Truth Perspective: Sudan… The Debate of Geography and Political Conscience
Ibrahim Shiglawi
Not all wars are decided on the battlefield alone; some are fought at the level of consciousness and existence. In Sudan, since April 2023, the war has gone beyond a struggle over power and resources to raise the question of the state itself: How can its meaning be preserved and its cohesion maintained while it undergoes one of the most dangerous phases of reshaping under the pressure of violence and division?
In this context, a text attributed to an Arab expert and a foreign expert circulated on social media last week. It contained lengthy analyses portraying the Sudanese state as merely a “geography” or an “administrative space” lacking a national bond. The danger of this type of discourse lies in its function during a time of war, as it seeks to reshape public consciousness by reinforcing a particular perception of the Sudanese state as a fragile or incomplete entity.
Herein lies the real problem. When such a perception becomes widely circulated without scrutiny in a society living through an open war characterized by multiple forms of psychological warfare, we are confronted with a shift in “political consciousness,” where narratives that reinforce collapse advance over those that support reconstruction.
In this sense, the circulated text becomes part of the tools of war by defining what is considered possible and impossible in the political future.
One of the most striking assumptions in this text is that tribal affiliation precedes national affiliation, and that the Sudanese state has failed to produce a unifying loyalty. However, this assumption is inaccurate.
Sudan has experienced forms of national cohesion that transcended tribal identity. This was evident in three revolutions: October 1964, April 1985, and April 2019, where collective political action succeeded in overthrowing successive regimes. This indicates the existence of a social capacity capable of producing a “general will” that rises above division, even if it has failed to translate that will into lasting stability.
More importantly, this political action was neither local nor partial; it was national in its fundamental structure and organization. This reveals that the question of the state in Sudan is not a question of the absence of belonging, but rather a question of the failure to transform belonging into stable institutions.
Throughout history, Sudan has been known for its deep civilizational roots in the Nile Valley. For thousands of years, it witnessed the succession of major kingdoms such as Kush, Napata, Meroë, and Sennar, followed by multiple political and religious transformations during the Christian and Islamic eras, leading eventually to the modern state.
This accumulation refutes the notion of a “historical vacuum” and confirms that Sudan has always been a space of political and social production, not merely a political geography devoid of state affiliation, as the circulated text suggests.
In modern history, a significant foundational moment emerged with Sudan’s independence in 1956 through a national process that culminated in the declaration of independence from within Parliament. This formula represented a political and national consensus among diverse forces and made the Sudanese experience a distinct model within its regional environment, as independence was achieved through an internal institutional mechanism rather than through total collapse or a power vacuum.
At this point, it becomes necessary to move from description to historical analysis. In classical thought, the state is a complex process of formation. According to Ibn Khaldun, the state is founded upon asabiyyah (social solidarity), which serves as a source of collective cohesion enabling a group to establish and sustain authority.
Yet this solidarity is not singular; it is multiple and dynamic, and different forms of it may coexist within the same space without merging into a final and complete entity. From this perspective, Sudan does not appear as a case of state absence, but rather as a space in which multiple solidarities intersect and coexist without settling into a definitive unifying formula, explaining the difficulty of achieving stability without negating the existence of the state itself.
For Émile Durkheim, the modern state is not founded on force alone, but on a “collective belonging” that generates a sense of shared existence. In the Sudanese case, the problem does not lie in the absence of such a collective entity, but in the multiplicity of its levels, where local, regional, cultural, and historical identities coexist without being fully integrated into a stable national framework. However, this diversity, in Durkheim’s logic, does not signify nonexistence; rather, it indicates an incomplete stage of formation in which the process of civilizational integration that produces the modern political nation has not yet been completed.
From this perspective, the circulated discourse does not appear to be a neutral opinion, but rather part of a broader struggle over defining the state within the context of war. It reproduces a perception that reduces the state to tribe or absence, ignoring what the Sudanese experience reveals about the capacity to restore cohesion even in moments of severe division. The danger lies not in criticism itself, but in transforming content into a final judgment whereby war is read as proof of the impossibility of the state rather than as a test of it. Thus, the analysis moves toward negation, while political history remains open.
States are not measured by moments of collapse alone; they are shaped through trajectories in which periods of rise and confusion alternate without leading to disappearance.
Between Ibn Khaldun, who viewed the state as a transformation of solidarities, and Durkheim, who saw it as a construction of the collective conscience, Truth Perspective holds that Sudan is neither an administrative geography nor a space devoid of belonging. Rather, it is a homeland founded upon the idea of shared belonging despite the conflicts and diversity that characterize it. Reducing it to tribe or region is an oversimplification that ignores the depth of the extended national experience. Ultimately, what matters is how the homeland is preserved as a unifying framework that transcends narrow loyalties. The state is not geography; it is a sense of belonging that is built and restored in moments of trial.
Wishing you health and well-being.
Sunday, June 14, 2026
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