The observer of Sudanese affairs stands perplexed before the syndrome of instability that plagues this vast, resource-rich country, which is in a state of crisis regarding its administration. In a serious and rigorous attempt to decode this sustainable crisis, the book “The Crisis of Governance in Sudan: A Crisis of Hegemony or a Hegemony of Crisis?” by researcher and thinker Dr. Atta El-Hassan El-Battahani emerges. This analytical tome, published in its first edition in 2011, represents a courageous critical attempt to dive into the roots of accumulated political failure, bypassing superficial readings that merely monitor symptoms, to place the surgeon’s scalpel on the structural and conceptual framework of the ruling political class across different eras.
A Necessary Introduction: For Whom is this History Written?
This book did not emerge from an isolated theoretical vacuum, but is rather the cumulative outcome of working papers and research contributions extending from the late 1980s, passing through the period of the third democracy (1987-1989), arriving at the era of the National Islamic Front’s rule. The exceptional advantage of this work is its timing; the researcher records his reviews at a pivotal stage in the country’s history, where the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Naivasha 2005) placed Sudan at a historical crossroads.
El-Battahani directs his message in this book to what he called “the forces of change – the living and vital forces looking towards the future.” He writes for the courageous woman who defeats the terrorism of “public order,” for the farmer who endures the midday sun, for the university student, and for the youth who master the use of modern technologies as tools for social change. It is an explicit call to rouse these forces to build a “historical bloc” based on a comprehensive national settlement, aimed at taming a reality distorted by peripheral capitalism that feeds on the marginalization of the marginalized.
The Ideological Labyrinth and the Dilemma of “Universality”
The author begins his analytical journey by shedding light on the ideology of the ruling political class, addressing the major intellectual polarizations tearing this class apart: the religious-Islamic, the secular-civil, and the nationalist-Arab-African. Here, El-Battahani poses a profound problematic concerning the “crisis of reference and the dilemma of universality.”
The author dwells at length on the experience of “political Islam,” asking with scientific transparency: Has this proposition succeeded in establishing a coherent reference that fulfills the conditions of universality? The comparison here is drawn with the Western-capitalist concept, which managed, despite all its historical and colonial flaws, to impose its hegemony and present a foundational concept for “liberal democracy” as a universal standard. El-Battahani believes that any alternative political thought (whether Islamic or socialist) cannot acquire its universal reference unless it absorbs and theoretically surpasses the solutions presented by human political thought, offering a contribution that advances human issues.
In the Sudanese context, political Islamic thought fell into the trap of “totalitarianism” and the attempt to bend a complex reality into a single formula. Instead of religion being a factor of cohesion, in the hands of the center’s hegemony it transformed into a tool to impose a central “assimilative unity” formula with a patriarchal totalitarian nature, threatening the pluralism that Sudan abounds with and feeding divisions instead of mending them.
Sudanese Identity: A Mosaic Rebellious Against Molds
The analysis transitions smoothly to one of the most complex and bloody issues in Sudan’s history: the issue of identity and subjectivity. The numbers cited in the book form a surreal tableau of a country that cannot be reduced; Sudan comprises nineteen major ethnic groups, encompassing five hundred and ninety-seven sub-ethnic groups. Linguistically, the people of Sudan speak one hundred and fifteen languages, twenty-six of which are spoken by more than one hundred thousand people each.
Faced with this disparity, El-Battahani asks a fundamental question: Can this multiplicity be integrated into a “holistic” identity without obliteration or exclusion? The author traces the evolution of identity concepts, highlighting how “ethnocentrism” (Arab-Islamic) sought to monopolize the definition of the state and imposed an idealized vision of the Sudanese self that excludes African or non-Muslim cultures.
The book strongly criticizes the elite’s view that treats identity as a rigid, absolute core value (Apriori) outside the context of history. Identity, as the author concludes, is not a final given imposed by the force of authority, but a process of tireless interaction and continuous civilizational cross-pollination to solve lived problems. The attempt to freeze identity in a traditionalist, ritualistic mold has contributed to halting political development, turning state apparatuses into a machine for exclusion rather than a vessel for integration and the management of diversity.
National Building: Dancing on the Edge of Dictatorship and Democracy
Between the years 1956 and 2005, Sudan experienced an exhausting sequence of military coups, popular uprisings, and short, aborted democratic periods. In the third chapter, El-Battahani rejects the formal institutional assessment of these periods (the presence of a parliament, judiciary, parties), and moves to a substantive assessment based on measuring the ability of these systems to accomplish the tasks of “national building.”
