The title of this article is intentionally inverted from the famous phrase “Pessimism of intellect, optimism of will” coined by Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) in his newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo. His point was that optimism based on a realistic view of a deteriorating reality leads to intellectual pessimism and paralyzes society’s ability to confront obstacles to peace, progress, and welfare. Pure realism without optimism defeats society and robs it of the will to change and achieve aspirations for a better future.

Today, in the context of this malicious war, by all measures, we are a defeated society, defeated by decades of optimism of intellect and pessimism of will, or rather by beautifying, embellishing, and sometimes falsifying reality instead of confronting it in all its ugliness, thus unable to change its course.

A defeated and fragmented society, which has lost over two million lives in a series of internal wars that have not ceased since before independence until the ill-fated dawn of April 15, 2023, and two million crimes for which no one has been held accountable.

Since the outbreak of the current war, tens of thousands have died due to direct violence, hunger, and disease, public and private properties have been looted and destroyed, and more than two-thirds of the population face the risk of dying from hunger, with millions displaced or seeking refuge.

Despite some initial optimism in the early months of the war that it could be stopped quickly to avoid total collapse, today, given its internal dynamics, it is likely to continue for many more years, and even if it stopped tonight, it would leave wounds that may never heal and destruction that may never be erased.

As the war continues aimlessly, voices of praise and applause rise, and funeral carnivals celebrate the formation of governments lacking the minimum standards of legitimacy, paving the way for the country’s division and continued decline into the unknown. This path is led by military-commercial cartels headed by warlords on both sides of the front line, cloaked in fragile civilian facades barely covering the bloodstained hands.

The situation worsens as respected factions among those concerned with confronting the ordeal and considered part of the “civil democratic” forces fall into the easy polarization trap set by the fighting parties today. A wide segment remains busy tearing each other apart morally, accusing and demonizing instead of uniting and focusing efforts to confront the collapse, address the horrific humanitarian tragedy, confront war criminals, hold them accountable, even if only morally.

This series of articles aims to contribute to a constructive dialogue among democratic comrades, away from emotional noise, systematic media misinformation, and war propaganda that have poisoned the public space and dragged it into the depths of a foul swamp. This is done by attempting a rigorous and candid analysis of reality, answering the question of the causes of collapse—subjective, objective, and historical—and then persevering in grasping what can be described as optimism of will, the will for possible action seeking a better future.

Who is responsible for the war and its consequences?…

There is no doubt that the leadership and membership of the National Congress Party worked to ignite and sustain this war by preparing its members and active agents infiltrated in the army, official and unofficial security apparatuses, and others. Among many other steps, they fired the first bullet on the morning of April 15, 2025. However, the causes of the outbreak and continuation of this war also lie in the constitutional and institutional vacuum imposed by the October 2021 coup led by the army and its Rapid Support Forces ally, and in the structural distortions inherent in the Sudanese state since 1956, which produced the phenomenon of the Sudanese Islamic movement, armed militias, and criminal commercial cartels.

This means that, in assigning responsibility and seeking a way out, these articles can be seen as a call to move beyond the simplistic view that, intentionally or unintentionally, overlooks the complex historical context and places all responsibility exceptionally on the Islamic movement. Consequently, driven by emotional and sometimes magical thinking, this complicates all superficial hopes for solving the Sudanese problem, exceptionally focusing on eliminating this “group” that has poisoned Sudan’s political, economic, and social life for decades, without specifying the means.

This also neglects other essential elements, most importantly political economy on one hand, and on the other, the significant influence of regional and international powers in shaping events since the fall of the previous regime and before.

To find the most accurate answer to the above question, let us begin by abstractly acknowledging that the current war is a declaration of the failure of the political and developmental project of the state whose borders were drawn by the colonizer and named Sudan.

The sequence of events and decisions since 1956 and their accumulated results have produced a reality in which war was inevitable because it is a reality where moral references and the rule of law have receded, replaced by tools of violence, repression, corruption, and political money to buy loyalties as key elements in the conflict over power and wealth.

This means the question these articles seek to partially answer is how to sustainably stop the war, remove weapons and corruption as tools to resolve political, social, and economic conflicts, and replace them with sound tools that allow Sudanese peoples to peacefully coexist on this defined geographic area. And allow them to build a sovereign state whose institutions represent all citizens, to which individuals and groups owe allegiance as a priority preceding all forms of religious, tribal, ethnic, sectarian, or other loyalties, and whose authority is voluntarily submitted to by all individuals and groups, embodied by its monopoly on legal violence and its effective presence—through them—at the sovereign, legislative, executive, and judicial levels. A state where all individuals and groups belonging to it, without discrimination, have the ability for free social and political mobility and participation in managing state apparatuses equally… a state that accommodates all.

To be continued