On the Edge of the Abyss… Sudan and the Moment of “the Greatest Evil”

By Amjad Farid

In Sudan, the wheels of history and geography are currently intersecting to weave the threads of an existential tragedy—one that not only inflicts unprecedented human suffering but also threatens to engulf the country in a spiral of chaos. Since April 2023, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has cast a dark shadow over the nation’s fabric. It has resulted in crimes and violations unprecedented in the country’s history, devastating infrastructure, a crumbling economy, and torn social ties.

The war has become more complex due to a vast “epistemic maze” of misinformation and alternative narratives. These narratives—promoted through the complicity of the “Taqaddum” alliance (now known as “Sumood”) led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok with RSF rhetoric—have obscured the truth of the conflict. This complicity has provided a civilian cover for the militia’s ambitions under the banner of peace and civilian transition.

The ongoing conflict is no longer a mere military struggle for power; it is an existential threat to the state itself, eroding under the weight of relentless violence and the civilian political elite’s continued justification of that violence through narratives that feed the RSF’s ambition to rule—or claim part of—the country. As Thomas Hobbes warned in Leviathan: The Natural and Political Foundations of State Authority, state collapse signals the absence of sovereignty, where the “social contract” becomes fragile, and life becomes, in his words, “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Hobbes wrote his book during the English Civil War (1642–1651), arguing that internal wars can only be avoided through a strong, unified government that derives its absolute authority from fulfilling the obligations of the social contract. In this context, Sudan’s civilian political actors bear a moral and historical responsibility to confront this threat, rising above self-serving ambitions, foreign agendas, and indifference to consequences, to save Sudan from collapse.

Hobbes’s philosophical project redefines politics and its purposes, distancing them from the absolute moral frameworks upheld by earlier philosophers—especially the idea of the “greatest good.” To him, this concept is not only ambiguous but inherently unattainable, since human desires are diverse by nature: what one deems good may be seen as evil by another. Thus, any political project seeking to achieve a “greatest good” finds itself trapped in a conceptual and practical dilemma, facing contradictory visions of good with no rational way to resolve them—inevitably leading to conflict.

In contrast, Hobbes believed that what can be agreed upon—or at least feared—is the “greatest evil”: violent death, crime, looting, and the stripping away of rights and property—things no one can reasonably accept. The core mission of a political society, therefore, is not to pursue an undefined good but to avoid a universally acknowledged evil. It is the fear of death—not the pursuit of happiness—that justifies political authority.

There is no “greatest good” upon which political consensus can be built. The so-called “state of nature”—existence outside political organization—is nothing but utter chaos, or as Hobbes puts it, “a war of all against all.” In a world of scarce resources and conflicting desires, there is no guarantee that one person won’t kill another for their possessions—or simply to defend their dignity. Even in the absence of actual violence, the fear of its possibility looms and can only be quelled by the presence of a ruling authority serving as a permanent arbiter.

On this basis, Hobbes presents his famous formulation of the social contract, which can be summarized as follows: “I relinquish my right to self-govern in favor of this individual (the sovereign) or this group (the state), on the condition that others do the same, and that we all submit to a common authority that regulates our actions and guarantees our safety.”

Hobbes’s conception of the state is not merely a brute force monopolizing violence—it is a rational contract among individuals who give up part of their freedom in exchange for security, order, and a minimum level of justice. In contrast, militias like the RSF do not represent legitimate political authority in the Hobbesian sense. They embody the very state of nature Hobbes warned against—deriving power from random violence and violating the social contract rather than upholding it. The rise of the RSF, therefore, does not signify the birth of a Sudanese Leviathan, but a full regression to a pre-state condition: a war of all against all.

State collapse—not just in Sudan, but anywhere—is not merely the dismantling of institutions, but the breakdown of the structures that bind a nation and offer its citizens stability. As Max Weber noted, the state is that entity which “holds the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.” The loss of this monopoly invites chaos. Historical examples like Somalia in the 1990s and post-Soviet Afghanistan show the consequences of state collapse: a governance vacuum filled by warlords, regional fragmentation fueling ethnic conflict, and social disintegration undermining national unity. In Sudan, these risks are visibly growing—especially with the RSF’s plan to establish a parallel government in western Sudan, as announced in Nairobi in March 2025—hinting at an actual partition of the country.

