The Architects of No Solution

Al-Mubir Mahmoud
Every few months, the French organisation Promediation convenes yet another meeting on Sudan. The host city may change, as may the title of the workshop or conference, but the participants are largely the same—and so too are the questions and, ultimately, the outcomes.
Throughout Sudan’s political transition and the subsequent years of war, the organisation has maintained a continuous presence among Sudanese political actors, presenting itself as a neutral intermediary seeking to bridge differences and build consensus among competing factions.
The real question, however, is not how the organisation describes itself, but what kind of institution it actually is, which intellectual and political tradition it represents, and what tangible results its work has produced across Africa.
Promediation is neither a development agency nor a humanitarian organisation. It operates in the field of political mediation and conflict management. Those leading it come from backgrounds in politics, security, crisis management and international relations. More importantly, it serves as one node within a much broader network of European and international institutions that have been engaged in the Sahel, Libya, Chad and Sudan since the Cold War.
This network is rooted in a liberal approach to conflict management, is funded by European governments, and comprises research centres, security experts, special envoys, and organisations specialising in conflict resolution and political transitions.
Yet when one examines this network’s record across Africa, it is difficult to identify a single unqualified success.
In Mali, years of intervention produced numerous agreements between political elites and armed groups, only for the country to descend into repeated military coups, state collapse and an ever-deepening erosion of trust between government and society.
In Libya, conferences and dialogue initiatives have followed one another relentlessly—from Skhirat to Berlin to Geneva—yet the country remains divided, politically fragile and plagued by many of the same security challenges.
Chad has likewise spent decades hosting initiatives, dialogues and negotiated settlements, without addressing the underlying causes of its political crisis.
After such a lengthy history of interventions and unsuccessful mediation efforts, any reasonable observer is entitled to ask: Which African state has become a genuine model of stability because of these conferences, dialogues and negotiated settlements?
For this reason, scepticism regarding the role of such institutions is both understandable and well-founded.
A close examination of these experiences suggests that far greater effort is devoted to managing conflict than to resolving it.
Once a conflict is genuinely resolved, there is little need for mediators, workshops, dialogue projects or international expert missions.
An unresolved conflict, by contrast, guarantees continued funding, travelling experts, commissioned studies, profitable initiatives and an ongoing institutional role.
This does not necessarily imply the existence of some grand conspiracy. Rather, it reflects the political economy of conflict management itself: prolonged crises ensure continued relevance, influence and financial support for those whose work depends upon them.
Most Western mediation initiatives in Africa are built upon the principle of incorporating all armed actors into the political process.
Presented in conference halls, this idea sounds both attractive and pragmatic.
Yet it raises a simple question.
Would France itself accept an armed group that had rebelled against the state, killed French soldiers, seized French cities by force and then demanded a share of political power in exchange for laying down its weapons?
Would Britain or Germany treat such a situation as an opportunity for inclusive national dialogue?
The answer is self-evident.
Within their own borders, Western states regard armed rebellion as a direct assault on the rule of law and state sovereignty.
When similar conflicts occur in Africa, however, the preferred prescription often grants armed force additional political value, transforming the possession of weapons into a ticket to the negotiating table.
In Sudan, these ideas found fertile ground within parts of the political elite.
This is an elite selectively cultivated in ways that often reward limited intellectual preparation, weak strategic vision and an unquestioning willingness to follow external agendas.
For years, attendance at international workshops and conferences has become, for some politicians, almost a profession in itself.
No sooner does an invitation from a foreign organisation arrive than preparations begin: travel arrangements, press statements, speeches and the obligatory group photographs.
Remarkably, few of these participants ever pause to assess the cumulative results.
Dozens of workshops.
Dozens of conferences.
Dozens of initiatives.
Yet Sudan has moved not from crisis to stability, but from political deadlock to a devastating war that has threatened the very existence of the state.
Nevertheless, enthusiasm for the next initiative remains undiminished, as though nothing had happened.
Perhaps the simplest explanation is that some sections of Sudan’s political elite continue to value legitimacy conferred from abroad more highly than legitimacy earned from Sudanese society itself.
Accordingly, they are often more active in the conference halls of foreign hotels than in the villages, towns and neighbourhoods they claim to represent.
Securing a place on an international panel appears to matter more than building a genuine domestic constituency.
The deeper problem, however, is that Sudan’s crisis is not merely about who governs or who shares political power.
The current war has exposed far more fundamental questions concerning the nature of the state itself, the legitimacy of the political elite and established parties, the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and the very social contract governing the relationship between authority and society.
Such issues cannot be resolved through closed-door meetings involving a small, unelected group of politicians and armed movements, nor through formulas that have already been tested repeatedly elsewhere in Africa without encouraging results.
For this reason, the debate surrounding Promediation extends well beyond a single organisation.
It concerns an entire model of crisis management in Africa—a model that continually recycles the same political elites, deploys the same instruments and reproduces the same approaches, regardless of their previous record.
After more than two decades of experiments across the Sahel, Libya, Chad and Sudan, the results require little explanation.
The crises remain.
States remain fragile.
Conflicts continue to regenerate.
Meanwhile, the international mediation industry continues to expand.
That fact alone should encourage thoughtful Sudanese to examine every new peace initiative with far greater scepticism—particularly when it originates from the very institutions that have yet to demonstrate a convincing record of success anywhere in Africa.

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