According to a report by Al Jazeera on October 29, during the Sudan civil war that began in May 2023, the United Arab Emirates-supported Sudan Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured Fashir in southern Sudan on October 26. It is reported that prior to this, the RSF had besieged the 1.2 million residents of Fashir for 18 months. During these 18 months, the RSF built a 56-kilometer-long barrier outside the city, blocking all food and medicine from entering, and sealed escape routes. Therefore, before Fashir was captured, the city was already suffering from famine, residents lacked medicine, and were forced to eat animal feed. After the city was taken, the RSF carried out a fascist-like massacre within Fashir. According to multiple sources, it is estimated that over 3,000 civilians, especially women and children, have been slaughtered. The RSF, this fascist gang, subjected civilians to various tortures and killings. They crazily used machine guns to spray fire, burned people alive, and also committed sexual violence against women and children. In the Saudi obstetrics and gynecology hospital, they raped and murdered at least 460 patients, doctors, and nurses. It is evident that the Sudan Rapid Support Forces are a murderous fascist gang, supported by imperialism, engaged in slaughtering the working people in Africa and acting as executioners to maintain colonial rule. So, what is the background of this heinous crime committed by the Sudan RSF, and what is the nature of the civil war between them and the Sudan comprador regime army? As Marxists, it is very necessary to study and clarify imperialist aggression in Africa, the war over colonies supported by puppet armies and comprador regimes, and expose the essence of their actions and the blood debts they owe to the broad masses of African workers.
To explain why the Sudan RSF is so reactionary, it is necessary to start with the situation of the Sudan civil war. The Sudan civil war that erupted in 2023 originated from the military coup in Sudan in 2019. In 2019, large-scale mass movements opposed the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, leading to his overthrow. However, Sudanese Armed Forces Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (hereinafter Burhan) launched a military coup, seizing the achievements of the mass movement and establishing a military government, with himself serving as the chairman of the Sudan Sovereign Council. However, since Bashir was overthrown, the forces of the RSF still existed. To consolidate power, the Sudanese Armed Forces temporarily compromised and appointed the new leader of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (hereinafter Dagalo), as vice-chairman. In 2021, seeing the opportunity, Burhan launched another coup, dissolved the Sovereign Council, and established a dictatorship within the military government. Two years after the military coup, with support from the UAE, Russia, and the US behind the UAE, the RSF launched large-scale attacks nationwide. At the beginning of the war, the UAE, seeking to expand its influence in Africa, acquire more raw material sources, and enslave local people, provided large amounts of weapons and funds to the RSF, turning it into its invasion vanguard in Africa. Since the outbreak of the Sudan civil war, at least 86 flights have flown from the UAE to a makeshift airport in Chad, neighboring Sudan. Senior leaders of the RSF also established several jewelry trading companies, transporting large quantities of gold and diamonds to the UAE. With support from the UAE, the RSF initially gained the advantage. At this time, the two imperialist groups competed for Sudan as their colony, supporting the RSF. The US and China, through the UAE, supplied large amounts of weapons to support it indirectly. Photos from foreign sources confirm that on the battlefield of the Sudan civil war, there are multiple instances of Chinese-made artillery and missiles, as well as large shipments of guns, ammunition, and drones. The US approved a $1.2 billion shipment of rockets and ammunition to the UAE in October 2024, most of which was transported via UAE cargo planes to Chad, then to Sudan. As an imperialist power, Russia, as a vassal of China, directly provided significant aid to the RSF before May 2024. The Wagner mercenary group openly trained soldiers for the RSF, provided military training, occupied the port of Sudan as Russia’s first military base in Africa, and stole large amounts of mineral resources from Sudan. After May 2024, the Sudanese Armed Forces launched a counterattack. Seeing the changing situation, the US and China immediately changed their tone. The US began condemning the genocide committed by the RSF and pretended to impose sanctions, but their real goal was to continue their imperialist invasions and slaughter countless third-world people. It is hypocritical for them to condemn their own running dogs at this point. Russia also quickly signed a treaty with the Sudanese Armed Forces, allowing Russia to establish a military base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, providing support and weapons to the Sudanese armed forces to strengthen their colonial grip in Africa. China’s imperialism, more cunning, played both sides: Chinese weapons continuously flowed through the UAE into the hands of the RSF, and through the Belt and Road Initiative, China expanded the port facilities, hangars, and oil pipelines around the Sudanese port. It is clear that the actions of the two imperialist groups, China, Russia, and the US, in the Sudan civil war, are entirely aimed at competing for colonies. The UAE is also playing a balancing act among these powers to expand its interests in Africa. The struggle over Sudan among imperialist groups vividly reflects the extreme intensification and unprecedented rise of contradictions among imperialist countries today. It also demonstrates that when their interests align, they temporarily unite to turn their guns against the colonized people. Combining these points, it is enough to show that today’s imperialist countries rely on expanding colonies and exporting capital to delay their own demise—decay, parasitism, and dying struggles. Whether through collusion or confrontation, the goal of China, Russia, and the US remains unchanged: expand colonies, export capital, suppress domestic and foreign peoples, and prolong their own death.
