From Package to Structure A Reading of Dr. Al-Shafie Khidir’s “The Practical Alternative to Militar

01:25 AM November, 13 2026

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The “Complementing, Not Confronting” Series
From Package to Structure
A Reading of Dr. Al-Shafie Khidir’s “The Practical Alternative to Military Decisiveness in Sudan”

Dr Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

Introduction

In his article published in Alrakoba on 9 November 2026, Dr. Al-Shafie Khidir continues the dismantling of the discourse of “military decisiveness” that he began in his previous article, and this time moves from critique to alternative. The article is, in my view, among the most mature contributions on the subject, because it rejects both easy options at once: no decision by the rifle, and no “demanding that Sudanese accept a settlement of whatever kind.” Between these two rejections he proposes “treating the ending of the war as a single package in which three sub-packages are integrated”: pressure to end the fighting, urgent humanitarian assistance, and a workable political and security track, implemented through four steps and grounded in a declaration of principles whose drafting is to be initiated by the civilian forces.
This reading follows the method of the “Complementing, Not Confronting” series: we begin with what we agree on, which is the greater part, then pause at the gaps the article leaves open, and set out the mechanisms that the Charter of Salvation and State-Building (Tenth Revision, October 2026), its companion Activation Protocol, and the Transitional Bridge Initiative propose to close them. The purpose is not to set one document against another, but to turn the “package” from a correct heading into an institutional structure with names, powers and deadlines. And since the author has promised to detail each step in his coming articles, this reading is a contribution to a dialogue we hope will continue, not a final word in it.

Part One: Where We Agree

The article meets the Charter at essential points, the most important of which are:
Reading military decisiveness as a political project dressed in military clothing, not merely a tactical option. This is precisely the Charter’s starting point: that the war is a struggle over the shape of the state and the distribution of power and wealth, not merely a confrontation between two armies.
Rejecting a formal dialogue that ignores the crimes and the roots of the crisis, and insisting that transitional justice is part of the solution, not an obstacle to it.
The multiplicity and interlocking of the war’s causes, giving the “third factor”, the failure of the elites to build the post-independence state, its due weight. The whole Charter rests on this diagnosis: that the centralised model, which distributes decision-making and resources from above, is what “produced the recurring cycle of marginalisation, rebellion and coup over seventy years.”
That the political process be “formulated and led by Sudanese civilians… without granting the armed parties the right to monopolise the determination of the country’s future.” This is the principle the Charter calls “the real test by which the seriousness of any transitional project is measured”: subordinating armed force to civilian authority (Section III, Part 1).
Linking the cessation of fighting with humanitarian assistance, which the Charter provides for when it requires of any ceasefire “the immediate and unrestricted opening of humanitarian corridors, without linking them to the track of political negotiations” (Section IV, Part 1).
Concern for national sovereignty in dealing with international partners, which the Charter expresses through its distinction between a “guarantee”, which binds the parties, and “tutelage”, which confiscates sovereign decision-making (Section IV, Part 2).
Indeed, the article contains something with which the Charter itself can be complemented. The author’s second step couples a sustainable ceasefire with “a halt to the flow of weapons and external support.” The Charter, while providing for a joint monitoring mechanism, regional and international guarantees and the unification of mediation platforms, did not make the halting of arms flows an explicit, free-standing clause. This is an addition we credit to the author without hesitation, and we consider it worthy of a place in the Charter’s next revision. Complementing, as we understand it, runs in both directions.

Part Two: The Gaps and the Charter’s Corresponding Mechanisms

1. A War That Finances Itself: The Missing Item on the Map of Factors

The “fourth factor” addresses external competition over resources, ports and waterways, and closes with a warning against the “plundering of the country’s resources.” But the article does not turn to the fact that the war has created, inside the country, an economy that finances it and feeds on it: armed levies on roads and crossings, gold leaving through informal channels, and in-kind barter outside the banking system. An investigation by Sudan Tribune (29 July 2026) recorded more than 108 checkpoints and estimated the levies at 22 main points at about 600 million Sudanese pounds a day — figures that are the investigation’s own estimates, not official data.
This layer matters because it threatens the author’s first and second steps together. As the Activation Protocol puts it: “Whoever signs on behalf of an armed party does not necessarily hold real authority over the one collecting at the gate” (Chapter Six, Part 1). A truce signed by the leaderships may not bind those whose interest now lies in the absence of the state, not in the continuation or the end of the war.
The Charter addresses this gap under the heading of the “gateway economy”, by separating the track of arms from the track of money: the surrender of weapons falls under the integration and demobilisation tracks, while accumulated assets fall under separate accountability, so that “handing over the rifle in exchange for a political amnesty” does not become the laundering of unaccounted wealth. To this it adds an independent authority for the governance of gold and extractive resources that publishes concession contracts and production and export figures; the transfer of the companies of the military and security institutions to civilian ownership; and an independent review of all concession contracts concluded since 15 April 2023 in any area of control, which treats them as neither automatically void nor automatically valid (Charter, Section VI, Part 3; Protocol, Chapter Six). In this way, the author’s warning about the “plundering of resources” becomes an implementation programme rather than a warning.

