ISIS Never Left Syria, It Just Changed Uniforms

Early last month, the forces of the ‘new’ Syrian army flooded across north and east Syria. The troops seized key cities and major oil fields, effectively ending a decade of US-backed Kurdish autonomy – with Washington’s blessing.

One of those cities was Raqqa, the former capital of ISIS’s self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ in Syria and a symbol of sectarianism, bloodshed, and iron-fist rule.

Raqqa remembers 

It was in Raqqa where scores of soldiers from the now-dismantled Syrian Arab Army (SAA) were executed in cold blood by ISIS militants. Many of these soldiers had their severed heads impaled on pikes on the city’s outskirts.

It was also in Raqqa where countless young girls and women, many of them Yezidis abducted from Iraq in 2014, were sold into slavery in what ISIS called Souq al-Sabaya – the ‘market of female captives.’

As Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s (formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani) armed forces entered the city in early 2026, his soldiers were gleeful, excited, and reminiscent. Many of them had been there before.

A closer look at the officers leading this offensive reveals a stark reality: ISIS has not been defeated. It has been absorbed, rebranded, and redeployed across Syria, reclaiming its ‘caliphate.’

ISIS reborn under Turkiye’s shadow

The Violations Documentation Center in Northern Syria (VDCNY), a Manbij-based human rights organization that monitors abuses against Kurds, released a report in August 2024 identifying dozens of extremist militants formerly affiliated with ISIS who were later incorporated into the Turkiye-backed Syrian National Army (SNA).

The SNA was formed by Ankara in 2017 and for years served as the Turkish military’s arm in northern Syria. Turkish forces had invaded Syria in 2016 to carry out an operation against the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose dominant component is the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – which Ankara regards as the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Turkiye went on to occupy swathes of Syrian territory and maintains that presence today.

Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions that assisted Turkiye’s 2016 intervention were reorganized into what became the SNA. After Raqqa fell to the SDF in 2017, this coalition absorbed scores of fleeing ISIS members. Over time, the SNA continued integrating former ISIS fighters into its ranks.

The ISIS ‘caliphate’ seemed defeated at a certain point. In reality, much of the heavy fighting against ISIS across Syria had been carried out by the former Syrian army, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, allied Iran-backed factions, and the Russian air force. The credit, however, went to Washington and the SDF – which today has been abandoned once again by the US military.

But ISIS was regrouping and reestablishing itself under a new name, with direct Turkish backing and under the watchful eye of US forces.

As VDCNY bluntly stated: “ISIS grew on the shoulders of the Free Syrian Army.”

Below is a partial list of former ISIS figures who were later absorbed into the SNA:

Abu Mohammad al-Jazrawi

According to the August 2024 VDCNY report, Abu Mohammad al-Jazrawi – born Abdullah Mohammad al-Anzi – is a Saudi national who joined ISIS in 2015 after arriving in Syria illegally via Turkiye – like tens of thousands of others from various parts of the world who did the same.

During his time with ISIS, he participated in battles against the Syrian army in the Syrian Desert and Homs countryside. He ended up becoming a military commander in Ahrar al-Sham, a notorious, sectarian extremist group responsible for many war crimes and atrocities.

Ahrar al-Sham had previously fought alongside Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front before eventually being embedded into the SNA. The extremist group is responsible for numerous war crimes, including the deadly shelling of civilians in the Shia-majority towns of Nubul and Zahraa in Aleppo, during the early years of the war.

Bashar Smeid

Nicknamed Abu Islam al-Qalamouni, Smeid joined ISIS in 2014 and participated in fighting in the Palmyra desert, Damascus countryside, and near Al-Tanf Base – where US forces were training extremist militants.

In 2016, he took command of a security detachment that oversaw the infiltration of three car bombs into Damascus’s Sayyida Zaynab area. He ended up moving to northern Syria’s Idlib in 2017 and worked with his group to funnel ISIS leaders into Turkiye.

A year later, he joined the SNA’s Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction – another criminal sectarian organization that was happy to take in ISIS leaders. In March 2023, members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya murdered four Kurdish civilians celebrating Newroz (Kurdish New Year).

Sabahi al-Ibrahim al-Muslih

Known as Abu Hamza al-Suhail, Muslih was a leader in ISIS’s Shura Council and oversaw trials on charges of apostasy and blasphemy that resulted in dozens of executions. He ended up joining the SNA’s 20th Division. While reports said he was killed in a US drone strike a few years ago, he remains a prime example of the type of characters who were joining the SNA.

