Sudan: deterrence and political accounts ..! – The face of the truth – ✍️ Ibrahim Shaqlawi
Since the outbreak of the War of Sudan on April 15, 2023, the country has transformed into an arena of conflicts which is not limited to the armed confrontation between the army and the rapid support militia, but which rather prepared it in a field of regional and international competition for influence and resources, within the framework of the transformations which redefined the equation of deterrence and Sovereignty in Sudan.
Where the developments of the conflict revealed that the question was not only the result of an internal political congestion, but an extension of the external conspiracy aimed at removing the state and to dismantle its institutions. Sudan, with gold, oil, water, fertile land and animal wealth, has become the center of traditional and emerging powers, in a feverish race to redraw the political geography of the African century.
In this context, the effectiveness of regional organizations, led by the African Union, has decreased, and its pivotal positions were sworn between the slogans of civilization of civilians and the calls for democratic transition. This weakness revealed a void in the regional system and opened the door to international powers to intensify its interventions, which increased the complexity of the crisis and the lowest of all the opportunities to solve it from the inside.
One of the most important learned lessons is the need to reconstruct the doctrine of national deterrence, which is only obtained by a unified army capable of exercising the act of sovereignty.
The news has circulated on the main arms agreements with China, Pakistan and Russia represented a turning point in the philosophy of military deterrence. The latest agreement with Pakistan, which has exceeded $ 1.5 billion, Sudan has introduced the era of drones and modern defense systems, while the agreement with Russia reflects Khartoum’s desire to diversify the sources of armaments and the location of technology, as part of an approach to reach a balance of regional powers which release the national decision of dependence.
These movements coincided with the growing international presence in the scene, because Sudan has become an indirect competition between the opposite axes: an Egyptian-Turkish-Pakistani axis, facing a French-Israeli Emirati axis, while American, Chinese and Russian interests meet at home. This competition acquires a more dangerous dimension while the Red Sea is transformed into a geopolitical struggle scene which places Sudan at the heart of the new regional equilibrium equation.
The intervention was not limited to the military level, but the attempts to form a parallel government appeared in the Darfur de Nyala, as part of a regional project seeking to undermine the center and to perpetuate fragile political pluralism, similar to what happened in Libya and Yemen. These attempts reveal that certain forces see in the Sudanese situation as an entry to reshape the sales of the region by allowing the parties and marginalizing the real national forces.
Consequently, the possession by Sudan of a real deterrent is no longer an option but rather an existential necessity, in particular in the light of internal political exposure. The Sudanese army did not fight the battle alone, but was rather based on a large national basis which included political and intellectual forces which played a decisive role in the battle of dignity, and presented more than six thousand martyrs in the fields of Khartoum’s struggle in Darfour and Kordofan.
These forces of different ways, have gathered to a central objective which preserves the unity and independence of Sudan far from external guardianship, and has succeeded in presenting itself as a coherent historical block which deals with the reality of flexibility and pragmatism, without renouncing the main national principles.
On the other hand, the regional and international powers strive to impose a fragile political regulation based on floating civil forces made or miserable, which do not have a popular or national legitimate extension, so it finds itself obliged to depend on the foreigner and to adopt stories which justify their bias at a militia which uses violence and violations as a means of control. This approach aims to produce a distorted political scene which weakens the state and does not build it.
As for the United States, the Sudanese file has long succeeded through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the context of conditional neutrality if called, but recent developments, led by the visit of the President of the Sovereignty Council to Switzerland and to meet the sending of the US administration, Massad Paul, reflected the transfer of the file to the institutions of Soverrign’s decision in the White House. It seems that the CIA and the Pentagon pushed this change after reports which monitored the rise of the Sudanese army as a regional force supported by Russia, China and Iran, which has feared that the absence of confinement will lead to the emergence of a new force which threatens its interests in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.
Washington is trying to balance the support of the military establishment and prevents the rise in the Islamic trend, but this approach comes up against Sudanese reality, because Islamists are inherent in the political and social structure, and they have a large role in national mobilization in favor of the army.
Consequently, the need for Sudanese steering improves the balance between absorbing the interior and opening outside without being subjected to it, because the unity of the National Front is able to thwart an external program, whatever its strength.
Sudan is today in front of a crossroads: either it supports its fate by consolidating the equivalence of a balance based on strength, legitimacy and conscience, or that a conflict arena continues to be exploited by the regional and international forces for its colonial projects. Consequently, the construction of foreign policy must be based on the realization of a strategic balance between international axes and stabilization of the interior on the basis of Sovereignty and Supreme National Interest.
Military success is not enough unless you are accompanied by a political effort which reorganizes the place according to the alignment standard with the national project, and not the narrow loyalty. The construction of a large national front is capable of bypassing false diodes is the guarantor of all lasting peace and a real democratic transformation. The events have proven that the output bet does not build a homeland, and that Sudan is not managed by foreign capitals or in closed chambers, but rather the will of its children who alone have the right to formulate its future.
According to the face of truth, deterrence in Sudan is no longer just a military problem, but rather a full political problem which establishes a complete national project and redefines the position of Sudan on the regional and international map, in a way that protects its national options and prevents the removal of its future, whatever the pressures and challenges.
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