I concentrate on the internal politics of the Sudan and the intricacies of north-north and north-south relations in this study. I have neither attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of the economic and cultural life of the Sudan nor dwelled on foreign policy issues. I have written several articles on Sudanese foreign policy in the 1980s and 1990s, which are referenced in the bibliography. Those articles complement this analysis, which seeks to elucidate the internal forces at work inside that strife-torn country.

I wish to express my appreciation for the financial support that enabled me to focus on researching and writing. I spent two months in the summer of 1990 as a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and the next twelve months conducting research on the dynamics of the Sudanese civil war and external intervention in that war, on a grant from the United States Institute of Peace. The month that I spent at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in March 1996 enabled me to complete the conceptualization of the manuscript and finalize the organization of the book chapters, while residing in a peaceful and exquisitely beautiful setting. I received a second grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace for seven months in 1996–1997, during which I delved deeper into the negotiations concerning the civil war and also completed the manuscript. Throughout those years Villanova University granted me released time from teaching as well as sabbaticals in the spring of 1996 and spring of 1997. Without that time to concentrate, I could not have completed this study.

I wish to thank Janet Rabinowitch and Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press for their careful attention to the manuscript at its several stages, as well as IUP’s meticulous copyeditor Ruth Albright and cartographer Jim Hull for the elegantly redrawn maps. I appreciated the comments on an earlier draft by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban and Robert O. Collins, and the often-pointed reactions to particular chapters by colleagues at Villanova and Sudan specialists elsewhere—none of whom bear responsibility for the errors of fact or interpretation that may remain in the text. I would particularly like to thank the Sudanese intellectuals and political activists who have patiently tutored me in the intricacies of Sudanese politics ever since I first visited Khartoum in early 1978 as a neophyte program officer at the Ford Foundation. I feel badly that I have not been able to reciprocate by helping them after so many were forced into exile, often living in difficult and alienating situations overseas.

The final year of writing this book coincided with the illness of my sister Patricia, whose cancer was diagnosed in late April 1996, just as I returned from Bellagio and from a side trip to Jordan and Israel. Even as I revised and improved the manuscript—working on it early in the morning or late at night while I visited her, and frantically focusing on completing the editing when I was not with her—her life faded away. Her gentle smile and dignity will remain with me and with her family to support and sustain us.

Racial, linguistic, and religious categories have become the basis for crucially important power relationships that have resulted in the peoples who live in the northern and central Nile Valley wielding disproportionate political and economic power. Those citizens’ Arab-Islamic image of the Sudanese nation excludes citizens who reside on the geographic and/or ethnic margins: persons who define themselves as African rather than Arab, ethnically or linguistically. Those who reside in the south generally adhere to Christianity or traditional African beliefs, whereas the ethnic minorities in the north are largely Muslim. Their marginalization has intensified as political, economic, and cultural power has remained concentrated in the hands of the Muslim Arab core and as the central government has intensified its drive to spread Islam and Arabic. In reaction, disaffection and revolts by the marginalized peoples have deepened and widened. Originally expressed by those in the south who are both African and non-Muslim, the revolt now includes many Muslim Africans who think that their ethnicity and particular forms of Islamic practices are denigrated and suppressed by the current ruling elite.

Recently a process of rethinking the political alignments has begun that may, in time, cut across the divide and lead to the restructuring of power based on inclusive concepts of national identity. At present, that realignment is partial, tentative, and largely theoretical.

These issues of identity need to be placed in a wider analytical context. What is actually meant by ethnicity and nationality? What are the components of national identity and to what extent are those fixed or malleable? Must a nation-state be constructed on the basis of one ethnic group? If so, what options—such as self-determination and/or secession—might be available to subordinated peoples?

Some analysts consider that ethnic groups are based on long-standing bonds that stress the significance of residence on the same territory and common language, religion, or skin color.1 Those markers of sameness and difference are seen as fundamental to social groups. Members of the group perceive their common ethnicity as biologically determined: the familial kinship unit forms a bloodline from which the group’s solidarity is derived. Similar and related groups form a people, who assume particular cultural characteristics that are incorporated into their sense of nationhood. In a nation-state, a people controls its own political system, which is separate and distinct from other nation-states that comprise other peoples.

A contrasting view posits that “ethnic identity is an attitude”2 that people deliberately shape and reshape. Elites and leaders (re)structure ethnic identity for instrumental reasons, such as to enhance their own power and to mobilize the populace behind their political goals. Identity can be manipulated and certain aspects can be more salient at certain times and in certain contexts. A complex ethnopolitics can emerge in which political leaders seek to control the actions of members of their own ethnic group and to affect the relative power and position of their group vis-à-vis others.3 Symbolic, organizational, and coercive steps can be taken to inculcate a sense of solidarity among people of similar ethnicity so that they will accord priority to their common identity and function as a political unit. Interethnic competition can be intense for a role in and/or control over core public institutions such as the government, armed forces, legislature, and civil service, and over the distribution of economic values.

Even without deliberate manipulation, of course, shifts take place in religion, language, and economic structures over time. But this approach emphasizes that social identities are inherently situational and in flux. In that perspective, since the concept of ethnicity or peoplehood is contingent, the idea of a nation is also a construct. Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny assert that4

Conscious action can be taken by a government to create a national language out of diverse dialects and then to inculcate that unified language through the educational system and other cultural vehicles. The construction of civic buildings and monuments, the composition of self-consciously nationalist music based on folk songs and dances, and the establishment of literary societies and publishing houses are all part of that nationalist production. Civic rituals can be developed that are based on events from recent history or from the distant past. Those events are reinterpreted in light of contemporary political circumstances. Religious tenets and practices can be transformed into the conceptual underpinnings for a nation-state. In that sense, language, culture, history, and religion are not fixed factors that serve as preconditions for nationhood, but rather are tools used to “imagine” the nation.5

The voluntarist concept should not be taken to its extreme, making it appear that any ruling elite can create a nation de novo without a social or cultural base. Anthony D. Smith argues that “nations [must] be founded upon ethnic cores, if they are to endure.”6 Political leaders will find it difficult to construct a national identity in a territory in which citizens lack any sense of common social characteristics and values. Smith concludes that “without some ethnic lineage the nation-to-be could fall apart.”7 He adds:8

Symbolic solidarity can be provided by a mythology of the past, which can take the form of a sense of nostalgia for an idealized way of life or a myth of descent from a common ancestor or ruling dynasty.9 In this manner, people create a shared history, the memory of which enhances their sense of ethnic consciousness and their perception of difference from others. In Smith’s view, the particular configuration of “myths, memories, values and symbols” is the “core of ethnicity.”10 When a religious tradition is a key component of that ethnicity, the solidarity can be particularly strong. Sacred texts, shrines, and languages create shared meanings and provide powerful vehicles to convey a sense of community and of the individual’s role within that community. Endogenous marriage and special clothing, foods, and customs set members apart and invoke a sense of unique worth.

The creation of boundaries between the self and the other is an important aspect of building and reinforcing an ethnic identity. Fredrick Barth argued that ethnic groups seek to emphasize their selfhood in relation to the stranger, the foreigner. Language and religion, for example, unify a people but also separate them from others with whom they cannot communicate or share beliefs and rituals.11 Distinguishing markers also include dress, skin color, and names. Systems of symbolic solidarity separate communities from each other. As a result, groups that reside in one territory can be divided by religion, language, and race: they may then develop rival histories and incompatible genealogical myths. Karl Deutsch noted that residents may work side by side and share everyday experiences but lack a common culture: their interpretation of historical and current events may be radically different and lead them to be “bitterly opposed.”12

The existence of ethnic markers is insufficient in itself to denote political difference. A deliberate effort must be made to create or enhance cultural and social bonds by deepening networks of social communication and consciously fostering shared values.13 Self-awareness as a group may initially emerge in response to an outside threat or arise from competition with neighboring ethnic groups.14 Such conflicts may help to instill a sense of ethnic solidarity in peoples who were previously highly competitive among themselves: Smith cites the Hausa and Kurds, who were sharply divided internally despite cultural commonalities but began to overcome those divisions and to define themselves as a nation when they faced external threats. Interstate or internal war deepens the demarcation between the self and the other. Mutual dependence in battle establishes an esprit de corps among the participants, and the battles themselves can assume mythic dimensions. The symbolic value of a particular territory can be deepened when its control is contested; such warfare, in turn, “sharpen[s] and politicize[s]” ethnic differences.15

A politicized ethnic awareness can lead to the emergence of a movement to create a nation-state. But there is considerable conceptual confusion over the idea of a nation-state since the term has two distinct meanings. Smith calls these the “ethnic model” and the “territorial model.”16 They differ conceptually and in their operationalization.

According to the ethnic model, a state should be coterminous with one self-defined ethnic group. The German romantics, for example, asserted that their organic nation had the natural right to form a state that would incorporate all ethnic Germans.17 Similarly, Somali nationalists argue that their nation-state should encompass all areas where Somalis live, even though they are now part of neighboring states’ territories. According to this approach, Indonesia, Israel, and Turkey should be defined, respectively, by their Javanese, Jewish, and Turkic ethnic cores. At its extreme, this can lead to militant irredentism and to the attempt to create an ethnically pure nation-state, uncontaminated by alien peoples. Operationalizing organic nationalism causes serious difficulties for ethnic minorities. The leaders of the dominant ethnic groups can seek a homogeneity that represses differences and promotes intolerance. Exclusivist policies can deny minorities the use of their language, discriminate against their religious beliefs, or even block them from citizenship. In the above-mentioned cases, asserting an ethnic nation-state automatically excludes Slavs and Jews in a Germanic union, Kurds and Greeks in Turkey, and Muslim and Christian Arabs in Israel. That denial and delegitization can lead to “fierce opposition from ethnic minorities.”18

In contrast, according to the territorial model, residents in a particular territory have a common allegiance to the state, irrespective of their ethnicity. This integrative approach emphasizes the legal equality of citizen-residents. Loyalty to a place provides the basis for national sentiments in, for example, Switzerland and the United States and in a significant number of anticolonial struggles in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.19 In the United States, citizens are expected to adhere to common political ideals, rather than to have a common descent. In newly independent countries this approach seeks to create an overarching political culture out of various traditions and ethnic groups. For example, the Indian National Congress sought to turn geographically defined India into a civic nation that would unite Hindus, Muslims, and the numerous ethnic and caste-based groups. The limitations of territorial nationalism can be shown in the inability of Indian nationalists to prevent the eruption of Muslim-Hindu tensions that led to the creation of Pakistan by Muslim ethnic nationalists. Moreover, ethnopolitics in independent India have flared into violence as politicized religious, linguistic, and regional groups compete for power, resources, and political symbols.

The problem of creating a territorial nation-state has been particularly acute in former colonies, partly as a result of the policies adopted by the imperial power.20 The ruler created and defined the geographic space without taking into account preexisting social solidarities. Moreover, colonial rule itself exacerbated divisions: groups interacted politically that had not had hierarchical and/or competitive relations in the past; the colonizer fostered ethnic particularities in its search for historical kinship groups on which to devolve authority; and its divide-and-rule policies set peoples against each other. Thus, ethnopolitical tensions were often entrenched by the time independence was achieved. A sense of loyalty based on residence in the territory of the newly independent state tended to be restricted to a small number of intelligentsia and politicians.

This means that if a new state is an artificial conglomeration of previously competing or isolated groups, political leaders can encounter serious difficulties in creating an overarching loyalty. Residing on the same land provides an insufficient basis for solidarity. The civic model of citizenship based on residence in the territory has difficulty mobilizing people once the colonial ruler has been expelled. In fact, in order to integrate the citizenry, governments often resort to the politics of ethnic identity. They revitalize particular ethnic sentiments and rewrite history from a nativist standpoint. After examining attempts to form new civic political cultures in Zaire, Uganda, and Nigeria, Smith concludes:21

Moreover, that effort to integrate the citizenry may cause a government to believe that it enhances territorial solidarity when its policies actually promote one ethnic group’s definition of the nation. For example, the U.S. constitution posits a territorial nationalism in which birth automatically confers citizenship. However, its political culture was originally defined by white male Protestant elites who assumed that the wider society would absorb their cultural values and religious symbols.22 Recent attempts to reimagine that identity in ways that are inclusive of racial, cultural, and gender differences have caused significant tension and defensive reactions. The Soviet Union called itself multinational, but the Russian ethnic core was paramount: for example, the effort to spread the Russian language throughout the USSR was termed “internationalist” whereas other European and Asian languages were deprecated as local and particular.23 Thus, politically dominant groups tend to ignore their own specificity and ethnicity: they see their assimilationist behavior as a positive means to draw the other groups into a higher global civilization, rather than as the imposition of their national culture and values on those peoples.

The duality of ethnic and territorial criteria for the determination of membership in the nation-state can be related to two contrasting models for rule termed the control model and the pluralist model. According to Rasma Karklins, “the control model’s intent is to make ethnic diversity and its political consequences disappear by defining it away and by exercising structural control.”24 A control model is likely to emerge in the ethnically defined nation-state, where one ethnic group assumes the right to rule and to craft the country in its image. However, it can also emerge out of territorial nationalism if leaders of one ethnic group try to impose their cultural values as the overarching civic political culture. In either situation, minorities are placed in a separate niche or are actively suppressed. Thus, the Iraqi government has at times accorded limited self-rule and language rights to the Kurds, whereas at other times it has tried to eradicate them. Similarly, the Turkish government has tried to make Kurds invisible by calling them mountain Turks and banning their language and cultural symbols. It is not surprising that a government seeks to centralize the political system and integrate the society within its borders. But, under the control model, additional steps are taken to efface differences. Leaders of the dominant group assume that they have a “civilizing mission in relation to the smaller and [in their view] ‘history-less’ peoples” in their midst.25 The latter should welcome assimilation into the “national” culture and identity.

In the control model the state tries to undermine and even destroy other ethnic national groups that exist within its boundaries, whether by assimilation or repression. That results in the structural inequality of marginalized peoples, which can also be seen as a form of internal colonialism.26 Protests by Scots denote the reaffirmation of a people faced with self-perceived economic and cultural threats. Peripheralized Bretons resist the Parisian core of French nationalism and Basques refuse Castillian dominance of Spanish identity. The control model thereby promotes homogeneity and stability in the short run but intensifies ethnic awareness and discontent in the long run, providing evidence that it is counterproductive to try to eradicate ethnic differences.

Karklins discovered in the Latvian-Russian relationship that the very assertion by the marginalized Latvians of their cultural values and political rights relativized the dominant Russian culture. That shift, in turn, unsettled and threatened the Russians who had controlled Latvia.27 In those contexts, conflict arose from the power relations between ethnic groups and from attempts to assimilate or marginalize peoples, not from the mere existence of ethnic differences:28

The control model can be implemented in democracies as well as autocracies. For example, the principle of majority vote is fundamental to democracy. But, if one politically cohesive group has a numerical majority in the legislative and executive bodies, then the minority is always outvoted and underrepresented. This is a critical problem in Northern Ireland, where the Catholic minority fears the automatic Protestant majority. It was a major issue between the Greek majority and Turkish minority on Cyprus until the Turkish invasion in 1974 led to de facto territorial partition. It also poses problems in the United States, where restructuring congressional districts to increase minority representation conflicts with the norm of individual rather than group-based rights.

