Al-Jawda is a private hospital located between Al-Daim and Al-Sahafa neighborhoods in Northern Khartoum, close to the center of Sudan’s capital. This hospital along with Omdurman hospital and Al-Arbeen hospital in Omdurman city as well as the Dawliya hospital in Khartoum North were an important refuge for injured protestors during Sudan’s four-year long revolutionary movement. Hospitals with welcoming staff members who have shown sympathy or outright support to the pro-democracy movement were an important pillar of Sudan’s revolutionary infrastructure, which is made up of several pillars that sustained the protests in Sudan and ensured that the whole community is contributing to this movement and is supporting the young women and men on the streets. This is part of the reason why protestors were able to feel a sense of security that they would get treatment at no cost if they are needed and that their families who are often impoverished don’t have to find ways to finance their treatment.

An organic revolutionary infrastructure saved lives

The peaceful protest movement was sustained by a revolutionary infrastructure that include many pillars but the most important ones are the resistance committees (RCs); they are neighborhood-based groups that  first formed in the aftermath of the deadly September 2013 protests, which saw widespread mobilization but also ended in less than a week, with a death toll of more than 200. To activists and community organizers, it was clear that dissent was brewing, but also that there was no leadership at the grassroots level and the RCs came to bridge this gap and build power from within society as opposed to the centralized power structure present in Sudanese political parties which were not popular with youth. Moreover, there was also a need to create entities that were more representative as political parties are very confined to urban centers and to the middle-classes while the RCs were able to find a platform in villages and mobilized across age groups and ethnic backgrounds and regions. The medical infrastructure; and this includes paramedics who operated from makeshift hospitals within neighborhoods during protests, hospitals that were open to receiving injured protestors as well as a network of doctors organised across trade unions who helped coordinate protection, treatment and recovery. The hospitals were also able to document the violations against freedom of assembly and provide reports that were shared through activist groups. The legal networks such as the Emergency Lawyers Initiative that provided immediate legal aid to protestors who were arrested from protests and other places and would usually camp out near police stations during protests to ensure quick intervention. The social infrastructure which provided protection to protestors who were able to enter random civilian houses in any neighborhood to recover from tear gas and hide from arrests and in many occasions, the residents paid a hefty price and saw their personal spaces violated as a result.

How a system to protect protestors and activists was built

This revolutionary infrastructure was not built in one day, but it was the result of a cumulative process that spanned decades and was built on the sweat and tears of activists. The RCs began in cells of 3-5 trusted individuals before they grew to include hundreds of members, the lawyers were trained by renowned human rights lawyers who spent months at a time in prison and volunteered their time to political dissidents while some of the doctors who treated the protestors were organised in trade unions that were intimidated for demanding better wages and working environments. This infrastructure was also organic in the sense that it was mostly resourced by activists and the community itself. Hadreen organisation, which is an officially registered national organization active in the fields of health, education, feeding, water plants and the prevention of disaster crises and is a critical part of this infrastructure, for example, fundraised from the community to compensate hospitals such as Al-Jawda for treating patients and was also able to support families to travel and seek treatment abroad when needed.

This infrastructure was critical in supporting the momentum of the revolutionary movement which was strong from December 2018 until April 2023, that fateful Ramadan when war began in Sudan.  It  was so strong that the protests and calls for change never stopped and there were regular days every week in which people left work early to join the protests and people planned their travel route accordingly. In October 2021, a coup happened and the transitional government led by the umbrella group that led the protest movement, the Freedom and Change Coalition (FCC) was largely put in jail and the prime minister was also put under house arrest. The 2021 coup was yet another test for the RCs that never technically left the streets to continue mobilizing and to ensure that the revolutionary momentum continues and by that time, they had a strong system in place. For example, the RCs have various committees and before and during the protest, the security and the organizational committee which is responsible for arranging the routes of the protest beforehand and at the protest, they could change or alter route of the march based on security issues. At certain points, they even send calls for protests to retreat based on the level of violence used and such calls are shared on social media and other sources.

It has not been easy as the RCs have faced asassinations, torture, imprisonment and economic impoverishment, but the narrative is much deeper as the RCs had this infrastructure to support them. 

How the protest movement came under attack

Since 2019 and especially after the 2021 coup, the authorities wanted to shut down the protest movement. As long as the world saw that the protests were peaceful, organised and consistent despite the risks faced by the protestors, the pressure continued on the authorities internally and externally. Internally, it was very difficult to form a government after the coup because of dissent even within the political sector and externally, there continued to be pressure by the international community.

As the violence of the attacks on the protests themselves increased, the conviction of the protestors didn’t waver, the authorities resorted to attacking the revolutionary infrastructure.

The lawyers became overworked as each protest saw more arrests and some members of the RCs began facing fabricated charges that required long-term litigation. The RCs which were the safety pin of the pro-democracy movement began to fragment under this pressure. Hospitals such as Al-Jawda began to be bullied, for example, the hospital saw power cuts during protests to put pressure on the hospital and its staff members while the hospital has also received higher taxation which RC members viewed as a stark punishment by the authorities. At the same time, the hospitals were unable to offer free services and Hadreen used to pay the bills on a regular basis, but they quickly saw a case against them citing registration issues and they began seeing shrinking donations. As a result, invoices piled up for Hadreen and they struggled to meet their debts. I am also noting that RC members said that Hadreen and its founders came under scrutiny by the authorities and were threatened while others also state that the worsening economic situation inside Sudan and also for the Sudanese diaspora has limited the fundraising abilities of Hadreen.

The crackdown on the revolutionary infrastructure was calculated and it led to a weakening of the movement and this happened at a time when the protestors also began facing stigma that was perpetuated by propaganda against them that they are communists, apostates, drug abusers and other things. This propaganda wanted to create a dissociation between the protestors and the community because this infrastructure is based on the community who offer their homes, their resources and their efforts for the movement. This attack was becoming more successful in violating the right to peaceful assembly by increasing hostility from the community and making it more dangerous.

In his recent paper, Al-Battahani (2021) argues that the RCs are one of the tools used by the youth to distance themselves from the “old political club” which continues to be very centralized and exclusive. Political parties were exclusive and operated in isolation and never engaged the community or saw that the public was part of their struggle,  people felt that they were called on to protest, but they never received any support or were never engaged in building a narrative that called for change. The RCs became a central part of the democratic movement in Sudan because they were able to build an infrastructure around the needs of their members and they didn’t even mobilize protestors but also mobilized entire sectors of the community to support the protest movement  and made them feel that they were part of this movement. People felt needed and felt that they had a role to play and they delivered every single day.

The infrastructure during the war

In the period after April 2023, the revolutionary infrastructure quickly adapted and began engaging in humanitarian work. The RCs engaged in Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) which were a lifeline for the communities living under bombardment as they provided food through soup kitchens as well as documentation services. This showed that the activists were always close to their communities and it also shows that they are able to self-govern their areas as they organised night patrols to protect their areas and provided much-needed services to them. However, there were also new dynamics as some members of the RCs took up armed resistance by joining the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) or the militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and this impacted the cohesiveness of the RCs as political bodies that are able to shape and direct the political discourses, but it didn’t impact their role in humanitarian work.