Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Khalid Mustafa Madani.
And he is chair of African studies at McGill University in Montreal.
And you may have seen him in the media in the last couple of weeks talking about the popular uprising and abolition, for a short time anyway, of the dictatorship in Sudan.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's an honor.
Very happy to have you here.
And you know what?
I'll get right to the chase of what's most important to me first.
And then we can talk about all the rest of everything.
But whose side is the CIA on?
Well, I don't know.
I don't have access to the CIA.
I know whose side the State Department's on.
But that's close enough.
Well, usually they're probably on the same page.
Go ahead.
Right now, the State Department has made a statement condemning the violence.
So they're taking a position against the human rights violation going on.
But and they've asked for mediation in terms of looking at what they're actually saying.
But the involvement isn't as important at this point anyway, as the African Union, which is actually mediating between the two sides.
The military government that is still trying to hold on to power.
And of course, the protesters that have been protesting for almost seven months now.
OK, so tell me where I'm off the story.
But long story short is the protest movement was so effective that the military went ahead and overthrew the dictator rather than giving the people a chance to.
And therefore they held on and just the next guy in line took power.
Is that it?
Yeah.
Unfortunately, you know, after, you know, maybe it was at that point, five months of protest, not only in the capital city, but all through the country, which is one of the largest countries in Africa.
The protesters peacefully protested throughout the country.
And then they held a sit in that went on for at least two months.
And they were able to overthrow the first dictator, Omar Bashir, on April 11th.
And then lo and behold, instead of giving authority to to the people, the military basically just consolidate power after kicking out Omar Bashir, just another military dictator took over.
And now he's playing delaying tactics so as not to give power back to the people after they've been struggling.
And many, of course, hundreds have been dying in the cause of freedom.
So it's one of those sad examples where you have people fighting and then counterrevolutionary forces taking over and stopping the uprising in the revolution.
And so what are the demands of the protesters?
I mean, is it one faction is just trying to take power away or they truly are protesting for one man, one vote and a better form of government in the future?
Yeah.
No, it's not one faction.
The interesting thing about it is that the entire country, I would say, you know, 99 percent or so are opposed to the government.
And their main basic objective is to overturn the military government or force them to hand over power and authority of the government to a civilian led government that would have an interim government for three years to prepare for elections, for multi-party elections.
But what I think has captured the attention of the entire world is the fact that even though there have been a lot of similar uprisings like this in the Arab world, as you know, and throughout Africa as well.
And even, you know, outside of the Middle East and Africa, this is probably, you know, the most extended and sustained people's movement and revolution that we have seen in the Arab world and in Africa for decades.
And so what is happening is that the entire world is looking now at this country, many of whom haven't heard about it before.
And I would say that there are paying close attention and many throughout the world are now supporting this movement because not only does it encompass the entire country, but it is remarkably peaceful.
So they're kind of following the model of the civil rights movement in terms of waging non-peaceful civil disobedience.
And they've been doing it for seven months.
So the whole world is looking on.
Neighbors are looking on.
You have protests supporting this revolution in countries like Ghana, Kenya, Algeria, you know, all over the world.
And even, of course, American celebrities now are chiming in in support of this people's movement.
So it's quite remarkable.
That's why I think your listeners may be interested, because some people are saying if it's successful, it could really kind of reverberate through other countries where there are military dictators.
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All right.
Now, so it's reported that the Saudis have been intervening on the side of the military dictators there.
And I guess the UAE and others as well.
How much money are we talking about and how decisive is that?
We're talking a lot of money.
In fact, there was the main reason.
In fact, it probably is the main reason that the military was emboldened to hold on to power and not give power over to the people and to form a civilian government.
Is that maybe a few hours just before they were almost being forced or they're being forced to hand over a government to a civilian led government.
The leaders, the military leaders, flew to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and also Egypt.
And then they came back a day later and decided to forcibly disperse the sit-in, the peaceful demonstrators, killing over 100 people, over 60 cases of rape and sexual assault.
