Sudan’s displaced citizens stir revolt from the sidelines

The Monkey Puzzle in Paddington is a modest west London pub, but in recent weeks it has become unexpectedly famous thousands of miles away in Sudan.

The reason for its sudden notoriety has nothing to do with its drinks or its atmosphere – but accusations that, despite its innocuous appearance, it is in fact a hub of revolutionary conspiracy.

“They sit there in London and plan the demonstrations,” fumed pro-government journalist Hussein Khoujali in a televised denunciation as the decades-old military regime of president Omar al-Bashir crumbled earlier this month. “The communists are in control of that pub and all its activities.”

The attack left both the pub’s landlord and London’s Sudanese community equally bemused. “I was thinking yesterday I should go and take a photograph. Because saying that the revolution was planned in London is such a ridiculous thing,” said British-Sudanese journalist Othaylat Suliman. But baffling and bizarre as Khoujali’s rant seemed, it was also a back-handed tribute to the role of the large, very politically engaged Sudanese diaspora, in their country’s revolution.

.

As Sudanese citizens have marched, protested and risked their lives in Khartoum to oust President Bashir, they have been supported by friends and family who were forced to leave the country during 30 long years of military dictatorship, and by a new generation born in exile.

“The diaspora played a very significant role in the downfall of Bashir,” said Professor Munzoul Assal, director of the Peace Research Institute at the University of Khartoum. “They were very active in social media, lobbied governments in their new homes, and organised themselves politically by staging demonstrations across Europe, the US and Australia.”

They have played key roles in the Sudanese Professionals Association, which has been leading the protests and has branches around the world. And many of those forced to leave, through political or economic pressure, say Bashir’s oppression has made them more determined to reclaim their country.

“For every lash I received in the street I have this feeling of defiance still echoing in my body,” said artist Issraa Elkogali, who lives in Sweden and has been following the revolution from there, but joined protests when living and working in Sudan at the start of the decade. “I want to go back and live the life I want to live with my children.”

The diaspora stayed deeply connected to its home country, even as years of exile stretched into decades, according to British-Sudanese author Jamal Mahjoub, whose family was among the earliest to leave after authorities shut down his father’s newspaper.

“Their sense of connection was strong and carried on, and was even transmitted to their children,” said Mahjoub, who explored Sudan’s troubled history and his ties to the country in his memoir A Line in the River.

The internet has made it easier for Sudanese living abroad to turn their own mix of patriotism and anger, longing and political frustration, into practical support for those pushing for change on the ground in Khartoum.

“Particularly in the last 10 or 15 years or so, when people have been connected through social media, through mobile telephones, there has been a revolution,” Mahjoub added. “Out in the diaspora, people are much more aware of what’s going on.”

News is coming fast. On Saturday, prosecutors said they were investigating Bashir for money laundering after discovering cash worth nearly £6m at his home, and on Saturday night several of his closest allies were arrested.

For some, the recent protests, documented in social media and shared on WhatsApp almost in real time, served as an unprecedented call to action after years during which Bashir had seemed untouchable.

“I hadn’t done anything before because it seemed hopeless. When these protests began I felt it was time to take on my family’s legacy,” said Ines Abdelaziz, a British Sudanese legal adviser whose father fled the country 25 years ago after being detained and tortured, and who is now involved in diaspora activism supporting the revolution.

Assal said exact numbers are hard to come by, but estimates that there are between 3 and 5 million people outside Sudan who hold Sudanese citizenship, or identify themselves as having Sudanese heritage.

Perhaps the most vocal have been those spread through the west, thousands of whom say they would love to return to Sudan to help rebuild it if they have an opportunity to do so, and ensure that recent hard-won victories are not stolen by a new generation of generals. The junta that now runs the country has promised to hand over power to a civilian government, but has also said that it may take up to two years. Yesterday, after talks with protest leaders, the military agreed that eight generals leading the intelligence service would retire.

“Last week Sudanese doctors working in the UK met to discuss an emergency plan, ready to go when the government allowed,” said Amira Gorani, a British-Sudanese public health specialist. “Every union is putting a plan in place, [about] what can they contribute, from their profession.” There are also financial collections to help those in Sudan manage the costs of a revolution.

Not all the diaspora has been politically vocal. There are also communities hundreds of thousands strong in the Arabian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, where the UN says more than 400,000 exiles are based. Authoritarian governments there make activism far more risky for Sudanese communities, but many of them are hoping to return.

In Chad too, there are more than 300,000 Sudanese people, the majority desperately poor refugees from violence in the Darfur region, living in camps and with limited access to the internet that has have helped drive activism elsewhere.

There is almost certain to be some resentment if the promised wave of returning Sudanese people materialises, Assal admitted. “Some voices in social media already started to say they lived abroad for too long and they do not understand local realities – who are they to tell us what to do? Or they did not share the misery with us and now they want to reap the fruits,” he said.“Nonetheless, my personal view is that overall they will be well received since they will come with their skills, knowledge and capital, things Sudan needs urgently.”