Two and a half years ago, Sudanese protesters achieved something extraordinary.
Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan for thirty years, was removed from power after months of mass demonstrations. Images from Khartoum seemed to capture one of those rare moments when political history visibly changes direction: enormous crowds demanding civilian government, women taking prominent roles in the protest movement, and a dictator who had survived wars, sanctions and international isolation finally gone.
But removing Bashir turned out to be much easier than answering the question that followed.
Who should govern Sudan after him?
That question is becoming increasingly urgent this week. Sudan’s civilian and military leaders are openly confronting one another, rival groups are demonstrating in Khartoum, and the transitional arrangement created after Bashir’s removal appears increasingly fragile. Supporters of civilian government took to the streets on Thursday in large numbers, while another protest movement has been demanding that the military dissolve the current government. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has warned that the political crisis threatens Sudan’s transition.
It is tempting to describe this as another disagreement between politicians. It is considerably more serious than that. Sudan’s transition contains a structural contradiction that has existed from the beginning: the country is attempting to construct civilian democracy while the institutions possessing most of the weapons never completely left political power.
That raises a question I think applies to many revolutions: when does removing a ruler actually amount to changing a regime?
Bashir came to power through a military coup in 1989 and spent three decades constructing a political system deeply intertwined with the armed forces, security services, Islamist political networks and economic interests. His government fought wars across the country, including the devastating conflict in Darfur, and survived partly because coercive institutions remained central to political authority.
When mass protests finally threatened Bashir’s position in 2019, it was ultimately the military that removed him.
That distinction matters.
The protesters created the political pressure that made Bashir’s rule unsustainable. But civilians did not seize the presidential palace and dismantle the security apparatus themselves. Military leaders removed the president and initially formed a military council.
The revolution therefore produced an unusual result. The head of the old political order disappeared, but some of the organisations that had made the old order possible remained among the most powerful institutions in the country.
After further protests, negotiations and violence, civilian groups and military leaders eventually agreed to share power through a transitional arrangement. A Sovereign Council containing both civilians and military figures would oversee the country until elections. Abdalla Hamdok, an economist and former United Nations official, became prime minister and headed a civilian government.
On paper, this created a pathway from dictatorship towards democracy.
In practice, it created two sources of authority inside the same transition.
Civilian leaders possessed revolutionary legitimacy and responsibility for governing.
Military leaders possessed guns, institutions, economic interests and control over much of the coercive apparatus.
Those are not equal forms of power.
A civilian minister can issue an instruction.
A general commands the organisation that ultimately possesses the capacity to enforce instructions.
Democratic transitions normally require the second eventually becoming subordinate to the first. Sudan has never fully completed that transfer.
This is why Thursday’s demonstrations matter. Large crowds demanding civilian government are not simply choosing one faction of the transitional administration over another. They are arguing over the fundamental question of whether Sudan’s future political system will actually place armed institutions beneath elected authority.
The military has its own argument. Sudan’s civilian government has struggled badly. The economy remains in crisis. Political factions are divided. Public frustration is significant. A failed coup attempt in September further destabilised the transition, and military leaders have increasingly criticised civilian politicians for mismanagement and infighting.
Some protesters currently demanding the government’s dissolution are therefore not imaginary creations of the military. There is genuine dissatisfaction with the civilian political establishment.
That makes the situation more difficult.
If civilian politicians govern badly, does that justify greater military involvement?
My answer is no, but not because civilian government automatically produces better decisions.
Democracy does not guarantee competence.
It provides a mechanism for dealing with incompetence without handing political authority to whoever controls the strongest armed organisation.
That difference is fundamental.
If Hamdok’s government is ineffective, a democratic political system should eventually allow voters to replace it. If generals can replace governments whenever they conclude civilian politicians are failing, elections become conditional on military approval.
The military then becomes the ultimate constitutional court, except its judgements are enforced by force rather than law.
That is not civilian democracy.