The author reviews how the missing balance between a “military dictatorship” that does not care about the grievances of workers and peasants, and a “parliamentary democracy” subject to the control of sectarian lords, traditional houses, and capitalism, has prevented the achievement of economic liberation and social emancipation tasks. Successive Sudanese democracies (1956-1958, 1964-1969, 1985-1989) were characterized by the fragility of alliances and the retention of real power in the hands of bureaucratic and commercial capitalist forces unconcerned with developing the productive structure of society.
The author delves into evaluating the performance of these governments according to strict criteria: economic development, social integration, fairness in resource distribution, and securing national sovereignty. The results come as shocking, as the “state of the Jellaba” (a term used by political literature to describe the commercial-pastoral-Islamic center elites) failed to break the correlation between the ethnic division and the economic division of labor. Instead, the marginalization of the peripheries continued, and the state turned into an apparatus for absorbing economic surplus from the countryside to feed parasitic capitalist interests in the center, leading to the outbreak of civil wars in the South and later in Darfur and the East.
The historical sequence reviewed by El-Battahani proves that the crisis is not merely the absence of ballot boxes, but rather a crisis in the nature of the ruling “historical bloc” that consistently fails to integrate the disparate components of Sudanese society into a productive developmental path that benefits everyone, replacing that with ideological slogans that neither nourish nor satisfy hunger.
The Duality of Power and Wealth and the Labyrinth of Federalism
We continue diving into the depths of the valuable tome “The Crisis of Governance in Sudan” by Dr. Atta El-Hassan El-Battahani, moving from the dialectics of identity and the crisis-ridden national building, to dissecting the true infrastructure of the crisis: the economy and resource distribution. If ideological conflicts are the smoke that blinds eyes in the Sudanese political arena, then the monopolization of wealth and its mismanagement is the fire that fuels this smoke.
In the fourth chapter, we stand before a rigorous methodological analysis that dismantles the complex relationship between administration, politics, and the economy, providing us with healing answers about the structural reasons that led to the peripheral wars and the cracking of the national state wall.
Fiscal Federalism: The Illusions of Decentralization in the Grip of the Center
El-Battahani poses in this chapter the major problematic that has long troubled administration in a vast country like Sudan; namely the issue of “local governance” and revenue distribution. An optimistic view prevailed that the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Naivasha in 2005 would constitute a paradigm shift in the formula of governance and the transition towards true decentralization. However, the deep reading presented by the book proves that transformations in constitutional texts do not necessarily mean a transformation in the balance of power or in economic structures.
The author employs a clever metaphor from the field of electrical engineering to dissect the crisis of the relationship between national and local governance. In a parallel circuit, the failure of one lamp leads to the continued illumination of the remaining lamps; which is equivalent to the autonomy of regions in a true federal system. As for the series circuit, the failure of one lamp cuts the current from the entire network. Sudan has been managed – despite all the federal banners – with the logic of a “series system,” where the regions and states continued to rely for their lifeline on an overarching center, making any flaw or deficit in the capital, Khartoum, reflect as complete paralysis and developmental darkness in the rest of the country.
Dissecting Historical Eras: From Financial Independence to Blind Dependence
To dismantle this crisis, the researcher divides the trajectory of local governance in Sudan into precise historical stages, revealing how the capacity of the regions to finance themselves deteriorated in favor of the center’s encroachment:
The first stage (1951-1971): Following the recommendations presented by the English expert Marshall in 1949, a local governance system was established in which the local council enjoyed a degree of relative independence, relying on separate financial resources such as business profit taxes, tithes, herds, and land yields. In this stage, the councils possessed a legal personality and managed health, education, and water affairs with reasonable efficiency, maintaining a margin of autonomy from the center.
The second stage (1971-2005): This stage witnessed an administrative and political coup with the issuance of the Popular Local Government Act of 1971 and the Regional Government Act of 1980. Here, the most dangerous change occurred; the central government understood the “important role” of local councils, but stripped them of all direct taxes, transferring them to the center. The councils’ powers to collect lucrative taxes were abolished, leaving them with the crumbs of local fees, becoming totally dependent on central subsidies that arrive late or never arrive at all.