Before examining the repercussions of the control model, which can lead disadvantaged groups to call for self-determination and/or secession, the ethnic pluralist model should be addressed. Adherents of that approach seek to recognize and accommodate group differences within the political system, rather than to suppress or deny such distinctions. Instead of positing a zero-sum political game in which the majority group wins and the minority loses, the ethnic pluralist model envisions the state as combining equal rights under the law for all citizens with special provisions to ensure representation for the country’s diverse groups. Karklins argues that this model requires that29

Two-fold safeguards need to be built into an ethnic pluralist system.30 First, equality before the law and regulations to prohibit discrimination are essential. Those establish a national consensus that supports principles of human rights. In that contest, there must be equity in access to governmental authority, services, and employment. Individual rights and group rights are intertwined: exercise of the individual’s right to religious freedom is implemented through an institution such as a church or a mosque; language rights require schools and publishing houses; and an individual’s security may require having adequate numbers of police forces that are drawn from that person’s group.

Second, there must be recognition of the particular cultures and aspirations of the groups that live within the overarching society and polity. That recognition can be based on corporate rights and/or geographically based rights. Corporate rights can include the autonomy for religious communities in the Ottoman Empire or the special school systems for minority groups that were mandated in central Europe after World War I. They can also involve affirmative action programs to overcome discrimination against racial minorities and women, as in the United States. Jordan’s guaranteed parliamentary seats for ethnic and religious minorities and Lebanon’s communal representation enable each distinct group to acquire a stake in political life and governance. Geographically based rights may be important for certain minorities that live in relatively compact territories inside the state. Political autonomy can protect a minority group by decentralizing authority and reducing the ability of the central government to control and assimilate the minority. Autonomy remains consistent with the ultimate sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. In fact, “decentralization can make possible the coexistence of multiple nationalities within the territory of one state.”31

Varying degrees and forms of autonomy have been instituted for indigenous peoples such as Native Americans in the United States, First Nations in Canada, Lapps in Finland, and Maoris in New Zealand. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1993) asserts their right to semiautonomous areas and freedom of choice in the pursuit of their own economic, social, religious, and cultural development.32 To protect their identities in the long term, however, they need to acquire political and economic power not only at the local and regional levels but at the center as well. Self-rule provides the possibility that33

Such a federal system can enable “communities to exercise meaningful … control over their own affairs” and increase their “real and perceived participation in the political process.”34 They can set policies for education, language use, and economic development at the local and regional level. Localities and regions must, however, operate within the overall authority of the central government and must enforce laws emanating from that government. Powers shared between the center and the region may include the exploitation of natural resources and the operation of ports, airports, and communications facilities. Control over natural resources is highly contested, as demonstrated by the battles between the central government and ethnically defined regions over oil rights and revenues in Nigeria, Iraq, and the Sudan.

Language and education are particularly important symbolic elements in ethnic autonomy, since culture is transmitted through those vehicles. They are also essential components of freedom of expression and association. The UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) upholds the right of members of national minorities to establish their own educational systems that use or teach in their own languages. However, the convention emphasizes that this right must not “prejudice national sovereignty” or prevent minorities from “understanding the culture and language of the community as a whole.”35 This indicates the delicate relationship among the center, region(s), and linguistic groups. For example, a central government is likely to require proficiency in the official language of the state for employment in the civil service or armed forces, and universities are likely to teach in that language. Such measures are seen as essential for political and social unity and administrative efficiency, but they leave linguistic minorities disadvantaged and facing de facto discrimination. For example, Arab citizens of Israel, whose primary language is Arabic, must be fluent in Hebrew for university-level studies and employment in the civil service. Moreover, when a nonindigenous language is used as the lingua franca, as in sub-Saharan African countries that employ English or French in administration and education, popular resentment can be whipped up against using the language of the former colonial ruler.

The international legal scholar Hurst Hannum emphasizes that the combination of individual and group-based rights is essential for a stable ethnic pluralist system: there must be equality before the law at the national level alongside recognition of specific minority rights. Recognition of minority rights within particular geographic enclaves should not provide an excuse to abandon the principle of nondiscrimination at the countrywide level. Thus, the minority treaties promulgated after World War I asserted the link between those rights: the principles of equality of treatment, nondiscrimination, and citizenship must be upheld by the governments and minorities must also have the right to use their own languages, operate their own charitable, religious, and social institutions, obtain state support for their schools, and gain some territorial autonomy. Hannum comments:36

Balancing the creative and destructive elements of the nation-state is extremely difficult in those multiethnic contexts, since a government is likely to be dominated by a particular ethnic group and to express that group’s values. The commitment to pluralist values requires time and effort. In postcolonial states where legitimacy is fragile, the political arena is highly contentious, and governments feel insecure, it is difficult for power-sharing systems to emerge and be sustained. Governments and politicians are less likely to mediate group differences than to reinforce their ethnic and regional bases in ways that undermine pluralism. It is all too easy to shift into the control model and to harden the lines of difference. The pursuit of assimilationist policies and nonrecognition of the cogency of group demands make those demands even more insistent. The process accelerates the delegitimization of the political system in the eyes of marginalized groups and can lead to civil strife and demands for self-determination and/or secession.

Self-determination is generally defined under international law as the attaining of independence by a self-defined national group. That formulation passed through two phases in the twentieth century: the first phase stressed ethnic nationalism and the second emphasized territorial nationalism.37 During the first phase, as the multiethnic Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires disintegrated during World War I, the victorious powers argued that ethnic groups within those empires could express their right to self-determination through achieving political independence. Each newly independent state should represent a particular ethnic group. Minority ethnic groups did not have the right to secede from the new states, but minority treaties were expected to guarantee their group rights.

The second phase came during the decolonization process after World War II. The right of self-determination was enshrined in the human rights covenants, the Declaration on Decolonization by the UN General Assembly (1960), and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981). Those documents limited self-determination to ending colonial rule and assumed that civic, territorial nationalism would underpin allegiance to the new states. They opposed undermining the territorial integrity of independent countries by allowing ethnic minority groups to secede. Self-determination was a one-time action that would not apply to the postcolonial political situation. Minority groups must remain within the borders of the existing state after the end of colonial rule. Thus, neither the first nor the second phase in the articulation of the right of self-determination embraced the concept of secession from an independent state.

Enforced inclusion is contested by leaders of ethnic groups who assert that the right to self-determination cannot be subordinated to the principle of territorial integrity. They argue that they have the right to choose to remain within the country, to create an autonomous region, or to secede and form a separate state. Nonetheless, since governments play the decisive role in the UN system, they reject the right of secession, arguing that it would lead to the disintegration of many existing states and the destabilization of the international community. This perspective is echoed by analysts such as Amitai Etzioni who fear that secession does not resolve the underlying problem but rather leads “to further schisms and more ethnic strife.”38

Nonetheless, the UN General Assembly Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States (1970) introduced phrasing that suggested a conditional right to secede. That declaration opposed disrupting the unity of “states conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights … and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed, or colour.”39 Although the declaration asserts that territorial integrity is the principal value, it indicates that a government which fails to uphold equal rights and nondiscrimination could be faced with legitimate claims to secession. This corresponds to the League of Nations’ justification of the secession of Finland on the grounds that the Russian government had oppressed the Finnish people. In other words, if a government shifts from a pluralist approach to the control model, which denies the legitimacy of differences, then a minority could have the right to secede. In practice, the separation of Rwanda from Burundi was endorsed by the international community in 1962, as was the secession of East Pakistan in 1971 to form Bangladesh. The recent breakups of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia as well as the pro-independence referendum in Eritrea have also been recognized by the UN. But those are still viewed as exceptions: the international community generally continues to assert the principle of territorial unity over the right of secession.

Analysts such as Michael Lind argue that holding together a territorial state by force is worse than allowing groups to secede. He argues that one should neither automatically favor secessionist movements nor offer “reflexive support for multinational political entities, especially despotic ones”40 that crush minorities. Lind maintains that the problem is becoming more serious as41

The key problem becomes the form of rule: where an ethnic pluralist system is in place, minorities are unlikely to seek to secede. They would find constitutional means to achieve representation and meet group goals. Self-determination might be achieved through regional autonomy rather than secession. Such political systems can contain centrifugal forces in a multiethnic state partly by establishing institutions that represent the diverse groups and by fostering “tolerance for those with different backgrounds and cultures.”43 This important interpretation of the meaning of self-determination is rarely recognized by analysts and politicians. Rather, self-determination is generally identified with secession. In fact, secession should be seen as one possible outcome of the act of self-determination and not necessarily the most likely outcome.

The difficulty of disengaging ethnic and territorial nationalism is indicated in this analysis. Politicians often invoke ethnicity as a basis for their political movements that seek self-assertion and independence. That generates tension with the territorial nationalist assumption that the residents of the given territory are equal citizens. In reaction to the exclusiveness inherent in the ethnic nation-state and in the effort to restructure a territorial nation into an ethnic-based state, minorities assert their right of self-determination. They may seek the codification of their rights as citizens, including the establishment of a geographically decentralized political system. They may also insist that the right of self-determination include the right to secede. Crafting an ethnic pluralist system that respects minority aspirations and creates an overarching identity for the country is a difficult process.

The Sudan is the largest country in Africa, covering a million square miles. It is a land of extraordinary diversity, and analysts classify its twenty-six million residents among more than fifty ethnic groups, which they subdivide into at least 570 distinct peoples. The largest groups are self-defined (in descending order) as Arab, Dinka, Beja, Nuer, Nuba, Nubian, Fur, Bari, Azande, Moru, and Shilluk.44 Table I indicates the wide variety of peoples, many of which lack sharp boundaries and change nomenclature over time. “Naming” them in this table emphasizes their diversity, but also risks unduly emphasizing the idea that they are permanent or central to sociopolitical life.

Moreover, although 40 percent of the population identifies itself as Arab, the actual meaning of the term remains ambiguous. A generally accepted definition would include peoples who speak the Arabic language and claim to have originated in Arabia, even though that genealogy is largely fictional. Many indigenous peoples call themselves Arab since, over the centuries, they adopted the Arabic language, customs, and Islam. In that sense, most Arabs in the Sudan are really Arabized Nubians, Dinka, Nuba, Shilluk, Fur, or Beja. Moreover, Arabs are not homogeneous socially: some have nomadic origins and others are based on riverine villages. Even among those categories there is considerable diversity, which urbanization, labor migration, and long-distance trade patterns have magnified over hundreds of years.

Nonetheless, Muslim Arabs from the Nile Valley have dominated the political, economic, and cultural life of the Sudan. They hold the main government posts in the capital city, the majority of seats in all the parliaments, and the senior positions in the armed forces. They lead the educational institutions, trade unions, industries, and businesses. As the largest and most centrally located ethnic group, Arabs wield a disproportionate influence over policy-making and over the cultural identity of the country. It is not surprising that they have, therefore, tried to shape the identity of the country in their own image: Arab culturally and Muslim in its religion.

The non-Arab ethnic groups in the north comprise a quarter of the population, but are scattered in outlying territories. Beja are concentrated in the east along the Red Sea, where they merge with similar peoples in Eritrea. They retain

Nuba peoples are localized in the west in the Nuba Mountains of southern Kordofan. They have several distinct languages and adhere to various religions, ranging from traditional African beliefs to Islam and Christianity. The names for their groups are based on the isolated hills on which these villagers lived. Only recently have enhanced communications, tensions with neighboring Arab peoples, and a growing sense that they remain second-class citizens even if they are Muslims and relatively Arabized intensified their politicization and self-awareness. They have reappropriated the term “Nuba,” which was used in the nineteenth century by Arabs to mean black people who could be enslaved, using it now as a nationalist term to denote their common and distinct identity.45

Nubian peoples traditionally lived along the upper reaches of the Nile River, extending into Egypt. Nubia comprised independent Christian kingdoms prior to the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 A.D. Later, Nubians converted to Islam and some became Arabized in language and self-identification. In the 1960s many Nubians suffered physical dislocation, when the construction of the Aswan High Dam flooded their villages. But their educated elite has been better integrated into the dominant Arab political and economic systems than most of the other African peoples.

The Fur, who live in the far west in the area centered on the mountains of Jabal Marra, have a strong tradition of independence. The Fur sultanate lasted—virtually continuously—from the fifteenth century until 1916, nearly twenty years after Britain occupied Sudan. The sedentary Fur controlled major desert trade routes, and intermingled for centuries with migrants from west Africa, Arab traders and holy men from the Nile Valley, and other indigenous peoples.46 Pride in their special history and culture remains strong among the Fur.

The south has a greater variety of peoples than the north, but “they are all racially akin to tropical Africa and identify culturally with Africanism.”47 Dinka, who are the largest African group in the country as a whole, comprise 40 percent of southern residents. They traditionally herd cattle in Bahr al-Ghazal or along the eastern bank of the White Nile, living in relatively small units that lack an integrated political structure. The Nuer, another Nilotic people, also have a decentralized society whose peoples were frequently in conflict among themselves and with contiguous Dinka groups. The Nilotic Shilluk, in contrast, had a centralized system and claim to have founded the Funj kingdom, based in Sennar, in the sixteenth century. Shilluk controlled territory as far north as Aba Island on the White Nile until the mid-nineteenth century, when they were pushed south by the better-armed Turko-Egyptian forces. In the southernmost province of Equatoria, there are a wide variety of peoples, many of whom are closely related to peoples across the border in Zaire, Uganda, and Kenya.

Fragmentation in the south is greater than in the north, where Arabized peoples comprise the central core and African peoples are located on the geographic periphery. There are also nonindigenous communities that occasionally have political significance, such as the small Coptic (Christian) community in Khartoum that originated in Egypt and Muslim migrants from West Africa who settled in the Nile Valley on their way to or from the pilgrimage to Mecca. Some joined the Mahdist religio-political movement in the late nineteenth century. Subsequently, the British encouraged West Africans to labor on agricultural schemes along the Nile, but they were denied citizenship and therefore the right to own land. Known pejoratively as fallata, they have varying origins and differing degrees of Arabization. Estimates of their numbers range from one to six million, with 6 percent being their probable share of the total population.48

These ethnic distinctions should not be seen as permanent or primordial. Ethnic designations shift over time and the movement of peoples across the Sudan resulted in transformations in self-identity. Fertit, for example, was the word for pagans used to encompass a wide range of small groups in western Bahr al-Ghazal. Those largely Arabized and Muslim sedentary peoples only recently began to use the word Fertit in political discourse.49 Many peoples have created new histories and genealogies to suit their new identities. For example, the Ja’aliyyin are Arabized Nubians who claim to be descended from Ja’al, a descendant of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad: they thereby acquired an impeccable Arab and Muslim lineage.50

In some ways the extreme diversity creates a tolerance for others, since peoples of differing customs, languages, and beliefs must interact with each other. For example, Arab pastoralists who move their camels and cattle into Dinka and Nuba territory in search of pasturage in the summer require access to the Dinka and Nuba fields for grazing after the farmers harvest their crops. Considerable intermarriage also takes place among those peoples. However, interaction also fosters intolerance and mutual stereotyping as well as clashes over limited resources and raids for cattle and grain. Arab-Islamic Baqqara nomads consider themselves superior culturally to the “pagan” Dinka, whereas Dinka have imprinted the image of those Arabs as slavers who seized their wives and children.51

In sum, two crucial lines of cultural demarcation in the Sudan involve language and religion. Just over half of the Sudanese speak Arabic as their native tongue. In the north, Arabic is the principal language at home as well as in education, commerce, and government. But in the south a hundred indigenous languages are spoken and English has been the preferred language (rather than Arabic) for the educated elite. Nonetheless, a linguistic profile of the Sudan in the 1970s underlined the linguistic diversity within both parts of the country.52 In the south the researchers found that whereas 87 percent of the residents of Bahr al-Ghazal spoke Dinka languages, 52 percent of the residents of Upper Nile spoke Nuer, 25 percent Dinka, and 14 percent Shilluk. In Equatoria, the language map was even more complex: 24 percent spoke Zande, 19 percent Teso, 18.4 percent Bari, and 13 percent Latuko, with smaller numbers speaking other distinct languages. In none of the three regions was Arabic the indigenous language of more than 1.7 percent of the residents.

