Drawing the line
How Sudanese political satirist Khalid Albaih uses his art and writing to confront injustice, challenge authority, and highlight the struggles of marginalized communities worldwide.
"The Last Nail" by Khalid Albaih, 12 January 2023.
It was while in school that Khalid Albaih first realized the universal appeal of political satire:
I noticed that we all have the same jokes. So the Palestinians joked about Arafat, and we joked about al-Bashir. Each one made a joke about their president, of course, whispering it, but it was all the same jokes, just different presidents. So that really made me feel that it was politics and/or the corruption of it, that really connected a lot of people, especially my generation.
Albaih was born in Bucharest in 1980. His father was a diplomat, so the family moved around a lot. He returned to Sudan, his home country, briefly as a child. However, in 1989, President Omar al-Bashir came to power, and thousands of Sudanese professionals were forced to leave. “If you are not with them, then that means you’re against them. They fired a lot of people and my dad was one of them.” The family moved to Doha, Qatar, where Albaih was raised as part of the Sudanese diaspora. Attending school there, he was surrounded by children of many different nationalities.
Albaih first discovered political cartoons through Egyptian magazines that his father bought. These were respected publications of the time. One was Rosa al-Youssef, established in 1925, and named after its founder. It became the first political magazine in the Arab world and pioneered the art of caricature and cartoons. It focused on arts and literature but played an important role in political discourse, calling for Egypt’s independence from British colonial rule. Another important magazine was Sabah Al-Khair (good morning). Both magazines were started by Fatima Al Youssef (nicknamed Rosa al-Youssef), an actress and journalist.
“When I was a teenager, my dad used to buy these two magazines every Wednesday, say Albaih. … It really transformed my favorite hobby, which is comics — something that was fictional to something that’s nonfiction — and art was a common ground for that.” He continues:
It was art telling stories about fantasy, about superheroes, about people that live in a faraway land. I love the stories of Superman, who’s basically a refugee, right? He’s the strongest person in the world, but the idea of being human is being the weakest person in the world. When he’s weak, no one notices him. He’s okay with that because he knows how powerful he is…The comics connected the superheroes of this fantasy world to artists that were talking about situations that are now and here, and that are working on critiquing this life. I went from seeing superheroes that wear capes to believing that not all heroes wear capes. Some of them have pencils.
Through these magazines, he discovered the work of acclaimed Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, whose mysterious murder in London in the 1980s has still not been solved.
He knew they were going to kill him. He had this character, which was this young boy that was always looking at a situation, giving us his back. He was this ten-year-old boy, and his name is Handala — which in Arabic means sour; like he sees a sour situation, and this is how Naji, the cartoonist, saw himself too […] He was another person who also was a refugee, just like Superman was a refugee. It was all these people that were alienated, and they’re trying to portray people and trying to help wherever they could. Naji al-Ali taught me that my work doesn’t have to be “haha funny”. I think this is when my world really changed.
Carving out an artistic practice
Today, the world is keeping Khalid Albaih’s hands busy. He follows in the footsteps of his heroes by continuing to challenge the status quo. Ongoing warfare, the domination of imperial powers, and the rise of fake news have made him one of the hardest-working political cartoonists in the world. His cartoons and written work feature in publications including The Atlantic, NPR, New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera, amongst others.
He describes his love for comics and drawing as a child:
We had VHS tapes, so I would pause the video and start drawing my favourite characters from there. After that, my dad used to buy me comics, and then I would be drawing from the comics. But art was always my thing. I always loved it.
He loved the medium because of how accessible it was: ”For us, museums were places where white people go. It wasn’t for us. But cartooning was always about the people. It was about the street. It’s about what the common person would say.” He says it’s also evident in the way people respond to him:
Today, when I say I’m a cartoonist, people smile. It doesn’t matter if you are speaking to an eight-year-old. It doesn’t matter if you’re speaking to a professor. It doesn’t matter if you’re speaking to a fascist or a leftist. It really doesn’t matter at all. Everyone is just like ‘Oh, okay’. It’s a good conversation starter. And I love that.
Albaih has engaged in political cartooning since 2008, first posting on his blog and later via social media. Around the Arab Spring in 2011, in Sudan, one of his cartoons went viral. Suddenly his work was everywhere, but it also upset people.
“2011 was a turning point in the world, because of the Arab Spring and because of the generation that took to the streets and we utilized a tool that was never utilized before, which was the internet.” It was around this time that he gravitated towards human rights work and activism.
Equally important to his political cartoon work is his writing. Albaih’s writing unpacks the historical and political perspective of a place like Sudan, while also describing his own family struggles. It is an extension of his graphic artworks. He is a child of the immigrant experience which he shares extensively through writing and can express it in a way that is rarely depicted, citing the identity crisis experienced by black Arabs in the West.
Writing was initially hard for him: “Drawing was always an outlet, because I couldn’t write, because I’m dyslexic.” But writing became an important tool for his drawings: “If you see my notes, it’s encrypted, because it’s a word and a drawing and then a word because this is how I think.” Writing also allows him to explain his ideas: “Cartooning is incredibly powerful. It’s super fast and it’s straight to the point, but now with everything being so short and cut down, you need nuance to know what actually happened.”
He adds:
Now the situation is so complicated that I don’t think, sadly, that a cartoon would do. Because we need to know more. We need to know where things came from. It’s not black and white. There are things that are black and white, obviously, like, Israel is a settler religious colonial state. Done! Black and white. But there are things, especially like Sudan, for example, that are complicated.
For roughly eight years, Albaih says that he used to draw a cartoon a day, but realized it was like being on a “hamster wheel of constant news.” Now he takes it at his own pace. “It’s not just about saying something. It’s about if there is something different to say. That becomes my point, so that’s why I try to, as much as I can, highlight other artists.”
