{"id":51650,"date":"2025-07-20T00:49:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T21:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=51650"},"modified":"2025-07-20T00:49:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T21:49:55","slug":"on-the-edge-of-the-abyss-sudan-and-the-moment-of-the-greatest-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/20\/on-the-edge-of-the-abyss-sudan-and-the-moment-of-the-greatest-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Edge of the Abyss\u2026 Sudan and the Moment of \u201cthe Greatest Evil\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amjad Farid<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Sudan, the wheels of history and geography are currently intersecting to weave the threads of an existential tragedy\u2014one 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\u2019s fabric. It has resulted in crimes and violations unprecedented in the country\u2019s history, devastating infrastructure, a crumbling economy, and torn social ties.<\/p>\n

The war has become more complex due to a vast \u201cepistemic maze\u201d of misinformation and alternative narratives. These narratives\u2014promoted through the complicity of the \u201cTaqaddum\u201d alliance (now known as \u201cSumood\u201d) led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok with RSF rhetoric\u2014have obscured the truth of the conflict. This complicity has provided a civilian cover for the militia\u2019s ambitions under the banner of peace and civilian transition.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s continued justification of that violence through narratives that feed the RSF\u2019s ambition to rule\u2014or claim part of\u2014the country. As Thomas Hobbes warned in Leviathan: The Natural and Political Foundations of State Authority, state collapse signals the absence of sovereignty, where the \u201csocial contract\u201d becomes fragile, and life becomes, in his words, \u201cnasty, brutish, and short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hobbes wrote his book during the English Civil War (1642\u20131651), 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Hobbes\u2019s philosophical project redefines politics and its purposes, distancing them from the absolute moral frameworks upheld by earlier philosophers\u2014especially the idea of the \u201cgreatest good.\u201d 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 \u201cgreatest good\u201d finds itself trapped in a conceptual and practical dilemma, facing contradictory visions of good with no rational way to resolve them\u2014inevitably leading to conflict.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Hobbes believed that what can be agreed upon\u2014or at least feared\u2014is the \u201cgreatest evil\u201d: violent death, crime, looting, and the stripping away of rights and property\u2014things 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\u2014not the pursuit of happiness\u2014that justifies political authority.<\/p>\n

There is no \u201cgreatest good\u201d upon which political consensus can be built. The so-called \u201cstate of nature\u201d\u2014existence outside political organization\u2014is nothing but utter chaos, or as Hobbes puts it, \u201ca war of all against all.\u201d In a world of scarce resources and conflicting desires, there is no guarantee that one person won\u2019t kill another for their possessions\u2014or 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.<\/p>\n

On this basis, Hobbes presents his famous formulation of the social contract, which can be summarized as follows: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hobbes\u2019s conception of the state is not merely a brute force monopolizing violence\u2014it 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\u2014deriving 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.<\/p>\n

State collapse\u2014not just in Sudan, but anywhere\u2014is 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 \u201cholds the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.\u201d 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\u2014especially with the RSF\u2019s plan to establish a parallel government in western Sudan, as announced in Nairobi in March 2025\u2014hinting at an actual partition of the country.<\/p>\n

The consequences of Sudan\u2019s 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\u2019s civil war (1975\u20131990) 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\u2014pursuing their own interests at the expense of the Sudanese people\u2014will only worsen the situation, calling for international action to halt the pouring of foreign fuel on the Sudanese fire.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Amid these catastrophic scenarios, the military situation is deteriorating at an alarming pace. In El Fasher\u2014the last SAF stronghold in Darfur\u2014the 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\u2014following the defection of a commander (Abu Aqla Kikil) in October 2024\u2014left 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2014which harms everyone\u2014undermines this legitimacy entirely.<\/p>\n

What Sudan\u2019s political forces must do now is cease justifying the RSF\u2019s 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\u2014all 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 \u201cgreatest evil\u201d that politics, in Hobbes\u2019s view, should strive to avoid.<\/p>\n

Sudan now stands at a decisive crossroads. State collapse is no longer a mere possibility\u2014it 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\u2014failures that must be confronted if Sudan is to avoid the fate of Somalia or Yemen.<\/p>\n

The Sudanese people, who have sacrificed dearly for freedom, deserve a civilian leadership that places their supreme interest\u2014avoiding the greatest evil\u2014at the forefront, to rebuild a state that fulfills their aspirations for justice and dignity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Amjad Farid In Sudan, the wheels of history and geography are currently intersecting to weave the threads of an existential tragedy\u2014one 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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51651,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51650\/revisions\/51651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}