Co-enactment of a coup: Local writing as a stranger and international writing as a local

-Mathilde Ku. and Azza H.Elamir

Dear reader
What we are presenting here is an extract, not yet/even a working draft. It is an attempt or trial of doing the writing and interpretation process differently. We did the ‘data collection’, interviewing, interpretation and writing simultaneously over number of video whatsapp calls interrupted by internet and power outages, protest and conflicts. What we have in mind is a paper in three parts, of which we only really present the first one to you as the two other parts are are very much in the making still. We would like to discuss with you the first part and our overall idea / outline for the whole piece. Part one is a dialogue with a combination of unedited replies and interpretation of the answers. In part two we would like to discuss our knowledge and writing production during the time of the Sudan coup and the immediate aftermath including the social location of information and how and where academic and other forms of authority was established.
In this short piece we test the soundness of the different writing styles and sequencing that starts with more creative writing followed by more academic writing in section two, however, maintaining our (the authors’) presence as observer, activist, participant, worker, interpreter, and writer of the coup as well as making visible from where and whom we establish our academic authority. In part three we would like to reflect the representation and process of this very paper. We are still unsure of the style.

Thank you !
Azza and Mathilde

Co-enactment of a coup: Local writing as a stranger and international writing as a local

This short essay is a dialogue about how the coup in Sudan was enacted upon us and how we enacted it in this essay and elsewhere. What we came to see through the coup, what the coup made us see/ how the coup adjusted our focus, how we represented the coup, and how this very conversation about it is part of never ending interpretation and rewriting. Much of this was discovered only through a conversation on the topic, which contains several revelatory moments like the productive quality of being silenced: from the initial conversation about Azza’s access to internet and communicating with a broad variety of international audiences including the American Congress contrasted to the complete absence of international communication on the side of Mathilde relying on information from the local neighborhood and living the coup with very little information stimulating other senses such as seeing and feeling — to how being silenced and not-communicating can be a productive. It also puts focus on the difference between data, field notes, situation reports and news article production. The difference in representation and the location of interpretive authority. Through a conversation, we talk about how the material environment, infrastructure, academic disciplines, owning or not owning the coup, and current work produced the ‘coup story’ and what we made of it and how. How we represented the coup. Where the story went.
by
Mathilde Kaalund, Department of Political Science [International Relations], University of Copenhagen,
Azza Elamir Hisham, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Khartoum University
In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, you find one of the most critical junctures on the entire African continent. The juncture is the one where the White Nile and the Blue Nile become one: the River Nile. When the 25 October 2021 military-led coup in Sudan happened, we were on the opposite side of the Blue Nile. Azza was in Khartoum and Mathilde in Khartoum North. And the military had closed the bridges. They had also shut down the internet, mobile phone network and airports.

We both saw the coup coming, but for different reasons. For Azza it was the historical baggage, the long history of coups in Sudan and the recent history of power sharing agreements and coup attempts. For Mathilde it was the visible signs in the street. The graffiti on the walls, the increasing protests, the traffic jam, the closure of the bridges and university the day before. It was a feeling.

Picture taken by Mathilde on 24. October 2022 — the day before the coup. Khartoum, Sudan. Text: “Leave us alone — 21st of October March- Fall Fall FFC, hijackers of the revolution.“ FFC stands for the Forces for Freedom and Change. A non-military coalition formed during the overthrow of former president Omar al Bashir in 2019.
Introduction
There is nothing mundane or routine about the actual unfolding of a military coup. Perhaps forceful military takeover of power is ‘normal’ in some countries, but in the hours, days and weeks after (and perhaps also before) such an event dramatically shakes up the routines of many people, though not all people. Some people still go to their fields planting or harvesting their crops, but for us, our routines dramatically changed. Mathilde could not get on her flight back to Denmark after completing her field work in Darfur and Azza’s work changed 100 percent. Neither Azza, nor Mathilde could go to University of Khartoum and we could not communicate with each other. Our lives, work and routines were interrupted. The event shook our attachments and detachments to ‘the field’ and the way we represented and continue to represent it. The dramatic change in routines called for a mixed impressionist way of representing the coup, which we have coupled with the interviewer’s reflection and mediated answers to her own question. A dialogue. The impressionist way does not try to represent the coup as it was experienced in all the details, but focuses on few telling events, people and places. We engage with our own ‘writing for politics’ and ‘writing about politics’ — not that of other people — like the ones of policy makers or expert analysis. We do call upon traditional, often criticized, anthropological authority of ‘being there’, but we also scrutinize both the subject of research and the process itself. This text is both our representation of the coup, a representation of our interpretation process and a representation of a representation meaning a representation of how we initially enacted the coup through writings of field notes, situation reports, newspaper pieces and government briefs (our written work about the coup composed during the coup and in the immediate aftermath).
Enactment of a coup — impressionist representation and conversational interpretation