Years back Albaih started publishing his cartoons online with the hashtag “khartoon,” a play on cartoon and Khartoum. In February 2024, considering the situation faced by artists, he founded a website of the same name, Khartoon! magazine. It is a platform to highlight the work of young Sudanese cartoonists who are now refugees, to showcase their work and get paid. He built the online magazine which he hopes to turn into print one day.
As a visual artist, Albaih enjoys creating installations. His work has been featured at Documenta and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Florida. He works on design programmes with the Qatar Museum while juggling his other projects including the Sudan Artist fund, FADAA and the Sudan Art and Design Library.
Understanding the challenges artists face, including lack of support and censorship, Albaih says:
The revolution in Sudan was led by three things—women, artists, and unions—and to support artists is very important because this is what’s on the street. This is how we’re going to keep people talking about the revolution and discussing the revolution. A lot of these artists need work; they need money in order for them to keep doing what they’re doing. I understand that quite well because I do the same thing.
Freedom for Palestine; freedom for Sudan
To be a sharp political cartoonist, you need to be constantly informed and up to date with multiple forms of news. Trying to stay informed means having to consume a lot all the time and your research skills have to be impeccable. As a result, Albaih has had to consume a significant portion of heavy global news over the past year.
Albaih’s work has fervently documented the past year of war in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum and the ongoing genocide in Gaza—through cartoons and writing. One of his works, depicting a cellphone barricaded by a concrete wall, titled Israel’s Digital Apartheid Wall (May 29, 2021), continues to be timeless and relevant as more digital censorship has taken hold. He often comments directly on the use of technology and AI in warfare.
Palestine and the struggle for freedom feature prominently in Albaih’s work, he says, because the Israeli-Palestinian war is not just a local issue but a global one that affects everyone:
It’s really a turning point. It’s the last outpost for colonialism in the world, after South Africa. Living in the Middle East, you understand that if the problem in Palestine gets solved and if we have one state that is democratic; it would benefit the entire region. I know the issue in Sudan will be solved at least 80% if Israel and Palestine becomes a democratic country — if it becomes one country where everyone has the rights of return and everyone has equal rights. There is no need for that huge amount of lobbying and that huge amount of militarisation in the region. The issue is that we need a democratic region. For that to exist, there needs to be a democratic system in the strongest and the richest place in the region. It’s as simple as that[…] So when I fight for Palestine, I’m also fighting for myself. I’m also fighting for Egypt. I’m also fighting for Saudi, I’m also fighting for Yemen. I’m fighting for all of these places that I am affected by directly. This is why I fight for Palestine.
After more than a year of genocide in Gaza, and over a year of displacement in Sudan, asking how he copes.
I’m as good as I can be. What keeps me going is really that I feel like I’m better than a lot of people who are in my situation. People lost everything. I lost everything, but thankfully, I can continue my life and I have an outlet… This is very important. Other people have lost everything. My dad has been working most of his life, just like many of my father’s generation. We had to drag him out of the house because war took everything. Everything he owns is gone. Someone who’s at his age, just losing everything is incredible. So every time I remember that or just see my friends, some of them are just getting heart attacks right, left, and center— from the stress. These are people who were going about their lives, and all of a sudden they’re just refugees that can’t move. They’re stripped of their life. So it’s really a lot. It’s been a lot since the Arab Spring. But Sudan is home, and it just really shows you that things deteriorate so fast. So I’m really trying to do all I can do at this moment.
For many journalists and activists, this moment in history has highlighted a failure in mainstream media, from the widespread use of fake news to the massive targeting and death of journalists. We have witnessed a collapse of journalism in the West, while journalists in Palestine risk their lives (and their families) to bring news to people. In general, it is a dangerous time to be a truth-teller.
In the same way that social media was utilized to mobilize youth, for example, during the Arab Spring, it has also been used for counter-revolutionary tactics. “This is why with the counter-revolutions, the first thing that happened was that they invented things like troll farms, for example,” explains Albaih.
Albaih has been threatened and detained for his work before. Doing political cartoon work is tiring—a process he often questions:
It has definitely been fatigue; information overload; you get lost in a sea of information because they want to dilute the truth. We’re used to this in Sudan. Al-Bashir controlled the media scene. When something was exposed[…] he pushed more fake news out so everyone would get confused, and then everyone would step back and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know what this is, so I’m just going to step back.’ And by stepping back, they win, right? It’s this thing that, sadly, people need to know how to deal with and we’re learning as we go.
Albaih mentions how, in Sudan, fake news websites written by fake journalists and photos with AI started popping up, meant to deceive the public.
The biggest question of all would be, what’s the use? Why am I doing all of this? Why does this matter? […] I think this hurts more than being targeted or threatened — I’ve been through all of them. I think just feeling that, ‘what’s the use?’ And realizing that you’re never going to win, that this is just an ongoing thing. But you have to keep doing this. It’s yin and yang. And you’re fighting monsters, basically, giants really—tech giants, governments, things like that. So it’s incredibly time-consuming and mental health-consuming. And it’s very hard. It’s incredibly hard.
This sentiment rings true for many journalists committed to exposing injustice. It is often thankless, unrewarding work; many journalists have been killed for it. However, despite his sacrifice, Albaih’s dedication to his work over the years has been instrumental in combating misinformation. Looking at the combination of his cartoons and writing, a very clear picture emerges of the abuses of power and the continued struggle for freedom, and how these are so closely intertwined in different parts of the world.
As he so clearly says, “when I fight for Palestine, I’m also fighting for myself. I’m also fighting for Egypt. I’m also fighting for Saudi, I’m also fighting for Yemen. I’m fighting for all of these places that I am affected by directly. This is why I fight for Palestine.”
