{"id":62477,"date":"2026-11-14T22:26:40","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T19:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=62477"},"modified":"2026-11-14T22:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T19:26:40","slug":"the-ahmed-haroun-affair-and-the-empty-chair-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/14\/the-ahmed-haroun-affair-and-the-empty-chair-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ahmed Haroun Affair and the \u201cEmpty Chair\u201d Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Al-Musallami Al-Bashir Al-Kabbashi<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There have been multiple interpretations of the dramatic public appearance of Ahmed Mohamed Haroun, the authorised chairman of the National Congress Party (NCP), with analyses swirling around the timing of the interview he gave and the subsequent arrest that followed. In my assessment, however, the controversy reveals that the political and social space occupied by the party, or by the political current it represents or is associated with, under its various names, cannot be bypassed or ignored in the equation shaping Sudan’s political landscape.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the timing of his appearance raised questions that went beyond its immediate significance. My personal interpretation, which I have expressed in previous articles, is that opening up political space during wartime could shift the centre of gravity away from the battle to win the war towards a debate about the future of governance before the necessary conditions for such a debate have matured. Political forces supporting the army in the War of Dignity will naturally seek to secure their positions and define their roles at the table where decisions about the future of the state are made. This will inevitably give rise to competition over the form of authority and the boundaries of political partnership.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this context, the National Congress Party sought to put forward its vision for a dialogue whose participants had not yet been fully assembled and whose framework of participation had not been definitively established.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The call for political dialogue was initially made by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Chairman of the Sovereignty Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. It was subsequently transferred to a committee described as independent in its principles and conduct, although questions were raised about its funding. In politics, the source of funding is necessarily also a source of influence and direction.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What appears to have become firmly established in the minds of National Congress Party leaders, judging by their position, is that there is an intention to exclude their role and disregard their political and social weight in the dialogue. The party chairman’s appearance therefore came as an attempt to illuminate what he sees as deliberately obscured areas of the broader political landscape.<\/strong><\/p>\n

His remarks were not merely an announcement of a desire to participate. To a considerable extent, they set the agenda for political discussion even before the dialogue itself had begun, bringing back to the forefront questions that would have been difficult to avoid. They exposed the impossibility of imposing an exclusionary equation while ignoring its political consequences.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is why the surprise was all the greater when the meeting was followed by Haroun’s arrest.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Analysts competed to identify the reason, or reasons, behind his arrest. Some argued that it was a response to external pressure, while others suggested that the authorities had become so provoked that they might even hand him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), pursuant to an arrest warrant issued against him in 2007. This coincided with strong pressure from National Congress Party opponents advocating his surrender to the Court.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Personally, I rule out the possibility that either of these factors played a decisive role in the arrest decision, for two reasons.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s position since the fall of the National Congress Party regime, over the past seven years, has not been aligned with pressures seeking to impose external dictates concerning the participation of the National Congress Party and the broader Islamic movement. In my assessment, the measures taken against these forces, including imprisonment, trials, and various forms of pressure, have been governed by domestic calculations and considerations. External actors have not played a decisive role in this regard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Second, and as an extension of the first point, I cannot envisage a decision to surrender Sudanese citizens to the International Criminal Court on the basis of positions and decisions associated with the institution of the Armed Forces, some of which were issued in its name and in whose formulation several of its officers participated. Had such a course of action been possible, the government of the Forces of Freedom and Change, led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, would have pursued it, given its stronger political incentives to do so.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moreover, the International Criminal Court has lost much of its credibility in the eyes of broad segments of Sudanese, regional, and international public opinion, particularly after seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin without being able to enforce its decisions. In the eyes of many, it has become an ineffective court, to the point where it increasingly resembles an institution that is clinically dead, even if it remains legally in existence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For this reason, let us search for the cause of the anger that ultimately landed Ahmed Haroun in detention.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Was the reason the powerful political momentum generated by his speech, which shifted the centre of gravity in public debate towards the future of governance, the role of the military institution in that future, and the search for common ground among political forces to produce a consensus upon which a national project could be built? That is what I understood from his remarks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this sense, Haroun broke through the constraints of the political framework within which the Islamic current was intended to remain confined: present in the war effort, but absent from discussions about the post-war period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He did not speak from a position of opposition to the army or hostility towards its leadership. Rather, he spoke as a participant in the War of Dignity, but as one who wants a say in shaping the future of the state, instead of remaining merely a mobilisation and support force.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is neither logical nor reasonable to accept that the army leadership would expect members of the National Congress Party and the Islamic movement, in all its different components, to stand in the ranks of the resistance against aggression, while denying them any role in political deliberations concerning the country’s future. Such an arrangement would reduce the relationship between the two sides to cooperation in confronting the rebellious Rapid Support Forces (RSF), without allowing a partner in the fighting to participate in shaping the country’s constitutional and political future.