*A letter to Mr. Ahmed Jaafar Al-Khalifa, and to all who work in public life* **Dr. Ali Abdullahi

07:25 PM October, 12 2026

Sudanese Online
د. علي عبدالله الخليفة طه-UK
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# Onward, Khalifa

## There is no end to the road before the destination

*A letter to Mr. Ahmed Jaafar Al-Khalifa, and to all who work in public life*

**Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha**

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### Introduction

When I published my reading of Mr. Ahmed Jaafar Al-Khalifa's initiative, *"A Letter to My Sudanese People,"* I knew I was writing to a man who had poured the essence of his thought and experience into his paper. His reply was gracious, as always: he accepted the observations and thanked me for the reading. But within it was a hint that made me pause. It was as if he were saying he had reached the end of the road, and that he had now said all he had to say.

That hint is what prompted these words. It does not concern my cousin alone. It concerns many of Sudan's sons and daughters who carried the burden of the nation. They wrote, took initiatives and organised. Then they were struck by what strikes everyone who works in a time of war and dispersal: the feeling that their words are not reaching anyone, that their efforts are wasted, and that the time has come to step aside.

### To Mr. Ahmed: the first draft is not the final word

Peace be upon you, Khalifa. Accepting the observations is not the end of the road. It is the first sign that the road is sound. An idea that accepts criticism is a living idea, and a writer who welcomes revision is a writer who has not yet run dry.

As a student of strategic planning, you know better than I do that a plan is never born complete. It goes through a continuous cycle: a first draft, then testing and review, then amendment and relaunch. No serious strategic plan anywhere in the world has taken its proper shape without going through many versions. Your initiative today is in its first version, and it is a bold one. It contains what much Sudanese writing lacks: a structure for the state, figures for representation, sources of funding, and councils for reconstruction. Few dare to put down figures and tables they can be held accountable for.

So my hope in you is that you carry it forward:

- **Amend and develop it.** Add a mechanism for getting through the war, a transitional justice that does right by the victims, a clear method for selecting council members, and a fairer formula for representation.
- **Put out a second version.** Open it to dialogue with the authors of other initiatives, so that each of us completes what the other has begun.
- **Keep going with it.** Take it to forums, councils and specialists until it finds its way to those who hold the power to implement it.

In the closing lines of your paper you wrote that you write *"so that I do not retire, or die, empty."* That sentence alone is proof that there is more in the quiver still unsaid. A man who fears dying empty has not been emptied.

### To those working in public life: no one knows which of their words will bear fruit

To everyone working on Sudanese affairs, I say what I said to my cousin: *nobody knows whose words will end up making a difference.*

A word spoken in public life is like a seed. It is cast into the ground, and the one who sows it does not know when it will sprout, or where, or at whose hands. How many ideas were written in times of despair, ignored by all, and then one day became the foundation of a great undertaking؟ How many small initiatives, in a neighbourhood, a village or a diaspora community, were the spark for everything that followed؟ None of us can judge the impact of our words as we speak them. What we can do is speak them truthfully, and keep going.

The gravest danger facing the Sudanese civil movement today is not a shortage of ideas. It is exhaustion. The war did not only destroy homes and cities. It also wore down people's spirits and planted in many the feeling that there is no point in speaking. That feeling is exactly what is needed by those who want Sudan to remain hostage to the gun. Every voice that falls silent leaves a void, and a void does not stay empty. The men of arms fill it.

### Public work is a relay in which each takes the baton from another

Moreover, none of us carries the burden alone. Public work is not an individual race in which one person reaches the finish line. It is more like a relay: each of us carries the baton for a stretch, then hands it on to the next. The worth of each runner lies not in covering the whole track, but in not dropping the baton.

This is the idea on which the series *"Complementing, Not Confronting"* was founded: the initiatives of sincere Sudanese are not rivals but complements. Each carries a brick, and the building is complete only with all of them. If the bearer of one brick stops carrying it, the building is lessened by that much.

### Conclusion: from the depths of tragedy to the heights of prosperity

The distance between what our people live through today and what we hope for them is immense. It is the distance between the depths of tragedy and the heights of prosperity, and no single generation or single voice will cover it. But it will never be covered if those on the march stop walking.

So to Mr. Ahmed Jaafar Al-Khalifa, and to all who wrote, took initiatives and organised, and then felt weary: do not stop. Amend and develop, engage in dialogue and complement one another, and keep going. My cousin closed his paper with the words *"Nothing is impossible under the sun,"* and with the verse of al-Shabbi that we all know by heart: *"If one day a people wills to live, then destiny must respond."* The will of the people is not something abstract. It is the sum of the wills of its sons and daughters who refuse to stop.

Onward, Khalifa. And onward, all who carry the burden of this homeland, until we reach the destination we all hope for.

**Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha**
October 2026