On "Tasis" and the New Sudan: A Response to Khalid Kodi

Elwathig Kameir (kameir@yahoo.com), Toronto, October 10, 2026. I read with interest the response of my brother, Khalid Kodi, to my article regarding "Tasis" and the Sudanese dialogue. I appreciate the seriousness with which he treated the text and his attempt to frame our disagreement within a broader intellectual context. Many of the issues he raised concerning the nature of the Sudanese state, citizenship, marginalization, and center-periphery relations are not points of contention between us in their essence. However, I believe his response is, in several key aspects, based on a confusion of four different issues: first, between the unity of the state and maintaining the "Old Sudan" structure; second, between engaging with a de facto entity and recognizing a parallel authority created by war; third, between the functional distinction of political and military tracks and the exclusion of a political project; and fourth, between the distinction I made regarding the Juba Agreement movements and granting them permanent legitimacy or political immunity. From these four confusions, the response shifted from the specific question raised by my article to a broader discussion on "Old Sudan" and "New Sudan," attributing to me a position I did not express: that the objective is to restore the pre-war state with its structure, institutions, and historical imbalances. Meanwhile, my article's question was more specific: how to build an inclusive political process that reconstructs the state without allowing military force and territorial control to become a source of government status or preemptive political rights. The disagreement is not between "Old Sudan" and "New Sudan." I did not argue that the "Old Sudan" should be restored, nor did I posit the structure of the Sudanese state as it has existed since independence as a model to be preserved or cosmetically repaired. I explicitly stated that political dialogue should open the way for a broader constitutional dialogue to discuss the nature of the state, the constitution, center-periphery relations, citizenship, identity, religion and state, justice, the distribution of power and wealth, and a single national army. I also called for reclaiming the concept of the "roots of the crisis" from the polarization that has afflicted it during the war, noting that these issues predate the Rapid Support Forces and the April war itself. Thus, framing the disagreement as a confrontation between those who want to preserve the "Old Sudan" and those who want a "New Sudan" is, in fact, arguing against a position my article did not take. The disagreement is not about whether the old Sudanese state needs deep change, but about how to arrive at the new state, who decides its form, and whether carrying weapons grants a prior institutional position in determining its future. The state unity I spoke of is not a sacralization of its historical structure or a defense of its centralization. There is a fundamental difference between preserving the political and geographical unity of the state and maintaining the political and social system that historically governed it. It is possible to rebuild the state radically without dismantling it into parallel authorities created during wartime. Engagement is not legitimacy. Khalid himself provides an important distinction between legitimacy, recognition, and de facto authority, and I agree with him on this. This distinction is at the heart of my argument. I never said that the Port Sudan authority enjoys democratic legitimacy, nor did I grant it the right to bestow or withhold legitimacy from others. Furthermore, engaging with existing state institutions does not mean accepting the post-October 25 coup arrangements as a final democratic benchmark. Conversely, the lack of democratic legitimacy for an existing authority does not automatically produce legitimacy for another parallel authority created during the war. It is logically and politically possible to reject a military coup and a parallel government simultaneously. This is not a purely theoretical assumption. The African Union itself, while rejecting unconstitutional change in Sudan and calling for the restoration of civilian constitutional rule, has taken a clear position on the parallel "Tasis" government. At the February 2026 AU summit, the union condemned the creation of what it described as a "parallel government" by the "Tasis" alliance led by the Rapid Support Forces, calling on member states and the international community not to recognize any such government, while emphasizing the unity and territorial integrity of Sudan and the preservation of state institutions. The AU Commission, while welcoming the Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue, called for an inclusive process involving various civil, political, and societal forces, ultimately leading to a unified Sudan governed by legitimate civilian institutions and a single national security structure. This clarifies my point: rejecting absolute democratic legitimacy for the existing authority does not necessitate recognizing a parallel authority born of war, nor does rejecting a parallel government mean excluding the civil and political forces associated with it from an inclusive political process. More importantly, I never called for not engaging with the Rapid Support Forces. On the contrary, I stated that the war cannot end without negotiating with them as a primary military party holding weapons and territory. Therefore, I clearly placed them within the track of ceasefire, civilian protection, humanitarian aid, withdrawal, security arrangements, and the future of forces. So, there is no disagreement between Khalid and me on the necessity of engaging with the actual party on the ground. The disagreement begins the moment Khalid moves from the necessity of engaging with the Rapid Support Forces and "Tasis" as a political and military reality to a completely different conclusion: the necessity of dealing with the "Tasis government" in its institutional capacity as a government representing a political project. But why does the second conclusion necessarily follow the first? Negotiating with a party, or acknowledging its existence as a political and military