When the dust is settled down, we need to move from peace towards reconciliation. The reason is that peace deals with the rudimentary elements of the conflict, whereas reconciliation deals with the root causes of the conflict. Reconciliation is the only way forward to having a stable state. Stable state is pervasive and central because it keeps us away from uncertainties desperation and destructiveness.
Our recovery is viable and achievable through stability, through the pooling of our economic resources — where necessary with international financial, technical support — and through the creation of co-operatively run, efficient institutions. We should move to make of Sudan an economic power.
In the 1970s Sudan was nicknamed the Arab world’s food basket. We have been endowed with unique geographical location and blessed with countrywide resources which we should preserve and use wisely, just as it should inevitably be our responsibility for the necessity to lay down new foundations that are based on solidarity, co-operation, respect, and the rule of law. It is high time to restore our nonviolent, tolerant, easy-going milieu. We must end what led to the appalling institutional flaws and geographical or historical grievances.
One doesn’t need to be a great philosopher to understand that civil wars are destructive, barbaric, rough, and primitive. We should try to live up and move on instead of wreaking our revenge. This impossible state of affairs might be the proximate cause of our homeland disintegration. Being wise and rational may cost a lot.
We would like to see a step-by-step approach to protect our homeland from the damaging consequences of sudden change. We could start by drafting at least a MoU that could be transformed into a national charter accepted by the Sudanese political forces, whether religious or secular, defining their common methods and objectives.
Taking an interest in the difficulties of people in wartimes and in anguish is precisely what a writer should do. We are now at a crossroads — having experience of a war that should not have been fought — and urgently, we are in need of repairing the socially torn fabric, re-building the economic institutions and re-embracing the traditional communal consensuses in order to achieve the required balance between Tribal/ethnic groups and social justice.
The current situation is so bleak and tragic. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) nearly 5,000 people have been killed since April 15th, 2023, 4mn people have had to flee their homes. On August 15, twenty international organisations had warned that “more than 6mn Sudanese people are one step away from famine”.
What happened on April 15 was the consequence of the lack of political consensus, and of the multi-armed factions, partisan encroachment, the cumulative history of coups, political upheavals, and the infirmity of the Executive Authority. This resulted in crimes against humanity, genocides, rapes, extra-judiciary killings with systematic violent acts and the spread of human rights violations; all these require considering and see the absolute necessity for change, and to include but not be limited to the following:
• Granting full amnesty for all those who committed crimes, before and after the April 15 war; based on the principles of transitional justice which include truth, justice, reparation, memorialisation and guarantees of non-recurrence. I know this will sound outrageous to many people.
• Immediate start of a comprehensive civilian dialogue that includes parties of all sides — the left, the centre, the centre left, the centre right, the right, and the Islamists including the National Congress Party. This also sounds vile to many people.
• To consider granting the right to self-determination to both – South of Kordofan & the Blue Nile – and to consider granting the regional self-government to Darfur.
• Adherence — throughout the foundation period — to the first Permanent Constitution of Sudan 1973.
• Giving priority to the acts/process of governance.
• Observing a founding period which will be for six years.
• Moving from the Parliamentarian Westminster Model of Democracy to the Presidential System.
• The expected Legislative Authority should accommodate two chambers: House of Representatives, and House of Senates.
To achieve the aforesaid, Sudan should do what France has done: move from one Republic to another Republic. Economic growth shall form the essential pole in the direction of The Second Republic. The Second Republic of Sudan should serve as a political founding alliance/platform that endeavours to abandon the legacy of violence and backwardness, with its aim to help recover the political, economic, and cultural strength including what Sudan inherited from the colonial epoch (Modernising hospitals, medical centres, and dressing stations. Revitalising Aljazeera Scheme. Reinventing Sudan Airways & Sudan Railways, investing in Gum Arabic ...)
The Second Republic should be inspired by the guiding principles of Islam, heavenly religions, and noble beliefs. The Second Republic’s top priority is to fight against hate speech, the narrative of abhorrence; its incitement or call for it. The Second Republic aims to oversee prospectively the vistas of modernity and contemporaneity that have no contradictions with the religious and social values.
The Second Republic in its foundation and concepts must rely on basic rights, public liberties, the human rights in the International Declaration of Human Rights, pledges, and international protocols. Therefore, Article 19th of the International Declaration of Human Rights forms as the essence that directs the Second Republic (Each Sudanese has the right to express their opinion freely, and this right includes their liberty to express certain views without any pressure, and to seek the news and thoughts and to transfer them to others, by any means possible regardless of borders).
Today, Sudan is on the floor; dominated by politics of division, retaliation, and vengeance. It failed to change; the culture of free- for- all in the misuse of power; lacking rules and structure. Yesterday’s politicians and ideologies were not able to create a viable consensus or workable plan. Sudan’s economy is in tatters: commercial, agrarian manufacturing infrastructures have been smashed, countless urban and rural neighbourhoods have been demolished to the ground, means of communication had been dented.
April 15, 2023 shall be the watershed of the new historic moment in Sudan. The war in The Sudan showed the dehumanisation and the extent to which human being could be reduced. According to Save the Children about 500 children have died from hunger in Sudan — including two dozen babies in a government-run orphanage in Khartoum. At least 31,000 children lack access to treatment for malnutrition and related illnesses since the charity was forced to close 57 of its nutrition centres in Sudan. To change this dark reality, we need to accept ourselves, to be at peace with ourselves and accept each other. We need to accept and face our reality.
(The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Gulf Times).