The book provides shocking statistics that evidence this collapse; in a study of regional budgets for several years, it becomes apparent that central support as a percentage of the regional budget exceeded eighty-one percent, while local resources did not cross the eighteen-point-four percent barrier at best, plummeting in later years to less than seven percent. This structural deficit is not coincidental but the result of systematic policies that pulled the financial rug from under the feet of regional administrations.
Self-Help and the Depletion of the Peripheries: The Economic Roots of Rebellion
When the center fails to provide basic services, and regions are robbed of their resources, the term “self-help” emerges as a cover for bleeding the citizen. El-Battahani explains how local councils in rural areas and regional cities were forced to impose harsh indirect fees and taxes to cover the costs of education, health, and even the operation of state institutions like security and the police.
The book provides painful examples from the states of Darfur and the East; where councils had to invent fees on every economic movement, from crop markets to crossing points, and even burdening citizens with the bill of running security apparatuses and government hospitality. These haphazard “indirect taxes” led to capital flight, rising production costs, and the destruction of the investment environment in the regions, creating fertile ground for rebellion and a deep sense of economic marginalization.
The center’s insistence on integrating effective tax revenues into its treasury, leaving regions to face resource scarcity through the imposition of dual local taxes, led to what the author calls the depletion of the “economic surplus from the countryside” and the entrenchment of the social structure inherited from the colonial era.
Naivasha and the Reproduction of the Crisis: The Constructive Destruction of the Economy
The analysis reaches the stage of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005), where the researcher views that the economic protocols, primarily the wealth-sharing and the establishment of committees like the Fiscal and Financial Allocation and Monitoring Commission, did not address the structural imbalance. Short-sighted political thinking dominated the scene, and national wealth (specifically oil) was treated as a “cake” to be divided between the two ruling partners (the National Congress and the SPLM), without paying attention to the necessity of dismantling the monopolistic structures that hinder the true development of the broader society.
El-Battahani borrows the famous economist Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of “Creative Destruction,” to describe what happened in Sudan as “Constructive Destruction.” Instead of the agreements leading to a real revolution in the Sudanese economy that stimulates production and distributes burdens and opportunities fairly, massive resources were directed towards maintaining patronage state networks, and spending on an inflated bureaucratic military and security machine, leaving vital sectors like education, health, and agriculture in a state of complete withering.
The book confirms the magnitude of the tragedy with numbers, as the percentage of spending on education and health declined terribly, vegetation cover was destroyed, and rural areas were subjected to systematic impoverishment, at a time when Khartoum was experiencing an unproductive consumer boom financed by fleeting oil revenues.
Infrastructure Transformations: When Parasitic Capitalism Assassinates the Dream of the Productive State
Dr. Atta El-Hassan El-Battahani takes us at a crucial juncture in his book to a thorny and complex area, which is the “political economy” of social transformation in Sudan. If politics on its façade is a struggle over seats of power, its deep essence in Sudan has remained a bitter struggle over resources and means of production. The author presents in this context an analytical historical narrative linking the adoption of macroeconomic policies with the disintegration that struck the social and political fabric, considering that the Sudanese crisis is not merely “mismanagement,” but the product of a “deliberate absence” of the national renaissance project in favor of narrow factions and parasitic interests.
This journey begins from the moment of dramatic transformation in the Sudanese economy, specifically with the beginning of the 1970s when the country entered the tunnel of “peripheral capitalism.” El-Battahani analyzes with a scrutinizing eye how the ruling elites, whether in their military or partisan garb, failed to build a solid national productive base. Instead of investing massive natural resources in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, the state slid towards haphazard “economic liberalization” policies imposed by international funding institutions, which found no institutional structure in Sudan capable of absorbing their shocks. This path did not lead to market recovery as theorists preached, but led to the birth of a new class accurately described by the author as “parasitic capitalism,” a group that does not live on production or innovation, but feeds on real estate speculation, commercial commissions, and the monopolization of basic commodities through proximity to central power circles.
This structural distortion in the economy had a heavy social price, as the book observes how the Sudanese middle class, which represented the safety valve for political stability, eroded. With the decline of the state’s role in providing basic services like health and education, and the transformation of these sectors into commodities sold to those who can pay the price, the class gap widened unprecedentedly. El-Battahani clarifies that this economic collapse was not confined to Khartoum, but struck more harshly in the peripheries and the Sudanese countryside. The policies that favored imports over local production led to the destruction of major agricultural projects, pushing millions of farmers and producers to the brink of poverty, which later paved the way for the emergence of armed conflicts as a tool to demand squandered economic rights.