reality, does not mean acknowledging its right to rule, nor the government status it confers upon itself. This is, in fact, the same distinction Khalid emphasizes between engagement, recognition, and legitimacy. A political project does not confer government status. If the justification for recognizing the institutional status of "Tasis" is that it carries the "New Sudan" project, then a political project—regardless of its validity—does not automatically grant its owner government status. Equal citizenship, justice, ending marginalization, redistributing power and wealth, addressing center-periphery relations, and revisiting the relationship between religion and state are not the intellectual or political property of one specific alliance. These are national issues that predated "Tasis" by decades and were raised by multiple political and intellectual schools, including the SPLM itself at various stages of its history. Therefore, accepting these issues should not be contingent upon accepting the government announced by "Tasis," nor should criticizing that government be a rejection of the "New Sudan" project. If the basis for institutional status is territorial control and military force, then we have returned precisely to the problem my article raised: transforming the results of war into political and institutional rights. Who decides which weapon is "revolutionary" and which is for "privilege"? Khalid makes a distinction between using weapons to protect old privileges and using them in the "struggle to change the historical structures that produced the wars." This is an idea worthy of discussion, but it cannot serve as a basis for determining political legitimacy. Who decides that a certain weapon is "revolutionary" and the other side's weapon is for defending privileges? Every armed movement can describe itself as fighting for liberation, justice, or rebuilding the state, and describe its opponent as a guardian of the old regime. If we allow each party's assessment of its own project's justice to determine its right to bear arms and its political weight, we have given the gunmen the right to define their own legitimacy. This is even more complex in the current war; the Rapid Support Forces did not historically emerge as a liberation movement against the central state or as a "New Sudan" project. They emerged in 2013 within the state structure that the "Tasis" discourse today accuses of producing marginalization, and were used primarily in counter-insurgency campaigns in Darfur and other regions, before their roles and political alliances changed later. Therefore, a force joining an alliance that subsequently adopts "New Sudan" discourse does not automatically rewrite its history of origin, nor does it simply transform the current war into a confrontation between the "revolution of the periphery" and the "state of the center." Distinguishing between civil and military is not a mechanical separation. Khalid describes my proposal as a mechanical separation between the civil and the military, but the article does not say that. I am talking about a functional distinction between tracks while maintaining their political interconnectedness, not a wall between them. I explicitly stated that civil forces should not wait for the war to end to begin politics, and that political dialogue can itself contribute to ending the war by narrowing the path between military gains and political ones. I also said that armed parties might need clarity on the nature of the political process that will follow a ceasefire. However, there is a difference between the interconnection of tracks and merging them into a single negotiation. Ceasefire, withdrawal, civilian protection, future of forces, and security arrangements require the presence of parties that hold weapons. But defining the nature of the state, the constitution, citizenship, and justice should not become a prerogative of war parties and their political allies. A crucial question arises: if we blend military and political negotiation into one process led by military forces and their allies, won't the war have predetermined not only the ceasefire parties, but also who holds the most weight in deciding the future of the state? This is not theoretical; Sudan experienced the Naivasha process, where ending the war was linked to a broad political settlement between two armed parties. That experience had historical circumstances that cannot be automatically applied to the current war. The problem is not in studying Naivasha, but in the current war becoming a mechanism that reproduces the formula: *Whoever has the biggest gun gets the biggest seat in determining the state's shape.* Who authorized the "Tasis government" to represent "New Sudan"? Here I reach what I see as the most important sentence in Khalid's entire response: "In this context, the civilian 'Tasis' government represents the 'New Sudan' project in the political track, while the specialized military forces handle the negotiation on security and military issues." This statement, in my estimation, reveals the point of contention more clearly than many pages of the response. The direct question is: who authorized the "Tasis" government to represent the "New Sudan" project? The "New Sudan" project was not born with "Tasis" and is not its organizational property. It has a long history and multiple currents. Sudanese people are free to accept, critique, or develop its ideas. Why should a government declared during this war become the political representative of this project? If the answer is that it includes the SPLM-N led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu, that gives those forces the right to present their ideas, but it does not grant the government created by a political-military alliance the right to monopolize representing the project or to enter the process as a government. Then another equally important question arises: if the "Tasis government" represents one side of the political negotiation, who represents the other? Is it the "Port Sudan government"? If political negotiation becomes a bargain between the incumbent government and the "Tasis" government, where is the space for the "Sumud" (Resistance) forces? Where are the political forces that do not belong to either camp? Where are the resistance