Footnotes on the Rifles of the Margins
By: Malik Taha
For seventy years (1955–2025), groups from Sudan’s peripheral regions—acting either in succession or sometimes in concert—have taken up arms under the banner of marginalization, waging war against successive central governments.
In an African country like Sudan, where a strong central authority is essential to bind together its fragile peripheries and uphold the rule of law, these wars have consistently targeted that very center. They struck not only at the state’s symbolic core but also at the embryonic social fabric that was beginning to cohere in the capital and its surroundings.
By any broad but fair judgment, these armed rebellions failed to achieve anything as successfully as they managed to sustain Khartoum—both literally and metaphorically—as the perpetual enemy, the fixed target for their rifles.
The inevitable and concrete outcome has been a weakened center and a fragmented periphery. A closer look reveals that much of Sudan’s borderlands have now effectively become the backyard of neighboring states.
The danger of these “wars of the margins” goes beyond weakening the center; they have birthed a particular political persona—one that demands but does not contribute, that takes without offering, and that bases its concept of citizenship on a threatening equation: “Give us what we want, or face catastrophe.”
This character, born of prolonged conflict, is ever-ready to take up arms to press its claims and die in doing so, but it is rarely prepared to lift a single brick to help build the nation.
These wars have also deeply eroded any sense of national belonging. Those who carry the rifle view national development projects through a skewed lens: if a project is located in their region, they see it as a local entitlement that must benefit them exclusively. If it lies elsewhere in Sudan, they demand a share under the banner of national equity. They are Muslims when marrying and Catholics when divorcing.
One of the most visible byproducts of these wars is the emergence of a political character prone to outbidding and excessive demands. This is best evidenced by the sheer number of peace agreements—sometimes even multiple deals concerning the same issue. Each agreement brings with it a price in positions and funds, but rarely results in actual peace. Spending on peace has come to resemble pouring money into a leaky sack. The periphery fights the center wholesale, but signs deals with it retail—movement by movement.
Worth highlighting in this context is the issue of secularism. Logically, if an armed group advocates secularism, it should be demanding it for its own constituents—just as it demands power and wealth for them—not attempting to impose it on everyone. But here, too, we witness bargaining and posturing. Just look at how some trade in secularism while simultaneously condemning the trade in religion.
Taking up arms to press demands is considered a crime across the world. Any group that raises a weapon against an existing government—regardless of that government’s nature—is generally labeled by media and legal systems as rebellious and illegitimate. But in Sudan, the moment a rifle is raised against the state, it is immediately granted legitimacy and elevated to the top of regional and international media agendas.
The rifles of the margins are never short of semi-intellectuals, idle pundits, on-demand politicians, or inexperienced media figures to rally around them. These voices echo hollow theories and overused phrases like: “pastoral mindset,” “Nile Valley elites,” “centralized power structures,” and “the belt of marginalization.”
For such people, the rifle must come first. Only afterward do they seek out a theory to justify it—writing its text, glossing it with commentary, and providing it with ideological momentum. In their eyes, the margin is always right as long as it’s opposing the center. And the center is always wrong, even when it does right.
This circle of enablers around the marginal rifle functions like a failed painter who draws a bullseye after the spear has already landed—just to make the thrower (who is even more incompetent) believe he hit the mark.
