Sudan: A Fractured State and a Betrayed People

Voices calling for Sudanese to return home are growing louder, accompanied by circulating videos that suggest life is returning to normal. Yet beneath this façade lies a far darker and more complex reality. Citizens continue to face murder, looting, rape, humiliation, and starvation whether under the control of Burhan and Hemedti -or-in territories occupied by neighboring brotherly states. Returning to homes that have been seized, looted,-or-destroyed remains nearly impossible.
The greatest tragedy is the division of the Sudanese people between Burhan and Hemedti, their tribal allies ever-changing and multiplying in name and opportunistic armed groups. To speak of a natural return under these conditions is to ignore ongoing dangers and perpetuate suffering.
Our complacency allowed the Islamists to survive tactically: they withdrew, repositioned, and pulled the strings from behind the curtain through their proxies Burhan, Hemedti, their tribal allies, and the so-called armed movements. The popular uprising that erupted in December 2018 had the potential to uproot the Islamists entirely. But it was co-opted, its ambitions lowered from total overthrow to mere negotiation, manipulated by alliances of professionals and tribal elites who bypassed the revolution without any clear popular mandate. Isolated, shadowy meetings replaced mass mobilization, street momentum faded, and the revolution shrank from a nationwide surge into a confined space, strengthening the Islamist system and allowing it to reemerge in a new guise.
The executive maneuvers of the tribal elites deepened our crises: administrative bloat, opaque appointments, obstruction of civil service reform, failure to reinstate those dismissed arbitrarily, superficial accountability for Islamist figures, delays in dismantling entrenched Islamist networks, and even recycling and strengthening them. Together with the Islamists and their proxies, Burhan and Hemedti manufactured the ongoing war, consolidated total control over wealth, weapons, and media, and left the population mired in poverty, displacement, and collapse.
Meanwhile, existential threats are mounting: rampant naturalization and demographic manipulation, structural economic collapse that cannot be remedied by loans but only through productive, globally competitive industries, environmental and health disasters caused by war, rising tribal and regional polarization, and relentless incursions by neighboring states into sovereignty through land grabs, port appropriation, and resource exploitation. These are not isolated crises they form a suffocating network. Post-war self-determination cannot be a mere transitional phase. Relying on the same actors and their settlements will only lead to erasure and certain destruction.
Sudan urgently needs a clear, nationally mobilizing project, grounded in four uncompromising pillars:
1. A complete break with the Islamist system and all its arms civilian -or-military with zero tolerance for recycling under any guise.
2. Creation of a broad-based popular entity rooted in genuine citizenship, justice, and the rule of law not narrow quotas -or-sectarian loyalties.
3. Selection of new, untested national leadership from genuine popular bases, not closed-room deals leaders who are honest, sincere, strategically minded, publicly accountable, and bound by time-bound programs.
4. A phased, actionable plan including:
o Dismantling corruption and empowering an independent judiciary.
o Comprehensive reform of civil service and security institutions along professional, ethical, humanitarian, and legal lines.
o Review of naturalization policies, land holdings, and sovereign agreements from 1989 to the present.
o Launch of a national production program relying solely on domestic resources, free from external dependence.
These are not mere slogans they are political and moral imperatives that must unite us to protect future generations from fragmentation and ruin. Burhan, Hemedti, and their allies will not build the lawful, ethical, and humane Sudan we aspire to, their existence depends on the opposite. Continuing to rely on them is nothing but recycling ruin and destruction. Awareness must translate into organized action, and organized action into disciplined, widespread movement.
This does not conflict with a return home on the contrary, it makes such a return possible but only with decisive safeguards. Post-war life is not a temporary truce -or-a circumstantial respite it is an existential sorting, dictated by the mortal threats surrounding us, threats crafted by the very forces now vying over our (skulls).
There is no middle ground between liberation and decline. Our survival God willing depends on conscious popular unity that uproots those who destroyed the state, rather than remaining fuel for their conflicts -or-spectators applauding one side -or-another. We must break the cycle of subordination to Burhan, Hemedti, their tribal allies, and the so-called armed movements, lest we inherit a far more brutal iteration of their tyranny.

Rate the article
Bad	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Very good
Result : 100%							Participated in the vote : 1