From the Crisis of Legitimacies to Building Consensus: Toward a Strategic Vision for National Dialogue and the Restorat
30 August, 2026
The widespread engagement with the article “From the Crisis of Legitimacies to the Restoration of the State” was not merely an expression of appreciation for an idea or endorsement of a particular position. Rather, it revealed a deeper national need: the need to move from diagnosing the crisis to building a pathway capable of leading Sudan out of it through a consensual approach acceptable to the Sudanese people.
The responses from academics, politicians, diplomats, legal experts, and public affairs actors, both inside and outside Sudan, confirmed that the Sudanese crisis is no longer merely a crisis of war, nor solely a crisis of authority or legitimacy. It has become a complex crisis involving the future of the state, the nature of the system of government, the relationship between the state and society, the management of diversity and resources, and Sudan’s position within its regional and international environment.
This makes it increasingly urgent to move the idea from an article that stimulates debate to a vision capable of opening the way toward an organized national dialogue—a dialogue that is not merely another platform for exchanging positions or a conference convened simply to record attendance, but rather a deliberate strategic process aimed at building consensus around the issues upon which Sudan’s future depends.
What is required, therefore, is not another repetition of calls for national dialogue, but a transition from the level of a political idea to that of a strategic project based on common ground and capable of implementation.
From an Individual Initiative to a National Project
The true value of any national initiative is not measured by its author’s ability to defend it, but by its capacity to evolve into a public ownership that transcends individuals, personal ambitions, political currents, and positions.
Accordingly, the next step should not be the production of a closed vision, but rather opening it to a carefully selected group of experts, opinion leaders, academics, politicians, and national figures from inside and outside Sudan through a series of structured and gradual dialogue sessions.
This process should allow ideas to interact through what may be described as interactive dialogue, in which assumptions are reviewed, alternatives tested, and visions refined through discussion.
At this moment, Sudan does not need another individual voice, regardless of the value of its contribution, as much as it needs a collective national mind capable of seeing Sudan beyond the current polarization and placing the higher interests of the state above short-term calculations.
The objective, therefore, is not to manufacture an artificial consensus, but to build a viable consensus around a minimum set of issues that must not remain hostage to political disputes and narrow interests.
National Dialogue as a Strategic Process
The dialogue Sudan needs is not a passing political event, but a national strategic planning process.
Strategic planning here does not mean imposing a predetermined substantive agenda on participants. Rather, it means providing a scientific and methodological framework that allows national issues to be discussed systematically; moving from impressions to information, from positions to alternatives, and from diagnosis to policy.
The process should therefore begin with the establishment of a National Higher Committee, composed of individuals recognized for their competence, experience, independence, and integrity.
The committee would not make decisions on behalf of the Sudanese people. Instead, it would lead the process and provide it with a national and methodological umbrella.
Its responsibilities would include setting the broad framework of the dialogue, raising public awareness about it, communicating with political, social, and community forces, inviting experts, leaders, and various constituencies to participate, and ensuring that the process remains open to Sudan’s genuine diversity and inclusive of its various sectors rather than relying on merely symbolic representation.
What Do We Want from the Dialogue?
Before beginning the dialogue, we must know where we want to arrive. This is perhaps one of the first principles imposed by strategic thinking.
There is little value in dialogue whose desired outcomes have not been defined, nor in a long list of issues if it is unclear what we intend to do with them.
Accordingly, the following should be clearly defined:
- The mission underpinning the dialogue;
- The vision guiding it;
- The governing principles and values;
- Its higher-level and detailed objectives;
- Its priorities and key issues;
- The outcomes it is expected to produce;
- The mechanisms for translating its outcomes into policies and decisions.
The ultimate objective is not to produce yet another document to be added to Sudan’s extensive archive of documents. Rather, it is to arrive at a national vision capable of being transformed into a sustainable political, constitutional, and institutional pathway toward a safe exit for the country and its people and an end to their suffering.
Understanding Sudan Before Prescribing a Way Out
No successful strategy can be built without an accurate reading of the environment in which it operates.
