Which Sudan Do We Want to Return؟ A Reading of Dr. Salah Ahmed Al-Hibbo’s Vision: From Restoring th

02:18 AM October, 29 2026

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Complementing, Not Confronting series
Which Sudan Do We Want to Return؟
A Reading of Dr. Salah Ahmed Al-Hibbo’s Vision: From Restoring the Past to Founding the Future

Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

On 28 October 2026, Dr. Salah Ahmed Al-Hibbo published an article in Alrakoba entitled “The Sudan We Want: A Return to Before 25 October 2021, by Ending the War and Restoring the Situation Before 15 April 2023 Through Reclaiming the Civil Democratic State.” In it he offers a diagnosis of the Sudanese impasse and a vision for its resolution in nine principles and practical tracks. The article deserves a careful reading, not only because it calls for an end to the war, but because it tries to move beyond the slogan to the question of the state: what comes after the guns fall silent؟
This reading belongs to the series “Complementing, Not Confronting,” which does not search for points of disagreement in order to widen them. It looks for points of convergence in order to deepen them, and then for the gaps that call for institutional completion, in light of the Ninth Revision of the Charter of Salvation and State-Building and its companion Activation Protocol.

I. Where the Article Meets the Charter’s Vision

The most eloquent line in the article is this: “What is required is not that one party triumph over Sudan, but that Sudan triumph over the war.” The sentence redefines the goal, moving it from the logic of domination to the logic of the state. That is the very shift on which the Charter is built.
The article also meets the Charter in its warning that “a peace that distributes influence among the armed forces, without building inclusive institutions, may postpone the war but will not end its causes.” This is an accurate diagnosis of the successive agreements Sudan has known: they treated the symptoms of conflict and divided its spoils without touching its structure.
There are many further points of agreement: that responsibility for the tragedy cannot be reduced to a single party; that transitional justice rests on individual responsibility, “not punishment on the basis of identity or affiliation”; that Sudan “needs its neighbours, but does not need tutelage”; and that agreements without mechanisms for implementation, monitoring and accountability remain liable to collapse.
Most important of all is the author’s acknowledgement, in the body of his text, that “restoring Sudan does not mean a literal return to what existed before the war; some of what existed before it needs deep reform.” That acknowledgement is the entry point on which this reading builds.

II. The Gaps That Call for Completion

The nine principles the article sets out are sound in substance, and it is hard for any Sudanese who cares for the country to disagree with them. But the strength of principles does not settle the question of mechanisms. How do these principles become institutions؟ Who carries them؟ And what guarantees that the experience will not repeat itself؟ It is here that certain gaps appear. We present them not as criticism, but as completion.

1. Which Moment Do We Return To؟ The Question of the Source of Legitimacy

The article’s title calls for a return to the situation before 25 October 2021, and before 15 April 2023, while its conclusion concedes that “the Sudan that was will not return as it was.” This tension between title and text is not a matter of wording. It is a fundamental question about the source of legitimacy.
The pre-coup order rested on the 2019 Constitutional Document, which was in essence a partnership between civilians and the military component, one in which the commander of the Rapid Support Forces sat as deputy chair of the Sovereignty Council. The 2020 Juba Peace Agreement then added shares for armed movements to the governing equation. In other words, the very pattern the author warns against, the distribution of influence among those who bear arms, was present in the structure his title invites us to return to.
This does not diminish the value of that period, which was the fruit of a great popular revolution and immense sacrifice, and the civilian forces that led it deserve credit that cannot be denied. But the Activation Protocol observes that their legitimacy rested on “elite delegation,” without any mechanism to verify that this representation reflected the real balance of interests on the ground, especially in the peripheries and the countryside. It was therefore open to challenge at the first real test of consensus.
This is why the Charter presents itself as a “third path”: neither a total rupture with the past nor a restoration of the inherited state, but a re-founding of the political compact through specific mechanisms. Its first premise is “ascending functional legitimacy from the peripheries to the centre.” The centre does not earn its legitimacy by monopolising decisions, nor by restoring any historical moment however dear, but by its ability to represent the functional consensus that the peripheries produce on security, justice and resources.

