Jack Healy and Ann Klein

But when the news finally came Thursday morning that the military had ousted and arrested President Omar al-Bashir, dissolved the government and suspended the country’s Constitution, Sudanese-Americans said their hopes for a democratic transformation had been shattered. They said the military’s move represented a continuation of the bloody regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in civil war and genocidal campaigns and created waves of hunger, suffering and refugees.

“We’re devastated,” said Jalelah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for Sudanese-Americans for Non-Violent Demonstrations, which held demonstrations in Washington. “This is not a coalition that was part of our movement. This was to repress the demonstrations. To get people to go home. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

From the other side of the world, thousands of Sudanese-Americans have become digital demonstrators against al-Bashir’s brutal 30-year rule.

Since the protests began in December, Sudanese-Americans — many young and American-born — have held online fundraisers and sent money through social-media apps to buy food, medicine and water for the thousands of demonstrators massed in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. They held parallel rallies in Washington, Des Moines, Iowa, and Denver. They conducted seminars in organizing tactics and social-media strategies over Skype with their friends on the ground.

“We are physically out, but spiritually, we are there,” said the Rev. Oja Gafour, a Sudanese pastor in Denver.

Moyad Baba, a leader of the group, said several of his friends called out sick for work or stayed home Thursday because they were so upset by a military takeover that appeared to shut the door on the possibility of a civilian transitional government. “It’s a continuation of the exact same thing,” he said. “It’s depressing.”

Baba, 30, grew up shuttling between Sudan and the United States. For three decades, tens of thousands of other Sudanese, including legions of orphans known as the Lost Boys, fled war and atrocities and were resettled as refugees across the United States. They ended up around New York, in Northern Virginia, Des Moines, Omaha, Nebraska, and elsewhere.

Now, some Sudanese-Americans said they were worried the military would accelerate its crackdown against the protesters who marched on the presidential palace and are camped outside the army headquarters. More than 40 people have been killed in the violence, and others have been beaten, tear-gassed and arrested. From 6,000 miles away, Sudanese-Americans said they wake up and go to sleep waiting for news from friends and family in the protests.

From the Sudanese food stall she runs in Aurora, Colorado, Sara Hamid keeps her phone close to stay in touch with her two brothers who are among the protesters in Khartoum and send her photos. One is camped out. The other goes back and forth to take care of his young family. “They are our voices,” Hamid, 35, said.

She said she felt compelled to send money through an app to help buy bottled water for the protesters. Her husband, Nasr Ahmed, a dual Sudanese and American citizen, said the small contributions made from 6,000 miles away helped him feel connected to a movement he desperately wanted to join.

“I wish I could fly to Sudan and be with those people,” he said. “But I have to be here. If I’m not able to go, then this is the least thing I can do. To help them stay there as long as we can do to get this regime out of power.”

Similar sentiments echoed across Sudanese-American communities. In Des Moines, which has a South Sudanese population of about 3,000, Francis Chan was running on no sleep on Thursday after spending the night following the news from Khartoum while his wife and five children slept.

After waiting for hours, he said he was crestfallen when Sudan’s defense minister — whom the United States has tied to killings and atrocities in the Darfur region — appeared in front of the cameras to make a statement.

“The people were really looking for a civilian leader, not a military person; this is why the Sudanese people do not believe he will bring change,” Chan said. “This has happened before. This is not the change the Sudanese people are looking for.”

Anwar Amed Elnour, who went to Des Moines in 2006 as a refugee from Darfur, said that other Sudanese people in Iowa organized a network to raise money to get sandwiches and water to protesters. Because of a near blackout of media coverage of the protests in Sudan, they constantly monitor Facebook, WhatsApp and other social-media feeds for updates and live video feeds from the demonstrations.

“Every movement, we are following here,” Elnour said.

He said the movement had united Sudanese-Americans from different faiths and different regions of the country, those who had fled violence decades ago, those who were recent immigrants and those born in the United States.

“We have never had people from Sudan come together in this number in America before,” he said.

Gafour, the pastor in Denver, fled Sudan more than 30 years ago to avoid being killed and said he and others in the community longed to return. At Sunday services for the Sudanese community, his congregation prays for peace in English and Arabic for Sudan and South Sudan.

“Hope is always the thing to cling to,” he said. “Without hope one might as well be dead.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/us/sudan-military-coup.html" id="955d6516-f65d-313d-abaa-f424c2b83aa9">The New York Times</a>.

They Fled Sudan for the U.S. Now They're Worried about What Comes Next.

AURORA, Colo. — Sudan’s diaspora in the United States stayed up all night, sipping coffee and sweet tea to stay awake as people waited for a revolution in the country their families had fled.

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Jack Healy and Ann Klein

Articles written by the author

They Fled Sudan for the U.S. Now They're Worried about What Comes Next.