Awad Jamal al-Jarad

Jarad joined ISIS in 2015 and commanded a battalion within the organization. He later entered the SNA’s Hamza Division in 2018, participated in Turkish offensives in Afrin, and subsequently joined Ahrar al-Sharqiya.

By August 2024, he was leading a unit of 30 men and had transformed the city of Tal Abyad’s post office into his personal headquarters and command center, according to VDCNY. The Hamza Division is responsible for sectarian violence, sexual assault, and other war crimes.

Majid al-Khalid

Khalid, nicknamed Hajj Abu Omar al-Ansari, formed Liwa al-Haq in Hama during the early years of the war, before incorporating his organization into ISIS in 2014. He was considered one of the founders of ISIS in Hama city.

He ended up becoming the Emir of Hama during his time with ISIS and took command of the suicide (‘Inghimassi’) battalions – which sent thousands of young men to blow themselves up in holy sites and civilian areas. In 2017, he joined the Hamza Division and became a battalion commander in the group.

Salem Turki al-Antari

Antari, nicknamed Abu Saddam al-Ansari, joined ISIS in 2014 in the Badia desert region, where he served as a commander and led extremists in battle against the former Syrian army in Palmyra and near Al-Tanf Base.

He went on to become the Emir of Palmyra. Antari later joined Ahrar al-Sharqiya in 2017 and took part in Turkish-backed assaults against Afrin, Tal Rifaat, and Ras al-Ain. He was also implicated in the roadside execution of Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf in 2019. In 2024, the ex-ISIS chief was appointed as the commander of the US-backed Syria Free Army (SFA), which was formed by Washington in 2022 and trained in the Al-Tanf Base.

SFA now operates under the Syrian Defense Ministry. Between 2015 and 2017, Antari took part in the ISIS takeover of Palmyra and the battles with the Syrian army that ensued. The terrorist organization’s assault on Palmyra destroyed some of Syria’s most cherished cultural heritage. In 2015, ISIS notoriously publicly beheaded renowned 83-year-old Syrian archeologist Khaled al-Asaad for refusing to reveal the locations of hidden antiquities.

Raad Issa al-Barghash

Also known as Abu Zainab, Barghash pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2013. He fought with the group in Ain al-Arab (Kobane) and elsewhere, and was responsible for the killing of many civilians. In 2017, he fled to Aleppo and entered the ranks of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, eventually becoming a top security chief in the group.

Thamer Nasser al-Iraqi

An Iraqi citizen, he joined ISIS in 2013 in Homs and then served as the military fortifications Emir in the Al-Shaddadi area until 2015. In 2016, he became the Emir of the armaments department in Raqqa, and then an advisor to the ISIS Security Office No. 011 in Raqqa.

Iraqi participated in the Battle of Mosul in 2014. Three years later, he fled towards the city of Jarablus, east of Aleppo. In November 2017, he joined Ahrar al-Sharqiya and participated in Operation Olive Branch and Operation Peace Spring, launched by the Turkish army in 2018 and 2019. He also participated in bombings and summary executions of Kurdish civilians in the Jindires district of Afrin.

Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr

Abu Bakr, now a dual Syrian-Turkish citizen, had defected from the old Syrian military to join the FSA in 2012. These defections were encouraged by foreign intervention and funding. The FSA never maintained the status of a unified opposition force, quickly splintering into different factions that aligned themselves with extremist groups.

He joined ISIS in 2013 and was appointed governor of Al-Bab during the organization’s control over the city. A few years later, he ended up as commander in the Hamza Division, taking part in several Turkish-backed offensives against Kurdish forces.

During his time with ISIS, he appeared in a propaganda video where another member of the group is heard demanding “repentance” from around a dozen prisoners kneeling before them. The prisoners are identified in the video as members of the PKK.

Abu Bakr was also associated with Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, an FSA commander who publicly praised ISIS following the capture of Menagh Air Base in 2013.

Abu Bakr is now a senior commander in the Syrian army. In May 2025, the EU imposed sanctions on him, including asset freezes and a travel ban, citing “serious human rights abuses in Syria, including torture and arbitrary killings of civilians.”

Washington’s ‘partner’ in fighting ISIS

These are only select examples.

In 2025, the entire Turkish-backed SNA was formally integrated into the Syrian Defense Ministry. Following the fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the SNA – effectively ISIS in new attire – became a core pillar of the current Syrian army, alongside Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), previously the Nusra Front. HTS itself contains numerous former ISIS members and has a long record of war crimes.

