A reading of Zuhair Abu al-Zahra’s article “A Reading of the War Impasse, the Crisis of Civilian Re

11:09 PM November, 11 2026

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د. علي عبدالله الخليفة طه-UK
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The “Complementing, Not Confronting” Series
From “Around What Do We Unite؟” to “By What Mechanism؟”
A reading of Zuhair Abu al-Zahra’s article “A Reading of the War Impasse, the Crisis of Civilian Representation, and the Conditions for Founding a New Political Path”

Dr Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

Introduction

I am glad to return to my conversation with Mr Zuhair Abu al-Zahra, with whom this series has engaged before. His new article, “A Reading of the War Impasse, the Crisis of Civilian Representation, and the Conditions for Founding a New Political Path” (SudaneseOnline, 5 November 2026), is among the most mature pieces written in recent weeks on the predicament of Sudan’s civilian forces. It does not stop at rejecting the war; it asks the founding question: why has broad popular rejection of the war failed to become a viable national path؟
The author answers plainly: yes, the civilian forces can regain the initiative, but on three conditions: separating the military track from the political track, building a representation mechanism that does not monopolise legitimacy, and preserving the independence of civilian decision-making from external actors. We agree with these conditions as a whole. Yet a condition that is not translated into a named institutional mechanism remains a wish. Hence this reading, which follows the method of the series: we begin with where we converge, then pause at what needs completing, and then propose, from the Charter of Salvation and State-Building (Tenth Revision, October 2026) and its two companion documents, the Activation Protocol and the Transitional Bridge Initiative, the mechanisms that would make the author’s conditions implementable.

I. Points of Convergence

1. A crisis of representation, not of will

Mr Zuhair writes that “the absence of civilian initiative does not mean the absence of a desire for peace, so much as it reveals a crisis of representation, organisation and agreement on the minimum national project.” This is an accurate diagnosis, and we share it fully. The Charter begins from the same observation when it observes that most Sudanese political initiatives since the outbreak of the war have fallen into “a preoccupation with arranging alliances and positions before agreeing on the blueprint on which the homeland is to be rebuilt” (Section I).

2. War does not write the constitution

The author rejects waiting for a military resolution, because that “in practice means granting whoever carries arms the right to write the constitution and determine the identity of the state and its system of government.” This is precisely what the Activation Protocol calls “legitimacy by actual force,” which it counts as one of two failed models in the Sudanese experience, one that reduces legitimacy to “a reflection of the military balance of power” (Chapter One, Part 2).

3. Individual accountability, not collective condemnation

The author warns against turning “individual responsibility into collective condemnation or a pretext for wholesale political exclusion.” This position meets an explicit rule in the Charter, which separates the institutional fate of armed formations from the criminal responsibility of their members: “Integration confers no immunity, and demobilisation attributes to no one a guilt not individually proven against them” (Section III, Part 2), while criminal responsibility is assigned to the three-tier structure of transitional justice (Section V). Even the single exclusion the Transitional Bridge Initiative provides for, that of the dissolved National Congress Party, is confined to the legal entity and to those bearing documented leadership or judicial responsibility. It does not extend to mere past membership, nor to the Islamist current as an intellectual current, and it carries a right of appeal before an independent judicial body (Transitional Bridge Initiative, III.2).

4. A critical review of the past partnership, and independence from external actors

The author calls for a “courageous reading” of the mistakes of the previous transition, and insists that internationalising the crisis must not become “internationalising the Sudanese decision.” Both lie at the heart of the Charter: the first is what produced the section on the Institutional Firewall (Section VII), and the second is what produced the distinction between a “guarantee”, which binds the parties, and “tutelage”, which confiscates sovereign decision-making (Sections IV and VI).

II. From Conditions to Mechanisms

The article sets out sound conditions but mostly leaves them at the level of principle. Below are six issues that we believe need completing, with a mechanism from the Charter’s texts proposed for each.