committees, professional unions, and independent voices? In that case, the war would have done more than identify the fighting parties: it would have redrawn Sudan's political map and turned the entire political society into an annex to two armed camps. This is one of the main reasons I am cautious about transforming the recognition of military reality into recognition of the political structure it has produced. What about the Juba Agreement movements? On this point, Khalid also discusses a formula that is no longer my argument. I do not claim that the Juba movements enjoy legitimacy because they are "older" than "Tasis," nor that merely signing an agreement with the old state institutions gives them a permanent permit to participate. I explicitly said that the Juba Agreement and its arrangements are not immune to review. My basis for distinction is different: these movements preceded the current war as political and military forces with declared programs and demands related to governance, peace, center-periphery, and power-sharing. The logic of the peace agreement for them was the transition from weapons to politics. The Juba Agreement itself stipulated the integration of the signatories' forces, aiming for a single, professional national army. This path was not fully implemented, and some of these movements participated in the current war and are not exempt from accountability. But the principle is clear: end the relationship between weapons and political action, do not use weapons to create a new political authority. The difference I propose is not between an "old" and "new" organization, but the direction of the relationship between weapons and politics: does it move toward civil politics and a single national army, or does it move from military control during the war toward establishing a parallel political authority? This criterion applies to everyone. Voluntary unity and self-determination. Khalid raises the issue of voluntary unity and the right to self-determination. This is a legitimate constitutional and political issue for debate, but it confirms, rather than denies, the need for a wide national dialogue. If self-determination is to be proposed as a constitutional principle, the question is: who decides it? In what constitutional framework? By what mechanisms? No armed force or political alliance can decide these issues unilaterally and ask others to accept them as "supra-constitutional principles." Even the concept of "supra-constitutional principles" requires national consensus. Equal citizenship and basic rights can be a matter of broad consensus, but turning a specific political list into supra-constitutional principles before the constitutional process even begins requires discussion, not a unilateral declaration. Who owns the terms of dialogue? Khalid asks: Who grants the organizers of the dialogue the authority to set the terms for others' participation? The question is legitimate. My answer is: no one should have this authority alone. Neither the preparatory committee, nor the Port Sudan government, nor "Tasis," nor the RSF, nor the army. This is why I spoke from the beginning about preliminary consultations leading to mutually agreed-upon rules for participation, guarantees, agenda, and the relationship between tracks. But a party not monopolizing participation terms does not mean there are no terms at all. Any political process needs rules. Are these rules imposed by a specific camp, or are they the result of a national consultative process? Among the rules I see as necessary is that bearing arms should not become an additional political right, and that a parallel government should not be used as a way to gain a negotiating status that other civil forces do not possess. What state do we want? Ultimately, I do not believe our real disagreement is that Khalid wants to change the state and I want to keep it as is; that is a false dichotomy. For years, from within the SPLM experience, I have written about the "New Sudan" project, the crisis of the Sudanese state, and the necessity of rebuilding the relationship between center and periphery, citizenship, justice, and the unity of Sudan on new foundations. It is perhaps useful here to clarify, without turning this into a personal narrative, that my discussion of "New Sudan" is not that of an observer from outside its intellectual and political experience. I was associated with the SPLM, worked closely with its late leader Dr. John Garang, and edited a book on his vision for rebuilding the Sudanese state. Therefore, my disagreement today is not with the "New Sudan" project itself, but with how this vision is invoked to justify a political or government status born of an ongoing war. The question that concerns me today is different: can we build the "New Sudan" by means that reproduce one of the oldest diseases of Sudan: that weapons become a path to power? If a citizenship state is desired, then weapons should not determine the weight of a citizen or organization. If ending historical privileges is desired, we should not replace them with a new privilege stemming from military control. If rebuilding the state is desired, the process should not begin with mutual recognition between authorities created by war and then ask the rest of the Sudanese to join them. Therefore, the question Khalid ended his article with—how do we prevent the reproduction of the state that created division and wars?—is a question whose importance I agree with. But I add to it a question of equal importance: how do we prevent the war itself from becoming the means that decides who has the right to re-found the state? Here, I believe, lies the essence of the disagreement. Sudan needs a deep rebuilding of its state and political contract, not a return to what it was before the war. But it also needs a national political process in which the possession of weapons, control of territory, or the creation of a government during the war is not a source of political right not possessed by the rest of the Sudanese. A political project is debated with ideas. Armed forces are negotiated with regarding war and weapons. As for the legitimacy of the coming state, it should not be granted by this camp or that to itself, but should come, in the end, from the Sudanese people themselves.