How long must this ongoing internecine and barbaric war continue before Sudanese people agree that enough is enough and the war must stop? What is the threshold or tipping point for this ongoing war, after which we, the Sudanese people, say ‘enough is enough’ and this nonsensical violence must come to an end? Did the Sudanese warlords who triggered this destructive war have a time frame for it, or did they just flare it up and let it go? Did they make any brief calculations or estimations for the death toll and casualties of this destructive war and then decide to go into it? What is the nature of this deadly war? Is it a conventional war, a holy war, or a war for dignity? Or is it a senseless war fought for the glory of the gun, or purely ideological, or what? Don’t they know that such an uncalculated war will bring external elements and strange entities into the country? Don’t they know that such an uncalculated war will stir up foreign forces’ appetites and fuel or encourage foreign intervention in the internal affairs of the country? Don’t the Sudanese military juntas know that many foreign countries and international companies have invested billions in hard currency in Sudan, and that it is their right to protect those investments by all means possible? Don’t the Sudanese warlords know there is a global scarcity of resources, which causes powerful countries to interfere in resource-rich nations to loot their resources under any pretext? These questions have kept obsessing Sudanese people’s minds for too long. They want to know what is going on around them and are fed up with the wars. They want to be self-sufficient—growing their own food and herding their own animals rather than relying on relief assistance and handouts.
Declaration of war, when left to military juntas alone, becomes a catastrophic tragedy. Such declarations are not merely military decisions but, rather, purely political ones. They are not an easy task, as they carry immense implications, complexities, and repercussions that necessitate thorough and well-thought-out calculations. Military juntas, however, often follow only one dogma: ‘shoot to kill’ which means in our Sudanese vernacular language ‘bl bs بل بس’. The Sudanese military junta is currently stuck in the dilemma, leaving no stone unturned to find a way out of this stalemate. The military junta has been advised by many well-intentioned international figures, as well as national and local wise leaders, to hand over power to civilians and return to their professional duties. However, they absolutely rejected all of this advice. The political greed and arrogance blurred their vision and made them turn a deaf ear to all advice.
Recently, on April 15, 2026, high-level members of the International Community—including representatives from UN agencies, International Non-Organizations, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—convened at the Berlin Conference to address Sudan’s humanitarian crisis. Participants included the African Union, IGAD, the League of Arab States, the European Union, the United Nations, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Despite this significant gathering, Sudan completely rejected its outcomes and labeled the participants as biased. The de facto military government perceives the Berlin Conference as a flagrant interference in Sudan’s internal affairs. The government perceives that Sudan’s sovereignty is being grossly violated, maintaining that no one has the right to interfere in Sudanese affairs without its consent. One really wonders at such idiotic mentality. In a nutshell, sovereignty as a concept needs to be revisited and redefined in order to remove such misleading interpretations.
In such a situation, any talk of national sovereignty or internal affairs by the de facto Sudanese military government is a shallow, groundless argument. Whether the Sudanese people or the government like it or not, foreign countries and international entities will intervene in Sudan’s internal affairs in order to protect their geopolitical interests. They will interfere in Sudan’s affairs to protect their economic interests and investment stakes. The foreign forces, the international community, and human rights entities will interfere in your country’s affairs as long as your country denies its people access to humanitarian assistance. The regional and international communities will not allow you to use national sovereignty as a trojan horse to dehumanize your people. Hiding behind national sovereignty is no longer a means to protect authoritarian regimes from being accountable to the international community’s organs, and Sudan is not an exception. A state’s treatment of its citizens is no longer merely a domestic issue, but rather an international concern within the purview of international community organs.
Sovereignty and dehumanization are mutually exclusive events: they never happen simultaneously. You can’t talk about sovereignty while you are dehumanizing your citizens. To build a real sovereign country, develop a rule-of-law state, uphold good governance and leadership, implement a democratic system, create a permanent national constitution, and establish a national project and strategic plan. In such a country, all citizens, without exception, will line up behind their leadership in defense of the national sovereignty of their country.
Eventually, sovereignty as a concept must be clearly defined to the military juntas.
Sovereignty is conceptualized as the exclusive right to exercise supreme political authority (legislative, judicial, executive) over a geographical region, a group of people, or one’s own affairs while a sovereign state is an independent political entity with a defined territory, permanent population, and a government that holds supreme authority over its internal and external affairs. These crystal-clear definitions of sovereignty and sovereign state are not clear to Sudan’s de facto military regime. The de facto regime interprets sovereignty wrongly. To them, sovereignty is interpreted in a way that serves their personal and political ambitions and interests. The dehumanization, demonization, incrimination, and vilification of Sudanese people are constituent parts of their definition of sovereignty. Sadly, this intentionally wrong interpretation of sovereignty has been used by the de facto regime to prevent international entities from interfering to help the vulnerable citizens. We need to make the de facto regime fully understand that sovereignty is not about ill-treating people. It is not about rendering people subhuman creatures. It is unfortunate that national sovereignty is used by the de facto regime to justify its falsehood. The international community is strongly urged to inform the de facto military regime that enough is enough and that it is high time to hand power back to a civilian-led government that has a deeper understanding of national sovereignty.
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I conclude by saying that the fragility of the Sudanese internal front makes it incapable of protecting the nation’s sovereignty. This weakness is not new; it has profound root causes. A primary driver of this fragility is the Sudanese political leadership’s reluctance to help the country become a single, cohesive nation, thus leaving a national identity void. Furthermore, the phenomenon of hate speech and stereotypical language is not under strict control. The burden of national sovereign protection is shouldered not by democratic leadership alone, but rather by aware and informed citizens. The Sudanese people have not yet developed a unified national identity. A mental shift within the nation is the only way to protect its sovereignty; otherwise, foreign countries and international entities will keep interfering in the internal affairs of the country.
No to War, Yes to Sustainable and Equitable Peace
Mahjoub Saleem
Kampala – Uganda
May 5, 2026
