Questions of Formation… and the Explosion of Deferred History (2/2)

Adil Al-Baz
We continue our engagement with the article by Mr. Obeid Marouh, “Sudan’s Earthquake… Are We Approaching the Formation of the Largest Bloc?”—an article that, over the past week, has stirred well-deserved debate for opening up spaces for serious and profound dialogue.
We concluded the first part of this article with the following passage:
How do we move from a state that inherited a society it did not understand, to a state that emerges from a precise knowledge of its structures, grievances, and transformations? How do we build a nation founded on mutual recognition, equitable distribution of power and wealth, and a unifying identity? These are the questions we have long evaded—and now they return to us, not as intellectual luxuries, but as conditions for survival.
In his article, Mr. Obeid proposes a vision for this transition through two principal approaches, both falling under what he terms “foundational transition”—which, as I understand it, is a stage that precedes the transition itself.
In the first approach, he calls for those endowed with insight and sound judgement to come together to establish the foundations of this transitional founding—foundations capable of addressing both the structural questions and the immediate realities, through a thorough study of their historical and contemporary complexities.
This is the first method he proposes. The second approach, meanwhile, is for the state’s leadership to initiate and sponsor this dialogue on the foundations of the transitional founding.
Here, however, I must respectfully say to Mr. Obeid that both approaches—despite their seriousness—have been tried in one form or another over more than seventy years, and have unfortunately failed to produce outcomes commensurate with the gravity of the questions at hand.
Sudan has witnessed countless conferences, endless dialogues, committees, recommendations, and documents—yet the final outcome remains the devastation we see today. The reason is simple: we have generally managed the crisis rather than resolved it, and negotiated over privileges and power-sharing before agreeing on the very nature and identity of the state.
The Sudanese experience has not suffered from a lack of conferences, but from a lack of methodology.
Each time a crisis emerged, we resorted to political dialogue that addressed the surface while leaving the roots untouched. These dialogues and conferences were merely attempts to manage superficial political crises, without delving into their foundational causes: how our multiple identities were formed over centuries, and how the post-independence central state produced a dominant centre that continuously generated marginalised peripheries in opposition to it.
This fundamental question never truly occupied the minds of the elites, who failed to develop a national project capable of addressing issues of identity, culture, society, and economics. Conferences were convened and recommendations issued without any prior serious intellectual effort to understand why Sudan had failed, in the first place, to build a cohesive nation and a just state.
For this reason, we may once again repeat what has already been tried. I fear, Mr. Obeid Marouh, that if we follow the same path, we shall once again be overtaken by regret—a regret whose bitter taste we continue to endure to this day.
The most dangerous aspect of the Sudanese predicament is that we have repeatedly sought quick political exits, while the real crisis lies deeper than politics itself. Why, then, do we not attempt a different path—one that may prove more fruitful?
I do not claim to present a new proposal here; rather, I call for a different approach to understanding the Sudanese question. To that end, I return to a passage from a previous article of mine:
The problem is too complex to be reduced to a single cause or factor. We require a multidimensional perspective, for we are dealing with a layered, interconnected issue that cannot be explained solely through social, political, economic, cultural, or identity-based lenses in isolation.
In short, we need an objective, scientific vision—rather than the theatrics of political conferences.
This does not mean excluding politics or political actors; such a notion is neither possible nor desirable. Rather, it means that the question of foundational reconstruction should not be left to politicians alone. By nature, the politician is preoccupied with the immediate and the feasible, with managing the pressures of the moment. Foundational work, however, requires those who examine the deeper roots of the problem—in history, society, economics, and culture.
We have failed repeatedly because we attempted to solve Sudan’s problems before understanding Sudan itself.
We rushed into settlements and power-sharing before diagnosis, divided the authority of the state before agreeing on its meaning, and drafted recommendations before answering the most fundamental question: what, in the first place, failed in this entity such that its crises have recurred in this manner?
From this perspective, I argue that we need the input of scholars of Sudan’s social history—to examine the questions of formation, understand the causes of our failure to achieve national integration, and propose a new social contract.
Yesterday, the distinguished writer Huweida Shabo published an excellent article titled “Sudan After the War: Towards a New National Social Contract”, in which she called for such a contract, stating:
Any forthcoming national social contract must bear the signature of all components of the Sudanese people, not be the product of secret negotiations among a limited elite. True consultation and the general will both require inclusivity that admits no exclusion.
I believe this is the correct direction—but with one indispensable precondition: it must be preceded by a profound foundational intellectual effort.
The new social contract she calls for cannot be merely a document to be signed; it must represent a redefinition of the relationship between citizen and state, and among the various components of society itself.
In the same vein, we need contributions from scholars in political, economic, and cultural history—not to produce recommendations that gather dust in drawers, but to generate the foundational knowledge upon which transition can be built.
In other words, we must first reach a shared understanding of the nature of Sudan’s crisis across all its dimensions. Only then can we construct a consensual vision for the social contract, and a comprehensive framework for politics, economics, culture, identity, and the structure of the state itself.
The concept of “foundational transition” must therefore be understood not merely as an expanded political dialogue, but as a stage preceding transition—its purpose being to produce the knowledge upon which it rests.
We must first reach an agreed diagnosis of our crises, then establish shared guiding principles, then formulate a new social contract—and only after that proceed to transitional political arrangements and institutions.
To reverse this order—by beginning with power-sharing before agreeing on the meaning of the state—is precisely what we have done before, with the result that the crisis has returned each time in a more complex and destructive form.
If we complete this stage with seriousness, emerging with a consensual vision grounded in genuine knowledge, we will have placed our feet on the correct path towards building a new nation.
Otherwise, we shall remain trapped in the cycle of deferred historical explosion—one that may return with even greater destructiveness.
My sincere thanks to Mr. Obeid Marouh for making this open dialogue possible. I hope others concerned with such questions will join this space of discussion.
If you’d like, I can also condense this into a journal article, policy paper, or editorial format, depending on where you plan to publish it.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=12373