2. Who Carries the Project؟ The Question of Agent and Mechanism

The article calls for “a comprehensive Sudanese political process, not a deal between centres of influence,” and the call is well placed. Yet Sudanese experience teaches that deals have often begun with the intention of inclusion and ended at tables around which only the best-organised or best-armed forces sat. The decisive question, then, is not whether we want an inclusive process, but who convenes it, who decides who takes part, and how it is protected from capture.
The Charter answers with specific conditions for the legitimacy of a transitional authority. It must be formed through ascending representation from the regions, not appointed by an armed party or carved up among elites at the centre. The role of military parties within it is confined to the ceasefire, security arrangements and the integration and demobilisation tracks, with no authority over political or legislative decisions. Until ascending representation is complete, day-to-day business is run by a small body of non-partisan professionals, accountable to the first elected representative body. All of this is bound by an absolute ceiling: the transition may not exceed five years and may not be extended on any pretext (Section IV, Parts 4 and 5).
The social carrier of this process is the Grand National Nafeer, drawn from the tradition of the nafeer that Sudanese villages and neighbourhoods have known for generations. It is a call that summons all the neglected and excluded energies, from neighbourhoods, villages, displacement camps and the diaspora, so that the people are not left as spectators awaiting whatever the negotiating tables produce. In its first phase the Nafeer works as a tool for mobilisation and for carrying the call, not as a body claiming to represent anyone. Its mandate grows only as real delegations accumulate from the base.

3. Who Finances the War؟ The Question of Political Economy

The article calls for “opening the roads… and lifting the restrictions that obstruct people’s lives, movement and trade,” and affirms that “national resources should belong to the people, be managed transparently, and be directed to development, not to financing conflicts or entrenching influence.” That is true, but it remains at the level of principle and does not name the mechanism that turned Sudan’s roads and resources into fuel for war.
The Charter names that mechanism the “gateway economy”: organised armed levies at roads and crossings, run by second- and third-tier field commanders, on lorries, livestock and gold. A recent investigative report counted more than a hundred checkpoints, by its own estimates. More dangerous still, these levies have turned from a temporary means of financing the fighting into a stable economic structure in their own right, whose interest is tied not to the war continuing or ending but to the continued absence of the state. So whoever signs a ceasefire in the name of an armed party does not necessarily hold real authority over the one collecting at the gate. “Opening the roads” by political decision does not mean they are actually open.
The Activation Protocol (Chapter Six) therefore separates the track of arms from the track of money. Handing over the rifle is a security matter; the accumulated wealth in property, parallel transport companies and exchange bureaux is a separate file subject to accountability, so that a political amnesty does not become cover for laundering fortunes. The body of the Charter (Section VI, Part 3) pairs this with an independent authority for the governance of gold and extractive resources, with which concession contracts, production and export volumes are registered and published periodically; with an independent review of every concession contract concluded by any standing or de facto authority since the outbreak of the war, ending in a reasoned, published decision to confirm, renegotiate or cancel it, and with any extension or assignment 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; and with the transfer of companies owned by the military and security institutions to the Ministry of Finance or a civilian public body. Financial sovereignty cannot be divided between what lies parallel to the state and what lies within it.

4. How Do Arms Leave the Equation of Power؟ The Question of Institutional Guarantee

The article proposes “removing arms from the equation of governance” through gradual arrangements and the unification of the military and security institutions. No one disputes that goal. But unification alone is not enough: Sudan has known a unified army that intervened in politics many times since independence.
At this point the Charter proposes “Resetting the Military Landscape” (Section III), through three simultaneous rather than sequential tracks: integration by professional rather than political criteria; demobilisation paired with genuine economic reintegration; and institutional restructuring around a new national military doctrine with unified chains of command and funding. These tracks apply to every formation without exception, including the armed forces themselves as regards restructuring. The Charter separates the institutional fate of a formation from the criminal responsibility of its members: integration grants no immunity, and demobilisation charges no one with a crime not proven against them individually.
The Charter adds explicit safeguards: a ceiling of twelve years on any leadership post; a ban on combining command of any armed formation with party-political activity; and the separation of army command from the headship of state in whatever system of government is chosen. As the Charter puts it, Sudanese experience shows that the dispute was never really about the name of the system, but about where the gun sits within it.

5. How Do We Restore the Institutions of the State؟ The Question of Continuity

In his third principle the author calls for “building professional national institutions… not run by the logic of personal, regional or militia loyalty.” That is the heart of restoring the state. Yet Sudanese experience reveals a deeper malady: when a regime falls, whether by coup or by revolution, it is not only the head of power that changes. The entire executive layer disappears with it, so that every transition, however noble its motives, becomes the occasion for a fresh institutional collapse.
The Charter addresses this through what it calls the “Institutional Firewall” (Section VII): a structural separation between the political class that competes for power and the civil-executive class built on competence and functional neutrality. It is protected by legal safeguards against the politicisation of appointment and dismissal, objective appointment criteria, periods of job protection, and independent committees that distinguish political responsibility for a decision from competence in carrying it out. The state cannot be restored if every transition tears it down again.