In the north, the greatest contrast was between Khartoum province, which was 96 percent Arabic speaking and Kassala, where 36 percent spoke Arabic as their indigenous language, 50 percent spoke Beja, and 11 percent spoke West African languages. In Dar Fur, 55 percent spoke Arabic, 21 percent Fur, and others spoke Masalit, Zaghawa, and west African languages. In Kordofan, two-thirds spoke Arabic and 27 percent Nuba languages. In the Northern province, 81 percent spoke Arabic and 19 percent Nubian dialects. Thus, even in the north, regional languages competed with Arabic.

Moreover, the linguistic map in Khartoum would be different today: with the influx of migrants from the west and the south, African languages and cultures have a marked impact on the capital city. By 1989, 40 percent of its population identified themselves as African, including many Muslims who came from Dar Fur or Kordofan.53 Thus, the linguistic bifurcation between the north and south needs to be qualified. Nonetheless, Arabic is decidedly the lingua franca in the north, whereas that status is still contested in the south and the lack of Arabic has important implications for the relative power of the south.

Religion also serves as a significant distinguishing mark which overlaps with language in the south. Although precise figures are impossible to obtain, approximately 70 percent of the Sudanese people are Muslim, 25 percent follow indigenous beliefs, and 5 percent are Christian. The north is overwhelmingly Muslim, with pockets of Christians in the Nuba Mountains as well as Christian communities in the towns. The latter include some Christians whose ancestors immigrated to Sudan from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, but most are southerners who migrated north. Most southern peoples adhere to indigenous beliefs, although about 20 percent have converted to Christianity since the early twentieth century. Perhaps 10 percent converted to Islam, mostly since independence.

Religious communities are not homogeneous. Indigenous beliefs are rooted in local customs and histories. The majority of Christians are Roman Catholic, but there are also Protestant, Coptic, and Greek Orthodox communities. Muslims belong to a wide variety of turuq (brotherhoods), which originally were formed around revered preachers but in time became complex and far-flung organizations. Brotherhoods cut across ethnic lines: for example, many Beja are members of the Khatmiyya order (led by the Mirghani family), while other Beja are members of the Ansar movement (led by the Mahdi family). Many West Africans also adhere to the Ansar movement.

Despite the diversity of the Sudanese people, the fact that some 70 percent of the population is Muslim and half comes from Arabic-speaking peoples has a major impact on its political culture. It is especially important that Arabic is the language of the Quran: Arabic culture is automatically linked to faith in the minds of most Sudanese. Issues involving the national language and the role of Islam as the majority’s religion have been vitally important in its political life—and have been highly divisive. The assertion of an Arab-Islamic identity by the northern majority has alienated African and non-Muslim peoples. That divide has had enduring political ramifications and has embittered political life.

In the Sudan, there is acute tension between the proponents of ethnic nationalism, whose Arab-Islamic paradigm has dominated political life since independence, and the proponents of territorial nationalism, who seek to restructure the system to respect minority rights and create an overarching common political identity. That tension has been exacerbated by the frequent imposition of a control model, rather than a pluralist model, under which the ruling ethnic nationalists maintain that the majority religion and most widespread language should define the country’s identity and be expressed in its legal and political system. In that sense, they insist, the country is Muslim and Arab in character. They note that Arabic is studied by most young people in school and used as the lingua franca in commerce and the central government. In their view, minority peoples who speak locally based languages or subscribe to Christianity or indigenous belief systems must either assimilate culturally to the Arab-Islamic majority or remain in separate territorial enclaves in which they can be exempted from the application of certain religious laws or linguistic requirements. This perspective sees any compromise of that Arab-Islamic identity as impossible, since that would require relinquishing the image of a country that seeks to be homogeneous in language and religion and intrinsically linked to Arab-Islamic civilization.

This strongly assimilationist version of the ethnic nation-state model defines the lines of political cleavage throughout the country. In the north, for example, Fur and Beja seek to maintain their distinctive cultural systems: they want to retain their indigenous languages and the special characteristics of their Islamic rituals. They adopt varying modes of accommodation, assimilation, and resistance to the dominant system. The conflict is most stark in the south, whose African peoples have cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions that are completely distinct from the Arab-Islamic north. Ethnic nationalists view the south and Nuba Mountains as fertile fields for conversion to Islam. They also press for the use of Arabic as the sole language in administration and instruction throughout the country.

Such pressures date back to the Turkiyya and Mahdiyya periods in the nineteenth century, when Muslim traders and slavers coupled economic dominance in the south with the assumption that their own culture was superior to that of the southern peoples. When the British kept the two parts of the country separate in the 1930s and early 1940s, many politicians in the north considered the peoples of the south “the lost brother” snatched away by the British: they maintained that, without that artificial separation, the diffusion of Arabic and Islam would have led to the disappearance of southern cultural specificity.54 With independence, adherents of ethnic nationalism sought to promote the country’s Muslim-Arab identity. General Ibrahim Abbud (1958–1964) Arabized administrative and educational systems in the south and expelled foreign Christian missionaries. Parties based in Islamic religious movements renewed that homogenizing drive in the mid-1960s as did Ja’far Numairi (1969–1985), when he instituted Islamic penal, commercial, and tax codes in 1983. Prime Minister al-Sadiq al-Mahdi (1986–1989) sought to retain Islamic laws, while exempting non-Muslims in the south. The current president, Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, who seized power on 30 June 1989, argues that he is fighting for Sudan’s Arab-Islamic existence: “We believe that what we now apply in Sudan is God’s will.”55 Only minor exemptions from Islamic punishments for non-Muslims are possible, under that absolutist paradigm, and cultural Arabization must be pursued comprehensively.

That assertion of ethnic nationalism has led to divergent reactions on the part of the other peoples inside the Sudan. Those reactions comprise, basically, demands to secede or demands to restructure the political system. Proponents of the secessionist approach assert that they have the right to self-determination, which can enable them to choose to secede and form an independent state. They reject assimilation into the majority culture and reject being accorded a special, limited status as a minority group. Some spokespersons of this approach stress that the initial formation of the country was illegitimate and coerced. Others view separation as the necessary outcome after years of discrimination and civil war, which have eliminated the possibility of gaining equal rights and political status. Secessionist demands were strong in the south in the 1960s, and they resumed after Islamic laws were promulgated in 1983. One political leader stated bluntly: “if one of the nationalities [in a multi-national state] imposes itself as the state nationality, where do the other nationalities go?”56 He argued, after Bashir’s coup in 1989, that creating a theocratic state would result not in assimilation but in disintegration and partition of the country.57 This call for secession became increasingly insistent during the 1990s and remains the favored option among southerners. Even some Islamists have concluded that the north-south polarization is so intense that the only solution is to divide the territory into two states, thereby ending the “illusion” of a united, homogeneous country.58

Those who call for restructuring the political system argue that a territorial nation-state can be achieved so long as it is based on the ethnic pluralist model. Their approach seeks to set aside definitions of majority and minority and to create, instead, an inclusive identity that accords all citizens equal rights. The status of citizens should be defined not by religion, language, or culture but rather by birth and residence in the territory that comprises the Sudan. The political system should incorporate that diversity into both central and regional institutions. The approach would place substantial power in the hands of the marginalized peoples living in outlying provinces and would reduce the control by (and benefits that accrue to) the Muslim Arab elite living along the central Nile River. Perceived economic, social, and political imbalances would be redressed through programs to transfer resources from the center to the periphery. Ethnic diversity would be built into the political system in a way that does not privilege any one group but rather enables all the Sudanese peoples to gain a stake in the system. Those who adhere to this approach maintain that a decentralized polity will limit centrifugal pressures rather than exacerbate them: ethnic groups will want to remain within one country if they find room for self-expression and self-rule instead of being pressured to assimilate and being denied their distinctive identities.

This ethnic pluralist approach was endorsed in the Addis Ababa Accord of 1972, which acknowledged the rights and individuality of the southern peoples. During the rest of the 1970s, the constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of religion, race, language, or gender; stressed Sudan’s dual Arab and African identity; and called for respect for Islam, Christianity, and “noble spiritual beliefs.” When Numairi unilaterally abrogated the Addis Ababa Accord and the constitution in 1983, the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM), which led the renewed rebellion in the south, retained that call for a pluralist political system.59 The SPLM rejected the concept of fixed religious, linguistic, or ethnic majorities and minorities, arguing that the concept of a permanent Muslim majority automatically “isolates large segments of the population from the political process and thereby denies them their legitimate basic rights.”60 SPLM’s proposed “New Sudan” would blend the various languages and cultures into a unique pattern in which no single element would have hegemony and the specificities of each culture would be respected by all. This approach was endorsed by many political activists in the north, particularly in the Koka Dam Accord of 1986 and the SPLM’s agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party in 1988. It was reaffirmed, after the military coup in 1989, by the opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In particular, the SPLM and NDA agreed at Asmara in 1995 that the Sudan must be a country for all its citizens and that the political system must be based on democracy and religious pluralism.

Moreover, the Asmara accord endorsed holding a referendum in the south on self-determination. That provision was particularly important for southern participants and provided a way for northern political forces to acknowledge southern fears. Indeed, a leader of an Islamic-oriented party stressed that according the right of self-determination was a way to bolster unity: if the north does not abide by the agreed-upon program during the transitional period, he declared, then the south can exercise its right of self-determination and can terminate the union.61 Recognition of the conditionality of unity is an important component of the ethnic pluralist model.

The ethnic and territorial nationalist approaches are bitterly contested in the Sudan. Strict adherence to the concept of an ethnic nation-state has generated an equally strong and violent backlash among the marginalized peoples. The long-term civil war has displaced much of the population in the south and Nuba Mountains and has spread to the Fur in the far west and the Beja in the east. Since the NIF-military coup in 1989, civil society has been dramatically restricted as NIF leaders have rejected all dissenting perspectives and sought to mold the society in their Islamist image. The ethnic pluralist approach inherent in the Addis Ababa Accord served to reduce strife from 1972 to 1983. Today, the NDA and SPLM offer a more comprehensive formula that is also based on a pluralist nationalism. Nonetheless, the possibility of constructing such a system remains remote. The “war of visions” depicted by former ambassador Francis Deng62 continues to tear the country apart. The analysis of the intensification of that struggle since 1983 forms the core of this book.

The boundaries of the contemporary Sudanese state were established by the British in the wake of their conquest in 1898. Before the nineteenth century, the territory was the eastern reaches of what medieval Arabs called bilad al-sudan (the land of the black people), a broad band that extended through central Africa. Independent kingdoms and sultanates controlled varying amounts of territory and engaged in trade, cultural interchange, and military conflict. Christian kingdoms in Nubia lasted until the fourteenth century, but gave way to gradual Islamization and Arabization through immigrants from Egypt. Eventually many Arabized Nubian groups even claimed descent from the prophet’s uncle Abbas. Some of the northern riverine peoples traveled west in response to political pressure or economic opportunity. They then married Nuba and Beja women, engaged in cattle and camel breeding, and journeyed up the White Nile and into Bahr al-Ghazal in search of ivory and slaves. In a somewhat similar process, the “black sultanate” of Funj (1504–1821) at Sennar contributed to the Arabization and Islamization of the indigenous peoples. Moreover, the Beja in the Red Sea hills maintained a distinct culture even as they converted to Islam and intermarried with Arab immigrants. Some descendants claimed Arab pedigree through such “adoptive ancestors.”1 The assimilationist thrust assumed that Arabic and Islam were superior to indigenous beliefs and languages and therefore should be emulated and even adopted genealogically. Nonetheless, non-Arab enclaves remained in the north. The scattered villagers in the Nuba Mountains had difficulty fending off slave raids from the nomadic Baqqara Arabs. In contrast, the powerful Muslim sultanate in Dar Fur lasted from the mid-1600s until 1874, staking out a key role in trans-African trade. Ali Dinar restored the sultanate in 1898 and warded off British control until 1916. Meanwhile, Islamic religious preachers (faqis) from Arabia and North Africa established sufi brotherhoods (turuq, sing. tariqa), some of which acquired substantial economic power and political influence. The turuq were often exempted from paying taxes and were granted land from which they could derive revenue. The last politically significant tariqa to emerge was the Khatmiyya, which originated with Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani (1793–1853) and was closely identified with Turko-Egyptian rule.

Despite a general perception that the swamps of the Sudd (barrier) blocked contact between north and south, considerable trade, cultural exchange, and military clashes took place between the peoples living in those territories. Within the south peoples’ sources of livelihood consisted of cattle herding, fishing, subsistence farming, and trade in ivory and gold. As noted earlier, they had diverse languages, religious beliefs, and political structures. Although the south was subject to sporadic slave raids from the north, the exchange was relatively equal until the nineteenth century. Indeed, the Shilluk, who lived north of the Sudd, had military prowess that equalled the Arabs’ until the latter acquired firearms and armed river steamers in the nineteenth century.

Today politicians argue over the origins of the northern and southern Sudanese. Some southern intellectuals argue that Shilluk, Dinka, and Nuer all originated in the north and migrated south relatively recently.2 They maintain that self-defined Arabs are really African genetically, with only minute traces of Arab blood. In contrast, northerners tend to emphasize their own Arab lineage. They often argue that some southern peoples originated in East Africa and came after Arab tribes settled in the north. These arguments present one group as authentic and seek to delegitimize the lineage and territorial claims of other groups. If nationalism is rooted in ethnicity, then the most “authentic” people have primacy. If, instead, all the peoples have equal claims to the land—as in territorial nationalism—then such distinctions are immaterial.

The Turko-Egyptian invasion of 1821 brought the first attempts to form a centralized administration.3 The Turkiyya established military garrisons, constructed telegraph lines, and collected taxes in the north. Although the Funj king surrendered without any resistance, other groups fought off the invasion. Moreover, people revolted in various localities against the heavy taxes that had to be paid in cattle or in slaves for Muhammad Ali’s army in Egypt. Over time, the government developed administrative structures, established schools, improved communications and security, and dammed seasonal rivers, all of which encouraged economic growth and both internal and external commerce in the north.

However, for the non-Muslim peoples the Turkiyya caused disastrous dislocations, initially due to the seizure of men to replenish the army in Egypt.4 Dinka, Shilluk, Ingessana, and Beja (in the east) resisted the initial expeditions, whereas the scattered groups in the Nuba Mountains could not fend off the raids. Private Arab armies also organized periodic ghazwas (slave hunts) in which they seized ivory, slaves, and cattle. Ottoman, Sudanese, and European traders established fortified stations (zaribas) in which slaves were held until they could be transported to the north as well as Libya, Egypt, and Arabia. Slave-owning increased substantially within northern Sudan, where slaves began to be used not only as agricultural laborers and servants but also as cooks, blacksmiths, and construction workers.

