The political camp aligned with General al-Burhan’s SAF appeared badly fractured on Wednesday after a sharp split inside the Democratic Bloc over whether to take part in exploratory consultations in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
The talks, backed by the international “quintet” mechanism, began amid competing statements from different parts of the bloc. One side said it would not attend, while another declared its participation and engagement in the meetings.
Observers said the dispute was not merely procedural, but a sign of deeper weakness inside the civilian political cover long used by military leaders to present themselves as having a broader national base.
The Democratic Bloc was formed from a mixture of armed movements that signed the Juba Peace Agreement, tribal and regional forces, and traditional political actors. Its main function has been to provide a civilian-looking platform for the SAF in the face of international pressure and rival civilian and revolutionary groups.
As Sudan’s war has dragged on, the bloc has become one of the SAF’s key political tools, used to promote its preferred terms for ending the crisis and to claim that a wide civilian constituency supports its position.
But the confusion around the Addis Ababa consultations, along with contradictory press conferences by different bloc figures, has exposed the fragility of that arrangement. Analysts say the alliance rests on narrow interests and power-sharing calculations, making it vulnerable to collapse when faced with serious negotiations.
Ahead of the Addis Ababa meetings, Mubarak Ardol, an assistant to the head of the Democratic Bloc, said at a press conference that the delegation attending the talks officially represented the bloc and had received notification of the meeting from the organisation’s leadership.
Ardol said the bloc remained committed to dialogue as the only way out of Sudan’s crisis, adding that the current moment offered a suitable opportunity for talks despite differences among its members.
He acknowledged divisions inside the bloc over participation, but insisted that its structures remained unified.
“We will reach an area of consensus, and we will sit with the members who rejected participation in the meeting,” Ardol said.
The international and regional mediators involved in the process are seeking agreement on a preparatory committee and the launch of a broad Sudanese dialogue. But they now face divided delegations that cannot claim to speak with one voice.
The quintet mechanism includes the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the Arab League and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development.
Observers say the Democratic Bloc’s split in front of the quintet deals a significant blow to the SAF-aligned camp’s negotiating position.
The current scene also weakens the SAF’s argument that it has a coherent civilian base capable of producing an acceptable political settlement. Instead, it highlights the structural crisis of alliances built around quotas, influence-sharing and proximity to military power.
The roots of the split lie in the competing ambitions of the bloc’s own components. Some armed movements are seeking regional guarantees to protect their influence, logistics and field gains, while other political factions fear that deeper alignment with the SAF’s agenda could isolate them internationally and damage their post-war future.
The dispute over representation and the size of participating delegations further reveals the limits of what critics describe as a manufactured political incubator. Rather than acting as an independent political force, the bloc appears increasingly shaped by the individual calculations of its leaders.
The division leaves General al-Burhan’s SAF more politically exposed at a sensitive regional moment.
Instead of presenting the Democratic Bloc as a stable and credible alternative to other civilian forces and rival alliances, the current fragmentation gives regional and international actors another reason to bypass its conditions and downgrade its political proposals.
It also reinforces the view that relying on troubled, SAF-aligned political fronts cannot create a genuine democratic transition or lasting stability in Sudan.
The first day of the Addis Ababa consultations offered a clear lesson on the fate of political alliances built mainly to echo military institutions. Without an independent national vision, and with the assumption that civilian cover can permanently be used to advance military strategies, such alliances are unlikely to survive the pressures of a serious political process.
The bloc’s disintegration does not only weaken its own factions. It also strips away part of the civilian mask from Sudan’s power struggle, leaving international mediators with the need to deal more directly and more boldly with the country’s political reality.
For many Sudanese observers, the lesson from Addis Ababa is that any serious peace process must move beyond front organisations and rely instead on more transparent, balanced and genuinely civilian criteria to end the war and prevent Sudan’s continued fragmentation.