It is military guardianship with elections operating beneath it.
The argument generals frequently make is that they do not want political power. They are reluctantly intervening because civilian politicians have created instability, corruption or national danger.
Sometimes they may even believe that.
But institutions cannot depend on whether individual generals possess good intentions.
This is the same problem that appeared in Guinea last month. Colonel Mamady Doumbouya justified overthrowing Alpha Condé by pointing towards corruption, poverty and constitutional manipulation. Some of those criticisms were legitimate.
The coup still placed the military above the constitutional order.
Sudan’s situation is different because its military already possesses a formal role in the transition. But that may actually make the problem more difficult. The armed forces do not need to overthrow an entirely civilian political system from outside. They are already inside the political structure and can claim that intervention is part of preserving the transition rather than ending it.
This is where democratic transitions become vulnerable.
Institutions inherited from authoritarian governments rarely disappear on the day the dictator falls.
Civil servants remain.
Judges remain.
Security agencies remain.
Military commanders remain.
Business networks remain.
Political patronage remains.
Sometimes that continuity is necessary. A revolution cannot dismiss every person who knows how the electricity grid, central bank or army works and expect the country to function normally the following morning.
But continuity also means the old political order retains mechanisms through which it can influence the new one.
Revolutionary change therefore involves a difficult balance: change too little and the old regime survives beneath new leadership; change too much and the state itself may stop functioning.
Sudan has been trying to navigate that problem since 2019.
The economic dimension makes the transition even harder. Sudan inherited enormous economic difficulties from the Bashir era, including debt, inflation and shortages. Hamdok’s government has attempted reforms partly intended to normalise Sudan’s relationship with international financial institutions and foreign governments.
Some reforms are economically defensible but politically painful. Reducing subsidies, restructuring the economy and allowing prices to adjust can impose immediate costs on households long before promised benefits arrive.
That creates a dangerous timing problem for new democracies.
Authoritarian systems can accumulate economic distortions for decades. A transitional government inherits them and is then expected to repair everything quickly enough that citizens continue supporting democracy.
The old regime creates the bill.
The new government has to collect it.
If living standards deteriorate during reform, people may associate the pain not with the policies accumulated under dictatorship but with the democratic transition occurring when the pain becomes visible.
This resembles Tunisia’s problem earlier this year. Political freedom arrived much faster than economic transformation. Citizens gained elections and civil liberties while unemployment, inequality and ineffective government remained.
Eventually the question becomes: what has democracy actually delivered?
That question is legitimate.
But it can become dangerous when military institutions offer themselves as the answer.
Armies possess characteristics that make them appear attractive during political disorder. They have hierarchy. Commands are followed. Decisions can be made quickly. They project discipline.
Civilian politics looks chaotic by comparison. Parties argue. Coalitions fracture. Legislatures delay decisions. Protesters complain. Newspapers criticise everyone.
The temptation is to confuse order with effectiveness.
An army can make a decision quickly because it does not need to negotiate with millions of citizens possessing conflicting preferences.
That is precisely why military government is not democratic.
Political disagreement is not a technical malfunction to be eliminated. It is the reality democracy is designed to manage.
Sudan’s military also possesses economic interests of its own, which makes the idea of a politically neutral army particularly difficult to sustain. Military and security institutions have significant involvement in businesses and economic assets. The Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary organisation led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, also possesses substantial independent power and economic interests.
The RSF itself demonstrates how complicated Sudan’s coercive structure has become. Its origins lie partly in the militias associated with the conflict in Darfur. It later became institutionalised as a paramilitary force and now exists alongside the regular military.
So even saying “the military” simplifies the situation.
Sudan contains multiple armed centres of power.
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan heads the armed forces and the Sovereign Council. Hemedti commands the RSF and serves as deputy head of the council. Civilian politicians occupy another part of the transitional structure.
This arrangement may have been necessary to prevent immediate conflict after Bashir’s removal.