Imperialist bandits, in order to maintain their rule and suppress colonized peoples, always resort to the most barbaric methods of repression, supporting local comprador regimes to control the political and economic spheres of colonies, acting as executioners to slaughter and oppress the people. Today’s imperialist bandits, especially US imperialism’s mouthpieces, always claim that these actions are carried out by the puppet regimes they support, high moral ground, and various denunciations to shift blame away from their crimes. Meanwhile, China and Russia are even more reactionary, viciously slandering, claiming these are the greed and brutality of the colonized peoples themselves. They ignore their own support for these butcher executioners and instead use this as an excuse to slander the colonized peoples, portraying them as only capable of slaughtering their own compatriots, inciting nationalist sentiments. In reality, isn’t it precisely China and Russia that support these ethnic traitors to serve as their colonial vanguard, launching wars and massacres in colonies? Their words are transparent! Therefore, we must recognize that the Fashir massacre is not an isolated, individual event. Since imperialist colonization of Africa, they have used countless fascist methods to slaughter people, accumulating an enormous blood debt in Africa. Since the outbreak of the Sudan civil war, imperialist bandits have caused at least 17,000 deaths, 30,000 injuries, and 2.17 million displaced. Historically, Britain, France, the US, Belgium, and Germany have caused hundreds of millions of African deaths since the triangular trade era. In the face of such irrefutable evidence, the slander of China, Russia, and US imperialism against African workers, and their glorification of invasion, are completely shattered. Their crimes in Africa will never be forgotten. Although US and Chinese imperialism implement such reactionary fascist tyranny in Africa, this does not mean they are invincible or terrifying; instead, it exposes their superficial strength and the fact that they are paper tigers forced to carry out such fascist acts domestically and internationally. The puppet armies and bandits supported by imperialism, as seen in the Fashir massacre, have behaved this way before and will continue to do so. As Stalin once said, “It should be regarded as a manifestation of bourgeois weakness.” Only when imperialism is rotten and decadent to the extreme and on the brink of collapse will such acts occur. Lenin once said: “Imperialism is parasitic or decaying capitalism,” “Imperialism cannot survive without oppressing and exploiting the colonized peoples and semi-colonies that make up the majority of the world’s population, extracting the maximum profit from these countries.” We must realize that today’s imperialist plundering and a series of anti-human crimes in Africa are rooted in imperialism’s inherent nature. No matter how they justify their crimes, they are powerless before Marxist truth. Only by abolishing capitalism can these anti-human crimes be completely eradicated. The current world is an imperialist era and also an era of proletarian revolution. Imperialist bandits are already morally bankrupt and cornered everywhere; people worldwide are spontaneously rising to oppose them. In China, protests by the masses in Jiangyou and Pucheng, and online support for the Mung and Wild Children incidents. In the US, seven million people have taken to the streets protesting Trump’s fascist dictatorship. In Russia, there are attacks on conscription officers and their offices, and public denunciations of Russian aggression in court. In this proletarian revolutionary era, as Marxists, we must realize this and prepare for future revolution. In the future, the proletarian revolution will inevitably smash capitalism, sweep it into the trash heap of history, and force imperialist bandits out of Africa forever!