After the SDF was thrown under the bus by Washington in early 2026, Syrian forces swept across the north and captured key oil fields and cities. Soldiers were jubilant upon their entry into Raqqa, charged with nostalgia for ISIS’s glory days.

غالبية مدينة الرقة خارج سيطرة تنظيم «قسد PKK». العلم السوري فوق دوار الساعة. pic.twitter.com/Mpm1WO716Y

— زين العابدين | Zain al-Abidin (@DeirEzzore) January 18, 2026

During the assault on northern Syria, tens of thousands of ISIS militants and their families were set free as troops entered Al-Hawl Prison Camp, which was previously run by the SDF.

Videos on social media showed government troops arriving at Al-Hawl and allowing the prisoners to leave. During the fighting days earlier, hundreds of ISIS prisoners escaped from Al-Shaddadi Prison. The SDF lost control of the facility and accused the US of ignoring its calls for help. Two kilometers away from the prison is a US coalition military base.

“The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS], we are proud of this,” video footage showed one Iraqi woman, dressed in a niqab, saying as she was leaving Al-Hawl.

The new Syrian army is saturated with former ISIS commanders and fighters – yet Washington now describes it as a “partner” in combating ISIS.

This is the same army that massacred Alawites and Druze in March and July of 2025, and committed heinous war crimes against Kurds during attacks against the SDF in January 2026.

President Sharaa, the former ISIS and Al-Qaeda leader behind deadly sectarian suicide bombings in both Iraq and Syria, (as well deadly attacks in Lebanon and the occupation of the country’s border with Syria) has vowed to protect minorities, and claims he is leading a campaign to rid Syria of extremism.

This is impossible with an army made up of ISIS and a political leadership made up of violent warlords.

An investigation released by The Cradle last year reveals that since Sharaa came to power, Syria has witnessed a government-linked campaign of mass abduction and sexual enslavement targeting young Alawite women. Syrian government forces also committed massacres targeting minorities, including Druze and Alawites.

In a new video from the assault on the north, a Syrian soldier films two female Kurdish fighters captured during battle. As he drives around with the two women in the back of his vehicle, he brags about how they will make a “perfect gift” for his commander.

ISIS is very much alive. And it now rules the entirety of Syria under the protection and sponsorship of the US and Turkiye.

source: The Cradle

The Sun Sets on the Syrian Kurdish Rebellion

The agreement that terminated the Syrian Kurdish enclave was presented by its signatories as a pragmatic settlement. But, in fact, the deal is a major political defeat for the Syrian Kurdish political formations. Certainly, the rapid advance of the Syrian armed groups loyal to President Ahmad al-Sharaa broke the resistance of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the largely Kurdish group, but this advance can only be understood by the total backing given by the United States to the Syrian government against the SDF. The SDF was outgunned and had no air support, which is what they had benefitted from in their war against the Islamic State. The SDF’s Mazlum Abdi signed the effective surrender on behalf of his party and their army. US Ambassador Tom Barrack’s tweet (despite its hyperbole) suggested the end of the Syrian Kurdish experiment called Rojava (the Kurdish word for where the sun sets, or the western part of the Kurdish lands.

The deal formalized what months of military pressure had already made clear. Syrian state institutions returned to the northeast not as partners but as authorities keen on a strong central state loyal to al-Sharaa. Over the course of the past year, border crossings that had been in the hands of various groups returned to central government control and oil revenues began to be collected for Damascus. The Syrian Democratic Forces, one of the last remaining independent military challenges to al-Sharaa after the rout of the Syrian Arab Army, agreed to be subordinated to the military’s central command but did not want its units dismantled; in other words, the SDF wanted to retain its own structures within the Syrian armed forces. This was the agreement that Abdi and others in the Kurdish leadership, such as Ilham Ahmed (former co-chair of the SDF), favored, but they were outflanked by sections of the Syrian Kurdish leadership that did not want to lose the autonomy of the Kurdish enclave. But now Kurdish political offices have begun to close, flags are being removed, and the language of autonomy has been erased from official documents.

Al-Sharaa came to the presidency of Syria through his politicization in al-Qaeda’s Syrian fronts. While he has left behind his turban for a suit, there are indications that his own followers are comfortable with the ideology of and links with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and that they welcome an alliance with both the United States and Israel. In the days leading up to this ceasefire and deal, SDF officials reported that the Syrian armed forces focused their attention on the prisons that held Islamic State fighters who had been captured by the SDF; heavy fighting had indeed been reported near Shaddadi prison (Hasaka) and al-Aqtan prison (Raqqa). These attacks, the SDF said, were a “highly dangerous development” since they suggested that the government forces wanted to free the Islamic State fighters from the prisons and put them back on the battlefield against groups such as the SDF. Now the state has control over these prisons and could do what it wants with these prisoners.

