Marhaba,

This is the 48th issue of Atar English, published by the Sudan Facts Center for Journalism. It reaches you every two weeks, bringing reporting from across Sudan.

As Sudanese students sit for the Secondary School Certificate exams this week, the moment feels heavier than usual. In other years, these exams marked a simple transition, from school to university, from one stage of life to the next. Today, they carry something else entirely. They sit at the intersection of war, division, and uncertainty.

For a long time, the Sudanese certificate was more than just an exam. It was one of the few things that still felt shared across the country. Students from different regions, different backgrounds, all sat for the same test under the same system. It offered, quietly, a sense that there was still a common ground, a shared horizon.

That sense is now under real pressure.

With two authorities preparing separate exams, one in SAF-controlled areas and another in areas under the Tasis alliance, the risk is no longer theoretical. It is already unfolding. Two exams, two certificates, and possibly two futures that may not recognize each other. What is being contested is not just control over the process, but whether a unified system can still exist at all.

And yet, this is not the whole story.

Across the country, teachers, academics, and civil actors are trying to hold on to something different. Their starting point is simple, education should remain a shared space, even if politics is not. The initiative to support the certificate exams reflects this thinking. It does not come from power, and it does not claim authority. It comes from a collective refusal to let students pay the price of division.

What matters here is not only the proposals themselves, but the idea behind them, the belief that even in a fragmented country, there are still things, what Marx called the “general intellect,” worth protecting collectively. That some institutions, especially those tied to young people’s futures, should remain outside the logic of conflict.

In that sense, these efforts carry a quiet political meaning.

They are not trying to impose unity from above. They are trying to rebuild it from below, through shared responsibility. The question they raise is not who controls the exam, but whether all students can sit for it, and whether that exam will still mean something wherever they go. It is a way of seeing education not as a tool of power, but as a public good.

This stands in sharp contrast to what is happening now.

As the reporting from Darfur and Kordofan shows, parallel exams risk turning one of the last shared institutions into another line of division. A certificate that is not recognized beyond a certain geography is more than a bureaucratic problem. It limits movement, closes doors, and reshapes what the future looks like for those who hold it.

At the same time, the wider picture is hard to ignore.

The investigation into Sudan’s war economy reminds us that this conflict is not contained within the country. It is tied to global systems, where resources linked to violence move through international markets. And in Dilling, daily life shows the cost of that reality, bombing, displacement, closed schools, and a constant struggle to keep basic services running.

In that context, publishing the Volkswagen investigation alongside the Berlin Conference carries its own significance. It suggests that Sudanese civilian actors can begin to build connections beyond official diplomacy, which is often tied to the same economic systems that sustain the war. By exposing these links, the report opens space for a different kind of engagement, one rooted in civil society, accountability, and shared concerns across borders. In a world that is itself increasingly fragmented, this kind of solidarity may matter more than ever.

Against all this, the act of holding on to education takes on a different meaning. It is not just resilience, it is a refusal. A resistance to accept that everything must fragment. A refusal to let every institution collapse into the logic of war. It is a way of insisting that some forms of cooperation are still possible, and that education is a right, a social contract and a “general intellect.” Of course, these civic efforts cannot solve the crisis on their own. Their limits are clear and much depends on decisions made elsewhere. But they do something important, they keep open the idea that a shared system is still possible.

Building an internal civilian front that rejects the commodification and militarization of civilian life necessarily intersects with the construction of international solidarity, one that exposes the link between the war in Sudan and the global economy. This is not as an exceptional case, but as part of a broader pattern in which resources are extracted from zones of vulnerability and revalorized in centers of power.

Experiences such as the Palestinian resistance demonstrate that influence does not emerge solely from official channels, but from the ability to transform issues into sites of pressure within Western societies. Through trade unions, universities, and the media, the conflict can be shifted from the realm of diplomacy to that of public opinion.

As Professor Umbadda aptly described in the interview published in this issue, their initiative does not merely oppose the denial of education as a right but also opens the possibility of forging a shared national political will. This is the only light truly worth continuing to carve through the wall, as the Yemeni poet Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh once urged.

As students walk into exam halls this week, their situations will be very different. Some will travel far, others will sit in unfamiliar places, many will carry uncertainty with them. But what they are doing still connects them. They are taking part, however unevenly, in something that once belonged to everyone.

So, the question is not only whether the exams will happen. It is what they will come to mean. Will they deepen division, or can they still hold something together?

In a country where so much has already come apart, even one shared institution can matter. Not just for the students, but for what it says about whether a common future is still possible.