Sudanese political parties and movements have long suffered from factionalism, but this problem is now at its peak. No party has managed to remain intact, and some have fragmented into small factions that are difficult to reunite. The war, which has been raging for nearly two years now, deepened and broadened these divisions. In many cases, divergences in positions do not stem from analytical disagreements but regional, ethnic, and social factors.
The latest public split was that of the National Umma Party. Some of its bodies decided to dismiss the acting party leader, Fadlallah Burma Nasir. In response, he dissolved the bodies that had announced his dismissal, and there are now three factions vying for legitimacy. There are several reasons for this schism- one is a battle for succession among the kin of the party leader, Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi. This struggle was aggravated by the war, with party leaders adopting divergent positions. Tensions escalated when the party leader signed an alliance with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with political forces and armed movements that convened in Nairobi to form the "Tasees Alliance," whose stated intention was to establish a rival government to General Burhan’s administration.
This scenario unfolded along the same exact lines in all Sudanese political parties, with variations in the degree and nature of the splits. The Democratic Unionist Party, one of Sudan’s two major parties, had already been in dire straits when the war broke out after having splintered into too many factions with slightly different names to count. Even the family of Sayyid Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani (head of the Khatmiyya Sufi order) was split between his two sons, Jaafar and Hassan, breaking what remained of the party in two. Meanwhile, another prominent member of the Khatmiyya family, Ibrahim al-Mirghani, signed the Nairobi Charter and joined the "Tasees Alliance."
The Sudanese Communist Party, once the most prominent party of the Left in the region, is undergoing a silent crisis. One faction seeks a broad alliance with the political forces opposed to conflict and in favor of restoring civilian rule, while the other, led by Secretary-General Muhyiddin Al-Khatib, has taken a hardline position, branding all former allies as untrustworthy and refusing to cooperate with them. Some members of one faction have written pieces critical of the Secretary-General’s faction, but the opposing side has remained silent and, aligning with party tradition, kept the debate out of public view.
The Islamic movement had already split into two parties (the National Congress Party and the Popular Congress Party) when they fragmented themselves. Other leftist parties have splintered along similar lines: the Baath Party has split into three factions, the Nasserists into two, while other leftist organizations that had played a role in the revolution have either weakened or disappeared.
The issues plaguing Sudan’s older political parties are strikingly uniform. They have essentially stagnated and failed to rejuvenate or adopt new leadership and programs. A telling reflection of this stagnation is that the four major parties (including the Islamic movement and the Communist Party) have been led by the same figures for forty to fifty years.
The parties have failed to draw youth because they have been unable to modernize their discourse. Most of them do not have a clear program that can appeal to new members. Instead, they rely on regional, sectarian, and ethnic affiliations or on outdated ideological slogans that have not been updated to align with the new state of affairs in the country. In some cases, party membership is inherited. Instead of political programs or ideological convictions, partisan loyalties are an extension of kinship or tribal ties.
Moreover, most parties are not internally democratic. Many either refrain from consistently regular conferences to elect leadership and discuss party programs or hold sham conferences to create the facade of democracy, while the real decisions (alliances and internal appointments to position) are made behind the scenes.
The post-war period will certainly bring major upheaval in Sudan’s political landscape. The scene will be redrawn, fracturing old loyalties, erasing the disappearance of major parties, and giving rise to new ones. The regional and local parties and movements that have proliferated during the war will become particularly prominent. It will be a tsunami, and only those who have prepared for it by modernizing, restructuring, developing their programs, and adapting to the new and complex state of affairs will survive it.