From the perspective of peoples in the south, jallaba (Muslim Arab merchants from the north), European traders, and Ottoman officials were all part of the Turkiyya that devastated their societies. Despite sporadic efforts by the government to stop the slave trade, “the Upper Nile and Bahr al-Ghazal had thus been opened to a predatory commerce and over large areas the traditional tribal structure was in dissolution.”5 Slave raids uprooted people and undermined social units. Conscription into the armed forces was similarly perceived as a form of enslavement and social dislocation, since soldiers rarely returned home.6 Southern peoples also opposed government efforts to monopolize the trade in ivory, which was one of the few sources of cash income in the south, and they opposed paying taxes and being forced to provide labor (corvée) for infrastructural projects. Moreover, their cultures and beliefs clashed with those prevalent in the north. Although individuals converted to Islam and traders learned Arabic for practical purposes, particularly in western Bahr al-Ghazal, most peoples resisted conversion to Islam. This disinterest in conversion was based on their sense of the inherent value and superiority of their own religions and cultures. It grew into active resistance, since Islam and Arabic entered the south transmitted by an alien army and slave-raiding merchants.

These southern perspectives differed sharply from the version of history presented by contemporary Islamists in the north. The latter argue that slavery was commercialized and promoted by Europeans, not by northern Sudanese.7 They note that slavery was practiced within the south and southerners captured other southerners to sell to merchants in the zaribas. Islamists also assume that the people in the south would have naturally adopted Islam (with Arabic as its linguistic vehicle) through the gradually expanding contact. In time, southern peoples would have recognized the superiority of Islam over their primitive religious beliefs and would have preferred Arabic as the lingua franca. In the meantime, as peoples who were not monotheists, they could be raided and compelled to convert to Islam. Assimilation would benefit the southern peoples as, they assumed, it had benefited other non-Arab peoples in the north.

The schism intensified during the Mahdiyya, the indigenous politico-religious movement that overthrew the Turkiyya in 1885.8 In 1881 Muhammad Ahmad Ibn Abdallah proclaimed himself the Mahdi, who would purify and guide the believers and uproot the corrupt, oppressive Turks. Mahdist forces won what seemed like miraculous victories against the well-armed Egyptian troops and brought together a diverse mix of pious disciples, merchants, and nomads. In 1883 the governors of Kordofan and Dar Fur surrendered to the Mahdiyya and, in the east, Beja rose in revolt under Uthman Diqna. The governor of Bahr al-Ghazal surrendered in April 1884 and Khartoum fell in January 1885. Sawakin, the port on the Red Sea, remained under joint British-Egyptian control. European administrators in Equatoria, to the far south, also stayed at their isolated posts. Although the Mahdi died in the summer of 1885, his successor Khalifa Abdallahi institutionalized the Mahdist state that controlled the north until the British conquest in 1898.

At the time, the Mahdiyya was viewed as a religio-political movement that roused the Muslim peoples to a spirit of martyrdom and sought to return the society to the practices of a pure Islam. But, to today’s northern nationalists, the Mahdiyya was the key “national liberation movement”9 that forged the Sudan into one nation, transcending tribal and sectarian allegiances. The perspective from the south was starkly different. Although some peoples in the south cooperated with the Mahdi in order to expel the Turkish garrisons, they did so to free themselves from foreign control and from predatory raids. They, therefore, turned against the Mahdist troops when they imposed centralized rule, collected taxes, and resumed slave raids. The messianic Mahdiyya linked slaveholding with the religious and cultural transformation of slaves from unbelievers to believers. Equally important, many leading Mahdists came from merchant families whose livelihood was threatened by the Turkiyya’s efforts to end slavery.10

Thus, the Mahdiyya was reconstructed in the national imagination of the north as a period of liberation and assertion of cultural values. It showed that the Sudanese were equal to Europe and able to defeat the once-mighty Ottoman Empire. The Mahdiyya invigorated their national image and held positive symbolic significance as a golden age. In contrast, within the south, the Mahdiyya was seen as the culmination of the depredations of the Turkiyya. Although the Mahdist forces could not consolidate their control over the south, their frequent raids further destabilized its society and economy. Dunstan Wai emphasizes that the “scars of the brutality inflicted on the Southern Sudanese still remain.”11 This period fixed a collective memory that the northerner was the primary source of danger. Those polarized images remain potent today.

Britain sought control over the Sudan for imperial strategic reasons that were largely related to preventing other European powers from seizing the sources of the Nile and gaining footholds along the Red Sea from which they could threaten the sea route to India. But the official justification presented by London, which had been the de facto ruler of Egypt since 1882, was the restoration of Turko-Egyptian sovereignty. Therefore, when it defeated the Mahdiyya in 1898, Britain established a joint regime known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium.

In practice, Britain instituted its own legal codes and administrative systems and ruled through British officials in the central administration and provinces. In rural areas the British sought to build up the authority of tribal leaders, through often contradictory policies by which the shaikhs were paid salaries, placed in charge of tribal courts, and accorded enhanced power. In some cases, already influential families consolidated their influence, but in other cases this led to the artificial search for “lost tribes and vanished chiefs.”12 Historian Martin W. Daly views the approach as frequently “an anomalous attempt to ‘tribalize’ people who had no memory of tribal authority or desire to recall it.”13

British officials cultivated close relations with the leaders of the principal Islamic religious orders. The most important were Sayyid Ali al-Mirghani, leader of the Khatmiyya, whose leaders had been closely aligned with the Turkiyya and who opposed the Mahdiyya; al-Sharif Yusuf al-Hindi, head of the Hindiyya tariqa; and the posthumous son of the Mahdi, Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, who was wooed by the British during World War I.14 They subsquently allowed al-Mahdi to collect zakat (Islamic tithes) from the Ansar (followers of the Mahdi) and to develop lucrative pump-irrigated cotton schemes on Aba Island and in the Gezira district. Many Ansar laborers were west African migrants who were paid in grain and clothing. The economic power accumulated by the turuq leaders enabled the Ansar and the Khatmiyya to establish political movements that commanded the allegiance of millions of believers in the rural areas of the north and dominated political life in the capital.

The British were wary of the small but vocal urban educated class, which was influenced by Egyptian nationalism in the 1920s and pressed the government to place Sudanese citizens in responsible administrative positions as well as to move toward self-rule. An early manifestation of those protests was the White Flag League, which the British suppressed in 1924. The league was founded by Ali Abd al-Latif, an Egyptian-born Muslim whose Dinka parents were originally slaves. The members of the league, enthusiastic about the Egyptian revolution of 1919 and Egypt’s gaining nominal independence in 1922, called for political unity of the Nile Valley and encouraged anti-British demonstrations in Sudanese towns. The movement attracted Arab and Dinka officers, government clerks, artisans, and workers. Some workers were employed by the railway headquarters at Atbara, which was the first industrial complex in the country. Although the league’s members were few in number, they included persons from the new urban lower-middle class that opposed the traditional tribal and sectarian elites. Today, the repression of the White Flag League is viewed as the crushing of the first modern struggle for freedom in the Sudan. Such analyses, however, often omit Abd al-Latif’s Dinka heritage and his parents’ slave background, as that would imply that a southerner of slave origin could be the authentic leader of an interethnic Sudanese national movement. Moreover, analyses sometimes omit the fact that Mahdi and Mirghani—along with other religious and tribal elites—viewed Abd al-Latif as a “dangerous upstart.”15 Since the White Flag League threatened the established social order, that elite welcomed its repression.

British officials concluded that they should restrict schooling in order to prevent an educated class from emerging that would be discontented with the condominium. An important exception was Gordon Memorial College, which developed several professional schools by 1936 and brought together the brightest youths from the north. The students and graduates of that college confirmed British fears by quickly becoming active politically. In 1931 students protested against cuts in the starting civil service salaries, since that would directly affect their careers. Some teachers, such as Ismail al-Azhari,16 had been educated in Beirut and returned with pan-Arab and secular nationalist beliefs that they promoted at the college. Most importantly, Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi supported cultural societies for secondary school and college graduates and underwrote a publishing house that printed literature, political writings, and a newspaper.

The graduates of post-elementary schools and colleges, who totalled 5,000 in 1938,17 joined together that year to form the Graduates’ General Congress (GGC). The GGC was established to press for political rights as well as to serve their professional interests. The GGC, led by Azhari, modeled itself on the Indian National Congress and aimed to have enlightened northern Sudanese take the lead in defining and achieving clear political goals. The growing politicization of the GGC was evident in April 1942 when its leaders submitted a memorandum to the governor-general that requested self-determination, a representative Sudanese body, a Higher Education Council, judicial reform, and educational and economic development at the end of the war. GGC’s internal tensions, which grew as Mahdi and Mirghani jockeyed for influence among the graduates, resulted in a schism the next year. Azhari founded Ashiqqa (blood brothers) in 1943, with the tacit support of Ali al-Mirghani, who talked of unity of the Nile Valley in order to maintain the support of Egypt. Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi founded the Umma Party in 1945, on a platform that called for complete independence. The split in the northern nationalist movement between the two religio-political leaders and their success in linking secularist intellectuals to their sectarian camps had a debilitating impact on pre-independence political life. It also colored postindependence political maneuverings that became locked into “sterile feuds of sectarianism.”18

Southern political life developed along a different trajectory from the north. Although Anglo-Egyptian troops made incursions into the south in 1898 and established outposts there by World War I, thirty years passed before the many uprisings were subdued. Religious figures and tribal chiefs led local (and uncoordinated) efforts to resist the new rulers. The motivations for resistance remained similar to those of the nineteenth century, with the exception that slave raids had ended. Those motivations included the outsiders’

The British pursued their “pacification” program with greater determination than the Turkiyya and Mahdiyya. The British shared the perception of previous conquerors that the peoples in the south were primitive and pagan. Southern peoples required moral guidance that could be provided by Christian missionaries from Europe. The British appointed and dismissed chiefs, despite their avowed support for indirect rule, and established courts which applied British rather than indigenous codes of procedure and which frequently deviated from customary law and its punishments.20 The British raided cattle camps to collect taxes, continued the corvée system that forced people to work without pay to construct roads, and resumed the Turkiyya’s state monopoly on the sale of ivory, which had been an important source of income for indigenous peoples. Overall, the historian Robert O. Collins concludes, there was an “inherent contradiction between British intervention to promote Native Administration and its erosion of tribal custom and authority.”21

Subsequently, the British attempted to seal the south off from the north in order to “protect” the south from Muslim influence. The ostensible reason for this policy of isolation was to end northern pressure on and dominance of the south and Nuba Mountains. The orders were intended to stop Arab tribes from seizing slaves, cattle, and grain from the south, and to end the alleged pressure to convert to Islam. Missionaries and many government officials were hostile toward Islam. More broadly, British officials sought to keep Arab and Islamic influences out of East Africa, which should fall under the sway of English values and Christianity.22 As initially articulated through the Closed District Order of 1922, which applied to Kordofan, Dar Fur, and parts of Kassala and the White Nile provinces as well as the south, Sudanese who lived outside those areas could travel to or live there only if they obtained a special permit. The Permits to Trade Ordinance of 1925 allowed the authorities to exclude northern traders (jallaba), who had dominated commerce in the countryside. Egyptian officials were removed after 1924 and some northern Sudanese officials were replaced by British officials. Arab-style dress (such as the jallabiyya) was prohibited as were names that the British deemed nonindigenous. In practice, however, large numbers of northern traders and officials remained in and even moved to the south.23

The British formalized a language policy in 1928 according to which vernacular languages were taught in primary schools, English was designated the official language, and Arabic was excluded from schools and government offices. Although residents in trading towns spoke varying Arabic patois, this policy created linguistic barriers with the north.24 Catholic and Protestant missionaries opened schools, whereas Muslim schools, mosques, and preachers were banned. The policy was particularly disruptive for western Bahr al-Ghazal, where British officials expelled indigenous Muslim, Arabic-speaking groups into the no-man’s-land bordering Kordofan and Dar Fur in 1930, in an extreme interpretation of orders to prevent contact between Arab and southern peoples.25 In those areas, the Arabic language, Islam, and Arab customs had been prevalent for the past century and were stamped out unnaturally.

British policy was also problematic since it did not foster economic and social development in the south or Nuba Mountains and thereby widened the already substantial gap with the north.26 The limited number of missionary schools did not meet the population’s need to train technicians, soldiers, teachers, and clerks. There were no government secondary schools in the entire south until after World War II. Key British officials blocked government and private development efforts, arguing that the indigenous population had no desire to improve its economic welfare. Private economic investment and production were discouraged by the difficulty of transporting goods within the south and the high cost of railway transport from the railhead in Al-Ubayyid to Port Sudan. Trade with the north relied on the river system. There were no organized markets for handling cattle and animal products, and fishermen lacked transportation, storage, and credit facilities that might have enabled them to expand into commercially viable operations. The government refused to allow projects to grow tobacco and coffee in the south, in order to protect customs revenues earned on the import of cigarettes and coffee from abroad. The only serious development scheme was an integrated cotton-growing and processing project for the Azande people, which began in 1945 and soon suffered economic difficulties. Economic and social development in the south, therefore, lagged significantly behind the north by the time the Sudan gained independence in 1956. The gap can be illustrated by the contrast in per capita gross domestic product in 1956: 119 Sudanese pounds (SL) in greater Khartoum and SL71 in the Gezira area; the level fell to SL27–28 in the rainfed clay plains and sand dunes of the western and central parts of the country. From there it dropped to a mere SL12 in the three southern provinces.27

Northern Sudanese resented deeply the British separation of the south. A northern historian even declared that “the harm done by the fanatical and arbitrary policy of the Condominium regime in the Southern Sudan far outweighs that of memories of the slave trade.”28 Islamists argue today that British and missionaries’ biases against Islam and Arabic culture made the educated southern elite hate the north. They maintain that the British aimed to create an anti-Islamic culture. Islamist leader Hasan al-Turabi asserts that without the forced separation southern ethnic groups would have disappeared through intermarriage and the gradual diffusion of Arabic and Islam. An Islamist intellectual commented that some northern Sudanese29

British policy would have made sense if it had led to the separation of the south from the north, then either turning it into an independent state or attaching it to a neighboring African country. Although an occasional British official suggested those solutions, they were never considered seriously.31 In 1946 the British formally acceded to pressure from northern politicians and the Egyptian government to keep the south within a united Sudan. Egypt wanted the Nile Valley to remain united under its monarchy. Britain had formed an advisory council in 1944, whose Sudanese members were all from the north. Those members insisted that the council’s jurisdiction include the south and argued that the south need not be represented by southerners.32 Without consulting the south, the British and the advisory council agreed to establish a legislative assembly whose jurisdiction would encompass the entire country.

To diffuse criticism, the British convened a conference in Juba in 1947. Its agenda did not include the principles of unity or separation. Rather, conferees discussed how the south should be represented in the legislature and special safeguards for the south. The British government selected the seventeen southern delegates to the conference, who were virtually all on its payroll as tribal chiefs, junior officials, or police officers. Despite those inhibitions, some of them expressed their fears that northern politicians would outmaneuver them and that they would be underrepresented in the assembly, with only 14 percent of the seats. They argued that the south needed to strengthen its educational and economic systems before joining with the north and therefore required the protections inherent in a federal system. They cited the history of slavery to indicate that “it would take time to develop mutual respect and promote [a] genuine sense of equality.”33 The most senior chief from the south articulated the fear that a hurried union would result in a violent divorce, if northerners reverted to their ancestors’ rapacious behavior. Nonetheless, British officials joined the three northern participants in insisting on a unitary system and persuaded most of the southern delegates to support that concept on the grounds that the south would benefit tangibly: the region’s isolation would end and the south would gain its fair share of civil service posts.