The consequences of Sudan’s state collapse extend beyond its borders. Strategically located on the Red Sea and surrounded by seven countries, Sudan is a regional cornerstone. Its collapse would destabilize neighbors like Chad, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, which host millions of Sudanese refugees. Lebanon’s civil war (1975–1990) showed how state collapse can lead to the cross-border spread of arms and fighters, fuel regional conflicts, and boost organized crime such as drug trafficking and human smuggling. In Sudan, foreign interventions—pursuing their own interests at the expense of the Sudanese people—will only worsen the situation, calling for international action to halt the pouring of foreign fuel on the Sudanese fire.

On the humanitarian front, Sudan is experiencing an unprecedented disaster. The conflict has displaced around 10 million people internally and created 4.1 million refugees. Famine is sweeping through Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile, with 25.6 million people suffering from acute food insecurity. The absence of the state will only exacerbate this suffering and increase the number of those in need. Warlords filling the governance vacuum will obstruct humanitarian efforts and use aid as a tool for militia recruitment.

Amid these catastrophic scenarios, the military situation is deteriorating at an alarming pace. In El Fasher—the last SAF stronghold in Darfur—the RSF has maintained a siege since May 2024, launching air and ground assaults on the city and IDP camps like Zamzam and Abu Shouk. Humanitarian reports have documented atrocities, including ethnically motivated killings and rampant sexual violence, raising fears of ethnic cleansing. In North Kordofan, attacks on El Obeid are escalating. Though the SAF broke a nearly two-year siege in February 2025, the RSF continues to bombard the city, killing dozens. Recently, in Umm Sumaymah, the army regained control after it was occupied by the RSF, reflecting the growing intensity of military operations. In East Al Jazirah, RSF retaliatory attacks—following the defection of a commander (Abu Aqla Kikil) in October 2024—left 124 civilians dead and displaced over 119,400 people. The Zamzam camp suffered a devastating attack in April 2025, killing over 200 civilians amid worsening famine, as confirmed by the UN.

In light of this reality, civilian political actors bear a historical responsibility. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted in The Social Contract, political structures are meant to embody the general will in service of the public interest. The absence of such a will opens the door to tyranny or chaos. Sudan’s political forces must stop behaving as private fiefdoms serving partial interests or the personal ambitions of their leaders, and recognize that their legitimacy depends on representing their constituencies in the pursuit of collective well-being. The collapse of the state—which harms everyone—undermines this legitimacy entirely.

What Sudan’s political forces must do now is cease justifying the RSF’s war to serve their political ambitions or power grabs through violence. The RSF has failed to offer any model of governance that serves the people. The genocidal massacres in El Geneina, the organized looting, killings, and widespread sexual violence during its control of Khartoum and Al Jazirah before the army retook them, the instability and gang rule in Nyala, the banning of students from exams across Darfur, the theft of humanitarian aid, and the rising rape reports in Zalingei—all prove that wherever the RSF goes, it cannot coexist with the population, but rather violates their rights with brutal chaos. The RSF has offered the ultimate embodiment of the “greatest evil” that politics, in Hobbes’s view, should strive to avoid.

Sudan now stands at a decisive crossroads. State collapse is no longer a mere possibility—it is a looming threat that endangers the nation’s hopes for peace, democracy, and justice, the very ideals championed by the December Revolution. The atrocities in El Fasher, Zamzam, El Geneina, Khartoum, and Al Jazirah are symptoms of RSF control and the absence of the state as a guarantor of security and justice. Civilian actors must take responsibility and stop constructing epistemic mazes around the nature of the war to obscure the failures of their positions—failures that must be confronted if Sudan is to avoid the fate of Somalia or Yemen.

The Sudanese people, who have sacrificed dearly for freedom, deserve a civilian leadership that places their supreme interest—avoiding the greatest evil—at the forefront, to rebuild a state that fulfills their aspirations for justice and dignity.