And then 40 bodies were dumped into the Nile River.
It was a horrible, horrible massacre that occurred on June 3rd.
And most will tell you, and I would be one of them, that the reason that the timing of that occurred on June 3rd is just before that, at the end of May, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates basically pledged, you know, millions and millions of dollars to the military government.
And also United Arab Emirates had been supporting financially and continue to support financially this militia called the Rapid Support Forces that had sent soldiers to Yemen to fight on the side of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
So these are, once again, you know, countries that are in the region are known as forces of counterrevolution.
They've done similar, of course, interventions in other Arab countries when there have been popular uprisings.
So we're talking a lot of money.
Saudi Arabia pledged $3 billion.
But so far, what we know is about $500 million has gone into the military council's pockets, but not the entire amount, although it has been pledged.
And now, so in the time leading up to this, Bashir had been cooperative with the United States at least recently, right?
Yes, absolutely.
He'd been cooperative recently, especially with respect to giving information, intelligence information and counterterrorism, terrorist information to the intelligence services in the United States.
It was really the mediator was the head of the National Security Intelligence Services in Sudan, a man, very famous guy, you know, infamous, so to speak.
His name is Salah Ghosh.
Beginning in probably the late 1990s, he started forging a relationship with intelligence in the United States to give out this information.
This is one of the reasons for many decades.
It begins really under the first term of the Bush administration, George Bush, where this kind of cooperation, intelligence cooperation occurs.
And so for that reason, for many years, the United States had been supportive of Bashir because that's what they were interested in, that objective, rather than, of course, supporting democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people.
Well, and is it right that when the Americans said, okay, go ahead and let the South go, or we're taking it, that he let them?
After millions killed in that giant civil war between North and South, he finally let the South go when it became the American's demand, I guess is what I'm saying.
Well, it's a little bit more complicated.
It's absolutely the American demands.
There were lots of kind of pressures, domestic coalitions in the United States that had been fighting for the separation of the South and the North.
And that is really well known.
But another reason, so it was, of course, at the pressure of the United States, but also Norway and the European Union who had overseen the separation and the talks that led to the separation.
But another element, the reason that Bashir himself gave up the South, even though it has, you know, probably and lost as a result, lost, you know, two thirds of the oil resources that were going into the revenue of the state in Sudan.
Another reason was that if he had not let the South go, there would have been a very good chance that he would have been deposed.
And so he felt that the war was draining his resources.
And of course, it was undermining his authority.
And so rather than keep the country united, he let it go so as to hold on to power.
So really, the peace agreement that led to the separation was signed by two basically dictators, you know, Bashir in Khartoum and Salva who's now heading South Sudan.
So they did it at the behest of U.S. and other countries, but also to keep make sure that they remain in power and to consolidate their authoritarian rule.
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Okay, and now, so, but if Bashir was getting along with the Americans, that's no guarantee of his safety.
And I think Muammar Gaddafi and some other friends can tell you about that.
So I wonder, I have no information on this whatsoever, just seems like a reasonable question if not a suspicion.
Has the U.S. been spending money building up civil society there to demand democracy and get rid of their friend Bashir, as they have in so many other places, and then called it a local democratic uprising when really it was more of a CIA, NED coup d'etat?
Where did you get that information?
I didn't at all.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm just asking because that's what America has done everywhere else.
Yeah, I think that I'm going to be very clear to be, I hope that it's helpful.
You know, I know the country very well because I've been studying it for three decades and also, you know, I'm from there, of course.
And I can assure you that this is a genuinely popular revolution that is fighting against the greatest odds.
In fact, you just, we just talked about the regional actors involved.
You know, I think that it would be a little bit clearer if I just mentioned that really the struggle has been going on for three decades, at least since 1989.
And this is a country that's gone and continues to go through, you know, believe it or not, many people don't know, three civil wars in one country.