2. The Declaration of Principles and the Implicit Veto

The author stipulates that the declaration of principles “must be agreed by all the warring parties” and that the civilian forces must unite around it. The condition is understandable: there is no ending a war that the belligerents do not accept. But left unqualified, it gives every armed party a veto over the principles themselves, so that what was put out through the door returns through the window: a monopoly over determining the country’s future.
The Charter proposes a way out that preserves both conditions: the military institution is a party that signs the Consensus Document “rather than a guarantor above it”, and “the role of the 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” (Section IV, Part 4). In other words, the belligerents agree to what concerns them, and hold no veto over what concerns others. The Charter adds that the headship of state and the command of the army may not be combined in one person or one body, and that no one may combine the command of an armed formation with party-political activity (Section III, Parts 4 and 5).

3. Who Are “the Civilian Forces”, and By What Legitimacy Do They Lead؟

The article assigns the third step, the political process, and the initiative of drafting the declaration of principles to “the Sudanese civilian and political forces.” Yet it neither defines this actor nor asks about the source of its mandate, even though its sharp division is one of the reasons it has been unable to present a unified project. This is precisely where many initiatives stumble: the call for an inclusive legitimacy usually issues from a position resembling the very centre it seeks to move beyond.
The Charter answers this question with the concept of “ascending functional legitimacy from the periphery to the centre” (Section I, Part 1), which the Protocol translates into a practical rule: “the call as a process, not a declaration” (Chapter One, Part 5). The convening body openly acknowledges that it holds no comprehensive mandate and confines itself to facilitating founding local meetings; legitimacy then accumulates through successive, revocable mandates, from local councils to the regional and then the national level. Until this is complete, the Charter allows a preparatory dialogue conference open to those who have not signed it, with declared, temporary proportions of representation “that lapse automatically upon the formation of the first ascending representative body” (Section IV, Part 4). All representation rests on place, not lineage, and fateful questions are decided by the rule of “weighted consensus”, which combines population weight with the documented degree of marginalisation, so that no bloc can impose its decision alone (Section II, Part 3).

4. Security Arrangements at the Bottom of the Ladder

Security arrangements come fourth and last in the author’s sequence, and are described as “gradual.” Yet his own analysis invites a reconsideration of this position. When he writes that “the two leaderships were born of a single womb”, and recalls that together they made a history running from Darfur to the dispersal of the sit-in and the coup of 25 October, he is describing a structural fusion of arms, politics and money. Such a fusion cannot be treated at the end of the road, because whoever holds the weapons during the political process will remain able to obstruct or steer it.
The Charter settles the matter clearly: “The military landscape is not a technical pillar to be managed after political consensus has been reached; it is the material condition without which every consensus remains theoretical, suspended in mid-air” (Section III). It therefore addresses the multiplicity of armed bodies “through three tracks that run simultaneously, not sequentially”: integration, demobilisation and restructuring, applying to all formations without exception, including the armed forces themselves, while separating the institutional fate of a formation from the criminal responsibility of its members: “Integration confers no immunity” (Section III, Part 2). The Transitional Bridge Initiative places this principle in a practical sequence: the ceasefire and its monitoring mechanism are declared at the start of political representation, the army reform timetable is signed in the same document, and only the deep implementation of restructuring is deferred, since it requires a legitimate cover to be carried out consensually from within. What is deferred is implementation, not commitment.

5. Transitional Justice: The Name Is Present, the Structure Absent

The article mentions transitional justice among the tasks of the third step, that is, after the truce and the sustainable ceasefire. However good the intentions, this sequence opens the door to what the Charter warns against: “postponing accountability indefinitely on the pretext of ‘not disturbing the atmosphere of peace’”, and the loss of evidence and of the victims’ memory in the interval between the two agreements.
The Charter therefore requires that the mechanisms of transitional justice, in particular the documentation of violations and the protection of witnesses, “begin in parallel with the ceasefire, immediately and not some time afterwards” (Section IV, Part 3). It proposes a three-tier structure for them: local reconciliation councils for violations of a communal character; a national Truth and Reparations Commission; and a Major Crimes Chamber with jurisdiction over grave violations that are subject neither to reconciliation nor to the logic of “truth for amnesty”, coordinating with the International Criminal Court under the principle of complementarity (Section V). The Protocol adds the rule of the “simultaneous minimum”: local documentation and the tracing and freezing of assets begin together from the first day of the ceasefire, so that justice does not become a moral archive without resources, nor asset recovery an elite settlement without a judicial cover (Chapter Two, Part 5).