El-Battahani does not stop at monitoring the collapse, but dives into analyzing the “oil trap” that Sudan fell into in the late 1990s. He believes that the flow of oil revenues gave the ruling regime a temporary “lifeline,” enabling it to inflate the security and bureaucratic machine and expand loyalty and patronage networks, instead of being a locomotive for balanced development. Oil created a state of “developmental illusion” in the center, manifested in the false urban renaissance in Khartoum, while the areas of wealth production in the South and the peripheries continued to suffer from chronic marginalization. This “rentier economy” contributed to deepening the crisis of identity and politics, as the state turned into “spoils” fought over by the influential, weakening its prestige and depriving it of its primary function as the guardian of public interest, and making peace itself merely a deal to share financial returns, not a social contract to build the nation.
In another chapter of this profound narrative, the author addresses the issue of “state and religion” from an unconventional angle, transcending theological debate to examine the political function of ideology. El-Battahani sees that the employment of religion in Sudanese politics often did not aim to consolidate the values of justice and equality that Islam calls for, but was used as an ideological cover to legitimize policies of exclusion and marginalization. By imposing a “monolithic formula” of national identity based on narrow interpretations, other cultural and ethnic components were marginalized, making “religion” a divisive element instead of a unifying one. The book bitterly criticizes how religious slogans turned into tools for financial and political “empowerment” for a specific group, causing the ethical political project to lose its credibility among broad masses, and ultimately leading to a state of political and social alienation.
The core of the crisis, as El-Battahani sees it, lies in the “deficit of hegemony”; that is, the inability of any political force to propose a comprehensive national project that enjoys true popular consensus. Because of this deficit, successive regimes resorted to the “hegemony of crisis,” meaning managing the country by creating continuous crises and relying on short-sighted security solutions. This historical impasse dictates upon the living forces in society, as the author suggests, the necessity of searching for a new “historical bloc” that transcends traditional divisions (right and left, Arabism and Africanism, Islam and secularism), to establish a national platform based on equal citizenship, equitable development, and sustainable democracy.
Reading “The Crisis of Governance in Sudan” in light of the transformations taking place today places us before a revealing mirror of past flaws and present dangers. El-Battahani does not merely theorize, but presents a critical “manifesto” calling for rebuilding the Sudanese state on rational and productive foundations. It is a call for emancipation from the illusions of “parasitic capitalism” and “ideological despotism” towards a national space that accommodates everyone, transforming cultural and geographical diversity from a political burden into a source of strength and prosperity.
Forces of Change Rising from the Ashes: The Agency of Society in the Face of State Calcification
We move with Dr. Atta El-Hassan El-Battahani from dissecting the deaf economic and political structures to examining the living pulse in the veins of Sudanese society. The researcher sees that the Sudanese state, with its totalitarian nature and exclusionary orientations, tried for long periods to domesticate society and turn it into a mere passive follower of the center’s decisions. However, what the book reveals is the “dialectic of resistance” born from the womb of suffering; El-Battahani analyzes the emergence of new social forces that managed, despite all attempts at repression and containment, to create alternative spaces for public action and establish different concepts of citizenship and national affiliation.
The author begins this aspect of his analysis by standing in reverence to the historical and heroic role of Sudanese women, considering them the backbone of any true project of change. El-Battahani explains that the ruling regime’s targeting of women through a package of repressive laws, foremost of which is the “Public Order” law, was not merely a desire for moral discipline, but a conscious political attempt to break the will of society in its most vital links. Yet, the societal reaction was counterproductive; those pressures turned into fuel for a growing rights and political awareness, making women’s issues a central cause in the struggle for freedom and dignity. The book recounts how the Sudanese woman, in rural and urban areas, in displacement camps and university halls, developed mechanisms for silent and declared daily resistance, making her a political actor that cannot be bypassed in any upcoming national settlement, thus transcending the traditional roles in which “patriarchal” elites tried to confine her.
In a related context, El-Battahani devotes ample space to analyzing the phenomenon of “youth” as a radical force of change separate from traditional partisan frameworks. The researcher views the generational gap in Sudan not merely as an age gap, but a gap in “knowledge and tools.” The Sudanese youth, raised in the shadow of the information revolution, managed to bypass the strict state censorship via cyberspace, transforming social media into platforms for organization, mobilization, and awareness-spreading. The book affirms that these youth forces, which El-Battahani described as “the living and vital forces,” have disbelieved in the hollow ideological promises of the old political class, and begun formulating a national discourse focused on fundamental rights, social justice, and the right to a dignified life away from elite struggles over seats of power. This shift towards a “civil agenda” represents, in the author’s view, the beginning of the end of the era of “sectarian hegemony” and “military despotism,” where the street has become the true source of legitimacy.