The dialogue should therefore begin with a comprehensive analysis of the Sudanese reality—politically, militarily and in terms of security, economically, socially, and institutionally—alongside an assessment of the regional and international environment surrounding Sudan.
The war can no longer be treated as an internal matter isolated from its surroundings. Nor will Sudan’s future be determined solely by what happens within its borders. It will be directly influenced by regional transformations, competition among international powers, Red Sea security, the interests of neighboring countries, flows of weapons and money, the political economy of war, and ongoing transformations in the international system.
Yet strategic analysis should not become an acceptance of external pressures. Rather, it should seek to understand those pressures and identify the space available for national action in responding to them.
The question is not only: What are others doing to Sudan?
It is also: What can Sudan itself do within a changing regional and international environment?
Defining the Issues Rather Than Multiplying Them
After assessing the reality comes the most important stage: identifying the major strategic issues around which dialogue should take place.
These issues should not be determined according to the agenda of a political party, group, or elite, but according to what directly affects the future and integrity of the Sudanese state.
These issues may include political legitimacy, the form of the state and system of government, political transition, the constitution, relations between the center and the regions, the management of diversity, institution-building, security-sector reform, resource management, reconstruction, justice and national reconciliation, peace and foreign relations, and Sudan’s regional and international role.
But more important than simply listing these issues is to prioritize them and understand their interrelationships. Some crises are not independent of one another; rather, they are consequences of deeper crises and interconnected structures that require comprehensive solutions.
From Crisis Analysis to a Matrix of Strategic Options
This is where the importance of strategic planning tools becomes evident, including the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT)—not as academic exercises, but as tools that can support decision-making.
Despite the scale of the catastrophe and the threats surrounding it, Sudan possesses significant strengths: an exceptional geographic location, vast natural resources, considerable human and cultural depth, state institutions that can be rebuilt, a broad civil society, and a large Sudanese diaspora whose capacities can contribute to national recovery and development.
At the same time, there are weaknesses that cannot be ignored, including institutional fragility, political and social divisions, economic deterioration, the consequences of war, and accumulated structural imbalances in the relationship between the state, society, and the surrounding environment.
There are also opportunities that must be transformed into policies and threats for which preparations must be made before they develop into new crises.
The purpose of the analysis, therefore, must ultimately be to produce clear strategic options—not merely diagnoses without remedies.
A National Reference Framework for Dialogue
National dialogue cannot exist without a reference framework.
By reference framework, we do not mean a party document or political program. Rather, we mean a system of fundamental national principles, values, and guiding norms around which participants can agree and which can serve as the basis for dialogue on governance, policies, laws, resource management, and foreign relations.
Among the most important of these principles are:
Sudan’s unity and sovereignty; equal citizenship; the rule of law; respect for diversity; peaceful transfer of power; protection of national institutions; justice; participation; and rejection of violence and exclusion.
At the same time, political disagreement must be recognized as an inherent right rather than a threat to the state.
Such a framework enables the dialogue to move beyond the traditional question:
Who governs?
To the more important questions:
How should the state be governed? For what purpose? And through which institutions?
The State First
The genuine entry point for national consensus should begin with redefining the center of the crisis: the crisis of the state before the crisis of power.
Governments change and political authorities come and go, but the state must endure.
The dialogue should therefore focus on rebuilding state institutions, enhancing their capacity, clarifying their roles, and strengthening their ability to protect citizens, manage resources, provide services, and safeguard national sovereignty.
It should also address the role of political and community leaders and the state itself, and how their performance can be improved, because institutional reform cannot be separated from reforming the political culture that governs those institutions.
A Multi-Level Dialogue
To prevent the dialogue from becoming a closed elite gathering, it should be designed across multiple levels.
There should be:
- An expert dialogue to formulate alternatives;
- A political dialogue to discuss strategic options;
- A community dialogue to incorporate the voices of different social groups;
- A dedicated track for Sudanese abroad, recognizing them as part of the country’s human, intellectual, and political capital.
This requires genuine inclusiveness, broad representation, and openness to all segments of Sudanese society.
The dialogue should also not be a single session or a short-lived conference. It should be a gradual process extending across several sessions and stages, with each stage producing outcomes that can be reviewed and refined in the next.
