Public discourse on the war in Sudan operates on a rigid, unforgiving binary. Document an atrocity committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur or El Fasher, and the immediate assumption is political alignment with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Port Sudan. Conversely, highlight the SAF’s sieges, blocked humanitarian corridors, or alleged chemical attacks, and the accusation flips: you are carrying water for the RSF. The facts themselves rarely drive the reaction; the structure of the conversation does.
The Schmittian Trap: Why the “Third Position” Is Illegible
Political theorist Carl Schmitt offers the clearest diagnostic for this phenomenon. In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt argues that political life organizes itself around a single, existential distinction: friend and enemy. A statement only becomes legible once it is sorted into one of these two categories. There is no third slot for a documented fact that serves neither party.
Applied to Sudan, this explains why a claim about SAF conduct is instantly read either as an attack on the SAF (therefore pro-RSF) or a defense of the SAF against exaggeration (therefore anti-RSF). The specific content of the claim matters less than which side of the binary it appears to serve. In a conflict where both belligerents are implicated in documented atrocities and war crimes and heavily invested in narrative control, neutrality itself is coded as a hostile act because it denies the binary that the warring parties—and their external patrons—require to sustain their legitimacy.
The African Union: Mandated for the Middle, Drifting to the Side
The African Union (AU) was institutionally designed to occupy the very “third position” Schmitt argues ordinary discourse cannot hold. Its mandate requires judging both belligerents by a common rule. The record, however, reveals a steady drift from that mandate.
The 2021 Suspension: A Promise of Impartiality
Following the October 2021 military coup that ousted civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) suspended Sudan. Crucially, this suspension did not sever diplomatic engagement. It distinguished between engaging authorities and recognizing legitimacy. Sudan’s participation in AU activities was frozen until the restoration of a civilian-led transitional authority. This was the institutional embodiment of the “common rule”: the military authorities were not the legitimate expression of Sudan’s constitutional order.
Procedural Drift: Port Sudan, Addis Ababa, and the Tilt
Since that suspension, the AU Commission has repeatedly acted in ways that blur this distinction:
- December 2025: AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf welcomed a peace initiative originating from Port Sudan—the seat of the SAF-aligned government. This prompted a formal protest memorandum signed by over 100 Sudanese political parties, civil society organizations, and experts arguing that no AU institution has grounds to recognize a legitimate government or faction-led effort while the suspension stands.
- Addis Ababa Talks: Civilian coalition members reported to Horn Review that organizers of AU-facilitated dialogue in Addis Ababa restructured seat allocations to favor a pro-SAF bloc without clear procedural justification.
- Sudanese-Sudanese Dialogue: The Commission’s recent endorsement of the dialogue spearheaded by SAF leader Gen. al-Burhan extended this procedural tilt rather than correcting it.
When the institution mandated to hold the neutral center drifts toward one side through statements and procedural choices—rather than formal policy—it raises a critical question: Is procedural neutrality merely a mask that inevitably slips when an institution interfaces with belligerents?
The RSF’s Parallel Track: Contesting Sovereignty
The RSF has not passively accepted this dynamic. It has pursued its own legitimacy independent of AU recognition, agreeing on a charter for a parallel decentralized government in Nairobi in February 2025 (often referred to as the Tasis alliance). Both parties are now contesting sovereignty by whatever means available—one leveraging the remnants of state infrastructure in Port Sudan, the other building a parallel governance structure. This symmetry of contested legitimacy makes an external arbiter’s impartiality more vital here than in conflicts with a clear legal asymmetry between sides.
Neutrality vs. Impartiality: The IHL Standard the AU Misses
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) provides a more precise vocabulary for the AU’s failure than the vague language of “bias.” As outlined by humanitarian standards bodies like ALNAP, IHL distinguishes two distinct concepts:
- Neutrality: Declining to hold any view on who is politically “right.” The AU is not obliged to adopt this; it has views on which side bears responsibility for specific atrocities.
- Impartiality: Applying the same evaluative standard to all parties regardless of political sympathy. This is the non-negotiable obligation.
The incidents cited above represent a departure from impartiality, not neutrality. The AU did not fail because it took a side morally; it failed because it applied different procedural rules to the SAF (engagement, recognition of initiatives, seat allocations) than it did to the RSF (exclusion, non-recognition). Impartiality does not require assigning equal blame; it requires applying equal rules.
Somoud Coalition: The Civilian Attempt to Build the “Third Position”
Amid this institutional vacuum, a genuine attempt to occupy the third position exists among Sudanese civilians. The Somoud coalition, led by former PM Abdalla Hamdok, represents the clearest political project refusing military rule by either belligerent. It stands distinct from the Democratic Bloc (aligned with SAF) and Tasis (aligned with RSF).
Refusing Recognition: “Warring Parties,” Not Partners
Somoud’s proposed political architecture pointedly excludes both the SAF and RSF from transitional authority. Its founding declaration refers to them only as “warring parties”—a deliberate semantic refusal to grant either the legitimacy that comes with formal recognition. This even-handedness reflects its constituency: resistance committees, displaced communities, and civil society actors who have borne the brunt of both sides’ atrocities:
- SAF aerial bombardment of civilian areas.
- RSF ethnically targeted campaigns in Darfur and Gezira.
- A sexual violence crisis documented by UN monitors, attributed mostly to RSF with verified cases linking SAF-aligned forces.
Somoud is effectively trying to build the institutional home for the “common rule” argument in real political terms—a constituency with no stake in either side winning, only in both being held to account.
The Accountability Paradox
However, Somoud’s structural weakness mirrors the tension at the heart of the discourse. Without naming the belligerents precisely in a peace roadmap, it struggles to build enforceable accountability provisions. A sincere attempt at impartiality must resolve the tension between diplomatic ambiguity (required to keep a table together) and specificity (required for justice). This is the trap the AU fell into: avoiding the specificity of accountability by retreating into the ambiguity of a tilted process.
Institutional Drift: Latitude Without Accountability
Analysis suggests this AU drift stems less from outright policy capture than from a structural flaw in the AU Commission (AUC) chairmanship. The Chairperson operates with significant latitude to make statements and structure dialogue processes that member states never explicitly authorized. This allows the Chair’s personal outlook—or the interests of their home state—to diverge from the organization’s formal mandate without any formal decision to abandon that mandate.
The result is an institution meant to model the third position reproducing the binary instead, leaving Sudanese civilians without the one venue supposed to judge both belligerents by a common standard.
Conclusion: The Corrective Is Equal Rules, Not Equal Blame
The binary trap in Sudan’s war discourse is not a failure of individual commentators to think clearly; it is a structural feature of politically organized conflict, predicted by Schmitt and illustrated with unusual clarity in Sudan, where both the SAF and RSF stand credibly accused of war crimes.
The corrective—for the AU, for international observers, and for those assessing Somoud’s viability—is not a demand for an impossible neutrality on the war’s politics. The question is strictly procedural: Is the same institutional standard applied to both?
Impartiality does not require the AU to assign equal blame; it requires it to apply equal rules. That distinction is the lifeline for Sudan. It is precisely the line Somoud’s founding language attempts to hold, and it is the line the AU must reclaim if its suspension mandate is to mean anything more than a procedural placeholder.
By Tsega’ab Amare, Horn Review