6. Pressure Without Incentives, Sovereignty Without a Mechanism

The author’s first package rests on “pressure to end the fighting.” Pressure is necessary, but on its own it does not explain why a party holding power on the battlefield would accept an arrangement that defers what it regards as its right now. The Transitional Bridge Initiative therefore pairs each milestone (cessation of fighting, start of demobilisation, handover of authority to civilians) with a corresponding step by the sponsoring regional and international parties, gradually lifting isolation and restrictions according to documented compliance, together with a respectable professional integration path for those who qualify and genuine employment programmes for the demobilised (Part VII). Guarantees prevent a return backwards; incentives make moving forward a reasonable choice.
As for sovereignty, the author calls for a unified vision that “forms a dam against external interference.” A dam needs stones, and the Charter proposes some: that external funding not exceed 30% of the operating budget of any transitional track or institution belonging to it; that any political party or organisation, or any religious institution, be prohibited from “receiving binding direction or funding from an external authority” (Section VI, Part 4); and that mediation platforms be unified 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).

7. A Society Absent from the Packages, and an Open-Ended Timeframe

The three packages in the article are packages for mediators and elites: the international community in pressure and relief, and the civilian and political forces in the political track. Society itself, the neighbourhoods, villages and camps, and the Emergency Response Rooms that kept people alive when the state was absent, has no place in the package. The Charter proposes the Grand National Nafeer as a popular executive vehicle, with a three-level local, sectoral and coordinating structure, drawing inspiration from the Emergency Response Rooms “without seeking to absorb or politicise them” (Section VIII). All of this rests on the principle of mutual interdependence: no party holds legitimacy, capacity and resources together on its own. “The army lacks a popular legitimacy that force alone cannot win; civilians lack an executive and on the ground capacity that representative legitimacy alone cannot supply” (Section I, Part 2).
Nor does the article set a time horizon for the transition, while Sudanese experience shows that transitional periods have been extended and shortened according to the balance of power, not according to what was achieved. The Charter sets an absolute ceiling of no more than five years from the formation of the transitional authority, with published achievement benchmarks, an indicative date for general elections at the thirty-sixth month, and a small civilian Transitional Sovereign Body of no more than seven members, in which the command of the army is not vested (Section IV, Parts 4 and 5). It also treats earlier peace agreements, foremost among them the Juba Peace Agreement, by separating the issue from the share: substantive commitments remain in force, while seats do not pass 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).

Part Three: Towards a Declaration of Principles That Is Built, Not Merely Declared

The author closes by welcoming the efforts and endeavours of the civilian forces to draft the declaration of principles. It is precisely in this frame that we offer the Charter, its Protocol and the Bridge Initiative: as a contribution to what is being drafted, neither a substitute for it nor a rival to it. If we may suggest what would turn the awaited declaration from a statement of intent into an accountable compact, it is that it include, alongside general principles, named elements that leave no room for interpretation:
Confining the mandate of the armed parties to the ceasefire and security arrangements, with no authority over political or legislative decision-making.
A security sector reform timetable signed with the ceasefire, not after it, covering all formations without exception.
Documentation, witness protection, and the tracing and freezing of assets beginning from the first day.
Separating the track of arms from the track of money, and an independent review of concession contracts concluded during the war.
A declared source of legitimacy for the transitional authority, and an absolute time ceiling not open to extension.
A ceiling on external funding, a prohibition on binding external direction, and a single mediation platform.
A halt to the flow of weapons and external support, with a mechanism for monitoring and verification, as the author proposed.

Conclusion

Dr. Al-Shafie Khidir has offered a correct diagnosis and a correct heading: the war will not be ended by military decisiveness, nor by a settlement of whatever kind, but by an integrated package. What we propose here is the next step: that the package become a structure, that headings become institutions with names, powers and deadlines, and that of every principle we ask: who implements it؟ Who is accountable for it؟ And by when؟
What his reading and ours share runs deeper than any disagreement over details: we both hold that no party in the Sudanese equation possesses the solution alone. This mutual interdependence, which the Charter calls iftiqār, is not a weakness to be concealed, but the condition on which any genuine collective political action rests. On this ground we welcome what will come in his forthcoming articles, and hope the dialogue continues step by step. For the aim is one: that the war stop, and that in its place arise what will prevent its return.

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