By the next year the government cancelled trade and travel restrictions between the north and south, allowed a mosque to be built in Juba, and permitted large numbers of northern civil servants and teachers to transfer south. Overall, the preparations for independence marginalized southerners.34 The legislative assembly seated in December 1948 allocated 14 percent of the seats to the south; those MPs comprised an easily outvoted minority. The one southern MP appointed to the thirteen-member Constitutional Amendment Commission in 1951 resigned when he lost the vote to create a federal system and establish a ministry for southern affairs under a southern minister. Similarly, southern MPs could not stop the ministry of education from decreeing that Arabic would be the only official language and that all intermediary and secondary schools would teach in Arabic. The first Sudanese minister of education considered that the best way to achieve national integration was to assimilate the south into the northern educational system. The south’s exclusion from decision-making was further emphasized by the fact that no southerners participated in the delegations sent to Cairo in 1952 and 1953 to decide whether the country should become independent or should merge with Egypt. Finally, the program to Sudanize the civil service, announced at the end of 1954, appointed only six southerners to 800 senior administrative posts. No southerners became governors, deputy governors, or district commissioners; northern officials ruled the south. The all-northern Sudanization commission claimed that southerners lacked seniority, experience, and academic degrees; their lack of fluency in Arabic was an important, though unstated, factor. Collins terms that the “single worst act of folly in the south,” since southerners had expected a quarter of the posts and this action confirmed their suspicions of northern intentions.35 Northern politicians stressed the rights of the numerical majority and formal equality for all citizens. In contrast, southern leaders stressed the need to protect the minority and the need to achieve equitable opportunities and access to economic and political goods. Each side felt it upheld a moral principle; the polarized perspectives deepened the conflict.

In 1953, the Khatmiyya-Ashiqqa alliance [renamed the National Unionist Party (NUP)] contested a second round of parliamentary elections and won 51 of the 97 seats, reducing Umma’s share to 22. NUP leader Azhari became the first Sudanese prime minister. A member of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) was elected to one of the five graduates seats. The Southern Party (later renamed the Liberal Party) gained nine seats and was supported by three independent MPs. The proclamation of self-government on 9 January 1954 called for a referendum in which the public would choose between independence and union with Egypt. But in August 1955, the assembly voted to evacuate foreign troops immediately. In October NUP and Umma agreed to move to immediate independence, bypassing the referendum. Parliament passed the transitional constitution on 31 December 1955 and Sudan became independent the next day. For such politicians as Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi this was a deeply emotional moment that symbolized Sudan’s resurrection seventy years after the Mahdiyya.36

The accelerated move to independence shocked southern politicians. Marginalized politically and excluded from decision-making in Khartoum, the southern MPs announced in November 1955 that they would not endorse the independence proclamation unless the south gained federal status. They called for a plebiscite in the south under UN auspices to determine the region’s relations with the north. However, they finally settled for a vague promise that “the claims … for federal government in the three southern provinces [will] be given full consideration” after independence.37 They realized too late that “full consideration” did not guarantee a favorable outcome and later cited this as a prime example of the tricks played on them by northern politicians. To them, “independence” meant that they exchanged one foreign ruler for another.

The transition to independence proved violent.38 In July 1955 police shot at Zande demonstrators who protested the arrest of a Zande member of parliament after he supported the concept of federation at a political rally. Southern fears of economic displacement intensified when, soon after northern managers arrived in June 1955 to run the cotton and textile scheme in Yambio, they dismissed 300 southern workers. When the workers petitioned for increased wages, threatened to strike, and attacked northerners in Nzara town, the manager called in police and soldiers to quell the protests.

Soon after, a unit of the Southern Defence Corps stationed at Torit (East Equatoria) was ordered to go to Khartoum for the independence celebration. Southern soldiers were already irritated that northern officers had taken over from the British and feared that the order was a plot to disband and kill them. The soldiers refused to get into trucks to travel to Juba on 18 August 1955 and then killed more than 300 northern officials and civilians (including women and children) in Torit. Attacks on northerners spread to a dozen other towns in Equatoria. The government airlifted Arab troops to Juba and declared a state of emergency. Although the soldiers laid down their arms when the British pledged to treat them fairly, they fled into the bush when they realized that northern troops (rather than British) would supervise their surrender. The four persons who remained to meet the northern soldiers were summarily executed, along with numerous southern policemen. Northern troops also burned houses and destroyed crops and livestock in neighboring villages.

What was perceived as a mutiny by the government in Khartoum, necessitating a firm crackdown, was viewed as justified resistance in the south. Northern politicians blamed the uprising on outsiders: some claimed that Catholic missionaries brainwashed the soldiers to hate Islam and northerners.39 Alternatively, they claimed that Egypt instigated the mutiny to try to block Sudanese independence.40 Those perspectives did not comprehend that the suppression of the Torit uprising—coming on the heels of the south’s political and economic marginalization—confirmed southerners’ worst fears. It had a far-reaching impact on the north-south relationship.

Thus, as Sudan gained independence, assimilationist tendencies came to the fore that sought to undo decades of separation and integrate the south on the basis of the Arab-Islamic paradigm. The northern politicians took full advantage of their automatic majority in the legislative and executive institutions. No serious consideration was given to an alternative paradigm that would posit the independent Sudan as a multiethnic country in which due consideration should be given to the culture and economic interests of its varying peoples. In the wave of enthusiasm for independence in the north, southern protests seemed illegitimate and even treasonous. They did not perceive those protests as statements by people who were distressed by a political transformation from which they were virtually excluded. The situation provided a clear case of one ethnic group imposing its values and symbols as the country’s ethnic-nationalism rather than embracing an inclusive territorial nationalism that would encompass the country’s diverse peoples.

Although Sudanese political life was dominated by northern parties, those political forces were not united. Within six months of independence, the alliance between Azhari’s secularists and the Khatmiyya broke up. A new coalition government brought together the parties of the two sayyids, who rejected federalism on the grounds that it would encourage secession and sought a constitution that would enshrine Islam as the official religion and shari’a as a basic source of legislation. Since the forty-six-member National Constitutional Committee formed in September 1956 had only three southern members, the committee recommended a centralized, unitary system, with shari’a the source of law and Arabic the official national language.41

Those recommendations increased instability in the south. A new degree of self-assertion by educated southerners was evident when their Federal Party won 40 of the 46 southern seats in elections to the 173-seat parliament in 1958. The party platform demanded federation, equal status for English with Arabic and for Christianity with Islam, an orientation toward Africa rather than the Arab world, and a separate military force in the south consisting exclusively of southern troops and officers.42 The southern MPs walked out of parliament on June 1958 when the government rejected all their demands and insisted on adhering to a unitary system. Beja, Fur, and Nuba politicians also sought a decentralized political system and inclusion in decision-making. But they could be contained or co-opted more easily, in part because of their smaller numbers and limited representation in the parliament and in part because the government could invoke Islamic solidarity to win over Beja and Fur and some of the Nuba.43

The parliamentary system assumed that participants agreed on the rules of the political game and adhered to a basic national consensus. In Sudan, however, support for political parties was based on ethnicity, religion, and personal allegiance. Non-Arab and secular-oriented groups were automatically and permanently in the minority. Given the lack of national consensus, those who were outvoted had limited incentives to remain inside the political system. Conversely, the Islamic- and Arab-oriented political parties were assured control over the parliament and cabinet and could ignore other perspectives. Assimilation and marginalization could be carried out by ostensibly democratic means. The existence of some elected representation and freedom of speech put brakes on repression but did not check efforts to institute the ethno-national vision of one part of the population at the expense of the rest.

In this context of deflated legitimacy for parliamentary rule and heightened regional and religious tension, the high command of the armed forces seized power. Commander-in-chief Major General Ibrahim Abbud had the tacit support of the prime minister, who feared that he was being marginalized politically. The coup d’état on 16/17 November 1958 occurred hours before parliament was scheduled to convene to vote on the contentious issues of an Islamic constitution and federalism. On the day of the coup, a mass meeting was scheduled by Fur politicians to endorse the southern-sponsored demand for federation.

Abbud opposed secularism and the devolution of power to marginalized groups.44 Instead, he sympathized with the Islamic-oriented Khatmiyya and Ansar, while being fed up with their factionalism and preoccupation with personal rivalries. Abbud appointed himself prime minister and surrounded himself with military officers. He suspended the constitution, closed parliament, and banned political parties. His actions were challenged in 1959 by members of the armed forces, including a group with ties to Nubians who were furious that they would be removed from their ancestral homes when that area would be flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. During the next two years, politicians—especially from the Umma, National Unionist, and Communist parties—lobbied to restore parliament, which propelled Abbud to intern a dozen leading politicians for seven months in 1961. Railway strikes, protests at the Mahdi’s tomb, and student demonstrations induced Abbud to release the politicians and conduct elections for local councils in 1963. However, he did not let the parties field candidates, which resulted in a widespread boycott. When the government forbade elections for the Gezira tenants union in 1963, the communist-organized tenants struck at the height of the picking season and compelled the government to capitulate, enabling the Communist Party to sweep those elections. But power remained concentrated in the hands of Abbud and his narrowly based regime.

Meanwhile, the south exploded when Abbud tried to stamp out unrest, impose Arabic, and limit the rights of Christian churches. He argued that cultural homogenization was essential to Sudan’s unity and believed that Christianity was an alien religion that foreign missionaries had imposed on the south. He expressed contempt for African religions and disparaged indigenous languages and customs. Abbud pressured Zande and Toposa chiefs in Equatoria to convert to Islam and to order their people to also convert. The government required Arabic in southern schools in order to achieve national integration and religious unity. It constructed many Muslim religious schools and mosques and changed the weekly holiday in the south from Sunday to Friday, the Muslim day of rest. Those measures provoked strikes throughout the southern school system in April 1960 and October 1962.45 Since northern Sudanese tended to blame foreign missionaries for southerners’ resistance to Arab-Islamic culture, Abbud restricted their medical, relief, and educational operations. That culminated in the Missionary Societies Act of May 1962, which regulated churches and nationalized missionary schools. In February 1964 the government expelled all 300 foreign missionaries, blaming them for fomenting separatism and encouraging the widespread armed revolt. The government also transferred north many southern officials and teachers, ostensibly to promote national integration but probably because they were potential leaders within the south. No economic development or infrastructure projects were undertaken in the south except for the extension of the railway to Wau, whose aim was to ensure military control rather than to enhance economic growth. No southerners were recruited into the armed forces and few entered the police or prison services, ostensibly because they were not fluent in Arabic. For example, from 1956 to 1964 the army commissioned 589 officers of whom twenty came from the south.46

Abbud’s policies revived memories of the military and slave raids of the Turkiyya and Mahdiyya, with the accompanying pressure to convert to Islam and adopt Arabic culture. His approach was a crude assertion of the dominant paradigm of a homogeneous country with one national religion and national language. Moreover, the restraints on government action during the parliamentary period vanished under military rule. As unrest spread, the armed forces bombed and burned villages to the extent that half a million southerners fled into exile. The core of the southern guerrilla forces that combined into the Anya-Nya comprised soldiers who had mutinied at Torit in 1955 and others from the preindependence Southern Corps.47 The guerrillas coalesced politically in 1960 into a movement that became known as the Sudan African National Union (SANU). At its national convention in Kampala (Uganda) in November 1964, SANU proclaimed the goal of independence for the south.

Meanwhile, mounting military casualties compelled the government to establish a commission of enquiry in September 1964 to investigate the causes of southern discontent.48 Northern political activists used that investigation as an excuse to air a wide range of grievances and argue that the civil war could not end while the military remained in power. When a communist student leader was killed in a clash with security forces, 30,000 people attended his funeral. On 24 October, the chief justice persuaded Abbud to meet representatives of professional groups, who formed the Professional Front and galvanized a general strike in Khartoum that was joined by trade unions and politicians. Significantly, young army officers refused to fire on the demonstrators. Senior officers then intervened to mediate an agreement whereby Abbud resigned and a civilian transitional government was formed on 30 October. That October Revolution acquired mythic proportions for democratic forces in the north as an exemplary use of moral power by unarmed civilians to overthrow an unjust regime. Opposition to Abbud, however, did not mean that most northern political forces had stopped supporting the concept of an Arab-Islamic nation. Nonetheless, the short-lived transitional government that followed the October Revolution displayed an unusual sensitivity to southern perspectives and concerns.

The transitional civilian government, headed by the educator Sirr al-Khatim al-Khalifa, was composed of representatives of five northern parties, the Professional Front, and three southern politicians selected by the new Southern Front (SF). Leaders of the ideologically opposed Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) and Islamic Charter Front (ICF) served in the cabinet, for the first time. Significantly, a southerner became minister of interior, a highly sensitive post that had always been held by a northerner. However, the leaders of the powerful traditional Islamic parties resented being relegated to one portfolio each in the cabinet.49 The Ansar mounted a massive demonstration in February 1965 that compelled Khalifa to restructure the cabinet so that the majority fell to Umma, NUP, and ICF, with SCP reduced to one portfolio and the Professional Front curtailed.

The transitional government was mandated to prepare parliamentary elections, but Khalifa also sought to use the opportunity to end the civil war. Khalifa had gained the respect of southerners when he was director of education in the south. He authorized southern ministers and politicians to contact Anya-Nya leaders in exile, and then made important gestures such as granting them amnesty, welcoming a delegation from SANU to Khartoum in February 1965, and promulgating a cease-fire before convening a Round-Table Conference in the capital in March 1965.50 All the northern parties and southern groups were represented at the conference, but they were far too divided to reach any agreement. Northern parties were preoccupied with the campaign leading up to parliamentary elections the next month and feared that they would lose votes in the north if they made political concessions to the south. They rejected the idea of establishing a federation and viewed even the discussion of secession as treasonous. At most, the south could gain local self-rule and an accelerated economic development program.

The south did not speak with one voice at the conference. Aggrey Jaden, representing the majority in SANU, argued that the conference should discuss only how to facilitate the south’s transition to independence. William Deng, speaking for the breakaway faction of SANU, endorsed federation between the south and the north. Southern Front delegates called for a referendum that would include all possible options—secession, federation, local government, and unity. While SF preferred federation, this approach would enable the south to have a free choice; their approach embodied the concept of self-determination in its fullest sense.

The Round-Table Conference was an important face-to-face meeting at which northern and southern politicians spoke as equals and southern politicians gave full voice to their grievances. Nonetheless, neither side trusted the other enough to reach an agreement. Memories of Torit made the Anya-Nya fear giving up their arms, whereas fears of southern secession made northerners demand that the guerrillas disarm. The delegates accepted the proposal by African observers to establish a twelve-person committee composed of six southerners and six northerners to draft a working paper that would be considered when the conference reconvened. Meanwhile, the government should institute immediate reforms, such as resettling southern refugees; hiring southerners in the police, armed forces, and civil administration; equalizing wages in the south and north; guaranteeing freedom of religion and missionary activity for Sudanese nationals; establishing a university in the south as well as a girls’ secondary school and agricultural training programs; and creating a southern development agency. Those measures would be difficult to implement, however, without an overall peace accord.

The committee spent more than a year preparing its recommendations. By then, the sectarian parties regained power through elections in April 1965 and further elections in April 1968.51 Fighting prevented voting from taking place in the south in 1965, which meant that the south had no representation in parliament for three crucial years. The fragmentation in the legislature was intensified by the behavior of the traditional politicians, who resumed their pre-Abbud pattern of wrangling over ministerial posts rather than developing coherent policies. The wrangling was exacerbated by the division of the Umma party between factions headed by Imam al-Hadi and the youthful al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, who had just returned from studies at Oxford University to claim the leadership of the movement in his capacity as great-grandson of the Mahdi.52 The 1968 elections also skewed representation toward the traditional Islamic parties, although an outspoken contingent of southern MPs was elected and, for the first time, northern non-Arab regional groups gained seats.

