Adil Al-Baz: Between Selectivity and the Reductionism of the Sudanese Crisis

This is not the first time that boldness in criticizing individuals has taken precedence over questioning the structure of power in the Sudanese journalistic field. The years of the Ingaz (Salvation) regime witnessed a press that could criticize certain officials and expose failures, corruption, and contradictions, yet the boundaries separating the criticism of performance from the questioning of the regime itself remained highly sensitive. The issue was not always direct censorship or explicit publication bans; the environment of ownership, funding, and security and political pressure contributed to drawing the lines of what could be said, and to forming patterns of self-censorship and adaptation to power balances. The problem is that the fall of the Ingaz was not, in itself, sufficient to change this culture. The country moved to a new phase, then came the October 2021 coup, and then the war, without the public sphere witnessing a transformation commensurate with the scale of the collapse that afflicted the state and society. In this context, the positions of journalists and media institutions regarding the revolution, the coup, and the war—and the 'Bel Bass' (Just Beat Them) discourse—should be examined according to their documented texts and positions, not according to impressions or ready-made classifications. It is our right to ask whether some media discourse contributed to aborting the civil transition, justifying the coup, or providing a narrative cover for the continuation of the war. However, this accountability must start from evidence: What did the journalist write? What did they defend? What did they ignore? And did they maintain uniform standards in holding competing forces to account? Talk of professional and ethical responsibility is invalid if it turns into collective condemnation that does not distinguish between positions or weigh the evidence. Hence, selectivity gains its importance. A writer may be harsh in criticizing a civil official, but less clear when it comes to the centers of armed power that define that official's scope of work. This selectivity might be a conscious political maneuver if there is evidence it is an intentional pattern; it may reflect a limitation in methodology when the writer reduces politics to the performance of individuals and does not penetrate to the relationships that produce failures. It may also be a mix of professional, political, and economic factors. It is not fair to settle these possibilities before examining the writer's path and texts across different stages. Nevertheless, the political impact of writing deserves to be questioned even when proving intent is difficult. Sharp criticism may serve a cathartic function: it gives the public the feeling that officials are being held accountable, while the power structure that produced the failure remains away from scrutiny. When this pattern repeats, the question becomes legitimate: does the press help us understand who actually rules, or does it merely provide figures upon whom people's anger can be offloaded? The crisis is moral, structural, and institutional. The crisis of Sudan is not merely a crisis of political behavior, although behavior is part of it. It is a moral crisis that manifests in the separation of power from responsibility, and in using the position and public interest to justify practices that are not subject to accountability; a structural crisis related to the distribution of power, wealth, and influence, and the ability of armed and political centers to impose their will outside a comprehensive constitutional framework; and an institutional crisis represented by the weakness of the civil state, the erosion of institutional independence, and the absence of effective mechanisms to regulate decision-making and hold those responsible accountable. Therefore, it is not enough to demand that the Prime Minister be more disciplined, communicate better, stop showing off, or develop a better plan. All that is important, but it does not alone address the question of the state: Are there institutions capable of implementing the plan? Are there rules that bind power centers to respect them? Is there an independent body that audits spending, appointments, and decisions? Can the citizen know who made the decision, who bears responsibility for it, and how they can be held accountable? The state is not built by the qualifications of office-holders alone, nor is it fixed by political rhetoric, nor is it saved by replacing one person with another if the relationships that produced the crisis remain the same. The state is built when power is restricted by law, resources are subject to oversight, armed force is subject to constitutional authority, and responsibility is proportional to the actual ability to make decisions. Here lies the paradox: Kamil Idris might be a subject of legitimate criticism due to his behavior or performance, but he may simultaneously become the regime's 'weakest wall' upon which the consequences of failures broader than him are gathered. The two things do not contradict; the official may bear responsibility for their mistakes, while the regime bears the responsibility for producing the conditions that make those mistakes part of an ongoing crisis, or that make the questioning of one person an alternative to questioning the system. The question is not why Kamil Idris's government failed alone, but why a head of government is asked to rule a state for which they lack the tools, and then their failure is presented as a sufficient explanation for its failure, while the power centers that created the conditions for this failure remain outside the circle of accountability? This is the question that should lead us beyond Kamil Idris, and beyond Adil Al-Baz as well. The former should not be the end of the investigation into the state's crisis, and the latter should not be the subject of a personal feud that obscures the question about the function of the press and the limits of its criticism. What is required is to move from putting faces on trial to examining the structure, from reacting to events to explaining the conditions of their production, and from distributing blame according to visibility to distributing responsibility according to actual power. If the regime's wall is leaning, fixing it does not begin by insulting it, nor by dumping all the weight upon it, but by revealing who built it on this foundation, who weakened its pillars, and who holds the decision to fix it. Otherwise, we will keep changing the walls, while the structure itself remains standing, waiting to lean again.