A senior figure in Sudan’s Sumoud alliance has criticised narratives promoted by supporters of the Sudanese Armed Forces to justify the continuation of the country’s war, describing the conflict as a “war of lies”.
Sharif Mohamed Osman, political secretary of the Sudanese Congress Party, said the public had been presented with a succession of changing explanations since fighting erupted in April 2023.
Osman said the first narrative promised that SAF would secure a decisive military victory within two weeks. When that prediction failed, he argued, advocates of the war began selectively highlighting violations committed by the Rapid Support Forces while overlooking abuses attributed to the opposing side.
He said the justification later shifted again, with the Port Sudan authorities and their supporters portraying the conflict as an external aggression involving 17 countries.
Osman rejected the suggestion that the war could be resolved through military force, arguing that continued fighting had instead deepened Sudan’s destruction, displacement and political fragmentation.
He said the demand for a single professional national army—one of the central demands raised following the October 2021 coup led jointly by SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—had been exploited to promote an unrealistic military solution.
Osman argued that Sudan’s internal weakness, political divisions and competing centres of armed power had created the conditions for foreign intervention.
“The most accurate description of what is happening is that it is a war of lies,” he said.
