By Dr. Osama Ahmed Al-Mustafa
On October 25, 2021, the scene in Khartoum did not need much interpretation, army tanks took to the streets, overthrew the transitional civilian government, and blocked the way for the completion of a path that was supposed to lead Sudan to democratic transition and constitutional and electoral entitlements.
Then came the April 2023 war, which tore the country apart, the maps of influence changed, state institutions receded in the face of the expansion of the fighting, and Sudan turned from a crisis of political transition to an open tragedy, and with the prolongation of the war, the political language began to change little by little, and realism began to crowd out principles in many corridors of the Sudanese crisis.
On August 31, 2026, the African Union Commission welcomed an initiative for the Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue, considering that it can contribute to unifying the ranks, restoring state institutions, and reaching a democratic state.
This is where the paradox begins, which deserves to be stopped, not because dialogue is rejected, but because Sudan needs dialogue more than ever, the problem is not in the principle of dialogue, but in who sets his table, who determines his parties, who owns his keys, and under what conditions it takes place.
Dealing with an authority that possesses the tools of power and control over the ground may be a negotiating necessity in a moment of war, but dealing with the fait accompli is one thing, and granting it political legitimacy is another, and there is a distance between the two that a continental institution should be very careful to cross, and that is why the question arises that the African Union cannot easily overcome, what has changed?
What has changed between an African Union that froze Sudan’s membership due to the 2021 coup, and an African Union that welcomes in 2026 a dialogue initiative based on the same political and military reality that dominates the power produced by that coup?
The African Union may have calculations that can be understood, perhaps it wants to regain the initiative after the multiplication of initiatives and the overlap of regional and international mediations in the Sudanese file, and perhaps it realized that ignoring the controlling authority on the ground makes any mediation unjustified, while the parallel party accepted all the initiatives, but that was not included in the list of the dialogue initiative. It may be feared that the continuation of the war will lead to the disintegration and collapse of Sudan, all of which are legitimate political considerations for discussion, but they do not answer the most sensitive question, has political realism become a substitute for principle?
If it has suspended Sudan’s membership because the change of power by force is a violation of the constitutional order, it must explain how it is possible today to build a political path on top of the results of that reality without the dialogue turning into a mechanism for reproducing it, where it does not want to.
More sensitively, the word “inclusiveness” may seem flashy, but it becomes dangerous if it turns into an umbrella for recycling the forces associated with the former system of government, or into an outlet that brings old political networks back to the center of the scene under new headings. What is meant here is to put the currents of political Islam and terrorist movements in one place, and to warn that reconciliation will turn into a reproduction of the political structure against which the Sudanese revolted, or that “inclusiveness” will become a cover for the return of the past from the window of war.
True peace is not a ceremony to gather the disputants around a table, but rather a re-establishment of the rules that prevent the recurrence of the tragedy, hence the question that puts the African Union in its narrowest corners is not why do you want dialogue?
Then comes the harsher question: Has Sudan changed, or has the position of the African Union changed? Sudan does not need a dialogue that ends with managing the results of the war, but rather a dialogue that ends with its causes, and it does not need legitimacy to be extracted from the barrel of a gun, but rather a path that returns politics to its natural place, above weapons, above the fait accompli, and under the roof of the constitution.
The real test of the African Union is therefore not in its ability to advocate dialogue, but in its ability to maintain its moral and political coherence when principles become more costly than realistic. Ultimately, the question will remain on the dialogue table: did the AU come to end the effects of the coup and the war, or to adapt to them?
The distance between ending the fait accompli and living with it is not defined by data, but by principles. If the African Union said in 2021 that the coup does not legitimize, it must now explain to the entire continent what has changed so that it is possible to deal with its outcomes.