The dawn of Rojava

In 2012, the government of Bashar al-Assad withdrew its military from the northeast so that it could defend the southwest from a cycle of rebellions. This withdrawal provided an opportunity for the Syrian Kurds, who had been fighting for either an independent Kurdistan or autonomy within Syria for decades. The leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Salih Muslim told me in 2013 that the Kurdish political and military forces filled a vacuum. “We organized our society so that chaos would not prevail.” The PYD’s Muslim made three points: Syria must remain united, Syria must belong to all those who live in it, and Syria must be decentralized. The government in Damascus accepted these three points and a tacit understanding was reached between the Syrian Kurdish political forces, other minorities in Syria, and al-Assad’s government. This was the opportunity that allowed for the birth of Rojava.

Over the decade since 2012, the Rojava enclave came under serious attack by the Islamic State (in 2014-15) and the Turkish armed forces (2018) as well as sustained attacks by various smaller groups. In this decade, the army of the SDF, the People’s Defense Units (YPG), the Kurdish Peshmerga (from Iraq), and the armed forces of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK from Turkey) defended this enclave, most dramatically from the advance of the Islamic State. When the Islamic State took Sinjar and began to ethnically cleanse the area of Yazidis in August 2014, it was the YPG and its allies that began a long siege of the area that was only won by them in November 2015 at a great cost. US air support began to assist the YPG and the SDF in their quest to defeat the Islamic State and to exist as an independent enclave from Damascus. Neither Salih Muslim nor other leaders of the Syrian Kurdish groups pinned their faith wholeheartedly on the United States, although the balance of forces set in motion an alliance that was always going to lead to betrayal.

Statements from Salih Muslim and Mazlum Abdi that silence about the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 would “cost Syria its unity” or that the YPG was the only “barrier against Turkish occupation” did not count for much. Assad was not going to enrage the Turkish government at this time (in fact, it was in this period that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a deal to demilitarize Idlib and allow the al-Qaeda inheritors, including al-Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al’Sham or HTS to build their strength in peace and wait a turn of fortunes). Perhaps if Assad were a better chess player, he would have provoked Turkey by defending the Syrian Kurds, thereby preventing a deal and forcing his Russian allies to provide air support while the Syrian Arab Army entered Idlib to fight the remainder of the HTS and its allies. But Assad began to allow the Russians to do his strategic thinking and therefore conceded a point of strength in the hope that the Turkish government would cease its attempt to overthrow his government.

Turkey’s Erdoğan refused to see the Syrian Kurdish rebellion as anything other than an extension of the fight of the Turkish PKK. In 2020, he told his party cadre at a meeting, “Turkey will never allow the establishment of a terror state right beside its borders. We will do whatever is necessary and drain this swamp of terrorism.” This should have been clear to both Assad and the Syrian Kurds that there was going to be no support from Turkey and no end to the attempt at destabilization by Turkey’s NATO partner, the United States. Over the past five years, Erdoğan leaned on the political leadership of the PKK to withdraw its rebellion and to effectively capitulate. In 2025, from his Turkish cell, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan announced “the end of the method of armed struggle”. The Syrian Kurdish project, linked with the PKK, lost its broader strategic depth. Pressure mounted from the Turkish side for the Syrian Kurds to end their project of “armed autonomy”, as Turkish officials said. Turkish military pressure continued with reduced international condemnation or even consideration and diminished Kurdish legitimacy.

The mysterious role of Israel in this entire fiasco has yet to be properly written.

The fall of Assad

With the full weight of Israeli and US air strikes, the forces of Hay’at Tahrir al’Sham led by Ahmad al-Sharaa dashed into Damascus. This victory marked a decisive rupture for the Syrian Kurds. Al-Sharaa, the new president, said that his government would reclaim the northern lands (but he said nothing about Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights and nothing about the hundreds of square kilometres of the UN buffer zone seized by Israel after al-Sharaa took Damascus). Statements coming from Damascus sent a warning to the Kurds, although the Kurdish leadership hoped against any logic that the United States would protect them (in December 2024, Abdi said that the Syrian Kurds were in ‘continuous communication with our American friends, who support our efforts to stop the escalation and guarantee the rights of all Syrian components, including the rights of the Kurds within the framework of a unified state’). The United States began a withdrawal, and the Syrian Kurds began to voice their hopelessness. One SDF official told me that their forces had fought ISIS and had taken huge casualties but now were, in her words, ”nothing at all”. Syrian forces flooded the north. “Syria does not need experiments imposed by force,” said al-Sharaa. Rojava was in his crosshairs. It did not take long to finish the job. “We are determined to protect the achievements of the revolution,” said Abdi, but this seems more like wishful thinking.

