Glory to Peace

Khalid Massa

On July 21, 2025, Dr. Kamal Idris, the Prime Minister, issued Decision No. (96/2025) under the authority granted to him. The decision established the Supreme Council for Social Peace, with defined objectives and responsibilities as outlined in the official decree. These include promoting and deepening the values of tolerance, reconciliation, and acceptance of others. The Council was also tasked with organizing awareness campaigns on the importance of social peace, encouraging constructive dialogue among community components, conducting research on the root causes of conflict, proposing solutions through interconnected initiatives, and providing them with technical support.

A Shift in the State’s Thinking?

The issuance of such a decision raises the question of its underlying motivations. Does it belong to the same category as previous initiatives with different names but identical substance? Or is it the beginning of a new approach born with the formation of the “Government of Hope,” as promised by the Prime Minister in his inaugural speech? Could this Council be an instrument to realize the aspirations laid out in that speech?

Terms like “social peace,” “national unity,” and “addressing the roots of the Sudanese crisis” have long echoed in political rhetoric, aimed at a society exhausted by the violations of these very concepts. But repeated use has hollowed them out, making them lose meaning. People have lost faith in their ability to heal the wounds inflicted by wars and the struggles for power. These wounds are far too deep for flowery slogans, often deployed whenever the state needs new structures to supposedly address long-standing societal crises.

The Birthdate of the Decree…

“In my homeland, people date their births by disasters…”
Some were born in the year of smallpox, others during the year of tribal conflict, and some on the eve of 1989.

Decision 96 was born in the third year of war. Some might argue that its timing is appropriate and that there is now a dire need for a council focused on social peace and addressing the devastating social consequences of war.

But a pressing question arises:
Can the discourse of social peace and the rhetoric of war be presented together on the same platform?
Is it even feasible to promote both narratives simultaneously—military mobilization and calls for reconciliation—and expect both to achieve their goals?

In other words, where should priorities lie during wartime?
Should we favor the war-driven mobilization rhetoric, which often ignores the sensitivities of social peace? Or should we promote a discourse that calls for community cohesion and national unity?

Observers are not unaware of internal communications justifying war’s “necessary collateral damage”—even if it means killing civilians who are guilty of nothing but being caught in the crossfire. The justification claims that these sacrifices serve a greater goal than the “emotional idealism” of social peace narratives in a time when drones hover overhead and bullets do the talking.

Entry Points…

The goals and mandates of the Supreme Council for Social Peace are undoubtedly noble. However, they must be approached with the harsh reality in mind: the war is still raging, and its weapons continue to tear apart the remaining social fabric of Sudanese society.

The April war even turned the natural components of society into weapons depots. Social “incubators” became strategic military assets—evaluated and targeted as critical to achieving victory.

The cartographers of this war drew their maps using tribal lines. They dissected Sudanese society with the knife of ethnic division. Today, national identity and citizenship are filtered through the windows of tribal classification and the geography of hate drawn by rigid and intolerant rhetoric.

The main gate to peace in Sudanese society is stopping the war and silencing the guns. Only then can a healthy environment be fostered for the Council’s objectives to flourish. This is the necessary path to healing and restoring post-war security and social cohesion.

Real progress in social peace begins by addressing the war’s roots—particularly the equitable distribution of power and wealth, and establishing peaceful mechanisms for governance. This cannot happen through quotas that reward the barrel of the gun with influence proportional to the sound it makes.

Citizenship—and the establishment of a state that upholds it—is the guarantor of true social peace. Rights must be distributed accordingly, not based on inflated tribal influence or social leverage. These distortions have replaced national legitimacy and enabled the monopolization of power and wealth, opening wide the doors to corruption and fueling deep social resentment.

The absence of a rule-of-law state—long called for by civilian forces—remains a fundamental threat to social peace. This void is what currently shelters the platforms of hate speech, enabling narratives that disintegrate the very fabric of national unity. The law of the jungle, governed by ethnic and sectarian classifications, has taken hold and continues to strike at the heart of unity.

The mission of the Council for Social Peace demands genuine reform in the state’s official discourse—whether from constitutional officeholders, tribal leaders, political figures, or media personalities. Hate speech must be countered with enlightenment and awareness. The public sphere must be liberated from the regression of civic consciousness into divisive tribal narratives.

Glory to Peace…

The political deadlocks obstructing a solution to the April war are the biggest obstacles to achieving genuine social peace—whose highest expression is national unity.

Relying on tribal mobilization, founding militias, and fueling identity-based fervor for political gain will make the Council’s mission near impossible. Therefore, the first condition for rebuilding what the war has destroyed is to stop the war. Let the slogan be:
“Glory to Peace.”

The government’s attention to the plight of refugees and displaced persons, and its efforts to ease their suffering, are important steps toward social peace. So too is the pursuit of justice, educational reform—especially curricula that respect diversity—and the crafting of a unified national vision to replace today’s divisive political projects that open dangerous doors to separatism based on tribal and regional fragmentation.

The murky waters of war are fertile ground for those who benefit from its continuation. They exploit morally bankrupt weapons such as racism, violent extremism, and narratives of marginalization—only to achieve goals that ultimately serve neither justice nor the true interests of the marginalized.

Social peace cannot be achieved through top-down solutions.
It is a national project that must include everyone: intellectuals, academics, religious leaders, tribal chiefs, politicians, and media professionals.

This effort must mobilize all of Sudanese society to confront what the prolonged war has left behind—a society once bound together with potential strong enough to place Sudan among the leading nations in the region.