Seeing the coup reactions through the rules of a global pandemic
Azza: Where were you and what were you doing when the coup happened, Mathilde. Take me through the first hours, day and days? Mathilde: On the morning of the coup, I was at what I would call my home, I consider it my home in Sudan. I was staying with a Sudanese academic family whom I knew through friends and not the university. They knew everybody in the neighborhood. I was just waking up at that point, 6 o’clock in the morning. I had been in Sudan for a month this time round, but I had only just returned from Darfur, the field to my study. As I was just waking up, the mother in the house said to me, ‘’Mathilde, there has been a military coup, you can just go back to bed’’ . I was to leave Sudan the following day and started looking into ways to go back home. The airport was closed, power and communication was out. There was a civil strike of all civilian employee in response to the coup and I needed a covid test to travel. Interesting how local and global crises intersect. In my hunt for a covid test, which seemed a bit absurd at that time, I experienced the unfolding of the coup that day. Most clinics were closed. Driving through Khartoum North by Hassan, a brother to my friend in the house, I saw the military presence on the streets and bridges, blocked roads everywhere, massive amount of people in the streets and the burning tires. The coup was announced by General Burhan from the Sudan Armed Forces on the radio outside one of the hospitals where I was trying to get a COVID test, which I failed. On the way back I started to become curious. I was of course tense, but not afraid. We stopped at a residence near our house. It was the residence of a known doctor that was killed by the army in the 2019 revolution. Now a large number of women were gathering with protest signs, shouting and putting up barricades to block the army vehicles from passing. All my knowledge about the coup was through conversations with local people, I had no idea what international media was writing. I had no internet and only very sporadic phone connection, which I only used for contacting my family so that they could attempt rebooking my ticket. Four or five times my flight was rebooked and canceled an hour later. Though the protest against the coup was not ‘mine’ [being from Denmark], it took an effort not to join the demonstrations as they passed by the house every day. I did at one point alongside one of the family members of the house. In the days that followed, friends, relatives of the family, students and academic colleagues came by for tea and conversations about the situation.
Azza; It’s really interesting that you had the chance to experience the coup through local knowledge and interaction only. The ability to absorb this momentum and be a part of it as a foreigner but on the ground is fascinating, let alone the fact that you’re a political scientist. For me, it’s such an unimaginable thing that during those first few days you had to try and get a Covid test. I thought the whole world was put on pause and as you said it’s interesting how local and international crises intersect. During the first days of the coup the only human interactions I had were with family members and neighbors, this was only possible face to face. As my screen time increased my virtual interactions increased, however, for security reasons I never met with anyone personally for work, only until maybe the second week of the coup. I spoke with various international actors, to people who were supporting pro-democracy movements in Sudan. I was also in contact with various international media outlets and possible speakers. I only used the internet as a means to communicate with people who were not in Sudan. With no sources of digital information available, taking to the street was the only way I could understand and experience the coup. Being a part of a whole, one citizen, but a part of the nation was the manner in which I lived the day of the coup and the few days that followed. This authentic resistance shifted by the availability of the internet for work purposes, which managed to give me what I missed of digital information, but this also took away my physical presence in the streets.
The coup was here all the time / the coup started with the “peace agreements”
Mathilde: Azza, when did the coup start according to you? Azza: To me personally, the coup started from the day the agreement was signed between the military and the civilian in 2019 after the Military Headquarters Sit-in disperse. It was only a matter of time. It was not going to be a healthy relationship [between the military and civilian coalition]. The violent events prior to the agreement showed that this could not be a sustainable relationship, where power would be shared. The agreement was a time bomb. It started already when the transitional agreement was signed [in 2019] and then the next mark was the Juba Peace Agreement [in 2020 — about ending the civil wars in Darfur]. Showed the unsustainability. There has always been mass mistrust between the people and the ruling bloc containing both the civilians and military. No one had any trust in the transitional process. Horrible events were going on, still violence, no peace. It felt like complete chaos. Well, I don’t call it a peace agreement actually [the Juba peace Agreement]. I call it a power sharing agreement between the military, civilians and armed movements. The military was only looking for a coalition partner for the moment where the coup would materialize. This was proven at the time of the coup: the armed movements [who used to fight the regime in Darfur] took side with the military, not the civilians. The coalition created during the Juba peace process proved very functional and supportive of the coup. Many different scenarios could have played out, but the coup seemed to be the most fitting.
Mathilde: This is a bit thought-provoking given the international engagement [a new political mission of the United Nations was established] and international liberal politics around the 2019 revolution, transitional power sharing agreement and what was labeled a historical 2020 Juba peace formally ending decades of civil war in Darfur. I agree with you, but I always thought there was a possibility to do things differently despite the odds. At each critical juncture there are several options. I wrote a piece in a Danish newspaper in early 2021 encouraging Europa to invest in Sudan and engage more with Civil Society to counter other foreign actors’ support for the military. In a way it is never too late, until it is. To me, really, it was the conflict in East Sudan and the Military’s closure of the county’s lifeline, Port Sudan just months before the coup. I felt it myself as I couldn’t get the necessary medicine for a simple food poisoning. Things had visibly changed since my last visit in May/June 2021. I remember reading a newspaper article in Al Monitor about how Eastern Sudan crisis threatened stability in Khartoum. This was three days before the coup. I thought, no, it is the other way around. This is an existential political crisis of the military, national politics at the highest level, which they took to East Sudan. The large ‘pro-civilian rule’ protest four days before the coup, on 21 October, was another mark for me. I was sitting in the plane on my way back to Khartoum from fieldwork in Darfur and a Sudanese colleague said to me: “this is the final match”. We did not know if we were going to land into historical protests, military shoot out or all out violence or something else. The pro-civilian rule demonstrations had grown rapidly in size in just a few weeks. I never experienced such a bad traffic jam as the day before the coup. We gave up crossing the bridge to go to the university after a few hours. On my way back to the house a senior Sudanese colleague asked me to take a photo of the graffiti shown above. A statement showing that the military would not cease power. The day before the coup, I said to my Sudanese friend in the house where I lived that something [political] was about to happen, but I was genuinely shocked when the coup materialized. To me it was similar to my thinking of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: all indicators pointed in this direction, but I didn’t think they would actually do it.

