When conflict broke out in Sudan on April 15, activists from hundreds of neighborhoods rallied to set up committees of doctors, nurses and engineers across the country.
Their duties ranged from providing shelter for the displaced, rehabilitating hospitals and saving lives amid shelling, gunfire and bombing.
The efforts came from Sudan’s “resistance committees”, neighborhood groups that have led Sudan’s pro-democracy movement since 2019.
“Each coordination committee performed a scan of working hospitals. Even the hospitals that did not work before the war, we had doctors, fuel and [getting them] electricity,” says Ahmed Ismat, the spokesman for one of the groups from South Khartoum, the capital.
“What we lack now is supplies – from medicines to first aid kits, to gauze. Every neighborhood lacks these things,” he added.
At least 413 people have been killed since a violent power struggle escalated into armed conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The violence has prompted aid organizations to do so suspend operations, but resistance committees have worked to fill the gap, mobilizing informal networks once used to organize anti-government protests.
In addition to medical care, they have coordinated evacuations for besieged civilians and spread anti-war messages. Their efforts, analysts say, have increased their popular support.
“The resistance committees maintain their legitimacy because they do something different from the political elites in this country and that is service. They’ve always centered all their political work around service and they’re doing that a lot more now during the war,” said Kholood Khair, founder and director of Confluence Advisory, a Khartoum-based think tank.
Evacuate civilians
Fighting has rocked Khartoum’s urban neighborhoods, leaving many citizens in a dilemma. Hundreds of people say on social media that it is too unsafe to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere, but staying put is also impossible due to a shortage of water, food and electricity.
Still, those desperate to move rely on resistance committees to buy fuel for cars and motorcycles, said Zuhair al-Dalee, a member of a resistance committee in East Nile Khartoum district.
“There is an area in our neighborhood next to the clashes, but there is no gas [to rescue people]. We had to buy it from the black market to move residents to safer areas. [The committees] work in unity. People donate to us to buy food for children and to do whatever is necessary to help people,” he told Al Jazeera.
A number of WhatsApp groups – as well as social media pages and hashtags – have also been set up to coordinate the humanitarian response.
Many use the hashtag #NotoWar. and publish updated information on which roads and side streets are safe to escape from severe collisions.
In the first few days of the conflict, these pages advised families to head south to Gezira state, an area relatively far from the ongoing clashes. Later, resistance committees came from the city of Madani warned people not to travel by Khartoum-Madani road after clashes suddenly broke out there.
“Neighborhood resistance committees have these coordination mechanisms that they use to work with each other, which allows them to share information and keep our social protection network alive to support civilians,” Hamid Murtada, a Sudanese analyst and member of a resistance committee, told Al Jazeera. from his home in Khartoum.
Stay neutral
In addition to providing services and escape routes, resistance groups also play a role in maintaining the social cohesion of their neighbourhoods.
Murtada stressed that activists have been urging their communities not to side with the RSF or the military, as either side could use ethnic rhetoric to recruit more fighters.
“Neighborhood resistance committees can play a huge role in making sure… the military and RSF narratives… don’t divide communities,” Murtada said.
“They play an important role in raising awareness among their constituencies and in supporting initiatives that will immediately end the war. What happens next is a story for another day.”
Resistance committees have seized this opportunity through activities such as spray-painting anti-war messages on homes and buildings, while forming groups on social media to urge their colleagues to join the humanitarian response – not the fighting.
Despite heroic efforts, Khair says resistance committees have received little support from the Forces for Freedom of Change – Central Command (FFC-CC), a bloc of political parties that shared power with the military in a transitional government before the October 2021 military coup . .
The RSF and the military have also not provided support because they terrorize civilians.
Khair told Al Jazeera that since much of Sudan relies on resistance committees, the international community must also work effectively with them. However, she predicts that Western officials will still favor political elites and generals when it comes to political decision-making.
“[The global community] makes excuses not to hang out [resistance committees] … because they make no effort to understand them. They just understand armies where people are in charge and there are people under them,” she said.
“But if you have independent and robust organizations that can create momentum for change and you still don’t find ways to deal with it. Well, that’s almost criminal.”