The discussion then moves to deconstruct the concept of the “historical bloc” proposed by El-Battahani as an exit from the tunnel of the crisis. This concept, inspired by Gramscian literature and adapted to the Sudanese reality, calls for building a broad alliance comprising professionals, workers, farmers, students, displaced persons, and the marginalized in the peripheries. The author sees that the inability of traditional parties to bring about change is due to their elitist nature and the connection of their leaders’ interests to the old state structure. Therefore, the bet falls on the shoulders of this “bloc” whose interests converge in dismantling “parasitic capitalism” and building a state of institutions. El-Battahani clarifies that the success of this bloc depends on its ability to bridge the gap between the center and the peripheries, and to transform regional and ethnic demands into a comprehensive national project that sees “diversity” as a source of richness, not a cause for conflict.
In a critical analysis of civil society institutions, El-Battahani notes that these institutions have been subjected to attempts of “nationalization” by the authority, or “westernization” by international organizations. However, he sees in “trade unions,” “neighborhood committees,” and demand-driven associations the seeds of an authentic civil society stemming from people’s real needs. These entities, despite their modest capabilities, represent the first line of defense for citizens’ interests, establishing the culture of “grassroots democracy” lacked by central regimes. The author stresses that the strength of civil society lies not only in its opposition to the state but in its ability to provide developmental and service alternatives in the absence or inability of official state apparatuses.
El-Battahani concludes this chapter with a forward-looking vision regarding the “manufacturing of hope.” He believes that Sudan, despite all the wounds and wars, possesses massive human energy capable of working miracles if provided with wise leadership and a just national platform. The crisis in Sudan, as depicted by the book in this part, is a crisis of “diversity management” and not a crisis of the “existence of diversity.” The Sudanese people, with their multiplicity of races and cultures, have proven in moments of historical turning an amazing capacity for solidarity and cohesion. The author concludes that breaking the “cycle of historical failure” requires critical courage to confront the mistakes of the past, and a solid political will to place the nation’s interest above the interests of individuals and groups, considering that “the future is made now” in workshops, in fields, and in squares where the voice demanding rights and justice rises.
El-Battahani sees that exiting the “labyrinth of the crisis” requires first and foremost courage in admitting that the old formulas for managing governance have exhausted their purposes and are no longer valid for confronting the challenges of the twenty-first century. The “comprehensive historical settlement” called for by the author is not merely a political quota-sharing among elites to distribute ministerial portfolios, but a new social contract that redefines the relationship between the individual and the state, and between the center and the peripheries. This settlement must start from a solid base, which is “equal citizenship” that does not discriminate between one citizen and another based on race, religion, region, or partisan affiliation. The book stresses that any attempt to circumvent the principle of citizenship through patchwork solutions will only lead to postponing the coming explosion and deepening the state of national fragmentation.
In the context of structural reform, El-Battahani proposes a radical vision to dismantle the “structure of the parasitic state” that lives on absorbing economic surplus and employing it to protect the interests of the ruling minority. The alternative he proposes is the transition towards a “state of development and production”; a state that invests in human beings first through education and health, and works to stimulate productive sectors in agriculture and industry. The author believes that the success of this transition requires a comprehensive reform of the civil service and the bureaucratic apparatus of the state, transforming it from a tool of oppression and extortion into an engine for development and renaissance. He also affirms the necessity of the independence of the judiciary and the activation of oversight and accountability mechanisms, considering that “justice” is the solid cornerstone without which no sustainable political or economic stability can be built.
El-Battahani touches in the conclusion of his thesis on the “external role” and its impact on the Sudanese crisis, warning against mortgaging national will to regional and international agendas. He sees that the weakness of the internal “historical bloc” and the absence of an inclusive national project is what opens the doors to foreign interventions that often seek to achieve their own interests at the expense of the aspirations of the Sudanese people. Therefore, the reclamation of “national sovereignty” begins by strengthening the internal front and building strong national institutions capable of managing diversity and protecting gains. Sudan, with its strategic location and resources, must transform from a “zone of conflict” to a “zone of integration,” and this will not happen unless the Sudanese succeed in presenting themselves to the world as a unified bloc possessing a clear vision for its future.