‘Coup or not a coup’ — disciplinary conventions
Azza: You must have been curious about the coup given your background in political science, Mathilde. Did you look at it in a particular way? how? Mathilde: The coup was not what I was supposed to study, my ‘field’ was Darfur, but of course as an academic I was curious and alert. I took the opportunity to try and make sense of what was happening. I didn’t plan to study a military coup or do field work in Khartoum, yet the most central part of my study was trying to understand the role of the military in more ‘normal’ settings and situations far away from the capital. In a conversation with Khitma, the mother in the family, who comes from natural science background, I asked her ‘’In natural science what do you do if, all of a sudden, what you find is an extreme version, like an outlier. An exceptional case of my topic is happening now. From an intellectual point of view, how do you deal with this?’’. She answered saying ‘’Mathilde this is not an exceptional case, it is not an extreme case’’. In this conversation we spoke about how, in situations like this, things become visible that used to be invisible, but was there all the time. This framed my lens: what is it that I can learn about the situation in Sudan as a political scientist on how politics, international intervention, transition and transformation, military, and security apparatus work. With that, I looked at what I can learn from this extreme situation about how things normally work, but are kept hidden. I have always been critical to political science concepts such as the revolution, peace, coups etc. My interest was in the process of what we call a coup, more than the coup itself, to look at it as a process not an event. To understand how and what these processes are doing to people.
Azza; It’s a beautiful thing to see how a curious mind functions in unexpected situations, especially crises. About the last part you spoke of, in relation to being critical of concepts, I remember just right before the coup I was working with a German researcher from Bayreuth University. Her work focused on the 2018–2019 revolution and resistance modes and movements. After the coup I met with her. She told me that her work had completely changed, because now she sees that the resistance is a process. This process makes one believe that these are just different phases, but rather connected phenomena that are affected and shaped by each other, and it is not what the revolution or the coup are in their abstract sense, but it is instead the process of revolution and that of a coup. These processes are amidst many social, economic and political processes, making it an extremely drastic thing to not study it in its continuation, dynamics, change patterns and the different interplaying factors.

