forces, of course, and the NGO class. the NGO class basically i talk about it in a little bit but just briefly for what it says it does it's really useless it says it's going to help people into like you know vocational programs women's rights blah blah all just orientalist kinds of nonsense

it does none of it it absolutely does the complete opposite doesn't matter of fact you know what i mean but one thing that undoubtedly it's unbelievably good at is taming revolutionary spirit because they come and they say like, we're going to do all of these things. And like the pitch is just crazy. You'd think that, you know, they're going to turn Sudan into like the, I don't know, a socialist utopia overnight.

You know what I mean? Their pitch is crazy. We're going to educate all, I don't know, workers in Sudan. We're going to increase literacy rates. We're going to do this. And you're like, fuck, yeah, dude, let's do this. But obviously, now that this happens,

it's not successful, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff. People are familiar with. But because the pitch is so amazing, a lot of revolutionary energy is like sort of swamped there. You know what I meant? And it's killed. It's amazing for dragging this energy. And so those people, you know, revolutionaries and stuff and so on and so forth who wanted good people, liberals, Marxists, whatever it is, who want to do good, they're attracted to these areas. And they also have funding.

Let's not forget. So after the revolution, it was a very strong moment. and then these people came some people who are civilians came out I would personally say that they were not elected no one chose them whatever but people can make their minds up about these things so these civilians came out who wanted to have

like a civilian democracy to replace this dictatorship but of course not only when we're not ready intellectually or psychologically or whatever mentally but also structurally so the structures of social reproduction itself were held completely by the dictatorship.

The civilians worried that if we immediately had like elections, because the structures of, like, for example, heads of hospitals, TV stations, major government sort of ministries and organizations, civil society groups, like just these factions of society, they were all influenced by the now-fallen regime. And they were afraid that if elections were happened tomorrow, that they might elect someone who's like pro-es. the al-Bashir regime. They may not get al-Bashir, of course,

but they're going to get someone who's like from that thing. So what they said would like, okay, instead of having elections tomorrow, we want to enter into a power sharing agreement with the military, and by extension, the power military, so that we can prolong this transitional period

so that we can establish democratic institutions, which I don't know what that means, in order for us to be ready for the elections. Cool. And of course, you know, I see in a book there's historic precedence for this because in one of the uprisings, in the October risings of the 60s, I believe, when they wanted to have like immediate elections,

it was sort of a little bit devastating for the left and for their reading of history because they had like prematurely sort of called for elections. But I would say that at least my reading of history is different and I think they're wrong, basically, without being to, you know, whatever. And so they wanted to share this power, have a power share agreement. to prolong this process. And in the meantime, they were going to prosecute the members of the regime who are not like in prison yet and so on and so forth, get their wealth and all that kind of stuff.

This backfired royally. It backfired because as revolutionaries, even though we were getting more political education as part of like the resistance committees, we also like distributed sort of natural gas. We sort of went to like seeing the pharmacies to see who has which medicine. and so on and so we were like integral to that social process but we weren't yet had like the abilities like command the major social infrastructure like social reproduction in society and so what happened was the military and the paramilitary who basically owned a lot of wealth and like a lot of things would keep on testing the waters how far can we push these civilians and they

pushed further and further there was like an assassination attempt on like one of the the civilian leaders are unsuccessful or maybe it was successful in like shoring up some sort of support i don't know like these things are i don't know political theater and so like they push they pushed they pushed and they see that there's no limit yeah the strongest aspect of the revolution was the revolution with themselves but they're not ready and they're sort of dissatisfied of course we were with like the civilian side of the agreement but they weren't elected and they didn't want elections immediately for Sudan and they were doing things and claiming a lot of money and like all that kind of stuff but they were doing things that they were not sort of they don't

have any jurisdiction but like mandate to do like for example distribute it doesn't matter like it gets into like pedantic things and so simultaneously why these civilian elites they were distancing themselves from the revolutionaries they didn't have the power of the revolutionaries the negotiating sides with them which is the military and the paramilitary, they see they can push them wherever. And basically, this is where we have the moment of like, okay, basically they can do whatever they want. Now, this is a short reading of history.

What we've been talking about, like the processes that I've talked about financialization and so on and so forth, this is more important than this in understanding how we are where we are today. It could have been anyone or whatever. But the reason why it came out in this form or the destruction that it does is because this destruction was sort of naturalized. it was sort of like limited to outside of Khartoum and blah-l-l-l-l-law, all these kinds of things. It came out through like the processes that we spoke about earlier.

So, yeah, I hope this sort of answers like the relationship between the revolution and the current moment a little bit. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Mohamed Kugale, a socialist who was part of the Sudanese Revolution of 2019. He's the author of Politically Unconscious, the psychic aftermath of the Sudanese Revolution, published by by Iskra Books. He's currently residing in Germany, where he has his own psychotherapy practice, and where he started the Black Radicals to incorporate the Black radical tradition into the German left. We'll be taking off the next couple of weeks for our summer break, so unless you're a Patreon subscriber, this will be the last episode until August 10th. For our Patreon subscribers, we've got an episode for you next week. Then we'll be taking a break there also until mid-August. We've got some

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