As 9/11 has come to mean in the average U.S. mind the attack on the Twin Towers and the beginning of the “war on terror,” the other September 11 in 1973 when the U.S. aided the fascist coup which overthrew the progressive Allende government in Chile has been ignored in the media.
Over the past two years, October 7 has been conflated solely with the Hamas attack on Israel after which the genocidal Israeli war began. Removed from the common memory in the U.S. has been the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan which began on October 7, only 24 years ago.
Although that war “ended” with the withdrawal of U.S., it continued in another way until early September 2025 when the Center for Constitutional Rights had a legal victory. Read about that here.
While we should be aware of the centuries of depraved colonialism which distorted the culture and economy and terrorized the population of Sudan and the region, we cannot let the “modern” imperialist system off the hook. Local wars are proxy wars between competing imperialist blocs; the destruction of people is of no concern to them. And here comes the Trump fascist regime sending deportees to prisons in South Sudan, a separate country with a common history, to further terrorize refugees and migrants around the globe.
We thank Carol Dudek for keeping in touch with Sudanese friends, and for following developments there. Carol produces the Sudan’s Struggle blog on our website and authored the piece below on some of the background to it and why she does it.
The barbaric genocide in Gaza, and the Russian-Ukrainian war are at the front of our minds every day. Yet Sudan, the other victim of genocide, gets rare attention, although its destruction is persistent, catastrophic. 14 million people have fled their homes, often to refugee camps overflowing with disease, malnutrition, bombardment. The death toll has reached 150,000, and does not count all the missing and buried under rubble. Khartoum, a 200-year-old city considered the center of modern Sudan, lost its inhabitants to bombing and destruction. Hospitals, universities, research centers, museums, power and water facilities, ministries, banks, businesses, factories, markets and agriculture have been looted, sabotaged, bombed and burnt. Private homes have been ransacked, families bribed, or killed, the women, and men, raped.
The violence comes from both sides, with foreign governments giving unlimited support to either side — Egypt supplying the army and UAE equipping the mercenaries. Russia guards the gold mines for distribution out of Sudan. Gold, fertile soil, mineral resources, and the extensive Red Sea coast has attracted raiders since antiquity.
Sudan rocked the region in 2019 when massive protests tore down 20 years of military dictatorship. That’s when I began to keep track of the movement in the blog “Sudan’s Struggle.” My interest began with friendships with Sudanese nationals who returned home to a civil war. The generation that came of age did not want another military dictatorship. That uprising of professional associations, doctors, lawyers, engineers, educated and organized workers and students, and grassroots resistance committees demanded total civilian control. The price of defiance was the murder of hundreds of protesters, thousands of imprisonments, disappearances. In 2021, yet another military coup derailed the transitional government addressing corruption, economic crisis, human rights violations and injustice. Hundreds of thousands from all over the country took to the streets. It is the 2023 outbreak of civil war that has brought the country to ruins.Weapons produced by China, Russia, Serbia, Türkiye, UAE and Yemen are used by both warring parties, and the massacres continue. The UN Security Council embargo on Darfur has been regularly violated, including by the UAE. The secession of oil-rich South Sudan, encouraged by VP Biden, left Sudan’s economy in turmoil. Sudan’s cultural heritage has been ransacked, with artifacts sold online. Hundreds of thousands of children are severely malnourished and at imminent risk of death. Cholera, malaria, typhoid, dengue fever, acute watery diarrhea have spread, posing lethal risk, while most hospitals are destroyed so medical treatment is scarce. The longer fighting continues, the more devastating its impact will be. The conflict is leading to a lost generation of children as millions miss education, endure trauma and bear physical and psychological scars of war.
A reporter describes returning: “It will be some time before all those who left can truly call Khartoum home again — my family included.”