{"id":56625,"date":"2025-11-02T03:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T00:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=56625"},"modified":"2025-11-02T03:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T00:04:11","slug":"it-will-not-stop-unless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/02\/it-will-not-stop-unless\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIt Will Not Stop Unless\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Fawzi Bushra<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every war \u2014 and indeed war itself \u2014 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 \u2014 its mirror opposite, if you prefer \u2014 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 \u2014 the very \u201cvirgin means of conquest,\u201d to borrow Al-Mutanabbi\u2019s 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 \u2014 a history whose scepter is always planted in pools of blood.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s very survival \u2014 a matter that should belong transparently to them and them alone.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 the very subject of negotiation.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s public preoccupation with ending the war distracts from the central issue of who holds power \u2014 the very heart of the fighting. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), having appropriated the rhetoric of \u201cthe marginalized\u201d without investing intellectual effort in it, has fashioned a militant creed aimed at founding a \u201cNew Sudan.\u201d Yet the \u201cNew Sudan\u201d sought by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo \u2014 Hemetti \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the RSF \u2014 itself a product of 1956 Sudan \u2014 has amassed enough power and riches to slip free from the grasp of its creators. Its commander\u2019s gaze now rests squarely on the nation\u2019s highest seat, questioning aloud why it should remain the preserve of certain people \u2014 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 \u201crebel force\u201d into a \u201cpolitical entity\u201d \u2014 bringing under its wing fragments of the Sudan People\u2019s Movement, minor groups, and opportunistic individuals that typically thrive in the shadow of power \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Here lies the true crux. Negotiations \u2014 direct or indirect \u2014 will not end the war unless they confront the question of power: Who will hold it? How? With whom?<\/p>\n

Will the outcome merely reshuffle the generals \u2014 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?<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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?<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

For Hemetti is not only a project of regional powers; he also enjoys the complicity of certain \u201ccivil forces\u201d that never once raised a gun against the Sudanese army but never left Hemetti\u2019s shadow either. They fashioned him into their \u201clion of democracy,\u201d even as he made clear his contempt for them during the transitional years after Bashir\u2019s fall. But one must remember the poetic truth:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn times of trial, a man is doomed
\nTo see beauty in what is not beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Hemetti and the civil factions have been forced together by necessity. Some came to believe the RSF an indispensable force, even a \u201cnucleus\u201d for a new national army. Hemetti, in turn, embraced these civil actors out of convenience, though his earliest alliances were with traditional elites.<\/p>\n

Who, then, will ride this incoherent coalition toward a \u201cnew authority\u201d that claims to deliver peace?<\/p>\n

Those who chant the pitiable slogan \u201cNo to War\u201d ignore \u2014 whether in innocence or intent \u2014 that war is the violent expression of clashing dynamics that cannot be halted by a referee\u2019s 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 na\u00efvet\u00e9 or deliberate deceit \u2014 a humanistic mask concealing the refusal to speak plainly about Hemetti and his RSF. It is time, perhaps, for movements like \u201cSudan\u2019s Resistance\u201d to declare their position openly: what do they truly think of Hemetti, and where does he belong in their political equation after saying \u201cNo to War\u201d?<\/p>\n

As for General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan \u2014 army chief and de facto head of state \u2014 he wages and manages this war with shrewd calculation and with minimal public participation, for \u201cthe world is at war.\u201d I remain convinced this war, at least in its origins, is one fought to preserve the state of Sudan \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Yet under Burhan\u2019s command, war risks becoming a tool to postpone the question of civilian rule altogether \u2014 a military pretext for prolonging his hold on power. Meanwhile, the civil democratic forces, with their hollow chants of \u201cNo to War\u201d and \u201cIt Must Stop,\u201d offer nothing to challenge this militarization. Their moral and intellectual integrity \u2014 once their most valuable political capital \u2014 is the first casualty of expedience.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The wishful belief that \u201cthe war will stop tomorrow\u201d must not blind us to the reality that ending the war ultimately means resolving the question of power \u2014 a question the \u201cNo to War\u201d chorus refuses to confront.<\/p>\n

The bitter irony, when it unfolds, will be a political scene that feels eerily familiar \u2014 one that makes the weary eyes of the people blink twice and say, Haven\u2019t 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 \u2014 yours, and no one else\u2019s. Beware, then, of history dragging you backward, for such regress breeds only sorrow and defeat. The talk of \u201cstopping the war\u201d 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 \u201cpermanent transition\u201d \u2014 it leads to the grave no less surely than despotism itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fawzi Bushra Every war \u2014 and indeed war itself \u2014 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 \u2014 its mirror opposite, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56625","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\/56625","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=56625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56626,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56625\/revisions\/56626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}