The example of Syria has sent a cold breeze across the border to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Iraqi leader Muqtada al-Sadr posted a message on X with a warning that what happened in Syria “should not be taken naïvely”. “The danger is imminent”, he wrote, “and terrorism is supported by global arrogance”. With the change of strategy of the Turkish PKK and the defeat of the Syrian Kurds, any faith in Irbil (Iraq) that the Kurdish autonomous region is eternal will now fade. Al-Sadr suggested unity in the face of external aggression. It is a suggestion that would be hard to reject in these times.

The collapse of Rojava was not merely the failure of a local revolt to be sustained. It was the defeat of a political wager: that decentralization and armed self-defense could rely upon the support of the United States. The language of democracy and dignity might have appealed to an occasional US diplomat, but it meant nothing in Washington. “We built Rojava on a swamp,” said a Syrian Kurdish official to me a few hours after the deal.

Vijay Prashad
This article was originally pulished by Globetrotter.

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‘We Should Determine Our Own Future’: Interview with Sudanese Communist Party

A brutal civil war is raging on the African continent in the nation of Sudan. The injection of illegal weapons and the jockeying of foreign powers for control over the country’s gold and other resources only adds to the misery of colonialism’s legacy and internal armed conflict. And suffering the worst of it all are the country’s children, women, and poor people generally.

International help is desperately needed to halt hostile outside intervention and stop the killing. That’s the message that Salwa Saied wants the world to hear. She’s a longtime member of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), and People’s World had the privilege to speak with her on the sidelines of the convention of the Communist Party of Canada, held in Montreal, Dec. 5-7.

Using the word crisis to describe the current situation in Sudan would be an understatement, and the atrocities accumulate faster than anyone can keep up. Even as People’s World was interviewing Saied, she received a message on her phone from her comrades about an attack on a school back home that killed dozens of kindergartners and their teachers.

A ruthless anti-people war

She said her country is being torn apart by warring factions, none of whom are on the side of Sudan’s poor and working-class population. “Fascist forces, through their two wings, the Islamist movement and the Rapid Support Forces, have been waging a ruthless and large-scale war since April 15, 2023,” Saied said.

The civil war, which features fighting among and between paramilitary forces and the official state army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), is complicated by the actions of regional actors—most notably the United Arab Emirates—which has supplied arms to the RSF in exchange for access to gold from Sudan’s mines.

Saied and the SCP argue that the atrocities and aggression of the Islamist groups and RSF that have been witnessed over the last few years are “primarily aimed at obstructing the December 2019 revolution” in Sudan, which “demanded freedom, peace, justice, and democratic transformation.”

That revolution got its start with mass protests in December 2018 that eventually resulted in the overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir and the assumption of state power by the military. The Communist Party, in conjunction with the Sudanese Professionals Association and neighborhood resistance committees, participated in the protests.

The party had long opposed al-Bashir’s dictatorship and stayed in the streets with the people after he was gone, determined to not let the military cement itself in place. It saw the uprising as, essentially, a class revolt against military-Islamist rule that was eventually sabotaged by compromises made with the generals, resulting in a hijacking of the revolution.

Demands for a quick transition to civilian rule by the SCP, labor, and the other forces of civil society were quickly derailed following the launch of the revolution.

The first blow was the “Khartoum massacre” of 2019, which saw SAF and RSF forces—then united in the “Transitional Military Council” (TMC)—kill hundreds and rape dozens in an attempt to disperse the crowds who were still agitating in the streets demanding that the people themselves, not soldiers, should determine the country’s future.

The RSF is a holdover of past fighting, born out of al-Bashir’s genocidal suppression in Darfur in the early 2000s. Many of its troops are thus veterans of past war crimes and mass killing campaigns, so their participation in the Khartoum massacre and other atrocities came as no surprise.

Hopes to salvage the revolution and for the people to re-seize the initiative from the TMC were dashed when a split occurred between the SAF and the RSF in 2023. Since then, the people of Sudan have been caught in the crossfire, leading to the mass displacement of at least 12 million and the deaths of uncounted numbers of people.