1. Representation: who convenes, and who is represented؟

The author calls for “a representation mechanism that does not monopolise legitimacy,” and sets a profound criterion for it: “political representation is founded on the capacity to communicate with society, respond to its demands, and submit to its accountability.” But the article stops at what the mechanism should do and does not say how it is to be formed. Here lies the dilemma the Protocol calls “the representation gap”: every call for ascending legitimacy needs someone to issue it, and that someone usually comes from urban elites or diaspora organisations, so the call reproduces the very centralism it seeks to overcome.
The Protocol proposes a way out in three steps:
Separating the moment of convening from the moment of representation. The first call is issued by a gathering that openly admits it holds no comprehensive mandate, so that it is “a call to test the call,” not “a declaration of final representation.” This gathering may not turn itself into the transitional body or monopolise the naming of its members: “its function is facilitation, not succession” (Chapter One, Part 5).
Representation that begins from the patch. The basic unit is “a small, clearly bounded geographic patch — a neighbourhood, a fariq, a cluster of adjacent villages or a displacement camp.” The sole condition for membership and candidacy is actual residence, not lineage. Residents choose their representative by name rather than by party list, and representation rises to the regional and then the national level through a mandate that can be withdrawn at every stage (Chapter One, Part 6).
Safeguards for absent groups. Neither gender may hold less than 35% of the seats elevated in each round, with a comparable threshold for those under thirty-five, and Sudanese abroad are organised into “patches” according to their actual places of residence, so that the diaspora enters the structure of representation “as a geographic extension, not as a separate advisory delegation” (ibid.).
In this way the displaced, refugees, women and young people, whom the article rightly mentions, find their place in the very structure of representation rather than on membership lists. This design also addresses the author’s observation that the presence of youth, women and the resistance committees “has not been sufficiently transformed into effective institutional participation.” As for ensuring that the mechanism does not monopolise legitimacy, that is safeguarded by the Charter’s principle of the “rejection of completeness”: no balance of representation is deemed final, and “permanent constitutional channels are therefore maintained through which any group or region that has not found adequate representation in an existing arrangement may call for its review” (Section I, Part 4).

2. Separating the two tracks: from slogan to safeguard

The author proposes two interlinked tracks, a humanitarian and security track and a civilian political track, with the aim of “preventing military negotiation from turning into negotiations over power-sharing.” The question left open is: what, in practice, stops those who carry arms from crossing from the first track into the second؟
The Charter answers with three specific safeguards. First, the role of military parties in the transitional authority is “confined to the ceasefire, security arrangements and the integration and demobilisation tracks, with no authority over political or legislative decisions” (Section IV, Part 4). Second, no one may simultaneously command an armed formation and hold a partisan political position; whoever chooses political work leaves the military chain of command entirely (Section III, Part 4). Third, previous peace agreements, foremost among them the Juba Agreement, are treated on the principle of “the issue, not the share”: substantive commitments remain in force, while power-sharing arrangements do not carry over automatically. “In this way, arms are not rewarded with a seat, and just causes are not punished for the conduct of those who carried them” (Section IV, Part 6).
The Charter adds a rule that directly serves the author’s humanitarian track, requiring that any ceasefire include “the immediate and unrestricted opening of humanitarian corridors, without linking them to the track of political negotiations” (Section IV, Part 1). The Transitional Bridge Initiative offers a sequence that clarifies the relationship between the two tracks: a ceasefire with an agreed monitoring mechanism is announced as a condition accompanying the start of political representation, the security-sector reform schedule is adopted in the consensus document itself, and only the deep implementation of restructuring is deferred until political legitimacy is in place (Transitional Bridge Initiative, I).

3. The political economy of the war: the greatest absence

This, in our assessment, is the most important gap in the article. It analyses the war as a struggle over “power and influence,” but does not pause at the economic structure that now feeds on the war and feeds it in turn. The danger is that this structure falls within neither of the two tracks the author proposes: a ceasefire does not dismantle it, and civilian political dialogue does not reach it.
The Charter addresses this in its section on Financial Sovereignty (Section VI) and in Chapter Six of the Protocol, devoted to “the shadow-economy gap” and to what we have called the “gateway economy,” meaning armed levies on roads and crossings. Among its principal mechanisms:
Separating the disarmament track from the track of accountability for accumulated assets. Dismantling the military capacity of the gateway lords is a security file, while the accumulated assets and financial networks are a separate file subject to transitional-justice accountability regardless of how the security file unfolds, so that surrendering weapons does not become a route to escaping accountability for wealth (Protocol, Chapter Six, Part 3).
Reviewing concession contracts concluded during the war. Resource concession contracts concluded by any existing or de facto authority since 15 April 2023 are subject to independent review against published criteria, and any extension or transfer of them is frozen until the review is complete, “so that the war does not become an occasion for mortgaging the country’s wealth through contracts concluded in the absence of oversight” (Section VI, Part 3).
An independent body for the governance of gold and extractive resources, with which concession contracts and production and export volumes are registered and periodically published (ibid.).
Barring those proven to be linked to the war economy from candidacy within the ascending representation mechanism, by a reasoned decision open to appeal (Protocol, Chapter One, Part 6).
Without this dimension, the fighting may stop while the gateways remain, and what the author calls “a mere respite between two rounds of conflict” would turn from a possibility into a fate.