One in the West, in a region called Darfur, one in the central part of the country in an area called the Nuba Mountains, and one in a state called the Blue Nile, which borders what is now South Sudan.
So in addition to that, since for three decades, there have been hundreds of thousands who have been killed by this military regime.
And of course, many people detained and tortured.
The result of that is that it's taken three decades, but after three decades of this kind of violence against the civilians and against people in the country, citizens have really risen up.
No one has supported them.
In fact, this particular uprising is not necessarily in the interest or strategic interest of regional actors or the United States, so to speak, in the sense that, you know, they had a reliable partner in the past.
And now what you see is that, and this is why, for example, there's such a struggle now.
It hasn't, you know, we don't even know where it's going to go yet.
In other words, this revolution has not become successful.
If they were supported by outsiders, one would think that they would be more, they would be successful.
At this point, they're not, they haven't achieved their objectives.
The entire country, if you look very closely at the protest over these past seven months, you'll see that it's not only in the capital city, but it is in every state of one of the largest states in the region, in the continent of Africa.
So this is a genuine people's revolution that's fighting against the greatest of odds.
This is why that it has faltered, because the military has been emboldened by outside powers and, of course, financed by outside powers.
And the people, you know, who've died or been tortured, and I know many of them, unfortunately, I can tell you for a fact, are independent-minded people who want to build a better country.
This is one of the, this is a country in Africa and the Arab world that has gone through the longest period of civil conflicts, the longest of any other country in the world.
And so this kind, and of course it's undermined its economy to the point where people can't even get money out of their, out of ATM machines because the banking system has collapsed.
The result of that has united people, men, women, you know, people of different colors across the country.
You have workers and you have a businessman and you have, you know, doctors and lawyers and pharmacists all coming together and saying, well, there's not going to be any future for our children if we don't take our future into our own hands.
But at this point, they're fighting against the greatest odds and no one's supporting them or financing them.
I know because I was there in December or January when the protests began.
And I can tell you that it's a very, very difficult thing to try to overthrow a military government.
And it's not clear that it is in the interest of anyone outside of the Sudan that there would be a civilian government in Sudan.
Right.
Well, and as you said, and this is probably the most important key to understanding the situation in terms of the relationships with the United States and the other countries is Saudi is backing the military dictatorship like in Egypt, which means they have no need to back the jihadists like in Syria.
And so, or the protesters or anybody trying to overthrow the dictatorship that they're clearly supporting.
And that's a pretty big clue as to what side the USA would be onto.
But, you know, CIA, they like to play all sides of every fence.
So, you know, I got to ask these questions because a lot of times a protest movement in the street.
Sure, they have all kinds of reasons to complain.
Syria is one great example.
Doesn't mean they're not being used by the Americans and the Saudis in that case.
So, you know, we have to parse these things and ask these questions carefully if we can.
So, but now.
So what's the name of the new guy?
Is he outright declaring himself president for life or is he pretending there's some kind of transition or what are they doing at this point?
Well, the new guy's name is, you know, he's a general and his name is Abdel Fattah Burhan and he's aided by his deputy.
So he's the head of the military council that is heading the government now.
And he's aided by a man called Hamidi.
That's kind of his nickname in Sudan.
But he's very well known.
And your listeners may be familiar with the kind of militia that he operates.
It's called the Janjaweed.
And this is the militia that was responsible and was used by the former dictator to squash the kind of insurgencies in Darfur that were asking for peace and also development.
And the result of that war in Darfur was the death of almost 300,000 people, the displacement of over a million people.
So it's the same gentleman, if that's not a good choice of a word, but it's the same militia leader that now is basically laying siege to the entire country in the capital city.
Some people say that it's almost like he's colonized the city and the country because many of his militia come from outside other countries outside of the Sudan.
And he's the one who's being used by the present military dictator to met out all of this violence against peaceful protesters, leading to a great deal of violence, deaths and all sorts of horrible kind of developments.
And so these are kind of two people who are trying to hold on to power at the greatest cost and the cost of the people of the Sudan.