During the second democratic period (1965–1969), three key policy steps involved expelling the SCP from parliament, renewing discussion of an Islamic constitution, and intensifying the war in the south. Competitive overbidding among northern Islamic forces fostered the assertion of the assimilationist control model that ignored the interests of other ethnic groups and ideological tendencies. Given their parliamentary majority, they could use democratic devices to achieve nondemocratic ends. In particular, the Islamic Charter Front (ICF) had gained five MPs in 1965 under the newly invigorated leadership of Dr. Hasan al-Turabi, a law professor who had graduated from the Sorbonne. He had restructured the Islamist movement to appeal to young intellectuals and had gained wider support by his activism during the October Revolution. Turabi succeeded in persuading the assembly to ban the Communist Party on the grounds that the party was atheist and thereby antithetical to the country’s religious values.53 This action placed ideological restrictions on the inclusiveness of the parliamentary process. By touching on the sensitive issue of religious faith, Turabi pressured the traditional Muslim politicians into following his ideological lead.

Overall, the governments continued Abbud’s policies that promoted Arabization and Islamization. For example, al-Sadiq al-Mahdi strongly reasserted the Arab-Islamic ethic when he became prime minister in 1966:54

The civil war intensified during this period. In June 1965 the all-northern parliament resolved unanimously to give the security forces a “free hand” to “restore law and order.”56 Soldiers killed unarmed demonstrators in Juba in July 1965 and razed half of its residential areas. A few days later, the army cordoned off the cathedral in Wau during a wedding and killed 76 persons, including 49 southern government officials. Then the army killed 187 civilians in August near Malakal. The editors of SF’s newspaper went on trial for publicizing those killings, which southerners viewed as a concerted campaign to eliminate their educated leadership. Two years later, the army killed fifteen tribal chiefs while they were detained in the Bor garrison.57 Pledges made at the Round-Table Conference to expand education and development, resettle refugees, and guarantee religious freedom remained unfulfilled, and the government reverted to the view that Anya-Nya were treasonous rebels.

Meanwhile, the committee appointed by the Round-Table Conference recommended the decentralization of power to the regions, short of federation or secession.58 Each region would elect a regional assembly that would, in turn, elect a regional government. Police and district officers would be recruited locally, and each region would craft its own economic plans. Southern residents would be permitted to preserve their indigenous cultures and to teach indigenous languages in school. But the exact relationship between the regional and central governments remained unresolved, and the committee did not agree as to whether the south should remain three separate provinces or constitute one large region, as southerners preferred. Northerners were particularly fearful that a southern home-guard responsible to the regional government could serve as the nucleus of a secessionist army.

Nonetheless, the recommendations modified the assimilationist approach to national unity and contained important concepts embodying ethnic pluralism. Those recommendations contradicted the assimilationist approach that was being developed in the parliamentary discussion of a draft constitution. Therefore, none of the governments took steps to implement the committee’s recommendations. In fact, al-Sadiq al-Mahdi avoided reconvening the Round-Table Conference by assembling an All Party Conference instead, which excluded the external southern parties and the (banned) SCP.59 In that inauspicious political climate, the Anya-Nya’s convention of August 1967 set up the Southern Sudan Provisional Government in areas controlled by Anya-Nya, in line with the movement’s emphasis on secession. Nonetheless, another convention of March 1969 reserved the option of establishing a federation if acceptable terms could be negotiated.

Overall, the second period of parliamentary rule proved disastrous. By 1969 the political system had even less legitimacy than its predecessor in 1956–1958. The south was seriously alienated; the left chafed at its restricted status; professionals and students resented being pushed aside after they had led the October revolution; and non-Arab groups pressed for federation. Nuba officers and politicians apparently began to plot a coup d’état. Before they could act, a group of secularist, pan-Arab Free Officers seized power in May 1969. They included some of the junior officers who had welcomed the overthrow of Abbud in 1964 but were now sharply disillusioned with democracy.

This capsule history indicates that the political thrust was clearly toward domination by Arab-Islamic peoples of the north. They assumed the right to rule and to define Sudan’s national identity according to their own ethnicity. They assumed that non-Arab and non-Muslim peoples lacked cultural—much less national—identities of their own and should be absorbed and assimilated into the Arab-Islamic ethos. Those who objected must be suppressed as illegitimate.

This expression of the assimilationist model not surprisingly led marginalized peoples to call for secession. First they objected to the terms of the union and then they rebelled when even moderate demands were brushed aside. Knowing that the international community was unlikely to recognize and support a secessionist movement, they were willing to consider the option of a federation based on ethnic pluralism. But that option was not taken seriously in Khartoum. Only the Round-Table Conference discussed decentralization as a real option. Otherwise most northern politicians viewed self-determination for the south as a threat to the country’s territorial integrity, not as a way to ensure the continuation of the Sudan as a territorial nation-state in which all the peoples would have a stake.

Numairi and his Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) identified themselves as secular, socialist, and pan-Arab, modeled on the Nasirite revolution in Egypt. They wanted to sweep aside the religion-based political groups and embark on government-directed development programs. They argued that state-led industrialization and the expansion of capital-intensive agricultural schemes would boost the economy. They initially won support from the trade union movement, led by the Communist Party (SCP), and several communists joined the cabinet.1 Some other politicians and professionals who were weary of the machinations of the political parties also supported the RCC, including southerners who welcomed Numairi’s statement on 9 June (discussed below).

The RCC outlawed political parties and purged the senior ranks of the civil service, police, and armed forces of supporters of the previous regime. Troops stormed the Ansar headquarters on Aba island in March 1970 and leaders of Umma, PDP, NUP, and ICF went into exile to escape the crackdown. Once the religious right was suppressed, Numairi turned against his allies on the left. The showdown with the SCP came in July 1971, after three communists whom Numairi had expelled from the RCC attempted to unseat him. Numairi gained popular support for “saving” Sudan from the “communist menace.”2 Numairi then wielded absolute power, although he did try to establish a popular base by setting up the Sudanese Socialist Union (SSU) as the only party that could contest elections for the Peoples’ Assembly.

Numairi initially spoke of increasing military pressure on the “mutiny” in the south. Nonetheless, on 9 June, only two weeks after the coup, he articulated a sharply different approach that was urged on him by Abel Alier, one of two southern cabinet members. Alier, a former judge, had written the Southern Front’s keynote address for the Round-Table Conference. Numairi pledged that the new regime was “determined to arrive at a lasting solution” on the basis of “the right of the southern people to Regional Autonomy within a United Sudan.” Furthermore, the government3

Numairi did not act decisively until he crushed the traditional Islamic parties and suppressed the left, all of which opposed ideological concessions to the south. The new policy was, however, supported by centrist technocrats who sought economic stability. Numairi made Alier minister for southern affairs and then second vice president, and appointed, for the first time, southern commissioners for the three southern provinces. Meanwhile, Colonel Joseph Lagu, who seized control of the Anya-Nya in July 1970, recognized that even though the guerrillas could prevent the government from controlling the south, they could never achieve a decisive military victory. The military stalemate helped to induce both sides to search for a political accord.

The peace agreement negotiated in February 1972 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) resulted in the Regional Self-Government Act for the Southern Provinces.4 The south became one region, whose regional assembly would elect a High Executive Council (HEC). The regional government was responsible for internal security and local administration in the social, cultural, and economic fields. It had an independent budget, whose revenue came from local taxes and fees as well as from a special fund from the central government to help narrow the gap with the north. Although Arabic remained the country’s official language, English was designated the principal language in the south and southern schools could teach indigenous languages. The southern region was represented in the national assembly in proportion to its population. The label “federal” was avoided, since that term was anathema to the north, but a de facto federal system was created.

The Addis Ababa Agreement and the Regional Self-Government Act were incorporated into the permanent constitution of 1973, which specified that they could be amended only by a three-quarters vote in the national assembly and a two-thirds vote in a referendum of the southern electorate. That double safeguard would prevent the northern majority from making arbitrary changes. The constitution stressed the dual Arab and African identity of the Sudan; respect for Islam, Christianity, and “noble spiritual beliefs”; the equality of all persons before the law; and the prohibition of any form of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, language, or gender.

The Addis Ababa Agreement and constitution articulated the ethnic pluralist model, since they included both equality before the law for all citizens and special protections for minorities. Territorial decentralization was combined with proportional representation at the center. The accord recognized that both components were essential. In the past, legal equality for individual citizens at the center had translated into permanent minority status for the south in the legislative and executive bodies and discriminatory measures in the minorities’ geographical area. Conversely, regional self-government alone could lead to ghettoization and an inability to impact national-level policies that were critically important to the minority. Practice diverged markedly from theory, however. Implementation of the Addis Ababa accord was hampered by Numairi’s effort to manipulate southern politics and control its economy, and by jealousies among southern politicians. In 1983 Numairi unilaterally abrogated the accord when he redivided the south into three regions and instituted Islamic law. Those divisive issues are detailed in the following sections.

When the civil war ended, the south’s economy was in shambles. Colonialera agricultural projects had been abandoned; the infrastructure was destroyed; and a million people had fled abroad or into the bush. The regional government was “starved” for funds to undertake reconstruction and rehabilitation and failed to receive development funds from Khartoum.5 Southerners were keenly disappointed, since the north-south socioeconomic gap continued to widen. Controversies over the Jonglei Canal and natural resources therefore arose in the context of grievances about inadequate development financing and economic discrimination.

The Jonglei Canal project in Upper Nile province would drain 20 percent of the huge Sudd swamp through which the White Nile flows and dramatically reduce water loss through evaporation, according to the Egypt-Sudan accord of 1974.6 The project was received with suspicion and anxiety in the south. Many people felt Egypt would be the primary beneficiary; rumors that two million Egyptian peasants would settle along the canal triggered riots in Juba on 10 October 1974. Moreover, the project would quickly destroy pasturage for cattle and dry up fish ponds, whereas studies for future development projects remained incomplete and none were implemented, even though the canal was more than two-thirds dug by 1984. At a deeper political and psychological level, many feared that draining the Sudd would remove the protective barrier separating the south from the north.

Oil was equally contentious. The Chevron Oil Company discovered oil in Muglad (southern Kordofan) and Bentiu (Upper Nile) in 1979. Southerners’ fear that the north would steal their oil crystallized in November 1980, when Attorney General Hasan al-Turabi submitted a new map to the Peoples Assembly that shifted the northern part of Bentiu into the Kordofan region. Although Numairi diffused tensions by withdrawing the proposed boundary change, he soon replaced southern troops with northern forces at Bentiu; pocketed the proceeds from the Chevron license, which the Addis Ababa Agreement stated should go to the regional government; and decided to shift the site of the oil refinery from Bentiu to Kosti, a major rail and river junction in the north. Southerners were furious: a refinery at Bentiu would improve the infrastructure, catalyze economic development, and provide jobs for southern workers. Southern politicians later argued that the contest over oil was a key reason for Numairi to abrogate the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1983; Numairi could not accept its provision that revenues from natural resources would accrue to the regional government. “If the central government was to retain control of the new found wealth in the South, [Numairi] must swiftly end what was left of southern autonomy once and for all.”7

The controversy over Bentiu was not the only problematic resource-cumboundary issue. The Addis Ababa Agreement provided for the reversion to the south of certain areas that were part of the south before independence. This meant that the districts of Hufrat al-Nahas and Kafia Kingi returned to Bahr al-Ghazal province. But Hufrat al-Nahas contained copper and Kafia Kingi contained uranium. When Numairi tried to transfer Hufrat al-Nahas back to Dar Fur in 1978, the move was blocked by widespread protests. The Addis Ababa Agreement also stated that residents of border areas who had ethnic ties to the south could decide by referendum whether to merge with the south. Abyei district in Kordofan and Kurmuk and Chali el-Fil districts in the Blue Nile thereby became eligible to hold referenda. But they were never allowed to vote. The unresolved issue contributed to the widening sense of grievance against Numairi’s manipulations.

Such tensions were typical of problems that arise in an incomplete ethnic pluralist system. Even though arrangements for control over and revenue from resources and development efforts are spelled out in formal agreements, a tug-of-war emerges. The central government uses its power to withhold funds and withdraw rights. Minority groups lack enough power in the center to retain (much less augment) those rights. Autonomy is eroded and changes are not due to negotiations but to the arbitrary assertion of power by the center. This undermines the balances essential to the ethnic pluralist system and promotes a return to the control model, based on dominance by one ethnic group.

The undermining of autonomy was particularly visible in the arena of internal security. The Addis Ababa accord specified that half of the troops stationed in the south would be drawn from Anya-Nya, and police and prison guards would be recruited entirely from the south. Intake into the national army would be proportional to population, in order to gradually redress the fact that southerners comprised only 12 percent of the armed forces at that time. Anya-Nya were incorporated as separate units within the armed forces with the intent to integrate the troops fully by 1977. Many Anya-Nya were suspicious of integration and resisted transfer north for training or military duty. The transition was difficult for both sides since they suddenly had to serve alongside their enemies. Former Anya-Nya officers resented their inability to rise in rank and there was anger that no additional southerners were recruited into the officer corps.8

Violent incidents broke out in Juba (1974), Akobo (1975), and Wau (1976) when southern troops feared that they would be attacked by northern soldiers or would be transferred north. The government did compel the battalion at Aweil to transfer to Dar Fur in December 1982 and, as noted above, replaced southern troops at Bentiu with northern soldiers to ensure Khartoum’s control over the oil fields. The turning point came in January 1983 when Dinka soldiers in the Bor and Pibor garrisons in Jonglei (Upper Nile) refused orders to move north.9 When northern troops attacked on 16 May, several hundred southern commanders and soldiers evacuated Bor and Pibor and regrouped in Ethiopia. Soon, thousands of soldiers took to the bush, some supporting the reconstituted Anya-Nya II but most joining the new Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA), which was led by Colonel John Garang de Mabior, an officer from the absorbed forces who deserted to join the rebels. The results of the Bor standoff bore an eerie resemblance to the outcome of the Torit mutiny in 1955, which triggered seventeen years of civil war.

The military terms for ending a civil war and constructing a regional system are particularly sensitive. The aggrieved ethnic group wants to ensure its own security whereas the central government wants to guarantee that the group will not secede. As power shifted from Anya-Nya and southern politicians to the central government from 1972 to 1982, Khartoum’s actions to undermine southern autonomy intensified. Those measures led to renewed warfare, galvanized by many of the same southern officers who had fought before 1972. The security system is particularly difficult to stabilize in an emerging ethnic pluralist system. When the control model is reimposed, security structures are the first to disintegrate.

Numairi’s manipulation of political life in the south enabled him to carry out those economic and military measures. He established “a pattern of presidential interventions which were to make dangerous and eventually destabilizing inroads on the rudimentary, often chaotic but nevertheless still working system in the south.”10

Elections for the southern regional assembly in 1973, 1978, 1980, and 1982 were contested vigorously, but Numairi intervened each time in the decision on who would be elected president of the High Executive Council (HEC). He also arbitrarily dissolved the HEC and regional assembly in 1980. He played off against each other Alier and Lagu, who had become a major general in the army and head of the Southern Military Command. This meant, as a prominent southern politician concluded bitterly, that “the South was no longer in charge of its own political process.”11 Numairi also played on Equatorian perceptions that Dinkas dominated the regional government, even though the capital was located in Juba and many Equatorians had prominent roles in the regional executive. At the administrative levels, however, Dinka bureaucrats did tend to favor fellow Dinka in the provision of services. Numairi thereby encouraged Lagu (an Equatorian) to demand that the south be redivided into its three original provinces in order to end Dinka domination. Some other politicians agreed that the south was too large and its communications systems too weak to administer effectively from one center. Nonetheless, the southern regional assembly rejected redivision in March 1981 on the grounds that it violated the Self-Government Act and the constitution.

