Sudan workers rebel! Bosses caught at crosshair of U.S.-China Rivalry

KHARTOUM, SUDAN—“The regime is panicking! I have never seen them panicking like this.” That’s what an activist with Justice Africa said as massive protests erupted here in response to the government’s attempt to triple the price of bread and fuel. The protests started in the eastern city of Atbara, the former home of the Sudanese Communist Party, which was one of the most powerful communist parties in Africa or the Middle East.  The demonstrations quickly spread to six other cities, including the capital.
Like all workers’ struggles today, this fight in Sudan unfolds in a world where the rivalry between imperialists is the main factor shaping events.  For decades now, Sudan has been a crucial outpost for Chinese capitalists in their drive to challenge U.S. imperialism and establish themselves as a new center of gravity in the world economy. In 1995 President al-Bashir signed an important oil deal with the China, supporting their bid to establish energy access outside the military footprint of US imperialism’s Mid-East presence.  China now controls 75% of Sudanese oil output of 133,000 barrels a day (thediplomat.com, 6/17/18).
Over this same period of time U.S. imperialism has sought to answer growing Chinese influence in the region by backing a series of separatist/nationalist/fascist movements in Sudan fomenting instability and civil war at the expense of the lives of millions.  Following Sudan’s first oil discovery in 1978 civil war raged from 1983 to 2005. US imperialist running-dog politician John Garang, trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, received $20 million of military equipment in 1996 (Federation of American Scientists) helping to prolong a war which has displaced four million and killed two million of our working class brothers and sisters in the Sudan .  
Despite the false promises by the Darfur separatist movement, and the later secession of oil-rich South Sudan in 2011 to create the world’s most recent capitalist state,the workers of Sudan continue to pay the price for U.S. imperialism’s ongoing efforts to deny Chinese imperialist access to a stable outpost in Africa.  
Most recently the Trump administration has reversed course by lifting sanctions imposed on the al-Bashir regime as he has committed thousands of troops to the U.S.-backed Saudi coalition’s genocidal war in Yemen. This “integration” of Sudan’s economy into world trade has pried it open for IMF and World Bank “structural adjustment” policies, which always amount to an attack on workers.  In this case Wall Street demanded an end to subsidies that kept fuel and wheat more affordable, triggering the protests. Such subsidies, like all pro-worker policies capitalist governments implement, are relics of class struggle of prior generations.  Sudanese workers carry forward this tradition of class struggle today.  Similar protests over rising fuel and bread prices took place earlier in 2018 and in 2013 and were put down by security forces.
Police and army snipers opened fire on protesting workers and students, killing about 30, according to local journalists. The government arrested 14 leaders of the opposition National Consensus Forces, and shut down internet service and social media sites. Universities and schools in the capital were also closed as many demonstrators across the country demanded an end to the 30-year dictatorship.
Inflation reached an annual rate of 70 percent last November, leaving many Sudanese workers unable to buy food. Many have been standing in long lines and spending up to 40 percent of their income just on bread or sleeping in their cars for two days waiting to buy gas.
Workers in Sudan in struggle today against the al-Bashir regime must rebuild a communist movement that will correct the errors of its predecessors or their brave struggle against al-Bashir ‘s fascist state will be diverted into fighting for the interests of forces loyal either to U.S. or to Chinese imperialism.  Sudanese communists formed the Sudanese Movement for National Liberation in 1946 with a program of fighting for self-determination, national consciousness, and uniting all classes under the leadership of Sudanese workers and peasants in the fight for independence from British imperialism. With the abandonment of world revolution being pronounced from a USSR exhausted by its recent defeat  in World War II, Sudanese communists viewed socialist revolution as too distant a prospect to be presented to the masses, and all organizing was dedicated to the fight for independence (el-Amin, 1996 Middle Eastern Studies).  These nationalist errors by communists worldwide are analyzed more fully in Progressive Labor Party’s Road to Revolution III (1976).
More and more, Africa finds itself in the crosshairs of the growing rivalry between U.S. and Chinese imperialism. The result is more poverty, more terror and more war. Taking lessons from history, a new communist movement will rise up from the struggles of Sudan’s working class and this time finish the job that was started in Atbara more than 50 years ago.