But I did want to reemphasize that most Sudanese really are focusing on the only weapon they have to overthrow a dictator.
And that is unity among the ranks of the opposition and all of the people in Sudan and also maintaining a peaceful form of civil disobedience.
In other words, people's power.
They're not using guns or knives.
And they realize that they're up against a lot.
You know, people at the head of the military who are against them, a militia, a leader of the militia who's, you know, basically a war criminal.
And what they're doing now is trying to recharge and mobilize and sustain this peaceful protest, especially since the military dictator has shut off the Internet in order for people not to be able to organize with each other.
And also so they can, you know, enact all this violence without folks like you hearing about it or knowing about it.
And so this is one of the reasons I'm, you know, do interviews and I talk to you.
I appreciate the opportunity because right now there's an Internet blackout by the military dictatorship, but they are the military council.
And it's very important for people to know that this is a peaceful, popular people's movement.
That is something that I think many people who are interested in popular revolutions that want freedom and liberties would support.
And also understand that when a country shuts down the Internet, it's never a good sign because you know what happens after that.
And so it's very important to get the word out and for people to understand that it's patently unfair to put people in this position and then, you know, you know, not, you know, be silenced in this way, in a way that, you know, obscures to the international to people all over the world.
You know, the horrible crimes that this military regime is perpetuating in the country.
If that if you know what I mean.
Yeah, absolutely.
So listen, are there any kind I mean, I know it's been a dictatorship all this time.
So what kind of institutions do the people of this peaceful movement have to use?
Are there any political parties or are there business groups or other political groups?
I mean, for all I know, there's states and counties and districts and and sort of smaller political, you know, groupings that can be used or any kind of thing like that.
Or they're all just in the street hoping that once the dictators turn it over, they're going to have to build a whole new thing from scratch or what?
Oh, no, that's a great question.
Scott, I have to say there are institutions.
Actually, the reason that this is a real genuine people's movement and the reason that it is so popular all over the country is that it's being led by professional associations of doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, even people like me.
They are, you know, university academics.
It's also being led by laborers, dock workers, construction workers, unions, even, you know, the staff, lower staff of the financial institutions and the banks who are, you know, implementing general strikes, work stoppages, peaceful forms of disobedience of the type used in the United States and other places to demand collective rights.
And so already you have labor unions and professional associations who are right there guiding and leading these protests, even though you see pictures of people in the street.
All of that is organized by these institutions that you're talking about.
And now they've come into alliance with political parties that are in many, you know, some, you know, a couple of them are conservative.
You know, if you look if you look at their programs and then the others are quite progressive political parties who are linked up with these professional associations and with with with these unions.
So as you know, and what I like to tell my students often, of course, is that these are the kind of institutions that really can help and facilitate a democracy because they translate participation from the government to the people on the ground and working people, too.
So it's led not only by the middle classes and some elites, but mostly by working people and farmers in the country.
And for that reason, I think that it's quite remarkable.
And it's the kind of textbook kind of popular movement that we read about and we we kind of, you know, see as an example.
And this is why other countries in Algeria or even, you know, in other African countries, other countries are looking at it and supporting it.
I'm talking about people in civil society.
So you'll have protesters in Algeria in the millions supporting the protest in Sudan.
Recently, there were supporters in Ghana, the country of Ghana workers.
They're supporting also the people of Sudan in Morocco, in Kenya.
Just yesterday, very large protests to support the people of Sudan against military dictatorship.
So these institutions are ready and they will if if, of course, it does occur, they are ready to take and form a government that is a technocratic government with very qualified people coming from these institutions and unions in order to do two things.
One of them is to resolve these three conflicts that have really decimated the population.
And another is to begin to try to tackle the social and economic inequalities that have made it very difficult for many people in this underdeveloped country to survive and to, you know, kind of meet their daily needs and their basic, basic daily needs.
