Talking Under Fire: What Libya and Yemen Teach Sudan About National Dialogue

A dialogue convened before the guns fall silent risks entrenching the very divisions it seeks to heal.

By Sami Abdelhalim Saeed

On 30 August, Sudan’s Dialogue Preparatory Committee, made up largely of academics and professionals, launched an independent initiative in Khartoum to facilitate consultations and lay the groundwork to end the war and build a broader national consensus. A national dialogue is an indispensable component of any comprehensive political settlement. Yet regional precedent Syria, Libya, Yemen and later in Ethiopia- shows that launching one without the necessary preconditions in place often deepens conflict rather than resolving it.

If Sudan is to build a sustainable peace process, it must learn systematically from the successes and failures of comparable experiences. This article examines two: Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (2013 to 2014) and Libya’s successive dialogue tracks, culminating in the 2020 Libyan Political Dialogue Forum. Both were conducted during the civil war, under incomplete central authority, and across territory divided among competing factions. Sudan faces the same conditions today.

A Fractured State

Sudan’s current political landscape is severely fragmented. Active armed conflict, rival administrative authorities and deepening institutional collapse together threaten the state’s core sovereignty. The confrontation between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), compounded by the alignment of armed movements, partisan militias and political blocs behind one side or the other, has fractured the country’s territorial and administrative governance.
Constitutionally, the prolonged crisis has exposed the weaknesses of interim frameworks such as the 2019 Constitutional Declaration. The result is a dangerous legal void in which military leverage dictates state authority. Any attempt to build governance mechanisms under active hostilities risks institutionalising a de facto partition. Without a clear constitutional path to restore state legitimacy, address sub-national grievances and establish a unified security architecture, Sudan faces perpetual fragmentation and institutional decay.

Escaping this crisis requires a genuine and inclusive national consensus. Experience shows that top-down agreements, narrow elite pacts and unilateral dialogues convened under fire do not deliver durable peace. A viable process must be strictly sequenced: first, an immediate, verifiable ceasefire and humanitarian access; then, structural state-building negotiations. Those negotiations must bring together civilian political coalitions, armed factions, local resistance committees, women, youth and traditional authorities to agree on a shared constitutional vision. They must also include the RSF, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur (SLM-AW). Only a homegrown consensus that guarantees civilian oversight of a unified security sector and a transition to civilian democratic governance can rebuild Sudan’s social contract and prevent total state failure.

Two Regional Experiences

The dialogues in Yemen and Libya were conceived as comprehensive tracks to rewrite constitutions, break political deadlock and move from war towards democratic state-building. Fundamental design flaws and a disconnect between the negotiating table and the battlefield prevented both from delivering lasting stability.

The Yemeni Model (NDC, 2013–2014) is inclusive on paper but overtaken on the ground: Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC) brought together 565 delegates from nine stakeholder groups, with quotas for women (30 per cent), youth (20 per cent) and southerners (50 per cent). Working through nine thematic groups, it produced a final document recommending a six-region federal state. For all its success in civic inclusion, the process foundered on the gap between deliberations in Sana’a and militarisation in the field. While delegates negotiated, armed factions such as the Houthis expanded their territory, eventually seizing the capital in September 2014 and rendering the agreement obsolete. The top-down imposition of the six-region map also alienated key local constituencies and helped trigger full-scale armed resistance.
The Libyan Model (LPDF, 2013 & 2020) was like a new executive without the guns behind it. Libya pursued several rounds of dialogue after the 2011 revolution, culminating in the UN-led Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) in 2020. Its 75 members, drawn from regional, political and civil constituencies, focused narrowly on selecting an interim executive to oversee national elections. The forum appointed that executive in February 2021 but failed to agree on a permanent constitutional framework. Crucially, it favoured civilian and political delegates over the armed groups and commanders who hold real power. Without binding security arrangements or a disarmament roadmap, the institutions it created remained at the mercy of armed actors who retained an effective veto over the state.

