The Face of Truth: Idris Government… Between the State and Chaos

Ibrahim Shaglawi

The state, after this war, is no longer as it was formed and lived in the collective consciousness since independence. The state did not collapse all at once; rather, it eroded slowly until the moment of explosion that exposed its structural fragility and its inability to perform its most basic function: protecting society and organizing public life.

Hence, the question is no longer who governs Sudan, but rather what kind of state can be governed in the first place, and under which social contract.

Within this critical historical context, the return of Dr. Kamil Idris’s government to resume its work from the national capital, Khartoum, carries a significance that goes beyond administrative procedure or political symbolism. It is a return that can be read as an attempt to redefine the state through the lens of a harsh experience, not from the realm of rhetoric. Thus, returning to Khartoum is not a declaration of victory, but an acceptance of accountability.

The war forcibly returned Sudanese society to what Thomas Hobbes described as the state of nature, where the legitimate monopoly of violence disappears, the boundaries between authority and chaos collapse, and fear becomes the organizing principle of relations. In such a moment, legitimacy falls automatically, because a state that does not provide security loses the justification for its existence. Yet the most important lesson produced by the war lies not in fear alone, but in the profound shift in societal consciousness: the citizen is no longer willing to grant obedience in exchange for deferred promises, nor to accept a state that demands loyalty without providing services, ensuring security, and making its authority and presence felt.

From here, the government’s return to Khartoum does not mean reclaiming space alone, but rather reclaiming the political meaning of the state. It is a risky transition from an absent state to a present one, and from an authority that governs from afar to an authority that tests itself on the ground. Presence in the capital, amid security, economic, and social fragility, places the government before a daily test: either the state transforms into a functional apparatus that serves the people, or it once again exposes its incapacity.

Here emerges the most important conceptual shift in the post-war phase: the transition from the legitimacy of slogans to the legitimacy of performance. The government is no longer measured by its discourse, nor by its capacity for mobilization, but by the extent of its success in restarting hospitals, ensuring electricity and water, providing employment, and returning schools and universities to their natural roles. The government’s promises to improve services, reduce inflation, and support major productive projects do not merely represent economic programs; they constitute political tools for rebuilding the lost trust between the state and society.
At this point, we pause with Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a reference for understanding the founding moment.

The new social contract taking shape after the war is not based solely on fear, as in Hobbes, but on the general will—that is, on society’s acceptance that the state be an expression of its shared interest, not a top-down apparatus imposing itself by force. This is what makes the post-war phase a moment par excellence of politics, in which the state moves from demanding obedience to seeking consent, and from a logic of domination to a logic of exchange.

Dr. Kamil Idris’s declaration that 2026 will be a year of peace, and his linking of this to economic and developmental programs, reveals that peace is no longer a purely moral value, but a political and economic condition for the survival of the state. Peace does not mean the end of conflict so much as it means managing it rationally and linking it to the labor market, production, and social justice. This is a realistic vision confirmed by the experiences of post-conflict countries, where stability was not achieved until peace was translated into economic stability.

However, the most dangerous threat to this path is the reproduction of the old centrality of the state. The state that collapsed was a center without peripheries, an authority without a fair distribution of resources. If the government returns to Khartoum only to reproduce this model, the new social contract will be born deformed, regardless of good intentions. Rebuilding the state requires redefining the relationship between center and periphery, and empowering local governments as partners in the contract, not merely executive tools for taxation.

The presence of the government in Khartoum, as stated by Governor Ahmed Hamza, carries a political, economic, and developmental message that the capital has become ready to receive its people, and that the state has decided to confront its challenges from its heart rather than from its margins. Yet this message will remain incomplete unless the citizen feels that the government’s return is tied to its function: to be a guardian of security, an organizer of the economy, and a servant of the people.

According to The Face of Truth, the government’s return to Khartoum is not the end of the crisis, but its true beginning. It is a test of the state’s ability to move from surviving the war to benefiting from its lessons, and from an authority that seeks legitimacy to an institution that produces it through daily practice. Here the meaning of the title becomes clear: Idris Government… between rebuilding the state or sliding into chaos. Either this moment succeeds in formulating a new social contract, or the opportunity is squandered, leaving Sudan once again suspended between a state that never fully materialized and a chaos capable of sustaining itself.

Wishing you continued well-being.
Tuesday, 13 January 2026
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