
The Sudanese Revolution Enters a New Phase
The Sudanese Revolution has won major victories. But it still needs to wrestle control from the military to popular forces.
Gilbert Achcar is a professor at SOAS, University of London. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (2013), The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013), and Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (2016).
The Sudanese Revolution has won major victories. But it still needs to wrestle control from the military to popular forces.
The recent uprisings in Sudan and Algeria show that the conditions that gave rise to the Arab Spring are not going away. But movements against authoritarianism and exploitation still face existential threats.
On why the rise of fundamentalism in Muslim-majority countries owes much to the failings of the secular left.
The Sudanese people just toppled their longtime autocratic leader, Omar al-Bashir. It's a confirmation that the revolutionary ferment of the Arab Spring didn't die out in 2011.
Through butchery and sectarianism, the autocracies of the Arab world have survived this round. But in the long run, any order dependent on murder and bloodshed is doomed to collapse.
Today's reactionaries don't seem to be interested in a new world war, but in a clash between North and South, rich and poor.
Both the Syrian regime and the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen aim to bury the aspirations of the Arab Spring.
It's been five years since the start of the Tunisian uprising. What was won — and what remains — in the Arab Spring?
The discourse of war is already upon us. But it must be resisted.