The history of political science and of conflicts between nations favours no one, and the clearest lesson from the experience of collapsed states is that a state inevitably falls once it loses its monopoly on the legitimate means of violence. In Sudan’s complex landscape, readings of the crisis multiply, and analyses of diplomatic moves and international recognition diverge. Yet the true reading of the future is written on the ground, through the barrels of many guns, far from hotels and political salons. Sudan’s greatest dilemma today, the one that threatens its existence as a unified state, lies above all in the danger of “multiple armies”; the question of legitimate representation comes second.
The presence of more than one army, militia or armed movement within a single territory, each with divergent loyalties and different military doctrines, is the perfect, almost mathematical recipe for endless civil wars. In the discipline of state-building, no central authority, however strong it may be or however much external backing it enjoys, can guarantee that the country will not slide into horrific rounds of bloodshed unless it possesses an “effective, central mechanism of control” that places all armed forces under a single command.
The danger inherent in this multiplicity goes beyond direct military confrontation; it strikes a fatal blow at the very idea of citizenship and national security. When armies multiply, weapons turn from a means of protecting the nation’s borders and the safety of its citizens into a tool for political power-sharing, regional influence and the blackmail of those in power. In such an environment, military decisions become hostage to fragile balances and narrow, intersecting interests, and the unarmed citizen becomes a permanent hostage to any miscalculation between supposed comrades in arms.
The real test facing the state’s leadership today, represented by the Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is measured by the answer to the question that reality on the ground poses; the scale of diplomatic breakthroughs and the warmth of receptions in regional capitals are a secondary measure. Is there a genuine vision, and are there real mechanisms, to end this military fragmentation? Is there the capacity to tame all the guns and merge them into a single national doctrine?
Without a decisive and practical answer to this question, and without asserting the authority of the central state and its monopoly on arms, all talk of political transition, economic stability or sustainable peace becomes an illusion. History shows no mercy to leaders who leave weapons loose in the hands of armed groups, and the dark scenarios across the region remind us that the absence of unified control means the state breaking apart into warring “cantons”, where the voice of the unruly gun drowns out every other.
The political and strategic conclusion that everyone must grasp is that Sudan stands today at a historic crossroads: either move forward with courage towards “unifying the gun” under a single national military doctrine to stop the bloodshed, or surrender to the reality of “destructive armed pluralism”, which will produce nothing but total chaos that consumes everything in its path.