Civilians in the Crosshairs of Political and Military Compensation
Dr. Al-Waleed Adam Madibou
The destruction of nations is not a reality brought upon by war alone, rather, the manner in which said nations are governed as well as the mentality adopted affects the overall outcome. Following the outbreak of this war, the State —instead of confronting its shortcomings on the battlefield— has chosen to take revenge on its own citizens, as if the people were the enemy, and as if civilians were the arena for compensating for defeats on all fronts.
The crime of targeting Al-Daein Teaching Hospital on the first day of Eid cannot be viewed as an isolated incident. For it constitutes a stark illustration of a deeper meaning: When the State fails on the battlefield, it may resort —intentionally or out of incompetence— to transferring the battle to the bodies of civilians. More than one hundred victims, the vast majority of whom were women and children, lost their lives in a place that is supposed to be a sanctuary for survival, not a stage for annihilation. At this particular juncture, we’re not highlighting a mere mistake, but a pattern.
In legal literature, this pattern is clearly defined: Targeting civilians or civilian objects, especially medical facilities, constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law and could potentially amount to a war crime. Nevertheless, when such actions are repeated systematically and used as a tool of deterrence or collective punishment, we approach a more serious classification: Crimes against humanity.
However, the issue is not limited to a legal sense; it is, at its core, an ethical issue. The Renaissance intellect Abd Al-Rahman Al-Kawakibi states in “The Nature of Despotism”: “Despotism is the root of all corruption,” and that the despot views his subjects as no more than tools to consolidate his power. This statement, despite its age, seems as if it was written to describe our present: Where the nation is reduced to a ruling authority, and that authority is reduced to a will that views bloodshed as no more than a means of survival.
As for the American philosopher Hannah Arendt, she described how evil becomes a “normal” practice within State institutions when it is emptied of its moral meaning and managed with cold, detached language. This is precisely what we are facing: Institutionalized violence, carried out coldly, and justified by an official rhetoric, as if the victims were mere numbers.
Despite this blatant decline, broad forces within the Sudanese society have maintained a degree of moral restraint, refusing to be drawn into a cycle of blind revenge and recognizing that succumbing to the logic of counter-violence only means reproducing the same tragedy. Hence, this adherence doesn’t reflect weakness, but rather an awareness that the survival of society depends on preserving a minimum set of values.
Nevertheless, recent history offers a lesson that ought not be ignored. As the nationalist regimes that ruled Iraq and Syria for decades, raising slogans of eternity and power, met well-known fates: Internal divisions, international isolation, and a resounding collapse once their legitimacy was exhausted. Today, it seems that some regimes cloaked in religion are treading the same path, deluding themselves that any ideological cover will protect them from the laws of history.
Hence, despotism does not change its nature by changing its slogans. Whether it is disguised as nationalism or religion, its outcome is the same when based on oppression and the violation of human rights.
