Every fair evaluation and objective reading will reach that the war that is currently taking place in Sudan in its third year is a natural result of the failure of the forces entrusted with the leadership of the transitional period that followed the fall of the previous regime in 2019.
In addition to the direct statements issued by a number of leaders of the Freedom and Change Alliance explicitly with the content of: “Either signing the framework agreement or war”, there are many devotions that confirm this fact.
The transitional period that was confident in the constitutional document between the military system and the forces of freedom and change was a great opportunity to lead the country towards stability that leads to the continuation of the project of building the national state, which has been stumbling throughout the periods of national rule.
But it was clear to everyone with a core of Selim that the way the forces of freedom and change behave- from contempt for the law and a waste of constitutional rights, and a feverish endeavor to dismantle the national army, and enable the rapid support militia, while clinging to power, whatever the prices- will end in this result.
To answer the question of this article, which is: Why did the democratic transition in Sudan fail? We need to admit, starting that what happened and taking place in Sudan is not isolated from the entire international and regional project that was implemented in Libya, Yemen, and Syria.
We will return to this important external factor, which contributed to the change of change from its correct path to slip into the maze of violence and destroyed war.
However, one of the fundamental reasons that led to the failure of the democratic transformation project in Sudan, and in other countries called the Arab Spring, is the lack of awareness of the nature of the movement that, among other factors, led to the fall of old regimes.
The forces that led the protests exaggerated the self -glorification and raised the ceiling of their achievement; The one who happened is a real revolution comparable to the French Revolution, if it does not exceed it.
It was common in the early days of change in Sudan that “the glorious December revolution is the greatest in human history.” This wrong reading, and the desire of the desire, led to catastrophic results, the most important of which is the stopping of the mind from thinking about what must be done after success in overthrowing the previous government, because the mere revolution does not mean the success of success.
This is the predicament that Kant warned of saying: “Through the revolution, we can drop an individual tyranny or put an end to persecution based on thirst for influence and wealth, but we will not inform them of a real reform of the pattern of thinking, on the contrary, due to it new prior rulings will recover similar to the old judgments to tighten its ropes, the darkening that lacks thought.”
Reform as a gradual act is what was missed by all the forces that inherited the old regimes, and instead the forces of freedom and change passed under the euphoria of false victory, swelling from their small achievements, and eating from the balance of confidence provided by the Sudanese street.
The second reason that led us to this damned war is the structural and political palaces of the group of freedom and change, so the witness that these forces did not have any national project for the transitional period except for the project of possessing and preserving power, as former member of the Sovereign Council Muhammad Al -Faki Suleiman said: “We want power and we will fight you until we keep you away from it”, without the slightest sense of moral embarrassment for those who are supposed to be a transition Democrat.
However, the biggest predicament of this is the coalition’s preoccupation with unknown battles that drained its limited energy, and he fought a battle with the armed forces, which is supposed to be its strongest partner in the sharing of power, then the structure of the coalition cracked when the dispute between it and its partners in the Darfur movements that joined the authority after signing the Juba Agreement.
Yesterday’s allies became enemies who exchanged accusations in the open air, and some seek to weaken the other, so they fell in the ban that Al -Turabi warned when he was in the coalition of the forces of the national consensus that seeks to drop the rescue:
“This is the year of the country of transformations and all revolutions, baffles something when it exceeds the preaching to the stage of implementation, the revolutionaries – especially in the spirit of conflict – goes away – as soon as they are surprised by the transition, and they aim to the correspondence transferred from the era of the revolution to themselves, as the targeted enemy perishes, and some of them turn to each other.”
The third reason and the main reason for the path of transition from its correct path is the lack of sufficient wisdom to deal with the old legacy, and the lack of estimating the size of the effect that the old powers can cause negatively or positively.
The forces of freedom and change, led by a revenge spirit, have rushed to heal the symbols of the old regime, and announced by its leaders that its slogan towards all the ancient elements is: (they will cry), in response to the initiative of Professor Ibrahim Ghandour, president of the National Congress, that his party will be (supporting opposition) for the transitional period.
As for the fourth reason, it is the external interventions that spoiled the course of the transition and deepened the divisions between the national components, and worked to attract some parties to implement an agenda that has nothing to do with national interests and does not support democratic transformation.
The American magazine “Foreign Policy”, which has a great influence in the United States’ policy, has published more than an article and the achievement of the United States what it called: (thwarting democratic hopes in Sudan).
The complications of Sudan
If these reasons are considered common factors in Sudan -like Arab countries in terms of the transition from one system of government to another, then the situation in Sudan all exceeds them in terms of complexity and the size of challenges.
The fragility of the state needed a national mentality dealing with these complications wisely, working to prevail over the national interest that is searching for participants, and at the same time dealing with all the previous violation of the texts and spirit of laws.
However, unfortunately, those small forces isolated from the mass influence were looking for what heals their boils, not the wounds of the homeland, and did not build the judicial bodies contained in their constitutional document such as the Higher Judicial Council and the Public Prosecution Council, and worked to absent the constitutional court so that its arbitrary and void procedures for the law did not retract, from random arrests, sources outside the laws, and separating thousands of employees without their work without their work Right.
These forces did not notice the major benefits and great challenges, including how to deal with the armed movements that joined the government, and it is assumed that they are allied with them in one entity.
The most prominent challenge was the transfer of these movements with their soldiers to the capital, Khartoum, which led to the militarization of political civil action, and the project of integrating its soldiers into the armed forces, a challenge that will continue to face Sudan after the end of this war: that is how these military forces turn into civil forces and political parties that depend on the political struggle to confirm their gains and authoritarian entitlements?
Added to this strategic error by enabling the rapid support forces and letting them enlarges the state and its security and military devices.
The experiment has proven that the bet on external forces will not be useful in establishing any powers in power, as the Alliance of Freedom and Change, which does not have a mass extension, was fully betting on external support to weaken its allies and opponents together, and it is the bet that carried Dr. Abdullah Hamdouk to summon an international mission with broad powers that are mentioned in the days of the general ruler in Sudan during the period of British colonialism.
Instead of helping to establish the elections and bring the political scene closer, the UN mission enabled small powers and excluding the majority of the Sudanese components of the political scene.
However, the most dangerous step made by the mission is to plant discord between the army and rapid support, when the latter carried, with the influence of the Alliance of Freedom and Change, to adopt the document of the framework agreement, which was the straw that broke the afternoon of the transitional period and ignited the current war.
Today, more than two years after the outbreak of the war, and while the Sudanese government is striving to return the democratic path to its path, these forces are still playing the same roles that led to the war, and are exaggerating the mindset of excluding others, and adopting letters of hatred and provocation.
What is worse is that she does not want to recognize all these facts, despite the dangers of partition that are overwhelming on the sky of Sudan.
The opinions in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al -Jazeera.