Designation… and the Re-Engineering of Sudanese Politics (3-3)

As I See 

Adil El-Baz

1

In the first installment of this article, we examined the impact of the decision and argued that its objective was to dismantle the military and social environment fighting alongside the army. In the second installment, we said that what is also being targeted is the re-engineering of the entire political landscape in Sudan. Decisions of this kind do not merely alter the status of the Islamic Movement; they redraw the very boundaries of politics within the state. When an entire and influential political current is placed under the label of “terrorism,” it becomes easy to exclude it from any future political process.

Herein lies the danger of the decision: it does not only target the current presence of the Islamic Movement, but seeks to shape a different political reality in the future—one whose contours are drawn from outside the country.

Similar designations have been used in numerous international cases, from Algeria in the 1990s to certain resistance movements in the region, where such classifications became tools of political pressure more than purely legal instruments.

In this third and final installment, I will attempt to examine how the state might deal with the designation decision.

Legally, the decision poses no real challenge for the state. The Islamic Movement referred to in the designation is not a legally registered entity within the Sudanese state—neither as a political party nor as a charitable or advocacy organization—and it does not even have a formal address. Consequently, it cannot be legally dissolved or banned. Nor can any party demand action against an entity that lacks legal definition. Even the authority that issued the decision cannot derive from it any enforceable legal measure inside Sudan or abroad. One cannot criminalize an undefined entity, nor identify its members or take action against them.

Moreover, the designation decision itself states that the entity in question—according to the text of the decision—has not committed a specific crime that would warrant investigation or prosecution. Instead, the decision alleges that individuals associated with the entity “use unrestricted violence against civilians” and that they “contributed to mass executions of civilians.” The government, and those who issued the decision, know that this is untrue; they know who actually employs violence, killing, and acts of extermination. The government also knows that the entity mentioned did not seek to undermine peace efforts—and it knows who actually undermined the Jeddah Agreement.

Therefore, the government understands that there is no crime on which to base punishment of the Islamic Movement or individuals associated with it; those who issued the decision have presented neither a crime nor a substantiated charge.

It appears to me that this is also the government’s direction, as suggested by the Foreign Ministry’s statement issued after the decision. The ministry affirmed that it condemns and criminalizes terrorism, meaning that it does not legally recognize any terrorist group of the type mentioned in the decision operating in Sudan, nor does it deal with terrorists. The statement then cleverly pointed out that the terrorist group recognized by the state is the Rapid Support Forces militia, calling for it to be designated a terrorist organization, since all the accusations fabricated in the decision against the Islamic Movement in fact apply to it.

Politically, I do not believe the government will suffer greatly. In practice, it does not deal with the Islamic Movement as a political entity nor does it officially recognize it. However, it faces a set of accusations concerning the alleged presence and influence of the movement within state institutions. Such accusations and pressures are not new. Since the fall of the Inqaz regime, they have repeatedly circulated and have been used as a scare tactic to influence the army.

President Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan has responded to these claims both privately and publicly, stating that the members of these institutions are Sudanese citizens regardless of their affiliations. If anyone or any party has an accusation against an entity allegedly working against the state, or against an individual who has committed a crime, they may bring the matter before the courts, which will decide the validity of the charges against that individual or entity.

One of the objectives of the designation decision is to empty the state of its cadres and expertise by means of this scare tactic.

Five years of transitional rule and war have demonstrated that claims about the influence of “remnants” of the former regime—or the Islamic Movement—over decision-making centers are largely fabrications. These narratives are promoted as a pressure tactic to serve external agendas. Those who circulate such claims know perfectly well who actually runs the state, who they deal with directly, and where the real center of decision-making lies. Yet they continue to use this scare tactic as leverage to extract concessions in line with the agendas of Paul and the United Arab Emirates.

Any action taken by the state in response to this designation would weaken its internal front, affect the ongoing war, and expose it to even greater pressure to retreat further. Nor would the state gain any reward by aligning itself with, or responding to, the agenda of those who issued the designation. The logic of this type of pressure is simple: every step of retreat opens the door to a new demand. Retreat has no end.

Political wisdom therefore requires that this moment be managed with a mindset that prioritizes the national interest. The balance of justice must remain the decisive standard: whoever commits a crime should face the courts, while anyone against whom no charge is proven should not be excluded by political designation decisions. States do not protect themselves during moments of major transformation by narrowing their national base, but by expanding it.

States are not governed by yielding to political blackmail—whether from external or internal actors—nor are their institutions built on designation decisions issued beyond their borders. What preserves the cohesion of a state during the great transformations in the life of nations is the expansion of its national circle, not its contraction.

The immediate objective of the designation decision, in essence, is the application of the theory of “emptying the circle”: isolating and removing the forces that support and influence a governing system so that the system becomes devoid of backing, suspended in midair—easy to prey upon or pressure into submission and compliance with external demands. At that point, everyone ends up ground in the air.