Al-Midan Editorial

The United States’ Declaration Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization, A Fact Long Known Through the Suffering and Atrocities Experienced by the Sudanese People

Al-Midan 4440, Sunday, March 15, 2026

The recent announcement by the United States declaring the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan a terrorist organization has been met with a wave of welcome from wide sectors of the Sudanese political spectrum. This reaction can be understood in light of what our people have endured from the crimes of this group and its disastrous policies. However, what Washington has announced today is not the revelation of an unknown truth, but rather a belated acknowledgment of a reality firmly rooted in the consciousness and experience of the Sudanese people, who have known this group through decades of repression, corruption, and organized violence.

Since its emergence in the 1940s, the Muslim Brotherhood has been linked, according to documents revealed in British archives, to relations with British intelligence agencies, within the framework of Britain’s imperial policy in the Middle East. Later, the group became one of the instruments used by the United States during the Cold War in confronting national liberation movements and progressive forces in the region. This was not limited to the parent organization in Egypt, but also extended to the networks of the international organization and its various branches, which were politically and ideologically employed in service of imperial strategies.

From its early beginnings, the group adopted models of fascist organizations as references for its organizational structure and methods of operation. It established secret apparatuses and شبه-military formations, and practiced political assassinations, bombings, and forms of organized violence as tools in political struggle. With the intensification of international conflict during the Cold War era, many of its cadres were summoned to regional conflict arenas, most notably the war in Afghanistan, where numerous members received advanced training in combat operations, explosives manufacturing, and clandestine work methods. This later contributed to the spread of networks of armed violence across the region and opened the gates to a hell of terrorist operations, in which civilians were the first victims.

At the same time, Western capitals continued to provide safe havens for the leaders of this group, reflecting the pragmatic nature of the relationship between imperial powers and such organizations, political use at times, and situational employment at other times, according to the requirements of strategic interests.

However, the Sudanese people do not need external testimony to recognize the reality of this group. Sudan’s past and recent history testifies that the Muslim Brotherhood, under its various names and political and organizational disguises, has been associated with a heavy record of crimes and violations, from the repression of opponents and the destruction of democratic life, to systematic corruption and the plundering of public resources, and reaching the war crimes and acts of genocide committed against broad sectors of our people. Its rule was also associated with the corruption of public life politically, socially, and culturally, and the establishment of an authoritarian system based on repression, patronage, and favoritism.

Our people are also aware that this group has never been isolated from external patronage networks. Historically, it received political, financial, and media support from international and regional powers, directly or through various funding channels, including petrodollar networks in the region. This support contributed to consolidating its influence and enabling its entrenchment within the state and society.

When popular resistance against the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Sudan escalated and the regime stood on the brink of collapse, influential international circles sought to contain the revolutionary transformation through the project known as the “soft landing.” In practice, this project aimed at reproducing the old regime in modified forms and repositioning the group within the power equation. The United States exerted intense pressure on Sudanese political forces to push this path forward, while Britain played similar roles through political conferences and workshops aimed at steering the transition in ways that preserved certain balances.

This contradiction that appears today in the American position, between a long history of political patronage for this group and the declaration designating it as a terrorist organization, clearly reveals the nature of imperial policy, which is governed by interests rather than principles. Therefore, dealing with this development must be approached with critical political awareness, not with the illusion of relying on the positions of major powers.

The task facing the revolutionary and popular forces in Sudan today is to continue and escalate grassroots and radical struggle against the system of political Islam in all its political, military, and organizational manifestations, against the armed forces that emerged from its ranks or allied with it, and against the war imposed on the Sudanese people that has plunged the country into a cycle of destruction and suffering.

The struggle of our people is not merely a struggle against a specific organization, but a struggle to dismantle the authoritarian structure that produced it and to build a democratic civil state founded on social justice, freedom, and national sovereignty.

The Sudanese people recognized early the violent nature of this group. Since the Ajko incident within the Sudanese student movement on November 6, 1968, when the group revealed its terrorist face in political activity, it became clear that its project was based on violence, exclusion, and شبه-military organization.

From that time until today, Sudan’s experience with this group has remained a testament to the danger of the project it carries, a project that combines political despotism, external dependency, and the instrumentalization of religion in the service of power.

For this reason, the path to Sudan’s salvation will not pass through recycling these forces or coexisting with their project, but through conscious and organized mass struggle to remove them from the arena of political life and to build a new democratic national horizon worthy of the sacrifices of our people and their long struggle.