Even when Numairi dissolved that assembly and appointed Major General Gismalla Abdallah Rassas interim president of the HEC in October 1981, Rassas refused to hold a referendum on the issue of redivision prior to electing a new regional assembly. When the assembly was elected in 1982, Numairi demanded that the new regional government formed by Lagu’s Equatorian ally Joseph John Tambura, submit a plan in February 1983 to dissolve the regional assembly and transform the HEC into an appointed council whose three members would administer each province. Tambura, the descendant of a prominent Azande family, recognized that most people in Upper Nile and Bahr al-Ghazal opposed redivision, and did not act on that request.

On 5 June 1983 Numairi abruptly decreed redivision of the south into three provinces.12 He claimed this did not violate the spirit of the Addis Ababa Agreement even though no constitutional guarantee was employed: there was no vote by the regional assembly, no endorsement by the national assembly, and no referendum in the south. Numairi had just been reelected unopposed for a third term as president. “Naked power” ruled. And Numairi immediately disbanded the HEC and regional assembly and replaced them with three governors for Equatoria, Upper Nile, and Bahr al-Ghazal. Those politicians, who were all allies of Lagu, did not realize that the three regions would not retain the powers of the united region. Instead, the president appointed the governors, cancelled direct elections for the regional assemblies, and withdrew their control over revenue derived from trade and natural resources. Military officers in the south answered directly to the defense minister in Khartoum, rather than to the Southern Command in Juba.

Overall, the principle underlying the Addis Ababa Agreement was that the Sudan could remain one country only if the multiplicity of its peoples was recognized and used as the basis on which to build the political system. That respect for diversity was undermined soon after it came into force. Part of the problem lay in the inherent tension between center and periphery. Despite the effort to define the relationship in the constitution, the central government sought to alter the terms so that it could control and allocate all natural resources. Southerners, in contrast, argued that the south, as the poorest region in the country as well as the one in which minerals had been discovered, should receive a major share of anticipated revenues and use the projects to catalyze local development. Control over resources was essential for preserving genuine self-rule. Moreover, tension derived from the nondemocratic political system, in which overwhelming power resided with the president. He could intervene blatantly in regional affairs and undermine nascent democratic processes. Admittedly, southern politicians contributed to that political erosion: they let Numairi intervene when it benefited them personally and discovered too late that their vital interests were damaged by his manipulation.

The north-south accord was further undermined by the growing power of the Islamic trends in the north. Groups such as the Islamic Charter Front, which had been in exile at the time of the Addis Ababa Agreement, rejected that accord as the basis for a national consensus. They sought Islamization and Arabization throughout the country, reviving arguments that, in the short run, non-Muslim peoples must not block the wishes of the Muslim majority and, in the long run, they must assimilate into the dominant community. That renewed Islamist drive is analyzed next. It was ironic that Numairi, who engineered a reconciliation based on respect for the diversity of the Sudanese peoples, later espoused a hegemonic religious formula that contradicted those tenets and deepened divisions during the renewed civil war.

Numairi ruled until 1977 without the participation or support of any significant northern political groups.13 Although he formed the one-party Sudanese Socialist Union (SSU) in 1972 to mobilize the public behind the regime, the SSU functioned primarily as a bureaucracy parallel to the government, and Numairi restrained political debate. During the mid-1970s he removed from the cabinet outspoken members such as Foreign Minister Mansour Khalid and the leading southerners.14 Although Numairi instituted ambitious agro-industrial programs in the north to transform the country into the breadbasket of the Middle East, cost overruns, corruption, and the escalating cost of imported oil derailed those plans. Cotton remained the main export, but exports covered only a third of the import bill and the foreign debt soared. The regime therefore faced unrest among workers and students and weathered serious coup attempts in January 1973, September 1975, and July 1976. The latter was galvanized by the National Front, a coalition of exiles headed by al-Sharif Hussain al-Hindi, former finance minister and leader of the late Azhari’s NUP. The National Front included the Umma Party under al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, the Islamic Charter Front led by Turabi, the pan-Arab Ba’th Party, some members of the Khatmiyya-affiliated Peoples’ Democratic Party, and regional organizations such as the Nuba Mountains Group led by Rev. Philip Abbas Ghabboush. They smuggled arms and men into the Sudan from Libya, but Numairi crushed the uprising and executed hundreds of people in its aftermath.

This fierce confrontation seemed to shock both sides into realizing that they could not destroy each other. A year later, Numairi reached a secret accord with al-Sadiq al-Mahdi that called for the release from detention and amnesty of opposition politicians and restructuring the SSU so that the opposition could participate fully. Al-Mahdi understood that Numairi agreed to repeal the State Security Act and revise the constitution so as to protect individual liberties and democratic processes.15 In practice, about 3,000 political prisoners were released and leading politicians returned, including al-Mahdi, Turabi, and Ghabboush. But the reconciliation between Numairi and al-Mahdi was short-lived. Al-Mahdi sought a fundamental reorientation in policy and institutions whereas Numairi would not allow the politicians to dilute his power. Numairi was shocked that opposition groups, campaigning under the SSU banner, won nearly 40 percent of the seats in the people’s assembly in 1978.16 Although Al-Mahdi was appointed to SSU’s Political Bureau and joined the assembly, he soon resigned from the SSU and Umma boycotted the elections in 1980 on the grounds that Numairi had violated his commitments. In 1981 Umma called for the end to one-man rule and the election of leaders who would be accountable to the people.

In contrast, al-Mahdi’s brother-in-law Turabi cooperated fully with the regime. Turabi became attorney general and a member of the parliamentary committee that was charged with adapting the legal system to conform to Islamic law, taking advantage of the provision in the constitution that Islamic principles should form a basis for legislation. ICF participated in the SSU and People’s Assembly and placed members in key posts in the administration, schools, and unions. It infiltrated the armed forces by encouraging its members to serve in the medical and technical corps and by instituting lecture programs on Islam for the officer corps. Those programs provided “a cover for the [ICF]’s infiltration of, and recruitment from” the armed forces.17 The movement acquired economic power, particularly through Islamic banks that opened after 1978. Through those multifaceted efforts Turabi implemented a coherent strategy to gain economic and political power.

Southerners viewed this reconciliation with alarm since it could undermine the rights they had acquired in 1972. Indeed, as noted above, Turabi and the ICF minister of interior played key roles in trying to alter the boundaries between north and south to transfer resources northward. Alier argues that Numairi promised the Islamists that he would review virtually all the provisions of the Addis Ababa Agreement: security, language, culture, and religion—all the most sensitive points.18 By November 1981 there were no southerners left in the cabinet to protest those moves.

Despite Numairi’s efforts to mollify religious forces in the north, discontent increased when the regime’s economic promises failed to materialize. Drought and famine in Dar Fur, Kordofan, and the Beja-populated Red Sea hills directly affected more than two million people who were primarily non-Arab Muslims.19 When thousands migrated to Khartoum, Numairi tried to force them to go home. In 1982 the Gross Domestic Product shrank by 3.6 percent and the foreign debt soared.20 Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Numairi imposed austerity measures that sharply devalued the Sudanese currency and dramatically increased the prices of food and gasoline. Those measures bought time for the government with its creditors but alienated the public. Civil servants, professionals, students, and workers became increasingly restive. Judges won a strike in February 1981 after a bitter struggle, but Numairi crushed efforts by professionals and workers to improve their conditions. In March 1981 he fired more than a thousand civil servants and in June 1981 the army smashed the powerful Union of Sudanese Railway Workers, which had struck over wage issues and in sympathy for the fired civil servants. A further austerity program in November 1981 reduced or ended many food subsidies and increased the price of gasoline. Numairi deployed the army to quell riots at the University of Khartoum and in the market places. Riots on 1 January 1982 were triggered by additional price increases. The armed forces again restored order.

The military high command resented playing that role. On 12 January 1982, Defense Minister and First Vice President Abd al-Majid Hamid Khalil led a high-ranking military delegation to meet with Numairi.21 General Khalil, who opposed Numairi’s dictatorial and corrupt rule, criticized the harsh measures against rioters, objected to shooting at students and closing universities, and decried the expulsion of western Sudanese from Khartoum. The officers demanded that Numairi restructure the SSU, relinquish some of his personal power, and undertake economic reform. Numairi immediately dismissed General Khalil and twenty-three senior officers, and made the head of the security service, Umar al-Tayib, vice president. Those moves shattered the military command and consolidated the power of the security services.

By then the Islamic Charter Front provided the sole public support for the regime, as Turabi stated frankly:22

Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban argues that Numairi paved the way for Islamization by decreeing the unification of the civil and shari’a courts in 1980, which required all judges to apply both sets of legal codes. He followed this on 8 September 1983 with his presidential order that shari’a “be the sole guiding force behind the law of the Sudan.”24 The new Islamic penal and commercial codes were partly based on statutes drafted by Turabi’s committee to revise the legal system, but were basically drafted in secret by a small group of advisors.25 The code instituted the hudud punishments specified in shari’a for such crimes as murder, theft, drinking, adultery, and prostitution. In October 1983, twenty-six men convicted of liquor offenses were each lashed forty times before a crowd in the Khartoum market. Two young men had their right hands cut off on 9 December in Kober prison for stealing a car.26 The first cross-limb amputations were performed on 22 May 1984. Soon after, an adulterer was hanged and a thief was executed. Overall, more than fifty people had one or more limbs amputated and thousands were sentenced to flogging for theft, brewing or drinking alcohol, adultery, prostitution, and political crimes such as agitation and spreading false rumors. Special courts tried the cases in the absence of defense lawyers and carried out the sentences immediately, without time or opportunity for appeal. Hudud penalties applied to Christians and adherents of African religions as well as to Muslims. An Italian priest was flogged for storing communion wine in his home.

The new penal code—known generally as the September decrees—was denounced by a wide range of political and religious leaders as a violation of constitutional provisions for equality and nondiscrimination. A petition by the heads of the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Evangelical churches and the Sudan Council of Churches stressed the importance of respecting religious and cultural differences and denounced the Islamization that turned non-Muslims into second-class citizens. Underground communist and Ba’th activists rejected the decrees as did Muslim intellectuals. Numairi detained al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and thirty followers in September 1983 after he denounced the decrees during prayers at the Mahdi’s tomb. Umma Party leaflets asserted that the decrees transformed Islam into a punitive religion that protected an unjust regime. Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani, spiritual head of the Khatmiyya tariqa, agreed that the September decrees perverted Islam. Many members of the SSU were disaffected and there were rumblings of discontent within the army.

In the spring of 1984, there was a brief attempt to unseat the regime by mass action. Three thousand doctors resigned on 27 March 1984 to protest the deteriorating economy and poor conditions in the hospitals as well as to denounce amputations on ethical grounds. The teachers’ union struck in sympathy, but the strike failed to spread to other major unions. The doctors themselves were divided, since those who were affiliated with the ICF opposed the union’s political demands. Numairi dissolved the doctors’ union, jailed its leaders, closed the University of Khartoum, and imposed a state of emergency on 29 April 1984. He banned strikes, detained suspects without charge, and allowed security personnel to enter private houses without search warrants.

Only the ICF continued to support Numairi. Although Turabi claimed that he was surprised by the timing of the Islamization and critical of some of the decrees, ICF provided most of the judges for the special courts and welcomed the additional decrees that Islamized banking and zakat (alms), which became a government tax. ICF was the only party to support Numairi’s additional moves in the summer of 1984 to compel military and civilian officials to swear baya (allegiance) to him as the infallible Imam and to amend the constitution to make him president for life and “leader of the faithful.”27 The proposed amendments would replace the elected assembly with a largely-appointed shura (consultative) council whose members would lack parliamentary immunity and would not have the right to question government policy, request a referendum, or impeach the president. Shari’a would be the sole source of legislation, and the Islamic penal code and zakat would be enforced on non-Muslims as well as Muslims. The draft deleted all references in the constitution to nondiscrimination on grounds of religious faith and barred non-Muslims from becoming president.

The proposed amendments caused an outcry. On 11 July, 105 of the 151 members of the people’s assembly insisted on postponing debate, particularly since the changes would strip them of their power. Southern MPs, religious leaders, students at Juba University, and members of the three southern regional governments protested vigorously. Lagu and Alier set aside their rivalry long enough to protest that the proposed amendments violated the constitution, undermined human rights, and ended respect for religious diversity.28 Faced with such broad opposition, Numairi withdrew the amendments and cancelled the state of emergency in September 1984. Military courts became “prompt justice” courts under the same judges and with the same penalties, but searches on the street and inside houses ceased and lawyers were allowed to defend their clients in court.

Meanwhile, Numairi accelerated his efforts to silence political opposition. He targeted small ideological and regional groups such as the communists, Nuba Mountains Group, Republican Brothers, and Ba’thists. In June 1984, Numairi charged with treason the prominent communist and women’s rights leader Fatima Ahmad Ibrahim. But the judge avoided jailing her by ruling that she was “insane” and should be referred to a medical board for treatment. In October 1984, security forces arrested the elderly Rev. Ghabboush and 207 members of the Nuba Mountains Group on charges of preparing to foment disturbances. Judge Al-Mikashfi Taha al-Kabashi wanted to press charges of treason against them, but Numairi feared an uprising by Nuba soldiers and granted them clemency. The Republican Brothers presented a more complex problem. Founded by Ustaz Mahmud Muhammad Taha in the 1940s, that pacifist movement advocated a radical reinterpretation of Islam based on egalitarianism, socialism, and democracy. Taha and about fifty supporters were detained in June 1983 and again at the end of 1984 for leafleting against the September decrees as distortions of Islam that jeopardized the country’s unity by making Christians unequal to Muslims. Taha and four leading disciples were charged with inciting disturbances, but Judge al-Mikashfi sentenced them to death as apostates and traitors. Numairi ordered Taha executed on 18 January, calling him the “greatest heretic of this age.”29 Hanging the seventy-six-year-old theologian triggered a sense of revulsion among people who did not otherwise agree with Taha’s interpretation of Islam. Finally, al-Mikashfi charged four members of the Ba’th Party with sedition and apostasy on the basis of leaflets that called for the overthrow of the regime. Ultimately, al-Mikashfi could not prove that Ba’thist ideology was anti-Islamic. Although al-Mikashfi was a professor of Islamic studies and a key member of the committee that had drafted the September laws, his courtroom behavior and predilection for altering charges in the midst of trials embarrassed other Islamist judges and led ICF cadres to distance themselves from him, at least temporarily.

Meanwhile, Turabi and ICF celebrated the first anniversary of the shari’a decrees on 25 September 1984 by organizing a march of nearly one million people in the streets of Khartoum. That display of mass strength scared Numairi. The SSU and secret police warned him that ICF aimed to displace him. Soon after, Numairi accused ICF members of overzealous enforcement of shari’a and claimed that they plotted to replace the “fighting imam” (Numairi) with the “scholarly imam” (Turabi).30 Numairi blamed ICF students for clashes with left-wing, secular, and southern students at the University of Khartoum in February 1985, and arrested more than a hundred members of ICF during the night of 10–11 March 1985, including Turabi, several judges, lawyers, SSU officials, and military officers. Judge al-Mikashfi was jailed in the same prison in which Taha had been hanged. Numairi thereby tried to make ICF the scapegoat for his harsh and unpopular policies.