So this is why if you look at who's leading the protest, you'll be very impressed at the fact that these are underpaid doctors, underpaid pharmacists, you know, academics with very little salary, you know, dock workers in the eastern part on the Red Sea where there there's a big port.
And the strikers there are port workers who are asking not only for individual benefits and higher wages, but they're asking for a transition to civilian government because they feel that this is a national problem and not just a problem of workers in the country.
All right.
So the fear of the American establishment then would be, I mean, hell, if they learn anything from their own crisis in Syria, it would be that, you know what, they would be afraid that without the dictator, there'd be Ladenites.
Somebody like the local branch of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Sudan or something.
And then what do we do?
So is there, is that any part of what's going on there?
I know there's been, as you said, massive violence in the West and in the South.
I didn't know about the civil war in the mountains in the middle there.
Thanks for cloning us into that.
So, and I know there's not been suicide bombing because that's part of Robert Pape's work is that when all sides are Sunni Muslims, even if 500,000 people are killed, there's no suicide bombings.
It's the difference in the occupation that causes it.
But anyway, so that would be the fear.
If I was some state department weenie, I would say, oh no, bin Ladenites.
So what do you say?
I say that's a great question.
And I say that absolutely not.
There is no chance of that.
And this is why this country and this is why this program and, you know, it's a great opportunity because it is a misconception on the part of, or was a misconception on the part of many, including, I'm sure, you know, people in the, in the U.S. government that somehow this would lead or is being led by Islamist fundamentalist or militants and terrorists and all of those kinds of things.
And that there, it's, there's nothing like that at all.
That cannot, there's, you know, it's in fact the complete opposite.
This is people's movement that is fighting against three decades of a government that ostensibly said that it's an Islamist government and had tried to use religion instrumentally to govern and keep people quiet, so to speak.
And so after three decades of a government that said ostensibly it's an Islamic government, the majority of the people in Sudan have risen up and said, well, we are Muslims culturally and this is our spirituality, but we do not want our religion, Islam in this case, to be used for political instrumental reasons.
This is something that at the beginning of the protest, many people didn't know because they weren't familiar with Sudan or they likened it perhaps to Egypt or to Syria, to other countries.
But this is not the case.
And this is why Sudan is different and why this popular revolution is different because it's actually, and it's very hard against any form of kind of religious fundamentalism or Islamic extremism.
In fact, if you knew Arabic and followed the slogans and the chants that accompany the protest, you will quickly discover that many of the slogans are against what Sudanese, the Sudanese protests are calling those who trade in religion, those who make religion or Islam their business.
And so this is completely opposite from other cases.
And what is happening now is that people in the United States government and other regional actors were surprised at first, but now are increasingly persuaded and convinced as the news have come out that this is actually not led by any form of extremism, terrorists, Islamism.
In fact, it's the opposite.
These are, you know, protesters who are calling for freedom to, you know, not use religion instrumentally in politics.
They're calling for pluralism because they're Christians in Sudan and they want them to have full citizenship rights.
There's a reason that women are at the very forefront of these protests because women are very opposed to the use of Islam against their own rights that has caused a great deal of violence against women.
So slowly the international community and governments across the globe have discovered, oh, well, this is actually a movement against that kind of Islamist or the use of religion to perpetuate any forms of violence or terrorism exported elsewhere, all of those kind of things.
And that's why gradually you've had, you know, people from the outside, African Union, the European Union, the United States, others who have started to condemn the military for its violations of human rights and the violence that perpetuated.
And that has also been really catalyzed by Sudanese who are living in the diaspora in London, in Berlin, in Washington, D.C., in Ottawa, Canada.
Sudanese are going to the embassies of these capitals and saying and explaining what this popular uprising is all about.
And what you have now is a campaign that encompasses non-Sudanese, American citizens, Germans, British folks who are also campaigning to support these peaceful protesters in their fight and struggle to overthrow a military dictatorship and see a civilian government through.
It doesn't mean that this will be a paradise overnight by any means, but it's what it's a first step.
