The Framework Agreement: Nobility Is Not a Strategy (2–2)

Abdallah Ali Ibrahim

5 January 2023 (note the date)

(This is another reflection on the Framework Agreement written on the day it was signed. I highlight the problems surrounding it, hoping these concerns would be shared knowledge among supporters of the embattled revolution. If you find in it a way to better understand the Agreement and its relation to the war, then so be it. And if you believe I wrote it out of malice, then disregard it. I had no reason for malice at the time, unless one counts my subsequent writings as such. But let no one come tomorrow and say, “We failed because we are addicted to failure,” with that familiar sleight of hand. If you can reconcile yourself to your own failure, this piece is an attempt to understand where and when you failed.)

One of the major pitfalls of the Framework Agreement is its division of the political settlement into two stages. The agreement includes general principles of governance and procedural matters related to forming the state, while postponing key policy debates—such as transitional justice—to a vague, later phase of broad consultations. This, as some have put it, is like placing the cart before the horse. And it is no secret that consensus on these policies—even before the Framework Agreement—was an almost impossible task.

The issue of Eastern Sudan is among the matters awaiting these broad consultations between the civilian forces expected to endorse the Agreement. It is unclear how the eastern question came to be treated as separate from the need to review the Juba Peace Agreement, which itself awaits discussion within the same wide process. The eastern crisis first emerged after the signing of the Juba Peace Agreement in October 2020, whose contentious “Eastern Track” triggered escalating protests—reaching their peak in July 2021 when the Beja Nazirs and Independent Chieftaincies, led by Mohamed al-Amin Tirik, blocked the Khartoum–Port Sudan road demanding the track’s cancellation. Their argument was that they had been unjustly excluded from negotiating and signing it.

There is little reason to be optimistic about the success of the planned public consultations when their agenda is so haphazard that it separates issues that share the same roots. Even Mohamed al-Faki, former member of the Sovereign Council and a supporter of the Framework Agreement, failed to mention the Eastern Track as a core issue when he recently appeared on a television program. He spoke at length about the marginalization of the east—nothing new, whether in the east or in the Blue Nile—but ignored the track entirely. This signals an unproductive discussion ahead: the Eastern Track is a red line for the Juba Peace Agreement signatories and for certain eastern groups who signed it. Calls to cancel it have stagnated since the Beja sit-in began, and remain unresolved to this day.

The Framework Agreement is a state of weakness—complete weakness. And this weakness is not confined to the center; it extends to the very forces advocating for social change in Sudan. It is an old weakness. Whether you support the Agreement or oppose it makes little difference. It resembles what Sudanese call a “janāzat baḥar”—a “sea burial”—a metaphor for a grave error one commits, prompting a friend to say: “We’ve come to help you bury this unfortunate body.”

Amani El-Tawil aptly noted that the pro- and anti-Agreement divide is a form of “competitive grandstanding.” Supporters burn incense for it, ignoring its perils. Opponents scorch it completely, refusing to see themselves in it. I found Jaafar Hassan, spokesperson of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), praising the Agreement because it stipulates that the prime minister must be committed to the December 2018 revolution—unlike, he suggests, the previous transitional government. I do not know whether Abdalla Hamdok, the former prime minister, failed to commit to the revolution for this clause to be considered an achievement. In another gratuitous claim, Jaafar argued that every peaceful movement—such as the December Revolution—must end in negotiation and settlement, and that settlement is good because a peaceful movement that relies on a military coup is doomed. This is tailored rhetoric, as propaganda often is. And it is unclear why he limits settlements to peaceful movements; even wars typically end in negotiated settlements.

On the anti-Agreement side, the argument is mostly counter-propaganda. Fathi Fadl, spokesperson for the Communist Party, said the Framework Agreement is a foreign-made product signed under the threat of the American ambassador’s stick—an ambassador allegedly seasoned in wielding such sticks in other nations. Fathi’s narrative aligns with that of the Broad Islamic Front—believed to be backed by Bashir loyalists—which not only emphasizes the Agreement’s foreign nature but organizes weekly marches to UN offices demanding the expulsion of Volker Perthes for meddling in Sudanese sovereignty. Fathi overlooks the fact that what this ambassador actually brought was the U.S. Congress–approved Democratic Transition Law—a law that may be many things, but not a stick used to herd the FFC.

Supporting or rejecting the Framework Agreement does not mean refraining from critiquing its text or developments. What must be avoided is the “competitive grandstanding” of revolutionary virtue. When a group associated with the revolution opposes the Agreement, it adopts an old Sudanese opposition culture forged in decades of struggle against dictatorship—where absolute righteousness is the hallmark of the opposition, and absolute failure stains the government. Opposition becomes less a political stance and more a perpetual contest of denial and antagonism. Nothing drained the transitional government overthrown in October 2021 more than this “friendly fire”—the attacks that came from those it believed were its allies.