Dialogue, However Long the Journey [1]

Dr Abdulazim Hassan – Lawyer
Sudanese people today seem to disagree less over the need for dialogue than over who should lead it, who should participate, and where it should ultimately lead. Nevertheless, the truth remains: however many flaws dialogue may have, however many attempts there may be to hijack it, it remains the least costly and most nationally grounded path out of the crisis.
The war did not arise out of nowhere. Rather, it was merely the latest manifestation of failure to manage political differences and struggles over power. Before it, Sudan experienced coups, uprisings, temporary agreements and transitional periods that often ended in new crises.
For this reason, ending the war, important though that is, will not, by itself, be sufficient to end the crisis. Weapons may fall silent while the causes that brought them onto the scene remain. What is required is not another dialogue to be added to the record of previous dialogues, nor a political meeting to distribute seats and positions, but a dialogue that confronts the questions long deferred: How should Sudan be governed? How should power and wealth be distributed? What should the boundaries of the relationship between civilians and the military be? And how can state institutions be built so they do not collapse every time power changes hands?
The road to dialogue may be long, and people may disagree over its steps, participants and guarantees, but the alternative is not necessarily a shorter road. Sudan’s experience shows that ignoring dialogue does not eliminate disagreement; it merely pushes it into other, more brutal arenas. Dialogue is not weakness, just as consensus is not surrender. The real weakness lies in continuing to reproduce the crisis while expecting a different outcome from the same methods.
However long the journey may be, Sudan will not reach a stable state until its people learn that the nation is greater than any one side, and that a state is not built through domination, but through agreement on rules that govern everyone.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=17885