Silence is gold: Think — write — (inter)act
Mathilde: What kind of writing did you engage in at this time, Azza? Azza: Those day to day updates related to the coup. We [the organization, Azza works for] reported on three issues: acts of resistance, political developments and conflicts/ security incidents. It was data and analysis. There was no time for reflections or analysis like more ethnographic angles or to reflect on the political economy or international relations of the coup. The work was exhausting. I felt alienated from the resistance process, though people told me that this was an important way of acting too. But I was behind a screen most of the time, not out putting up barricades. The writing was not personal either though of course it had my fingerprint. It was not my writing, as it was not personal. And the work pressure expanded quickly. Think fast, act faster. Although I was producing written reports daily, giving briefings on the situation and so on during those few days of the coup, I never had the chance to dwell into the beautiful but saddening complexities of the phenomenon. Beautiful because of the massive resistance and because the coup accelerated the growth, coordination, organization, policy formulation and ambitions of the resistance groups and movement. I took pleasure in intellectual conversations I had with resistance committee members, which opened my eyes to the deep nature of the resistance and its deepening analysis. Although these few days may seem like a nightmare to a person who craves writing, I escaped this reality by reading. As part of my work, I had to read a lot of short news stories, but I also gave myself time to read what others wrote in depth, which I did not have time to do.
Mathilde: This is interesting. When I first thought of asking you this question knowing part of the answer — sort of the facts about your work, advocacy and reporting on human rights violations — I thought: I am supposed to be the privileged person from the outside, and yet de facto I was being silenced due to complete lack of internet connection and mobile network. I was surprised to hear about your access just now. At first I wished that I had that access too. In fact the Danish newspaper Politiken tried to contact me, but failed. Yet from your answer, I am now thinking, I had the privilege of slow thinking, reflecting, note taking, interacting with the people I wanted to and asking the questions I wanted to ask. In depth conversations free of my formal research questions or work obligation. Yet your work is very meaningful and mine a bit navel gazing. This is an afterthought. I didn’t think of it before you had explained your work tasks in details and your emotions about it.
Interpretive authority or authoritarian interpretation (from this page on it is still very sketchy and we have not decided on style and precise academic point)
During and after the coup, we have been concerned with the flow of knowledge production, which we engaged in. Our jobs and academic careers were all about this. The question of “truth and its social location” (Rabinow 1986, 256), domination and representation, accuracy and interpretation.
In this part, we will delve into our writing process during the first few days of the coup and those that followed. Our endeavor to understanding the writing process and its products, has made it nescceary that we speak of the sources of our knowledge during those times, the purpose of writing and the writing or perhaps the value of writing itself for both Mathilde and Azza. The interplay between the difference in representation, interpretive authority and ownership of the writing products will then be reflected on the audience receiving and interacting with these processes. Highlighting not only how the process was being undertaken but also how data and knowledge were received and perceived by each of the two. In turn focus will be put on the audience of these products, as Mathilde had a personal print in her writing in both her field notes and article, Azza dealt with situation reports and news article productions where she struggled to leave her mark, this part will take us through the interpretive authority one has over a text and the effect of the presence or absence of an audience, their nature and dynamics, has on the products of writing.
Interpretive authority [sources of knowledge and interlocutors, what establishes their authority. Something about what questions the kind of knowledge and information we produced answered]
Moving from ‘my field’ Darfur back to Khartoum and into the coup, my ‘field note title’ changed. One could say in Joe Soss’ term, Mathilde kept re-casing her study or what this was a case of (2018). It was an ongoing interrogation. In Darfur, she titled my notes “the problem with peace”. In Khartoum, she titled it “the problem with politics”. In 2018 Alison Howell wrote: The concept of militarization seems attractive in part because it holds out the possibility of emancipation from military encroachment into civilian life, but what if there was no such “pure” civilian political space to begin with? (117–118). In Mathilde’s notes she replaced this ‘civilian’ with ‘political’.
In the following, we will give you two examples of people who influenced Mathilde’s thinking and writing. Mathilde spoke with Professor Hassan (of Political Science) three days after the coup in ‘her home’. He was a long term friend of the family. His main message was, that the dichotomy was not civilian against military, but the large pro-transition to democracy segment of society versus the ones that were not. Madaniya in Arabic means civilian rule, a slogan of the street protests, which Mathilde encountered on the first coup day. Yet its content appeared flexible, not the fixed Weberian format Mathilde would normally associate with it. Civilian rule was almost like a state of mind. The next concept that Mathilde came to recast was the concept of politics. To Hassan politics was the art of compromise. In Sudan it has come to mean deal-making, co-option with and by the military and political parties. Politics meant political parties. Political parties who had taken turns in making deals with the military for decades. The word political was a no-go word. Student Unions, Political Science Department and Resistance Groups were perceived as being infiltrated or co-opted by political parties. Top leadership in public offices used to be members of the former ruling party under President Omar al Bashir (president from 1989–2019). In 2021 many people in those positions were still affiliated with this party, National Congress Party (NCP), which was officially banned after the 2019 transition. In political science, politics is often considered the opening of space for debate and securitisation and militarisation is the closing of the space (see also securitisation theory. Issues become part of public-political debate once they have been politicised). In this academic context, politics is normal and politics is often good. But what if politics meant something else. Compromise, deal making, power sharing, co-option. In a different conversation with Professor Khitma (in preventive medicine) on the coup day, Mathilde asked her about the event of the day: “In the exact sense it is a coup. General Burhan spoke as an army man, as the head of the army, not as the head of the sovereign council, the government body. And the way he detained the people of the government against their will. Only detaining people from certain parties.” Mathilde: If you were to tell the world one thing that you think they have misunderstood about what is happening today [the day of the coup], what would that be? Khitma: “This is a coup, and then it is not a coup” with the references to some political parties and actors being involved. The interpretive authority that Mathilde used her field notes and news article was founded on a dialogical desire, critically debating (not always agreeing with whom she spoke to) and coup-facilitated encounters in intimate rooms with people whom she trusted already — neither essentialising (cultural) differences and power relations, nor pretending that they did not exist. The point of pro-democracy moment and protests, the misunderstanding of civil-military dichotomy, the distaste for politics and the societal role of the NCP where key features in an opinion piece two weeks later. Yet the title and angle was changed by the editor to fit Western and Danish discourse.
[something about a news article written by Mathilde and how and what was changed by the editor]