4. Independence from external actors: from stance to ceiling

The author writes that “international mediation can provide pressure and guarantees, but it cannot provide legitimacy.” We see in this sentence a precise summary. But independence that remains a moral stance erodes before the first conditional funding. The Charter therefore turns it into a measurable rule: a maximum ceiling of 30% of the operating budget of any transitional track or Charter-affiliated institution may come from external funding, and the prohibition extends to any party or political organisation receiving binding direction or funding from an external authority (Section VI, Part 4).
The Charter also responds to the author’s observation on the multiplicity of platforms, supporting “unifying the multiple mediation platforms into a single coordinated mechanism, because competition among platforms allows armed parties to move between them in search of the terms that suit them best” (Section IV, Part 2).

5. Time: a long process without a ceiling

The author concludes that the way out is “a long process that begins with stopping the fighting and rescuing society.” This is true and sincere, but Sudanese experience teaches that a transition left open in time becomes an arena for whoever can afford to wait, and those are usually the bearers of arms.
The Charter therefore sets an absolute ceiling of five years for the transitional period from the date the transitional authority is formed, and “this ceiling may not be extended on any pretext.” It indicatively targets general elections at the thirty-sixth month, “so that the last two years of the ceiling serve as a margin to absorb delay rather than as a target date”. It measures the transition against published benchmarks, and elections begin with local units and proceed upwards (Section IV, Part 5). In the meantime, authority rests with a small caretaker body of non-partisan competences, and with a small civilian Transitional Sovereign Body of no more than seven non-partisan members, with a rotating chair and ceremonial functions, in which no military party participates and whose membership no civilian party may monopolise (Section IV, Part 4).
6. Federalism and the social carrier
The author proposes “building federalism and local government” as an entry point for addressing imbalances of power and wealth, and we share his direction. But federalism addresses the division of powers between the centre and the regions; it does not necessarily settle how decisions are made at the centre itself, nor does it prevent exclusion from being reproduced within a region against its own minorities. This is why the Charter proposes the Fourth Pillar: regional representation based on place, not lineage, and a rule of weighted consensus on fundamental questions, so that no bloc can impose its decision alone (Section II). The form of the state and the system of government, including the degree of federalism itself, are settled in the constitutional conference under this rule.
Then there remains the question of who carries the project on the ground. The article speaks of “an organised political force,” while the Charter proposes a carrier of a different kind: the Grand National Nafeer (Section VIII), a distributed popular structure of local cells in neighbourhoods, villages and camps, sectoral teams, and a light coordinating body, drawing inspiration from the experience of the Emergency Response Rooms without seeking to absorb or politicise them. The idea is that a distributed project is harder to co-opt or hollow out than a centralised alliance, as the Protocol sets out under “the adversary gap” (Chapter Five).

III. An Answer to the Closing Questions

Mr Zuhair ends with three questions that we consider the most important part of his article: “Around what should they unite, to whom do they speak, and with what project do they wish to address the Sudanese people؟” We propose the following answers:
Around what should they unite؟ Around an institutional blueprint before an alliance. The Charter “does not present itself as an alternative to these alliances; it presents itself as a blueprint that must precede them, and as a condition of their soundness” (Section I). Its philosophical foundation is mutual interdependence (iftiqār): no party in the Sudanese equation can resolve the crisis alone, provided that the acknowledgement of this interdependence begins with the stronger party before it is demanded of the weaker.
To whom do they speak؟ To whoever lives in the patch, whatever their lineage: in the neighbourhood and the village, the displacement camp and the country of refuge. Legitimacy here is built upwards through a revocable mandate; it is not proclaimed from platforms.
With what project؟ With a project that names its mechanisms and accepts accountability for them: safeguards that prevent arms from crossing into politics, the dismantling of the war economy, a ceiling on external funding, an absolute time limit on the transition, and a distributed popular carrier.

Conclusion

Mr Zuhair writes that Sudan “does not need a new alliance that adds another name to the list of alliances.” We agree, which is why we do not present the Charter as a competing alliance, but as a completion of what his article began: he set out the conditions, and the Charter proposes a mechanism for each. Every mechanism here is open to discussion and amendment, for the Charter itself is bound by the principle of the rejection of completeness, and holds that “the claim of completeness is itself a sign of institutional deviation that calls for review, not celebration.”
Perhaps the next step is for the conversation among the authors of the various initiatives to move from the question “Who represents civilians؟” to the question “By what mechanism is that representation tested؟” Once we agree on the mechanism, disagreement over persons and platforms will prove far smaller than it appears today.