The Face of Truth: The State After the Gun… Who Holds the Monopoly of Force?

Ibrahim Shaglawi

After every war, victory is not measured by the number of battlefronts that have been closed, but by the national questions that are opened—foremost among them: who holds the right to use force in the country? War may cease militarily, but the state does not truly begin politically until the gun returns to its natural place within the army institution—neither above politics nor outside the law.

Here, in this gray zone between the end of fighting and the beginning of sovereignty, the shape of the new state is determined: either a ruling authority that monopolizes force and is subject to it, or a fragile entity governed by balances of weapons rather than the logic of legitimacy.

In this context, the meeting of the Chairman of the Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with the Security Affairs Coordination Committee of Khartoum State acquires an exceptional character that goes beyond administrative reassurance. Politically, it is read as the first practical test of the question of monopolizing force after the war, and a declaration that the security file in the national capital has become central to the battle of restoring the state’s order and sovereignty.

Its greater significance lies in its timing, location, and political ceiling, as it comes at a transitional moment in which the authority’s ability is tested to transform military victory into real sovereignty, and to move security from a temporary state of emergency to a permanent system based on institutional governance, legal control, the prevention of security breakdowns, and negative phenomena.

The directives issued by the meeting regarding the introduction of electronic monitoring mechanisms, strengthening the capacities of the regular forces, ending military appearances inside the capital, banning unregistered vehicles, and securing markets and gathering sites are important security measures; yet they are read as an attempt to re-engineer public life in Khartoum and subject it to the logic of the state rather than the balances of weapons.

Therefore, the monopoly of force is not a purely security measure, but a sovereign act that redefines the relationship between the state and society. When instruments of violence continue outside the official framework, the “necessity” imposed by war turns into a permanent parallel structure, and the state becomes capable of declaring laws without possessing the full ability to impose and enforce them; security becomes negotiable, sovereignty incomplete, and political decision hostage to the balance of force rather than the authority of the state and its institutions.

In this context, weapons do not live in a vacuum after war; they are surrounded by a full economy of financing networks, smuggling, extortion, local influence, and social functions that substitute for the state. Therefore, any attempt to disarm without dismantling this economy merely removes reassurance and reproduces war in a more complex form.

Confusing disarmament with de-politicizing weapons is among the most dangerous post-war mistakes. Guns may be handed over, but if weapons remain a political symbol, a pressure card, or a source of an “additional right” in political life, the state remains captive to a masked armed representation, and politics stays hostage to the memory of force rather than the rules of citizenship.

Therefore, it is important to work on de-politicizing weapons—meaning ending the legitimacy of claiming that force grants representation, confining political action to the civil sphere, and stripping violence of its ability to transform into negotiating capital within the state.

This problem becomes more urgent with the return of the government of Dr. Kamel Idris to the capital, Khartoum, and the beginning of its executive duties from within it. This return is considered a declaration that the political geography of the state has regained its center, and that authority is no longer managed from outside the seat of decision. The government’s presence in the heart of the capital places it in daily confrontation with the challenges of security, services, and reconstruction, and turns Khartoum into a testing ground from the logic of war to the logic of the state.

Accordingly, the essence of the issue does not revolve around the weapon as a tool of combat, but as a question of the state: how does force transform from an exceptional act into a public function? The announced measures, no matter how strict or sensitive they may appear, are not read as a denial of the sacrifices of the armed struggle movements or the mobilized popular resistance who bore the burden of defending the homeland in its darkest moments.

Rather, they are read as a natural transition from a stage in which the state was protected by weapons to a stage in which it must be protected by law and procedures that guarantee the safety of citizens. Recognizing the historical role of these groups does not contradict the necessity of returning weapons to the custody of the state; rather, it is completed by it, because the continuation of force outside the institutional framework empties sacrifices of their meaning and turns heroism into a permanent burden on the nation.

According to #The_Face_of_Truth, The State After the Gun: Who Holds the Monopoly of Force? is not a formula of political exclusion, but a formula of national salvation. It reorders the relationship between those who fought, those who govern, and those who await security.

The state’s monopoly of force is not the exclusion of anyone, but the protection of all. It is the only bridge by which society can cross from the memory of war to the horizon of peace. And when force is governed by law as it was once governed by emergency, the homeland becomes capable of embracing all its sons under one sovereignty, and a peace not guarded by guns, but protected by the rule of law.

Stay well and in good health.

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

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