Sudan’s Communists Reject Dialogue They Say Would Reproduce the War
The Sudanese Communist Party has rejected political dialogue initiatives being advanced while the country’s war continues, arguing that they risk giving political cover to the same forces and structures that produced the crisis. The position was set out in a September 16 statement published internationally on September 21.
In the party statement circulated by International Communist Press, the SCP argues that the proliferation of initiatives can postpone the central task of stopping the fighting. It accuses the de facto authority in Port Sudan of seeking legitimacy and of trying to reorganise a political camp capable of preserving the power structures challenged by Sudan’s December Revolution.
The statement also ties the war to a broader political economy. The communists argue that forces linked to the former regime, regional interests and networks benefiting from Sudan’s resources have incentives to maintain a war economy. Those are the party’s political allegations, but they explain why it rejects the idea that any dialogue process is automatically a road to peace.
Crucially, the SCP is not rejecting peace itself. Its statement describes peace as a fundamental principle of the revolution and calls for an end to the war, democratic rule and the removal of the conditions that repeatedly reproduce armed conflict. Its objection is to dialogue conducted under the authority of belligerent power structures while the fighting remains unresolved.
The intervention also belongs to a wider struggle by communist organisations to maintain independent political space across Africa. Pamphlets recently documented the pressure facing communists in Kenya through the Booker Omole case, where the fight over organising rights has likewise become inseparable from the question of who is permitted to define the political future.
For Sudan, the immediate point is sharper. The Communist Party is demanding that the sequence be reversed: end the war first, rebuild popular democratic power, and refuse a settlement that merely changes the language around the existing crisis. That puts the party outside elite consensus-building efforts that seek stability without a deeper transfer of political power.
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