But it also means Sudan’s political system contains several actors with independent sources of coercive power.
That is not a stable foundation for democracy unless those forces eventually become subordinated to one constitutional authority.
This connects directly to what I wrote about Lebanon last week. A weak state does not necessarily contain too little power. It can contain too many competing organisations powerful enough to resist common institutions.
Sudan’s problem is similar but not identical.
The question is who ultimately possesses the right to command force.
In a consolidated democracy, the answer should be boring. Elected civilian institutions establish policy, and the armed forces follow lawful civilian authority regardless of whether generals agree politically.
When that relationship remains negotiable, democracy remains negotiable too.
There is also the question of accountability for the Bashir era. Sudan’s transition is not simply supposed to create elections. It is supposed to deal with the legacy of decades of authoritarianism and conflict, including atrocities in Darfur.
Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes committed in Darfur. The question of cooperation with the ICC has therefore become politically sensitive.
Accountability threatens people and institutions connected to the old order.
That creates another reason transitions are dangerous.
Democratisation does not simply change who wins future elections. It can determine whether powerful people are prosecuted for what they did in the past.
For those individuals, losing political influence may therefore mean much more than losing a government position.
It can mean prison.
That dramatically increases the incentive to obstruct transition.
Political scientists sometimes describe this as part of the commitment problem facing democratisation: why should powerful authoritarian actors surrender control if they cannot trust the new system not to destroy them once they do?
The morally satisfying answer is that people responsible for crimes should face justice.
The strategically difficult question is how to obtain a peaceful transfer of power from people who believe surrendering power may expose them to prosecution.
There is no easy answer.
Blanket immunity can entrench impunity.
Aggressive prosecution can make authoritarian actors fight harder to remain in power.
Successful transitions somehow have to balance justice, stability and credibility.
Sudan has not yet found that balance.
What concerns me most this week is therefore not simply that civilian and military leaders are arguing.
Arguments are normal.
It is that the dispute concerns the institution capable of deciding arguments by force.
Civilian politicians can threaten to resign.
Political parties can threaten protests.
Generals possess another option.
That asymmetry hangs over every negotiation.
A power-sharing agreement between civilians and soldiers can create temporary stability. But if the ultimate objective is democracy, military participation in government has to contain an expiration date.
Otherwise the transition stops being a bridge and becomes the destination.
The huge demonstrations this Thursday suggest many Sudanese citizens understand that.
They did not spend months protesting Bashir simply to replace one form of military-dominated politics with another.
At the same time, civilian leaders cannot assume revolutionary legitimacy will protect them indefinitely from criticism. If they want civilians to control the state, they have to demonstrate that civilian government can actually govern it.
That means managing economic reform, reducing political fragmentation, building institutions and eventually delivering credible elections.
Democracy cannot survive entirely on the argument that military rule would be worse.
It has to create reasons for citizens to believe civilian government is worth defending.
This may be the central problem facing Sudan tonight.
The revolution removed Bashir.
It did not remove the army.
It did not remove the paramilitary forces.
It did not remove the economic networks accumulated under authoritarian rule.
It did not remove the political distrust created by decades of conflict.
Perhaps no revolution could accomplish all of that immediately.
But until those structures are transformed, Sudan’s democratic transition remains vulnerable to the institutions it inherited.
Removing a dictator is a visible event. There is a date, a crowd, an announcement and eventually a new person occupying the presidential palace.
Building civilian supremacy is much less dramatic.
It happens when a general receives an instruction from an elected government that he dislikes and follows it anyway.
When an army accepts a budget written by civilians.
When military businesses become subject to ordinary financial oversight.
When security officials can be investigated by courts.
When election results determine who governs without requiring approval from armed institutions.
Those moments rarely produce revolutionary photographs.
They may be the moments when a revolution actually succeeds.
Sudan removed Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
Two and a half years later, it is still trying to remove the political principle that men with guns ultimately decide who rules.
Until it does, the revolution remains unfinished.
