SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Independent - Revolutionaries in the Middle East have learnt crucial lessons since the Arab Spring

20/4/19: Independent - Revolutionaries in the Middle East have learnt crucial lessons since the Arab Spring, by Patrick Cockburn

 Patrick Cockburn argues that Sudanese and Algerian revolutionaries have learned from past defeats of the 2011 Arab Spring.

 Cockburn highlights their distrust of the army, citing their realisation that Arab armies are "parasitic entities...that live off the flesh of the rest of the population.”

 Cockburn credits peaceful protesting for averting a reliance for money and weapons solely obtainable from “outside powers pursuing their own egocentric agendas.”

Cockburn then praises the discrediting of political Islam, as it alienates large parts of the population that are “only moderately religious,” and benefits dictators because “the alternative to their brutal rule seemed even more horrific.”

 Cockburn then credits a Sudanese Professionals Association’s slogan “Christ at the Heart of the Revolution,” for averting the damage that sectarian exclusivity can do to their cause.