It would be a first step in the very long and difficult road towards healing the country from all of the civil wars that occurred and begin the process of perhaps some kind of economic development that would meet at least the basic needs of many, many people in the country who are who live in under extreme poverty.
And of course, if there were a bunch of bin Laden nights and Islamists trying to take over, then we'd see the Saudis backing them and not the olive green dictators against them.
So pretty obvious, again, who's on whose side there, but worth bringing up because, you know, we've seen a lot of, oh, gee, democracy doesn't work because only bad guys win.
But that's always seems to be when America invades a country or when they hold a very unbalanced election in Palestine or when they support suicide bombers in Syria.
Or we never really let these things play out on their own.
And here, I don't know America's direct role in supporting the dictators.
But as you're saying, the Saudis and their friends, their clones in in Egypt and UAE and whatever are also backing them.
So it makes it pretty clear.
And this is just a minor point here real quick.
Where's Bashir now?
He's just on home arrest or anything like that.
Or what's the deal?
Well, that's a good question.
He was in prison, but in a very kind of good conditions in a kind of by all accounts, you know, being taken care of.
And he is now being trotted out by this military government on a trial of, you know, it's hard to believe, but a trial of money laundering and embezzlement rather than, you know, crimes against humanity.
And so you can tell that there is a tacit, less, you know, not so tacit alliance between these military leaders and Bashir himself.
Of course, they were always connected for years in terms of all of the money that they siphoned off from oil, all of the financial institutions they built up through their own forms of corruption and corrupt networks.
And so by all accounts, the Saudis are very upset because, you know, it's clear that they're basically trying to find a way out for him.
There are reports that are now confirmed that they let his two brothers leave the country and gave them safe passage outside of the country, even though that they're two of the most corrupt individuals of the past.
And what the Sudanese protesters are calling for, and this is why the civilian government is so important, is the establishment of an independent judiciary that would hold these individuals, including Bashir, accountable rather than this kind of, you know, cosmetic indictment against him for embezzlement and things like that, which is a minor crime given that he's wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
So you can tell why the protesters are insisting that without a civilian government, there can be no accountability, no redress.
And as they put it very, very directly, there can't be any justice.
And that's a very, very important aspect and central part of the of the protest that is calling for freedom and justice.
It's calling basically the most important slogan encapsulates all of the objectives, and that is peace, freedom, justice, peace to resolve the civil conflicts that have gone on for three decades, justice to bring those accountable for the crimes against the people of Sudan.
And of course, you know, a civilian government that is associated with the slogan of freedom, that is to expand political and civil liberties elsewhere.
And to refer to your previous point, I think that it's it's important maybe to frame this even U.S. foreign policy and others and the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
As you know, this kind of old adage that historically stability has been prioritized over democracy, somehow democracy or the kind of democratic aspirations of the people historically has been seen as a threat undermining the strategic and other interests of superpowers and regional powers.
And what Sudan really represents is is a popular uprising that is going against that script, that saying that, you know what, you know, actually freedom and democracy is far more important than stability, that people's will is far more important than the strategic interest of, you know, that are focused on stability at the expense of people's life chances and liberties.
And so what many people are saying is that if there is international support among people like you and others in civil society across the globe for this, you know, if by any chance and we don't know if it's going to happen, that Sudan does find itself successfully transforming into some kind of democratic government.
This would really change the script, you know, in terms of people increasingly understanding that you can have democracy and stability.
And actually, the best way to have stability is to represent the will of the people.
This is something that has happened in a lot of African countries, actually.
And we see that a great deal, whether it's Ghana with its stable democratic regime, Kenya that has had problems but now has stabilized in terms of having a democracy.
And so I think Sudan can be a real, as one person put it, a beacon of hope for other countries in Eastern Africa and maybe even the Arab world.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, the thing of it is, is democracy has to mean more than regular elections and majority rule.