Five Lessons for Sudan

•Security before political architecture: Political consensus cannot survive if hard power is ignored. Debating constitutional models or elections before securing a verified ceasefire, local de-escalation and a concrete roadmap for security sector reform (SSR) invites armed collapse, as Yemen and Libya both show. It also risks deepening political, ethnic and regional polarisation.

•Tiered participation: Inclusion without binding power creates an illusion of progress. Effective design pairs broad public participation, from civil society, women, youth and traditional leaders, with binding Track 1 negotiations among those who control weapons and political authority.

•Bottom-up regional restructuring: Administrative maps drawn by executive decree alienate local populations and fuel resource conflicts. Federal arrangements and regional boundaries should emerge from transparent local consultation and, where needed, referendums. This depends on freedom of speech, assembly and association, which are especially hard to guarantee in a Sudan fragmented among rival armed forces.

•Insulation from foreign interference: Libya and Yemen show both the value of international support and the damage external spoilers can do. When outside powers fund competing armed proxies, delegates often serve their patrons rather than their country. In Sudan, the principal parties are backed to varying degrees by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel. International initiatives should reinforce a single, locally led process rather than compete with it.

•Independent enforcement: In both Yemen and Libya, dialogue outcomes largely remained on paper, as participants lacked the will or the capacity to implement them, squandering energy, ideas and resources. Outcomes and transition documents must be tied to time-bound, monitored steps overseen by independent bodies with enforcement authority. The UN Security Council’s oversight of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between 2005 and 2011 remains the most effective precedent in Sudan for monitoring compliance and penalising violations.

The Risks of a Wartime Dialogue

A national dialogue held under current conditions risks capture by armed groups and militias aligned with the de facto authorities, while anti-war civilian coalitions and resistance committees face exclusion or coercion. For General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Port Sudan administration, endorsing an internal dialogue offers clear strategic gains: restored sovereign legitimacy, broader domestic support and a stronger political position.

Launching a dialogue without a verified ceasefire is therefore a serious structural hazard. Confining talks to SAF-controlled territory risks cementing a permanent partition on the Libyan model. Convening parties under fire allows the authorities in control to turn the process into an instrument of unilateral legitimacy. And the disillusionment that follows would discredit the very idea of national dialogue, weakening it when genuine conditions for peace finally emerge.

Getting the Sequence Right

Once the preconditions for a transparent dialogue are met, and an independent institution is in place to facilitate it, Sudan should settle security arrangements before building permanent political frameworks.

•Phase I-emergency priorities: Secure an enforceable, verifiable ceasefire; guarantee full humanitarian access and civilian protection; and establish local governance protocols to manage public services and displacement sites.

•Phase II- state-building: Build a unified national security structure through comprehensive security sector reform and the full disarmament of militias; agree consensus-based federal and constitutional frameworks; deliver transitional justice for war crimes; and set clear timelines for civilian oversight leading to a fully civilian-led democratic transition.

Conclusion
Numerous international and regional
initiatives have sought to foster a transparent dialogue in Sudan to restore peace and civilian democratic governance. Despite broad support for these efforts, the warring parties have shown little willingness to take part, and meaningful engagement by the military factions appears unlikely.

The SAF-led bloc itself comprises political, social and military forces with conflicting and sometimes mutually exclusive interests. Many have secured privileges through direct involvement in the war or steadfast support for the army against the RSF. They may see the outcomes of a national dialogue as a threat to those gains and seek to undermine the process or empty it of meaning.

The lesson of Yemen and Libya is plain: a national dialogue launched without a secure ceasefire or binding security arrangements leads to institutional collapse and continued conflict. Sudan must resist premature, top-down dialogue under fire. Such a process would be weaponised for unilateral legitimacy, would shut out essential civilian voices, and would entrench a permanent de facto partition of the country.

Sami Abdelhalim Saeed, LL.D., Vice-President of the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers (ANCL).

Talking Under Fire: What Libya and Yemen Teach Sudan About National Dialogue