The war has placed Sudanese society under unprecedented pressure since its outbreak on April 15, 2023. The displacement that followed represented a social earthquake that reshaped the country’s demographic and economic landscape.
Millions of people moved between cities and states or across borders, leaving behind homes and a social fabric woven over long decades of pain and hope. Cities that received waves of displaced people found themselves facing a new reality of overcrowding and pressure on services and job opportunities, while vast areas of the country lost part of their productive human capacity, deepening the economic and social imbalances between the center and the peripheries.
The early days of the war revealed the fragility of the system of trust. Video clips spread documenting the violation of residential neighborhoods in Khartoum State and elsewhere, with painful scenes of people looting the homes of their relatives and neighbors. In one of these clips, a young man was seen robbing his aunt’s house, while in the background the voice of a girl who recognized him rose in bitterness asking: “Why are you stealing a house you grew up in?”
Her words embodied the famous historical phrase “Et tu, Brute?” attributed to Julius Caesar when he saw Marcus Brutus among the senators who assassinated him, expressing the devastating shock of betrayal by those closest.
The matter did not stop there. Housemaids, shop owners, even the neighborhood washerman, guards, and gardeners turned into tools for militias in looting and plunder, pointing out houses and revealing their owners according to their political affiliations.
This tragic moral collapse is a natural consequence of the faltering state and the absence of the rule of law, where influence and the ability to provide protection have become tools of social power.
These harsh realities represent a moment of collapse in the system of social regulation that once governed relationships within society. When the state weakens and its institutions retreat, the law becomes merely a formal framework, and social knowledge, which once formed the basis of trust between people, turns into a tool of power used for control and looting.
Here the existential dimension of the war appears: society has not only been morally tested, but has also been subjected to a redistribution of power within it, where weapons, illicit money, and local networks of influence have assumed the role left by the absence of the state.
Amid this painful reality, profound transformations have appeared in the system of values. The war economy imposes its harsh logic, where survival has become a priority that precedes many moral considerations, and the balance of power within society has changed according to who possesses resources or the ability to provide armed protection. Yet Sudanese society did not move toward total collapse.
At the heart of the crisis, new forms of solidarity emerged, as homes opened their doors to the displaced and community support networks formed, including food kitchens that partially compensated for the absence of official institutions.
Today, with the passage of time, signs of recovery have begun to emerge. The International Organization for Migration revealed the day before yesterday that about 3.6 million people have returned to their homes, with the number of displaced persons decreasing by 21% compared to the highest level of displacement recorded.
The country had reached the peak of the humanitarian crisis in January 2025 with 11.5 million displaced people, before the number declined to about 9.1 million with the improvement of the security situation in some states. Most returnees settled in their original homes despite the fact that 88% of them are damaged and 10% completely destroyed.
Nevertheless, the return has not ended the suffering: difficulty in obtaining food, healthcare, and basic services, the loss of employment, and the rise in the proportion of households led by women and children among the displaced all indicate that the war has redefined society at the level of the family, the neighborhood, and society as a whole.
This phase represents the collision between shock and the attempt to recover. Society is trying to regain its balance slowly, relying on the instinct of survival and a genuine desire to reorganize life alongside a deeply rooted Sudanese culture of collective mobilization and aiding the vulnerable.
In this experience, the political dimension becomes evident: the return of citizens is an indicator of society’s ability to reproduce itself even in the absence of the institutional structure of the state. While the government attempts to reassert control, society itself moves first, organizing, recovering, and creating new networks of coexistence.
At the heart of this stage comes the importance of rebuilding trust among people. Social reconciliation and the role of Sudanese society in repairing relationships have become a condition for stability.
Experiences of community solidarity, initiatives to support displaced families, and the reopening of markets and schools are all indicators of society’s ability to restore what it has lost. Without this trust, any political efforts toward reconstruction will remain incomplete, because the state cannot be built upon a social vacuum.
Here the larger question remains, according to #Face_of_Truth: what remains of us after this war? The answer may not simply be the remnants of homes or fragmented social networks, but rather the genuine ability to rebuild meaning and shared living, and the capacity to rise again from all these challenges.
The war has redefined the relationship between the state and society and placed before everyone a fundamental challenge: will the country benefit from this experience to emerge with a more just, stable, and secure state, or will the wounds of society remain latent beneath the surface awaiting the next crisis?
Wishing you well and good health.
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Shglawi55@gmail.com