6. How Is the Periphery Represented؟ The Question of Centre and Margins

The article does well to reject the denial of Darfur’s grievances while refusing to let them become a pretext for dismantling the state by force, and in calling for agreement on the form of the state “through political and constitutional means.” But this requires more than the language of fairness. It requires a decision rule that treats the structural root of the problem: the imbalance in the relationship between the centre and the peripheries.
The Charter puts forward the “Fourth Pillar”: regional representation and weighted consensus (Section II). This mechanism combines numerical representation by population with compensatory representation according to the degree of historical and developmental marginalisation, measured by objective indicators of the place rather than by the composition of its inhabitants. A region is a geographic-administrative unit, not an identity-based entity, and the citizen is represented by place, not by lineage. Decisive questions, from the form of the state and system of government to the relationship between religion and state and the distribution of resources, are settled within the constitutional conference by a weighted quorum that prevents any bloc from imposing its will alone.
The Charter recognises the right to self-determination as a last-resort constitutional safeguard, not a call to secession. It can be invoked only upon documented and repeated failure of the state to honour equality among the regions, and only after every corrective mechanism has been exhausted. Its purpose is to deter any return to inherited centralism, which meets the author’s own insistence that the homeland must not be restored by dividing it.

7. When Does Justice Begin؟ The Question of Sequence and Structure

The article proposes a process that “balances the victims’ right to truth and redress with the need to prevent collective revenge.” The balance is right. But it places transitional justice sixth among its principles, after ending the war and the political process. Here the Charter warns against treating the two as consecutive tracks, because such sequencing opens the door to postponing accountability indefinitely on the pretext of “not disturbing the atmosphere of peace.” It therefore requires that justice mechanisms, especially the documentation of violations and the protection of witnesses, begin in parallel with the ceasefire itself, so that evidence and the living memory of victims are not lost (Section IV, Part 3).
The scale and geographic spread of the violations in this war also mean that a single track cannot contain them. The Charter therefore proposes a three-tier structure (Section V). The first tier is local reconciliation councils, dealing with direct communal disputes within a unified national legal framework. The second is a Truth and Reparations Commission, taking public truth-telling from South Africa and the insistence on tangible material reparation from Colombia. The third is a Major Crimes Chamber, with exclusive jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, working under the principle of complementarity with the International Criminal Court in the situation referred to it by the Security Council. In this way the victims’ rights are preserved without justice turning into revenge, and without reconciliation turning into impunity.

8. Who Guarantees the Settlement؟ The Line Between Guarantee and Tutelage

The article clearly rejects tutelage, then relies, in its ninth principle, on “regional and international guarantees for implementing the settlement.” Here the Charter agrees with him: it too proposes a joint regional, international and national monitoring mechanism, with guarantees from the African Union, IGAD and the Security Council. But it draws the line precisely: a “guarantee” binds the parties, while “tutelage” confiscates the sovereign decision. It also calls for the many mediation platforms to be unified into a single mechanism, because their competition lets the armed parties shop between them for the terms that suit them best.
The Charter protects that line with a concrete instrument: no more than 30 per cent of the operating budget of any transitional track or Charter-affiliated institution, the Nafeer included, may come from external funding. The prohibition extends to any party, political organisation or religious institution receiving binding direction or funding from an external authority (Section VI, Part 4). International support is welcome, but it must not become a substitute for the Sudanese decision.
Beneath all of this lies the principle of iftiqār, or mutual interdependence. The army lacks a popular legitimacy that force alone cannot win; civilians lack an executive capacity that representative legitimacy alone cannot supply; and every region lacks what the others possess. The Charter requires that the stronger party be the first to acknowledge its need of the weaker, not the reverse. This is precisely what the author means when he urges the parties to recognise that “withdrawing from war is not defeat, but may be the most honourable and courageous of decisions.” When mutual interdependence becomes the foundation of the national compact, the settlement becomes a shared interest guarded by its own stakeholders, not a fragile agreement waiting for someone outside to guard it.

III. From “the Sudan That Returns” to “the Sudan That Is Built”

Dr. Al-Hibbo closes his article with a statement that deserves to be the principal point of convergence: that Sudan does not need a “mercy bullet” fired at its people, but “a political and moral decision that stops the slow death.” We agree with him entirely, and we add that this decision, if it is not to remain a wish, needs a structure to carry it and institutions to protect it.
If we may suggest one amendment to his title, it is this: the Sudan we want is not the Sudan that “returns,” but the Sudan that “is built.” The author says as much in his own conclusion, when he describes the Sudan we seek as “not merely an image of the past, but a state reclaiming its right to the future.” The Charter says the same: the question is no longer “how do we restore what was؟” but “who will gather all the pieces, the old and the neglected together, to begin the wider building now؟” A return to the past, however cherished, takes us back to the point from which the crisis began. Building opens a road we have not yet travelled.
The principles the article sets out form a broad common ground on which many civilian forces can meet. What the Charter offers is not an alternative to them but their completion: mechanisms that turn principles into institutions, a social carrier that turns vision into movement, and guarantees that turn a settlement into a national compact. In that sense we say to Dr. Al-Hibbo, and to all who share this noble concern: what lies between us is not confrontation, but completion.

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