Azza:
Unable to answer her main research question and work on her research interest freely, Azza had to drop the ‘Making of militias in Sudan, the state?’ question she thought of answering. This question shaped Azza’s research interests, but unfortunately as a student in the University of Khartoum, the manifestation of academic instability, made her unable to delve into its realms. In a conversation with Prof.Musa Adam Abduuljalil, Azza’s direct academic supervisor, a few days after the coup he said ‘This would have been a very timely question, if you’ve had a chance’
The academic authority that caged Azza within the University did not disappear as the coup occurred but instead, work encompassed that new authority. Writing within the framework of an NGO, is embedded with various challenges to a writer, especially one with nagging questions, analysis and opinions in their heads. To write situational reports, human rights and documentation one must be accurate, to try their best to convey the situation precisely. Azza was still unable to answer her research question through the writing process she was involved in during the first few weeks of the coup, as it was not her story to be written, but her role was to tell the story as it is.
The process of report writing, with all that’s being said, seems like a dull one. However, it was on the contrary interesting. As the internet was shut down, it was semi-impossible to acquire knowledge thoroughly from media research on the internet which meant the need to communicate and engage in conversations with active members of the resistance and pro-democracy movements in different parts of Sudan. Conversations may not have been personal dialogues nor were they usually long, but they delved into details about the reality being lived by each of these people, showcasing the different ways in which the coup have affected everyday life. The content of these conversations was not only flexible, but also ever changing depending on context whilst looking at three main themes, Political developments, Conflict and Security Incidents and Acts of resistance. Each of the three themes could have been perceived differently by the different actors, however it was Azza’s job to stay within the placement of accurate delivery of the situation, the fight against bias in writing was a vigorous one.

Reflections
One manifestation of David Hanauer’s (2010, 2012) meaningful literacy instruction approach, in which the content of writing is the student’s self and life, begins academic-writing instruction with poetry writing. The present study sought to test out the soundness of a writing sequence that starts with creative-genre writing followed by academic-genre writing.
We try to bridge the “I was there” traditionally establishing academic authority in anthropology with the dialogical interpretive process and unfolding the knowledge production process and its social location. Our presence in this text is not only about establishing authority and then disappearing again, but to scrutinize our presence, knowledge production, ongoing open ended interpretation and textual representation in field notes, analytical briefs, situation reports, and news articles.
Process
Instead of the classical hierarchical academic process we attempt to write, interpret, interview and relive the October 2021 coup simultaneously. When writing and discussing new interpretations materialize. Ongoing protests in Khartoum, interruption of power, closure of internet and bridges have been part of the writing process up until submission.
Within this writing process both Azza and Mathilde were not only delivering information but they explicitly or implicitly, included themselves in their writing. Mathilde as a political scientist writing she had interrogated what ‘politics’ and the ‘political’ means in her writing and had used her critical approach to not only concepts but to information she had received. This was both the personality of Mathilde and a critical teaching in Denmark in general and in international relations at Copenhagen university in particular. Mathilde, is also a former UN employee who had long avoided expats- this was evident in her deliberate choice to stay with a Sudanese academic family. Not to study them, but to interact with them, learn from them, discuss and so.Azza as an anthropologist had brought forward her core research interest, her interaction with data and information in an intimate way. It was clear how the process of writing of the coup had a personal take for Azza, as part of the resistance movement and as a student of the University of Khartoum who have always believed that it was their role to act in times of crises. We also see, the effect of being privileged with internet access had on the writing process.