In the midst of war, Sudan’s army is retaliating against activists for their role in bringing down the former regime.
When the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces captured Sudan’s second-largest city, Wad Madani, tens of thousands of people fled and sought safety in regions still under the army’s control.
Mohamad Osman* was among them, but military intelligence arrested him as he was trying to flee on December 27.
He was taken to a secret detention centre – commonly referred to as a “ghost house” in Sudan – where the army quickly found out that he was a member of the Kalakla resistance committee, one of many neighbourhood groups that spearheaded the pro-democracy movement before the war.
For five days, Osman was electrocuted and forced to look at seven corpses rotting on the cold concrete floor. He was going to be number eight.
Luckily, a friend in the military bailed him out.
Osman is one of dozens of Sudanese activists who have been arrested and tortured in ghost houses by military intelligence in recent weeks, even as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) threatens to defeat the army and capture all of Sudan.
“The first thing they asked him was if he was a member of the resistance committees,” said Fatma Noon*, a spokesperson for the Kalakla resistance committee. “We know they’re targeting us.”
Many of those being detained are members of the resistance committees, which played an instrumental role in organising mass protests to bring down Sudan’s autocratic former President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
“What is happening is the political revenge by cadres of the former regime who are in the security forces,” said Hassan al-Tayb*, a resistance committee member in Port Sudan, the army’s stronghold and Sudan’s de facto administrative capital since the war.
The army frequently accuses resistance committee members of being RSF sleeper cells, but activists believe this is a pretext to punish them for their role in bringing down al-Bashir.
“There are some people in the army that say volunteers and activists cooperate with the RSF. But this is not correct,” said Yousif Omer*, a resistance committee member in the city.
“I believe these are political arrests. Many of the activists being taken were active during the revolution [that brought down al-Bashir]. Now, they are facing baseless accusations,” Omer told media.
media sent messages to army spokesman Nabil Abdallah asking him for comment about the arrests of activists, but received no response by the time of publication.
‘Sleeper cells’
Meanwhile, Sudanese activists accuse the army of devoting more efforts to crack down on them than to fight the RSF. Many pointed to the army’s rapid withdrawal from Wad Madani in mid-December, which allowed the paramilitary to capture the city.
Wad Madani was a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the capital Khartoum and surrounding cities earlier in the war, many of whom just had to flee again when the RSF attacked.
Since the war erupted in April 2023, resistance committees have mobilised to evacuate civilians from neighbourhoods caught in the crossfire, power hospitals and distribute food and medicine to those in need. But activists are now pausing their initiatives for fear of arrest.
“Right now, I stopped all my work,” Omer said. “To be honest, we’re scared of military intelligence. We just don’t feel like we can move freely to do our work.”
Other activists said the army has imposed heavy security measures and set up checkpoints that restrict the movement of civilians and hampered the delivery of aid.
In River Nile state, the governor even issued an order to disband resistance committees and reform them according to strict guidelines set by the governor, who also barred members of old committees from joining the new ones.
Hamid Khalafallah, a Sudanese expert and an active member of the resistance committees before he fled the country in May, told media that the army is restricting and impeding international aid.
“There is a bit of a shift by international aid agencies, who now wish to work with local groups because they have seen that [working through the army] has resulted in very little aid reaching people,” Khalafallah told media from Manchester, United Kingdom.
He added that because the army feels that resistance committees threaten its legitimacy and tries to disrupt them, vulnerable communities will face more hardship if local relief is stamped out or scaled back.
“I imagine the military is not very happy about possibly losing an opportunity to exploit or divert aid,” he added.
Resistance committees have also drawn ire for calling for an end to the war, for the RSF to dissolve and for the army to surrender to a civilian government, according to al-Tayb from Port Sudan.
“The [army] is against any activist that does not support the war or the return of the former regime,” al-Tayb told media.
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