Complete social collapse

Saied said it is the details of that human side of the fighting which should spur the world to action. As a mother of four daughters herself, the situation of women in Sudan particularly pains her heart.

“You may have heard about documented genocidal atrocities, such as those that recently took place in the city of El Fasher and its surroundings. Those atrocities have shocked the global conscience with killings and mass rapes of women and sexual slavery.”

But, Saied said, “these have become daily practices for both sides in the war.” Another common tactic is the “enforced disappearance of thousands of citizens, including women and children.” Even if civilians manage to escape or survive, there is also a mental health disaster in the offing that will play out for years and across generations, as Saied warned there is a “total absence of psychological support for the victims.”

People don’t even have time to process the affect the war is having on their psyche, though, because many of them are devoting their days to scrounging for food to keep themselves alive. “There is a crisis of in obtaining enough food… famine stalks the country,” Saied said.

She provided People’s World with documents detailing some of the latest statistics compiled by the United Nations. Over 21 million face “food insecurity.” Another 14 million are determined to be in a “food crisis,” and 6.3 million have entered what the UN calls “a state of emergency food insecurity”—in other words, they’re starving to death.

Whether it’s hunger, disease, sexual assault, or gunshot wounds—the people of Sudan have nowhere to go for medical help when they need it. Saied’s documents show that 70% of the country’s health facilities are either destroyed or out of service.

“Cholera, malaria, and dengue fever have resulted in hundreds of deaths due to lack of healthcare, unavailability of lifesaving medications, and the nearly complete absence of medical staff,” Saied lamented.

These immediate disasters, already horrifying enough, are not the only problem Saied is worried about. There are also the calamities of the future that are currently in the works.

“One of the most notable features in this war, which has become known worldwide,” she said, “is the catastrophe it has caused for children.” She explained that there has been a “complete collapse of education institutions, depriving millions of children of their right to education, threatening the future of an entire generation.”

She said current estimates are that as many as 14 million children who should be enrolled in school are not in the classroom. “Affected schools and displaced people face significant difficulties in providing education, with the situation only expected to worsen if the conflict continues,” Saied told the World.

Many schools have been destroyed, while others have been repurposed as shelters for the people displaced from their homes by the war.

The kind of help that’s needed

Sudan’s Communists remain optimistic and have confidence in their people, despite the disaster that’s engulfed them. They’re asking for international help, but not the military variety of “assistance” that Western imperial powers or their regional accomplices are often eager to provide.

“Peace is primarily in the hands of the Sudanese people and their own living forces,” Saied said. “It is no longer hidden that the ‘Quad’ initiative is not a serious attempt to end the crisis.” The Quad refers to the consortium of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, which claims to be working to achieve peace in Sudan.

Saied asserted that the Quad group’s main goal is to “contain the consequences” of the fighting in Sudan and “restore the balance of influence in the region.” The recent shift in rhetoric by these powers, whereby they express such concern for the humanitarian situation in Sudan, “does not reflect an ethical review” of their past positions and actions, she said.

Instead, the SCP believes the change is “a tactical necessity imposed by the resilience of the people, the exhaustion of the parties to the war, and the exacerbation of regional risks” to peace.

Saied said it’s important to remember that “all the major supporters of the warring parties in Sudan are allies of the United States.”

The SCP remembers well, she told People’s World, that “all of Washington’s dealings with Sudan have proven that the issues and aspirations of its people are merely pretexts employed to serve plans for sustaining dependency and facilitating resource exploitation.”

That’s why the most recent “roadmap to peace” did not deviate from the most minimal of objectives: “a fragile ceasefire, superficial settlements, and a nominal civilian government established outside the will of the Sudanese people.”

What’s needed is an immediate end to foreign interference, including shipments of arms and illicit finances to the warring factions; the termination of illegal outbound shipments of Sudan’s natural wealth, especially gold; and an urgent rush of food and health aid for its beleaguered people.

Saied urged Sudan’s friends and supporters to put these demands to their governments. “We need a campaign of solidarity by all the progressive and peace forces of the world to repel the imperialist assault and its regional agents against our country,” she said.

Sudan’s Communists hope that their “comrades in the world Communist movement will answer that call,” Saied said, and “do whatever they can to build an international movement to help win peace in Sudan and open the path for our people to decide our own future, free of interference and war.

C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People’s World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University and has a research and teaching background in political economy.

source: Black Agenda Report

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