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This contradiction becomes even clearer when we consider the nature of the relationship the army leadership has established with other political forces within the camp supporting the Armed Forces. Chief among these is the Democratic Bloc, whose conferences the army commander has repeatedly addressed, encouraging its political role in a manner that reflects a degree of rapprochement and understanding.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here, questions arise that cannot be ignored: Does what happened to Ahmed Haroun mean that the military leadership is seeking to regulate the political space within the camp supporting the army, encouraging one group to assume a predetermined political role while isolating the Islamic bloc and, at the same time, preventing it from establishing an independent political space?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words, is the military leadership uncomfortable with the emergence of an independent political centre within the camp supporting it in the war, even if that centre is neither opposed to it nor challenging its leadership of the battle, but rather supports it unconditionally and without reservation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Furthermore, does the military institution regard itself as a national stakeholder in the process of rebuilding the state and believe that, by virtue of its leadership of the war and the balance of power it has produced, it enjoys an exceptional right to determine who participates in shaping the future, who is excluded, and what boundaries of political debate are permissible?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or do the reasons behind the man’s arrest lie elsewhere? If so, legal and human rights considerations require that the reasons be made public. Political considerations, meanwhile, require a clear distinction between the man’s expression of the views of those he represents and his own legal status, which remains unknown to the general public to this day, according to the team of lawyers defending him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fate placed General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at the forefront of Sudan’s turbulent political scene following the end of President Omar al-Bashir’s rule in April 2019. In proportion to the magnitude of the challenge, it also placed before him an opportunity to enter history through the gateway of leading his country out of the darkness of uncertainty and wars into a horizon of freedom, stability, and progress.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Accordingly, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan faces a strategic national mission built around two closely interconnected projects:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First: Leading the military effort to defeat the rebellion and restore the country to a state of security and stability, thereby creating the conditions necessary for recovery, reconstruction, and the resumption of normal life.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Second: Bringing together the country’s fragmented political forces and working to engineer an inclusive national consensus that excludes no one, lays the foundations for a transition to a pluralistic political system, and helps Sudan overcome the state of political instability that has persisted since independence, undermining its prospects for stability and pushing it towards the abyss of wars and underdevelopment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Neither project can be achieved by isolating any political force that considers itself capable of contributing to the process, let alone by excluding a political entity as large and deeply rooted as the Islamic movement, with its various names, social constituencies, and political extensions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sudan’s experience has demonstrated the impossibility of achieving lasting stability under any military government, regardless of the size of its support base or the strength of its political backing. The Salvation regime provides a case in point. During its years in power, it managed to assemble broad forces in terms of size and influence, yet ultimately collapsed. General al-Burhan himself is among those most familiar with the details of that experience and its eventual outcome.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From this perspective, Ahmed Haroun’s arrest cannot be viewed in isolation from the possibility that there is an intention to isolate a major political entity and remove it from the equation of dialogue. If this assessment is correct, it could lead to a political paradox that serves neither the dialogue nor those who initiated it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The political current whose seat is intended to be vacated at the dialogue table will not necessarily disappear from the scene. Rather, it may become the holder of the “empty chair”, whose absence dominates discussion across the wider political arena more than the deliberations taking place inside the dialogue hall itself. Furthermore, a party that has not participated in shaping the outcomes of the dialogue will not be bound by them and will retain its political options open.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Responsibility for managing this course rests with the military-political leadership. It is difficult to imagine that this leadership would wish to design the country’s political future according to its own unilateral vision and then invite others to participate in a dialogue supposedly intended to determine that very future. A dialogue that begins by granting one party the right to participate while withdrawing that right from another, according to the leadership’s own assessments or calculations, carries within it the first signs of failure.<\/strong><\/p>\n

General al-Burhan has a strategic opportunity, supported by the lessons and accumulated experience of the country’s national history, to choose a different path: allowing the Armed Forces to distance themselves from favouring any party in the political process and to maintain equal distance from all political forces, while encouraging them to shoulder their historical responsibilities and agree on constitutional rules for a political transition that leads the country towards strength through stability and the peaceful transfer of power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Armed Forces, which are leading the battle to restore the state, are not expected to seek exclusive ownership of the right to determine its political structure and future.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That, in my assessment, is the equation that General al-Burhan and his colleagues must recognise before the empty chair grows from a small space in a dialogue hall into the defining symbol of a new political crisis.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al-Musallami Al-Bashir Al-Kabbashi There have been multiple interpretations of the dramatic public appearance of Ahmed Mohamed Haroun, the authorised chairman of the National Congress Party (NCP), with analyses swirling around the timing of the interview he gave and the subsequent arrest that followed. In my assessment, however, the controversy reveals that the political and social …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62477","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\/62477","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=62477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62478,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62477\/revisions\/62478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}