The Truth Perspective | Ibrahim Shaglawi The Story of the Return of the Martyrs…
On Tuesday, the Popular Resistance in Shendi Locality, River Nile State, announced the laying of the foundation stone for the largest memorial dedicated to the martyrs of the Battle of Dignity. Yet the event raises a question that goes beyond the monument itself: How do nations honor their martyrs after wars? Is it by erecting memorials, or by building the state for whose survival they gave their lives?
This initiative has raised a number of questions that this article seeks to examine and answer. Its significance lies in the fact that it shifts the nation’s struggle from the battlefields to the realm of national memory. Wars do not end with the silence of guns; rather, a greater battle begins afterward—the battle to preserve meanings and protect values. The greatest challenge facing nations after war is rebuilding public consciousness, so that sacrifices do not become merely a seasonal remembrance, a disputed narrative, or a tool for political exploitation.
Drawing inspiration from the pyramidal design of Sudanese civilization and immortalizing the names of the martyrs undoubtedly gives the initiative a dimension that goes beyond the event itself, reinforcing the values and history of the state. National memory is not merely a record of the past; it is one of the pillars of national security, preserving the nation’s story as it was written in blood, not as it is rewritten by interests. Yet the most important question remains before us all: If the martyrs were to return today… what would they find?
The question may seem literary, but it is, in reality, one of the harshest political questions. It does not summon the martyrs to be judged; rather, it summons them to judge the living. Here I am reminded of the novel by the Algerian writer Tahar Wattar, The Martyrs Return This Week, which offers a profound vision of the nature of societies after war. Wattar was not concerned with the return of the dead as much as he was with testing the national conscience: What happens when sacrifices stand before the reality created by the living? Have the principles for which they gave their lives remained alive, or have only their names endured?
In Wattar’s Algerian novel, the question of the post-war era is renewed: What would the martyrs find if they returned? The real test does not begin on the day a martyr falls, but on the day the struggle over memory, state-building, and fidelity to sacrifice begins. In Sudan, this question takes on an even deeper significance because the Battle of Dignity was fought in defense of the state, its existence, sovereignty, and unity. In it, the blood of the armed forces mingled with that of other forces and the Popular Resistance, united only by their homeland. Therefore, the memory of the martyrs must remain a unifying national memory, and the blood that preserved the state must remain a moral legacy for all Sudanese—not a tool for polarization or monopolization.
From this perspective, the Shendi project should be viewed as the nucleus of a national project to be adopted by the state at both the sovereign and ministerial levels across all states. Just as the Battle of Dignity extended throughout Sudan, so too should its memory. Every state has its martyrs, every city has its story, yet the national narrative is one, and the homeland for which they sacrificed is one. Establishing memorials, documentation museums, and public spaces of remembrance throughout the country would undoubtedly be an investment in strengthening national identity and protecting public awareness from oblivion and distortion.
More importantly, the blood of the martyrs must be transformed from a memory of the past into a project for the future. Nations do not rise after wars through memorials alone, but by building a national covenant that makes sacrifice the foundation of homeland, unity, and shared responsibility. In our country, the blood of the martyrs was not shed in defense of a party or a faction, but for the survival of the Sudanese state. Therefore, any political project that does not make the Battle of Dignity and the sacrifices of its martyrs a cornerstone of the new national covenant will remain deprived of one of its most important sources of moral legitimacy. States are rebuilt after wars through loyalty as much as through politics, by translating sacrifice into justice, institutions, development, and national unity.
The martyrs do not need someone to speak on their behalf as much as the homeland needs a state that fulfills the cause for which they gave their lives. It needs the rule of law, an efficient government, justice free from selectivity, development that restores citizens’ confidence in their state, and a national memory that preserves the truth as it happened, not as political shifts dictate.
Therefore, according to #The_Truth_Perspective, the story of the return of the martyrs is not completed by erecting memorials alone, but by building a national covenant that recognizes the sacrifices of everyone who contributed to defending the state. Hence, any talk of excluding or marginalizing any component that participated in the Battle of Dignity and offered its sons as martyrs sends a message that contradicts the very essence of the loyalty upon which those sacrifices were made. Nations are built by those who stood true in times of hardship, not by those who arrived when the gains were to be shared. They are governed by the logic of national partnership, not by the logic of reward and exclusion. The question that must precede any political arrangement therefore remains: If the martyrs were to return today… would they find a homeland spacious enough for everyone who defended it, or yet another arena of polarization and exclusion? It is there alone that true loyalty begins, and memory is transformed into a project for building Sudan.
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Thursday, August 6, 2026Shglawi55@gmail.com