“It Will Not Stop Unless…”

By Fawzi Bushra

Every war — and indeed war itself — brings with it that unbearable burden of existence, that exhausting sense of spiritual fatigue, even among those most passionate in its pursuit and most convinced of its just cause. Yet war, in all its misery, remains an aspect of life — its mirror opposite, if you prefer — much like death, which walks hand in hand with life and never lets go. For that reason, war, for all its wretchedness, is an inevitable reality whenever the balance of peace collapses within a nation or across an era, whenever the lust for domination and power tightens its grip over a group that persuades itself to seize authority by force — the very “virgin means of conquest,” to borrow Al-Mutanabbi’s phrase. The chronicles of kingdoms rising and falling before the age of democracy and parliaments are but tales of tyrants establishing dominions that endure only until a mightier hand arrives to destroy one reign and erect another. Such is the history of power — a history whose scepter is always planted in pools of blood.

Today, Sudanese citizens, weary of war, demand its end and take heart in reports of indirect negotiations in Washington between the warring sides. And even if one prefers to believe the Sovereignty Council’s denial that such talks are underway, there are clearly efforts moving in that direction whose truth will unfold in time, their secrets exposed, their substance separated from illusion. Still, it is neither wise nor credible that the Council cloaks itself in ambiguous phrases on a matter that touches people’s very survival — a matter that should belong transparently to them and them alone.

Yet amid all this, the urgent call to stop the war misses a deeper, more essential question: how can ending the war lead to peace? For ending a war and achieving peace are two very different things. The cessation of war concerns the halting of military operations on all fronts; peace, however, is about the question of power — the very subject of negotiation.

Thus, stopping a war does not automatically mean attaining peace. A truce that rests upon an unbalanced peace is no more than a pause between battles. Any peace built upon unresolved causes of conflict merely conceals within itself another war, waiting for its moment to erupt.

Today’s public preoccupation with ending the war distracts from the central issue of who holds power — the very heart of the fighting. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), having appropriated the rhetoric of “the marginalized” without investing intellectual effort in it, has fashioned a militant creed aimed at founding a “New Sudan.” Yet the “New Sudan” sought by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — Hemetti — borrows heavily from the vision once sincerely pursued by the late John Garang, and from the grievances articulated by the Darfur armed movements since 2003, which exposed profound political and developmental injustices before fragmenting into factions chasing scraps of power and wealth.

Nevertheless, the RSF — itself a product of 1956 Sudan — has amassed enough power and riches to slip free from the grasp of its creators. Its commander’s gaze now rests squarely on the nation’s highest seat, questioning aloud why it should remain the preserve of certain people — as though weakness alone disqualified others. But Hemetti was not weak when the war began, nor has he forgotten his ambition. His readiness to transform the RSF from a “rebel force” into a “political entity” — bringing under its wing fragments of the Sudan People’s Movement, minor groups, and opportunistic individuals that typically thrive in the shadow of power — betrays a plan to shift from a military to a political posture, even as fighting continues. His logic is that survival depends not on legitimacy or recognition, but on the brute fact of control on the ground.

Here lies the true crux. Negotiations — direct or indirect — will not end the war unless they confront the question of power: Who will hold it? How? With whom?

Will the outcome merely reshuffle the generals — Burhan and Hemetti smiling again atop the ruins of a nation-wide grave, as they once did before? If so, people will surely ask: why was this war fought, and for what?

Would the Dagalo family accept being pushed from the stage, they whose ambitions have fused with those of foreign patrons who see Sudan as a prize worth billions? How can the RSF and its backers, being central to the conflict itself, simply disappear from the power equation? The sharper question, then, is: who will design the post-war order — the new authority on which peace depends? Will it be the Sudanese people themselves, absent from the negotiating table, whose highest access to information is a truncated headline or a vague official denial? A people without even a transitional parliament to represent their will, to approve, correct, or reject decisions in their name? Who speaks for them?

If negotiations are to stop the war, they can mean only one thing: the reintegration of the RSF into the new power structure. Is the Sudanese public prepared for such a possibility?

For Hemetti is not only a project of regional powers; he also enjoys the complicity of certain “civil forces” that never once raised a gun against the Sudanese army but never left Hemetti’s shadow either. They fashioned him into their “lion of democracy,” even as he made clear his contempt for them during the transitional years after Bashir’s fall. But one must remember the poetic truth:

“In times of trial, a man is doomed
To see beauty in what is not beautiful.”

Both Hemetti and the civil factions have been forced together by necessity. Some came to believe the RSF an indispensable force, even a “nucleus” for a new national army. Hemetti, in turn, embraced these civil actors out of convenience, though his earliest alliances were with traditional elites.

Who, then, will ride this incoherent coalition toward a “new authority” that claims to deliver peace?

Those who chant the pitiable slogan “No to War” ignore — whether in innocence or intent — that war is the violent expression of clashing dynamics that cannot be halted by a referee’s whistle, as if it were a football match. To call for an end to war without addressing the power struggle at its core is to display either political naïveté or deliberate deceit — a humanistic mask concealing the refusal to speak plainly about Hemetti and his RSF. It is time, perhaps, for movements like “Sudan’s Resistance” to declare their position openly: what do they truly think of Hemetti, and where does he belong in their political equation after saying “No to War”?

As for General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — army chief and de facto head of state — he wages and manages this war with shrewd calculation and with minimal public participation, for “the world is at war.” I remain convinced this war, at least in its origins, is one fought to preserve the state of Sudan — and the state, let it be clear, is not the government. The state, as an entity, should never be an object of conquest or partition. If war is waged for that cause, the people are justified in fighting a just war to protect their state.

Yet under Burhan’s command, war risks becoming a tool to postpone the question of civilian rule altogether — a military pretext for prolonging his hold on power. Meanwhile, the civil democratic forces, with their hollow chants of “No to War” and “It Must Stop,” offer nothing to challenge this militarization. Their moral and intellectual integrity — once their most valuable political capital — is the first casualty of expedience.

In this fog of uncertainty and political deceit, the ordinary Sudanese citizen is left with more questions than answers: about war and peace, about power and those who hoard it, about what future awaits him and his children, and who will build that future on foundations firm enough not to collapse upon them.

The wishful belief that “the war will stop tomorrow” must not blind us to the reality that ending the war ultimately means resolving the question of power — a question the “No to War” chorus refuses to confront.

The bitter irony, when it unfolds, will be a political scene that feels eerily familiar — one that makes the weary eyes of the people blink twice and say, Haven’t we seen this before? And the deeper tragedy is that the authority to be contested, dismantled, and reassembled in the post-war order is none other than your own authority, citizen — yours, and no one else’s. Beware, then, of history dragging you backward, for such regress breeds only sorrow and defeat. The talk of “stopping the war” will remain incomplete until those who utter it tell you, clearly and honestly, how power is to be held, by whom, and for whose sake. Beware, too, the temptation of “permanent transition” — it leads to the grave no less surely than despotism itself.