It has to mean essentially, you know, at the end of the day, at least I hope that freedom is more important than democracy itself and that some rights just can't be overridden because otherwise you just get the majority, I don't know, the farmers deciding to lord it over the nomads or vice versa, which is I guess the fight in Darfur all those years.
Right.
And so power, there's still a lot of power to abuse if we're simply going by, you know, having hopefully regular choices of who holds it.
But it's the limitations on that power that really make democracy meaningful for freedom in the Western sense.
Not that we have much of that here anymore.
Don't get me wrong.
But you know what I mean?
Yeah, I do.
But Scott, I think this is one of the reasons to really look closely.
And I hope your listeners will take the time to do that at a time where democracy is being reversed, whether it's the United States and elsewhere.
And of course, now, as you know, it's quite well known, a lot of books discuss the limiting of democracy in the U.S. and people call it a kind of the reversal of democratic institutions.
In Sudan, because of the failures of democratic experiments in the past, if you look very closely at what the opposition and the people of Sudan are trying to do, is they're trying to form an interim government that's civilian, that is, you know, not based on political parties, but based for three years on technocrats from different social groups in society, which would include farmers.
It would include workers.
It would include about 35 percent women.
A kind of interim government that would try to address what you're talking about.
And that is it's not so much about elections.
It's really about the substance of democracy and whether it's inclusive of different people.
In fact, there's already an agreement that different regions of the country, because of the civil wars, would be represented in the interim government.
And it's also the number one reason that the opposition is calling for a three year period of transition, not just one year.
The military dictators are asking for one year so they can do exactly what you're mentioning.
And that is having a cosmetic election that's unfree, not fair, not representative.
And of course, they can pick who gets to win and rule, as, for example, has happened in the case of Egypt.
Instead, because of these kind of issues that you brought up, the Sudanese opposition is carefully crafting an interim government that would really reflect the substance of democracy rather than just the cosmetic, what we call procedural forms of democracy that that focus on electoral cycles rather than the substance of democracy.
And so I think you and your listeners would be fascinated to look very carefully at how this has been outlined by the the the leaders of the opposition in ways that attempt to secure substantive democracy.
And in that sense, I think, you know, those who really care about genuine democracy would be very, very supportive of this kind of attempt and hope for its success.
Because it could mean a great deal for the country of Sudan, of course, but also for, you know, other countries in Africa and the Middle East, which is really important.
We know in Africa, the the age of the big man, the authoritarian leader is slowly slipping away as one country in sub-Saharan Africa after another starts forming genuine democratic institutions.
And one hopes that that may occur in Sudan as well.
All right.
So back to the beginning here with the American interest, of course, the entire, you know, seven seas are an American lake.
And that includes the Red Sea.
And Sudan, of course, is, I don't know, a third of that Western coast of it or something like that.
So from Washington's point of view or the Pentagon's point of view, of course, that means they have a major interest.
And you said at the beginning that the Americans had called for an end to the violence, which I think no one was disputing that it was the military dictatorship that was committing the violence.
Do you think that that means that they're willing to take a chance on, you know, not supporting Saudi efforts, or maybe, you know, going ahead and lending some influence to the idea of letting the protesters have their way and make the military their way?
Yes.
Not that I would advocate America doing anything at all, but I'm just saying in the scheme of things, I wonder if that's a possibility.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you my perspective.
I'm actually also American, as you could probably have guessed by now.
And I worked in Washington, D.C. for many years.
So I actually know American foreign policy with respect to the region very well.
I would say that in the initial period, there was a real great hesitation on the part of the U.S. government in general because of their strong alliance with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
In recent years, and this is why I keep going back to the people rather than external powers, as the protest continued for so many months, it became clear even to some in Washington, oh, there's definitely differences between the National Security Council at the White House and the State Department, as you can imagine, for a variety of reasons.
But as the protest continued, what has happened is that the United States has come to the realization that it may be not in their interest really to have an unstable Sudan and that this military dictatorship is so thin in legitimacy and so unpopular in the country that there is no chance of it being rehabilitated in order to stabilize the country.
