In diplomatic practice, the strength of a position is not measured by the harshness of its language, nor is the prestige of a state determined by its representatives’ ability to trade insults with their adversaries. Diplomacy is, at its core, the art of managing conflict, not the art of inflaming it. Its purpose is to keep the channels of dialogue open, even when disagreements reach their most dangerous point.
The United Nations platform is far too consequential to become a stage for pre-Islamic rhetoric, and far too important to be reduced to a theater of political propaganda. Those who stand before it carry, above all their political responsibilities, the responsibility of every word they utter on behalf of an entire nation.
Diplomatic language is not merely a vehicle for expression; it is a political instrument whose consequences must be measured with precision. A professional diplomat understands that a carefully chosen phrase can convey an uncompromising position without destroying the bridges of communication, while an emotional outburst can undo in minutes what years of negotiation have painstakingly built.
A prudent diplomat does not address an adversary through the logic of emotion, but through the logic of interests. Political rivalry is not personal rivalry, and differences in political positions do not justify insult, humiliation, or reckless rhetoric. Even when a message must be forceful, it should remain disciplined and leave room for a return to the negotiating table.
More importantly, diplomatic restraint is not weakness, nor does it mean surrendering rights or abandoning political positions. On the contrary, a measured statement can be more powerful than an insult, and a documented argument more effective than shouting. When a diplomat says, “We categorically reject this position and hold the party concerned fully responsible for its consequences,” the message is unmistakably firm without turning an international forum into a battlefield of personal attacks.
Derogatory descriptions and inflammatory language do not diminish an adversary. More often, they diminish the person who uses them, while giving the other side an opportunity to appear more composed and credible before the international community.
True diplomacy knows when to be conciliatory, when to be firm, and when to raise the level of warning. But it never abandons its moral and professional compass. A diplomat can say “no” unequivocally. He can reject, protest, warn, condemn, and demand accountability—without descending into the vocabulary of insult or incitement.
It is a painful irony in Sudan today that a platform intended to embody diplomatic reason, respect for international law, and the search for peaceful solutions to protect human life has, in some instances, been turned into a stage for polarization, mobilization, and division.
This raises a legitimate question: How can those who stand before the United Nations—the institution created to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war—allow their discourse to descend into a language reminiscent of political ignorance, social backwardness, and intellectual regression?
The value of a diplomat is not measured by the volume of his voice or his ability to inflame emotions. It is measured by his ability to represent his country in language that preserves its dignity, opens doors to dialogue, and keeps the possibility of a political solution alive, even in the most difficult circumstances.
A discourse that divides Sudanese society into opposing camps, or appeals to ethnic and regional fanaticism, does not serve the state in whose name it is delivered. Instead, it adds another layer of complexity to a crisis that has already exhausted both Sudanese society and the state itself.
The United Nations is not an arena for exchanging political insults or recycling the rhetoric of war. It is a forum where national disputes are supposed to be presented through responsibility, evidence, argument, and documentation, with the ultimate objective of protecting civilians, ending conflicts, and creating a path toward peace.
The transition from the language of the state to the language of mobilization, from diplomacy to provocation, and from argument to accusations of treason is therefore more than a change in vocabulary. It represents a departure from the fundamental purpose of official discourse and a weakening of the image of the state that a diplomat is expected to represent.
Sudan does not need more verbal fires. It needs a rhetoric capable of extinguishing them. It does not need a reckless diplomacy that perpetuates confrontation; it needs a diplomacy with the courage to acknowledge the crisis, the sophistication to address the international community responsibly, and the determination to pursue a settlement that protects the unity of the country and the dignity of its people.
The most troubling aspect of the diplomacy practiced by the Port Sudan authorities is that it appears not merely incapable of addressing the modern world in the language of the twenty-first century, but also willing to excavate the vocabulary of anger, tribalism, and polarization from the ruins of history—as though it were searching in the dust of the pre-Islamic past for words that cannot be found in the vocabulary of the modern state.
Hostility, no matter how intense, is ultimately a temporary political condition. Diplomacy, by contrast, is the craft of shaping the future. It is the art of turning adversity into a pathway forward, transforming crisis into an exit, and converting competing interests into bridges.
Yet Al-Harith Idris, in what appears to be his journey into the depths of the distant past, seems to have returned with little more than the expression “by the shoelace of Kulaib”—shasea na‘l Kulaib in Arabic—an obscure reference drawn from the language and legends of pre-Islamic Arabia.
He invokes it as though history itself had handed him the keys to the present.But history does not confer diplomatic wisdom merely because someone can quote from it.
Those who borrow the vocabulary and symbols of the pre-Islamic age to address a modern international community are not demonstrating diplomatic sophistication. They are revealing a failure to understand the political language of their own time. The result is not statesmanship. It is political caricature.
And that is precisely the tragedy: while Sudan needs diplomacy capable of building bridges toward peace, some of its representatives appear determined to search the ruins of the past for weapons with which to fight the battles of the present.
By Dr. Osama Ahmed Al-Mustafa
