Who is Responsible for the Destruction of Sudan? And What is the Way Out?

Abubakr Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim

Translated by: Ramadan Ahmed

Indeed, saying that Islamists are a party to the war raging in our afflicted country is a valid and well-supported claim. People revolted against the regime that the National Islamic Front (NIF) supported to reach power in June 1989. Despite the division among Islamists at the end of the first regime’s decade between the Popular Congress Party (PCP) and the National Congress Party (NCP), the leadership of both parties chose to resist the change that led to the overthrow of Bashir’s regime in April 2019.

It is true that at its crucial junctures, the change was manipulated by its intelligence apparatus, which continued to seize opportunities to impose its will on the country. However, if it were not for the differences among the Islamists themselves, perhaps the path of change would have been less harsh, less costly, and less tied to external influences.

It seems that the intelligence deception, political impotence, and leadership vacuum in the ruling party and its supporting organisational entities all contributed to the catastrophic outcomes witnessed in the country due to the ongoing war since April 15 last year, a war that appears to be controlled by external hands, insisting that it is a war between two generals!

Some argue that the Islamic bloc, as organisations and entities, has been stagnant since before the overthrow of Bashir, as it remained unable to influence its leadership. To the extent that Islamic literature described the annual conferences of the Islamic Movement as ‘boisterous gatherings,’ with their bases filled with crowds motivated by the increasing secularisation in a world where the values of virtue and dignity have declined, they have sought those meanings in the political world, unlike any time in our recent or distant national history.

This phenomenon of stagnation and impotence was revealed a long time before the fall of the Bashir regime. Since then, until today, Islamists have no unified political discourse other than their differences with their political opponents, especially the leftist factions. They have no genuine actions, only reactionary responses driven by the Secretary-General’s speeches and, previously, by protests and demonstrations against the policies of the transitional government, which were not without failures, constraints, and challenges beyond their political capacity.

Blaming Islamists as if they are the main devil is a statement that denies reality and fact. It has become customary for some to imagine that the regional and international arenas are the ultimate decision-makers in engineering the change that led to the December uprising. They deliberately underestimate the role of other parties responsible for this war, parties that, with external support, have consistently insisted on their unilateral choices in the Lawyers’ Coordination Council, the Framework Agreement, and similar initiatives, knowing full well that they would not satisfy their adversaries whom they failed to uproot and purge in the ‘December Revolution’.

At the beginning of the change, this group preferred to join hands with ‘Bashir’s military’. In the post-Bashir era, it rejected the promises of the civilian leadership expressed by the head of the National Congress Party to be “a supporting opposition” to a civilian government in the transitional period, supporting accountability through judicial institutions. However, the military, allied with civilians, with external support in shaping policies and tactics, made that group believe that the opportunity had come and that the country no longer had imperatives. They turned a blind eye to the fault of the external force that geared up to push onto the pedestal of the man who assumed the second position in the Sovereignty Council without constitutional support.

Suppose he could not swallow the army in twenty years with the consent of those generals sitting at the helm of power and intimidating their opponents. In that case, his secession from the military is possible through a swift operation. The success of such an operation is prepared regionally and blessed by those who communicate with the international community to convince their major countries. The result today is that the civilian leadership that led the change in the years before the war is farthest from the army, and the army is closer to its political enemies, be they Islamists or comrades in the ‘armed struggle.’

Likewise, the end of this war must be the end of all that legacy of failure to manage a country that accommodates everyone. It must be the end of that leadership that failed to preserve the dignity and security of Sudanese citizens. It must be the end of infiltrating intelligence and fake leadership, the end of the humiliation of state sovereignty and the weakening of state institutions.

That is the end we should be thinking about. As for the illusion of ending the war by recycling failure, this is unacceptable because it simply means that what the heavy price the citizens have paid in Darfur, Khartoum, Kordofan, and the Gezira, including horrific acts of insecurity, violation of dignity, was for the sake of reinstating individuals or a unilateral will. It simply means that it all happened just for a political game on crumbling ground, a field without an audience. Accepting the status quo is like accepting colonisation in its post-modern form… the surrender of peoples, the impotence of elites, the fragmentation of leadership, and the subjugation of states’ wills to the detriment of their citizens. What else is worse than living oppressed and humiliated in your own country?

Meanwhile, you may ask me, and I ask you, what is the way to stop this war with a logic that rejects the recycling of failure? We go for a logic that restores the citizens’ confidence in those who govern them, a leadership that heals the wounds, sweeps the rubble, and builds on a solid foundation.

I do not have an answer for you, and I do not have the right to think for you. You do not have the right to confiscate my right to ask and think about a matter that concerns us together because we are, whether we like it or not, of the same nature as this country with its diverse climate, varied regions, different terrains, and multiple dialects.

My non-binding answer is that representatives of all political, union, and societal forces and opinion leaders should participate in outlining a vision of the desired political system. This should be done with conditions of integrity and efficiency, excluding leaders of the first ranks of all parties and entities who did not prevent the occurrence of this war.