And once again, as Sudanese are saying every day on the street and outside of the Sudan, is that at the end of the day, the bargaining chip is on the side of the people on the street, on the side of the Sudanese people.
As they continue to insist, and they have reinvigorated their protest across the country, as they continue to insist that this country, their country, is not going to be stable absent a civilian government, what has happened is the United States has come to the realization that it's possible that the interest of Saudi Arabia may not align with the interest of the United States in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel, and throughout the Africa region.
And for that reason, we see glimmers, not glimmers, but actually real kind of diplomatic pressure being asserted on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Discussions, I am told, having to do with asking Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to ease off because their kind of policies are leading and their support of the militia leader, for example, is going to lead to a great deal of stability, not only in Sudan, but on the borders of Libya, throughout the Sahel, and even in ties, you know, militants from Boko Haram.
That kind of calculation is making the United States government increasingly, perhaps having no choice but to really take seriously the will of the Sudanese people.
As a result, they have relied increasingly more on the African Union than they have on their allies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
And so this is a very important point, the complicated, you know, relationship of the U.S. government to its allies in the Gulf and also their own interests that may not align with Saudi Arabia when it comes to the very important continent of Africa and, of course, the Sahel region.
So in this sense, you'll see much more, you know, pressure on the United States.
Having said all of that, and I want to emphasize that at the end of the day, it's the Sudanese people who will make the real difference.
It's not clear at this point to what extent the United States will put in, you know, vigorous pressure on the military council to see to a civilian government.
So, you know, I can speak as an academic, as I did before, but also as someone from Sudan and say that, yes, a lot of the majority of Sudanese are suspicious with respect to the extent to which the United States will in fact put pressure, you know, in ways that would force and coerce the military government to to cede power to the civilian government.
There are negotiations ongoing supported by the U.S. diplomatically by the prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed.
But we are still in a very difficult round of negotiations.
It's not clear whether the military council is going to be pressured enough by the United States or elsewhere to cede power to a civilian government and meet their demands.
So that is by way of outlining the complicated relationships and alliances that the U.S. has in the Gulf and in Africa.
But I cannot be certain to what extent this will play out in terms of putting pressure on the military government to cede, you know, and, you know, to a civilian government and meet the demands of the majority of the Sudanese people at this point.
And then is there a place where you write regularly so we can help keep up with this?
I write for a journal called Jadaliya.
If you're interested in Sudan, they cover the Middle East and Africa.
And I have previous articles over many decades in a journal called The Middle East Report that I write on Sudan.
And, you know, people can Google me, but there are lots of different wonderful Sudanese academics and journalists now.
There is a man by the name of Ismail Khush Khush who writes for The New Yorker.
And so I think that there is a really good journal, a newspaper called Middle East Eye where Sudanese write a lot.
I would encourage your listeners to really read about Sudan from Sudanese journalists and academics as well as as Westerners.
And that, I think, will give them a really good idea of how important this popular revolution is.
Because as an American, you know, I'm very excited about it because it reinvigorates my own interest in democracy, not only in my in, you know, Sudan, but also the United States, where I'm also from.
So I think there are lots of people interested in pro-democracy movement, the legacy of the civil rights movements, the issue of anti-racism, which is part and parcel of this uprising and how that is being, you know, you know, examined and discussed amongst Sudanese.
You'll find a lot of parallels of the kind of, you know, democratic, you know, there's, you know, political parties that are running that are interested in democratic socialism, for example, as a platform, which is similar to some, at least you'll see that in the elections in the US.
So there are a lot of things for those interested in democracy, both at home and abroad.
I think that the Sudan will really, you know, kind of, they'll find a great deal of interest in following these developments in terms of the prospects for genuine, substantive democracy being built, you know, far away from home.
All right, you guys, that is Khalid Madani, chair of African Studies at McGill University.
Really appreciate it.
You're welcome, Scott.
You have a good day.
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