The objective is not to reach a rapid but fragile agreement, but to build a consensus characterized by depth and sustainability.
The Plan Before Implementation
One of the most important lessons to be understood is that the dialogue itself requires a strategic plan and an implementation program with clearly defined timelines.
Calls for participation should not begin before the rules governing the process have been agreed upon. Detailed issues should not be addressed before the overall vision, principles, and objectives have been defined. And recommendations should not be produced before mechanisms capable of translating them into reality have been identified.
Therefore, the strategic plan for national dialogue should be developed first, agreed upon by the participating constituencies, and only then should the process move into implementation.
Such a plan could include:
- The institutional structure;
- Levels of dialogue;
- Criteria for selecting participants;
- Decision-making mechanisms;
- Mechanisms for managing disagreement;
- A timeline;
- Communication channels;
- Documentation and archiving tools;
- Technical support and resources;
- Mechanisms for monitoring and implementing outcomes.
Toward an Initiative That Transcends Its Founders
What is being proposed here is neither a ready-made project nor a final prescription for Sudan’s crisis.
It is an invitation to open a pathway for organized, profound, and nationally driven thinking.
The true value of the initiative will lie in its ability to attract people with diverse ideas and expertise and to move Sudanese debate from a cycle of reactions into a sphere of strategic action, based on genuine Sudanese ownership and inclusive participation.
The next stage should therefore not be an act of monopolizing the initiative, but rather of liberating it from its original author so that it becomes the property of everyone who believes that Sudan can find a third path between war and division, between temporary settlements and the reproduction of crisis—and toward shaping the contours of the future.
The goal is not to agree on everything. That is impossible in a country with Sudan’s diversity, history, and complexity.
The goal is to agree on what we must not disagree about:
The survival of the state, the unity of Sudan, its sovereignty, and the right of its citizens to security, stability, dignity, citizenship, and peaceful coexistence—and that our disagreements should concern how the state is governed, not whether the state itself should exist.
This must be accompanied by the pursuit of comprehensive peace and national reconciliation.
A Final Word
The past years have demonstrated that managing crises through partial solutions, temporary settlements, and competing claims to legitimacy is no longer sufficient.
Sudan needs to move:
from managing the crisis to managing the future;
from reaction to anticipation;
and from competing for control of the state to reaching consensus on how to build and preserve it.
If the article “From the Crisis of Legitimacies to the Restoration of the State” sought to open a window in the wall of the crisis, the next step should be to build the road through which we can cross and to bridge the obstacles along the way.
That road cannot be built by one individual, one political party, or one institution.
It must be built through an enlightened national dialogue, guided by knowledge, governed by the national interest, supported by strategic planning methodology, and shaped by the minds and expertise of Sudanese people both inside and outside the country.
Ultimately, the real challenge is not to write yet another document about Sudan. It is to produce a vision that the state can adopt, that society can rally around, that political forces can find common ground within, and that future generations can regard it as the beginning of a different trajectory for the Sudanese state.
The strategic equation that should govern this initiative is:
Not dialogue to manage division, but dialogue to build consensus.
Not consensus to dismantle the nation, but consensus to build the state.
Not a vision of the future written for elites, but a national project that restores Sudan’s capacity to shape its own future.
And Sudan—its leadership and its people—must recognize, at this historic crossroads, that:
«“In moments of major national crises and transformation, relinquishing some positions is not relinquishing the nation. Holding on to what unites us is the greatest victory. The middle path does not mean standing between one right and another; it means creating a common space in which everyone gives up some of what they want so that the nation can gain what it needs.”»
Or, put more clearly:
«“When the gap between different constituencies widens, mutual concessions become a bridge, not a defeat. The middle path becomes the road on which no side defeats another, but the nation triumphs over its crisis.”»
In conclusion, I say to our nation and to its leaders, across their different orientations and schools of thought:
«A national project is not born when one side defeats all others. It is born when everyone realizes that some mutual concessions are less costly than continued division. Consensus does not mean that every side gets what it wants; it means that everyone gives up enough so that the nation can receive what it deserves.»
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