His attempt to deflect criticism was not credible, but ICF was dangerous to alienate since its militant cadres were the last on whom Numairi could rely. The allegiance of the military and security forces was in doubt. Army officers recognized the futility of fighting in the south, resented the frequent purges in the officer ranks, and disliked suppressing student demonstrations. Nonetheless, the high command of the armed forces hesitated to act against the president, having given him the religious oath of allegiance. Security personnel knew that the September laws had alienated the public and their head, Vice President al-Tayib, had ambitions of his own to replace Numairi. Tayib’s 45,000-person security services outnumbered the armed forces garrisoned in Khartoum.

During that final year, Numairi’s policies aggravated the renewed war in the south, which he initially termed a minor mutiny that he could end by appointing John Garang vice president. Only on 3 March 1985 did Numairi set up a High Committee for Peace, announce a unilateral cease-fire, and declare an amnesty for the rebels.31 By then SPLA and Anya-Nya II forces had compelled the French company to stop digging the Jonglei Canal and had forced Chevron to suspend drilling for oil at Bentiu. Guerrilla forces, spread across nearly half of the south, caused extensive casualties among the armed forces and drained the country’s financial resources.

Numairi’s authoritarianism undermined any possibility of establishing a pluralist political system in which citizens would have equal rights. Instead of sharing power, he played the south off against the northern Islamists, favoring the former in the first half of his rule and then shifting to the latter. His opportunistic ideological shifts left an indelible mark on the country. He took the Islamist perspective to its logical extreme by excluding non-Muslims and silencing Muslims who differed with him. His policies ensured that the south would react by resuming the civil war. After his overthrow, it was difficult to undo his policies. Since Muslim politicians were committed in principle to an Islamic state, they became immobilized, fearful of annulling his laws even though they criticized their content. Northern politicians became trapped in the image of Sudan as a Muslim country. They could not find a way to create a national consensus that would embrace all the Sudanese people.

The National Alliance for National Salvation that was formed on 18 January 1985, immediately after the execution of Mahmud Muhammad Taha, represented professional and trade unions that sought to remove Numairi from power by a campaign of civil disobedience.1 The alliance’s charter had been in the process of development since June 1984, when Sudanese professionals living in the Gulf initiated an effort to conceptualize a new political vision. They worked closely with counterparts inside the country and met in London with the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM), Umma Party, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP). Their Charter of National Salvation called for a democratic system of government based on the provisional constitution promulgated at independence in 1956. The charter affirmed freedom of organization, expression, and belief, the rule of law, and independence of the judiciary, but did not specifically call for cancelling the Islamic decrees of September 1983. The charter was finalized once the uprising was under way and endorsed by Umma, DUP, and SCP on 4 April.

Public protests began on 26 March 1985, a day before Numairi flew to the United States for consultations. Prices for bread, petrol, and public transport had just doubled and there was an acute shortage of soap and edible oils. Most public schools in the capital were closed because buses lacked the fuel to transport students. A quarter of the population was affected directly by drought and thousands had died in the countryside for lack of food and water. When leaders of the SSU complained to Numairi about those conditions, he callously blamed “destructive consumption habits”2 and criticized people for spending their income on luxuries. Daily protests galvanized university students, union activists, and townspeople, who stoned shop windows, burned cars, and trashed gas stations. An outpouring of 50,000 people on 3 April called for “bread and liberty.” By then, the physicians’ union led the professional unions into a general strike that demanded Numairi’s ouster. On 4 April strikers cut all water, electricity, and telecommunications in the Khartoum area, closed the airport, and silenced the radio station. Although the security forces arrested some 2,000 demonstrators and union leaders, Vice President and security chief Umar al-Tayib sought to impose a state of emergency so that he could crack down decisively.

However, military officers increasingly leaned toward the strike. Deputy Commander-in-Chief General Taj al-Din Abdallah Fadl endorsed the protests and apparently informed al-Sadiq al-Mahdi that the armed forces would not confront the public in the streets. But his superior, Defense Minister and Commander-in-Chief General Abd al-Rahman Suwar al-Dhahab, insisted to soldiers and officers in the Khartoum barracks and the military academy that they honor their religious oath of allegiance to Numairi. Meanwhile, most officers supported the popular demand to remove Numairi and they reportedly brought a religious dignitary to Suwar al-Dhahab, who convinced him that his oath was no longer valid since Numairi’s harmful policies had caused the people to withdraw their support.3 Officers presented Suwar al-Dhahab with a virtual ultimatum on 5 April, since they were anxious to remove Numairi before he could return to Khartoum.

During the night of 5–6 April, the armed forces sealed off the city center and seized power for “a limited transitional period.”4 Acting as commander-in-chief, Suwar al-Dhahab suspended the 1973 constitution, relieved Numairi and his top officials of their posts, and dissolved the SSU and peoples assembly. The army arrested Vice President al-Tayib and disarmed the security forces. Residents celebrated in the city streets and stormed Kober prison, where they lifted the detainees onto their shoulders and swarmed over the scaffold on which Mahmud Taha and other prisoners had been hanged. By the time Numairi landed in Cairo that morning, for a stopover on his way home, the takeover was complete.

The high command filled the legal vacuum by forming a Transitional Military Council (TMC) on 9 April, chaired by Suwar al-Dhahab [See Appendix 1]. The TMC consisted of the top-ranking officers and the commanders of the barracks in the capital city. Only two of the fifteen members came from the south. All previous laws remained valid until rescinded or amended. The activists who had galvanized the uprising were disturbed by the TMC’s quick consolidation of power, since they wanted a civilian transitional government based on the non-religious constitution of 1956. Even though members of the National Alliance gained leading roles in the council of ministers that was installed on 25 April, that cabinet was subordinate to the TMC. The alliance was partly reassured when the TMC agreed to hold elections to a constituent assembly within a year.

Eleven of the sixteen cabinet ministers were chosen by the National Alliance [See Appendix 2]. The TMC selected the minister of defense and the police chose the interior minister. Three seats were allocated to southerners, one representing each province. The head of the new Southern Sudanese Political Association (SSPA), Samuel Aru Bol, became deputy prime minister. Southern activists in Khartoum were disappointed that they had not obtained a larger number of and more influential ministries and had not insisted that the September decrees be annulled. Furthermore, although Prime Minister al-Jazouli Dafallah claimed that none of the cabinet members had cooperated with Numairi or had partisan affiliation,5 several ministers had strongly Islamist perspectives. For example, the minister of education proposed that all teachers be devout believers. Dafallah and Suwar al-Dhahab displayed their sympathies for the Islamist movement by agreeing to chair NIF’s two principal Islamic relief organizations at the end of their terms in office. Similarly, the minister of health later joined the Islamist-supported military regime in 1989.

The Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM) stood outside the political arena in Khartoum but had a powerful impact upon it. As a fighting force, the SPLA presented a serious challenge to the military establishment in the south. As a political force, SPLM rejected the TMC and saw itself as the springboard for a new revolution that would establish a secular, socialist system. As will be discussed in chapter 6, although the SPLM lacked the power to transform the country in its image, a settlement in the south required the SPLM’s agreement.

The most important legal issue tackled in 1985 involved the constitution for the transitional period, whose terms would set the tone for the emerging democracy. Would it be an inclusive document to which all citizens could subscribe or would it enshrine the values of only one part of the citizenry? The assimilationist-pluralist tensions were evident in this debate.

The council of ministers submitted a draft constitution to the TMC on 28 July, but several months of delicate negotiations were required until the constitution was promulgated on 10 October 1985.6 The constitution specified that the provisional constitution of 1956, as amended in 1964, would serve as the basis for the transitional period. It was updated to take into account the establishment of self-rule for the south in 1972 and the regionalization of the north in 1980. The constitution established the independence of the judiciary and included a Bill of Rights.

The transitional constitution stated that shari’a (Islamic law) and urf (customary law) were the bases of the legal system, as had been the case in the 1973 constitution. Constitutional lawyer Peter Nyot Kok noted three difficulties with this approach. First, urf was not an alternative legal code and, therefore, could not modify or balance shari’a. Second, there was no explicit reference to respecting indigenous African beliefs, in contrast to the constitution of 1973. Third, retaining shari’a made it difficult to repeal the September decrees. Overall, the constitution did not satisfy those in the alliance and the south who wanted to revoke the September decrees and reinstitute secular civil, criminal, and commercial codes. However, it reflected the views of the majority in the TMC and council of ministers. Suwar al-Dhahab believed that, although the September decrees could be “amended” or “modified” to eliminate “incorrect and excessive” punishments, the popular majority prefered to live under Islamic law.7 Prime Minister Dafallah also wanted merely to correct those aspects of the decrees that “do not conform with Islam.”8 Suwar al-Dhahab and Dafallah believed that cancelling the laws was blasphemous.

Hasan al-Turabi, leader of the Islamic Charter Front, which was renamed the National Islamic Front (NIF), warned the TMC against cancelling “God’s laws.”9 He and his followers had been released from jail during the uprising even though they opposed the National Alliance’s charter. At a rally in Khartoum on 7 April, Turabi called for strengthening Islamic law, rejected the secular emphasis in the charter, and refused to cooperate with the SCP. NIF views were echoed by Ahmad al-Mahdi, an Ansar leader and uncle of al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, and by a conference of ulama (men learned in Islamic law) in July 1985 that endorsed maintaining a reformed Islamic law. DUP leaders and al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, while calling the September decrees un-Islamic, supported the promulgation of alternative Islamic laws. Even the secularist attorney general talked of amending rather than annulling the September laws. Kok commented that these views rejected “the deep ambivalence” of most northern Sudanese toward shari’a and their difficulty in countenancing the abrogation of shari’a once it was in place.

Indeed, the cabinet decided in December 1985 to retain shari’a as the basis of the penal code and to maintain hudud punishments for major crimes although, in practice, no amputations or executions were carried out during the transitional period.10 Those persons remained in prison, pending final resolution of the status of hudud. This ambiguous outcome was discomforting to secularists and non-Muslims, who wanted a definitive end to the Islamic penal code.

Overall, the uprising of April 1985 represented an important broad-based popular movement that uprooted a bitterly hated regime. The transitional government created a climate sufficiently stable for foreign donors to provide vital food and petroleum aid that staved off economic collapse. They encouraged free public debate and investigated key officials of the Numairi regime.11 However, criticism mounted from the public that the regime lacked a sense of direction: the intifada (shaking off—the Arabic term for the April uprising) had become inti fadiya (you are empty). The government was easily pressured by the unions that had brought it to power and thus could not meet the stringent conditions set by the IMF. Price hikes and reductions in subsidies were undermined by worker strikes and demonstrations. There was no clarity in economic policy and no resolution of fundamental political issues. The continuation of the Islamic legal system was a crucial decision. Set alongside the failure to negotiate with the SPLM, which is discussed in chapter 6, it indicated that the assimilationist approach to national identity remained paramount. Parliamentary democracy was being restored in the image of an Arab-Islamic Sudan into which other ethnic groups must fit. The idea that those ethnicities should be accommodated by altering the overarching framework remained incomprehensible to the political elites in Khartoum.

The assimilative approach of the dominant political groups had complicated and ultimately helped to undermine democracy in the 1950s and 1960s. Moreover, the multiple cleavages in Sudanese society seemed to ensure that any political system would be fragile. Ethnic heterogeneity and a geographically dispersed population, coupled with the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the people living in the center, reinforced inequalities and bred resentment on the part of the marginalized peoples.

The fragility of democracy was compounded by the weak commitment to pluralist values on the part of many political forces. NIF, in particular, viewed democracy as a means to establish an Islamic state and to mold Sudanese society according to its particular vision, and stressed that it could never compromise on the issue of shari’a. Even al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, who frequently emphasized that “what is more important … is adherence by consent to democratic decision-making, even if the decision is in conflict with the ideology of this or that party,”12 argued that shari’a could be applied if the majority supported it. Minorities must accept that outcome. Politicians such as al-Mahdi felt secure in upholding majority rule, since their core religious and cultural values could not be challenged. Conversely, African, Christian, and secular political forces comprised permanent minorities that were always outvoted in parliament and marginalized in the executive branch, and therefore had few incentives to support the political system or view democracy as a means to address their needs and grievances. Some southern politicians tried to restructure the political system in order to end the automatic Arab-Islamic majority. Others exited the system, seeking to secede and leave the north as a relatively homogeneous Arab-Islamic territory. Violence, nonparticipation, and alienation resulted from their disadvantaged position.

Thus, the dominant political forces adhered to an assimilationist model that assumed that national identity was predominantly Muslim and Arab. Minorities sought an ethnic pluralist system based on territorial nationalism in which they would share power in Khartoum, have equal legal rights, and regain regional autonomy. The nature of the nation-state was still contested as they reentered the political arena to compete in the elections in 1986.

The Umma Party had been led by al-Sadiq al-Mahdi since the mid-1960s, when he served briefly as prime minister. Despite the reconciliation with Numairi in 1977, Umma called for popular elections and sharpened its criticism after Numairi instituted the September decrees. Umma’s election program was announced within days of the uprising in 1985. Al-Mahdi sought to revitalize the party, adding young intellectuals while retaining core support among the three-million strong Ansar religious movement. The program called for a modern democratic Islamic society that would guarantee human dignity and freedom. Public freedoms and freedom of religion should be guaranteed in the context of a legal code that should consist of the Quran, the Sunna, and “all the other sources of legislation unless they contradict” those codes.13 Strong regional governments would ensure an equitable distribution of investment and development among the different sectors and regions.

Al-Mahdi wanted Umma to serve as an umbrella party, attracting political allies from professional unions that spearheaded the uprising in 1985 and from adherents of regional movements such as the Beja, Nuba, and even southerners. Al-Mahdi blamed his brother-in-law Hasan al-Turabi for the most harsh aspects of Numairi’s Islamist program. He was concerned that the transitional regime did not annul the September decrees, formulate a new penal code, convene the national constitutional conference, or even develop a coherent economic strategy. Such delays exacerbated internal problems and hardened lines of conflict, thereby complicating the task of the elected government. Thus, al-Mahdi positioned himself as a democratic pluralist who would accommodate the perspectives of a wide range of groups. He distanced himself from the exclusivist version of religious assimilationism. Nonetheless, he took for granted Sudan’s predominantly Arab-Islamic ethos.

The Khatmiyya tariqa formed the base of support for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose religious leader Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani generally remained aloof from politics. After the uprising, Mirghani indicated that shari’a should be the only source of law, the September decrees should be revised but not annulled, and the shari’a-based draft constitution of 1968 should be promulgated.14 DUP did not hold a party conference or publish a comprehensive program and therefore had no organized way to select candidates. Individuals nominated themselves with the support of their family, tribe, village, or religious order. As a result, the DUP often ran more than one candidate in the same constituency, which cancelled out each other’s votes. DUP candidates adopted varying stances on current issues, although in general the party supported the parliamentary system based on Islamic principles and sought a mixed economy that would allow private enterprise to flourish. That reflected the support for DUP among large merchants, industrialists, and farmers in the Khatmiyya strongholds of the north and east. DUP’s concept of national identity was unself-consciously assimilationist. Its leaders took for granted that Sudan was a Muslim country that should be ruled by Islamic law. They also assumed that Sudan was Arab, despite the inclusion of Beja and Nubians in responsible posts within the party.

The National Islamic Front (NIF) had gained substantial power since 1977 through the executive, legislature, armed forces, student movement, and professions. Through the Faisal Islamic Bank, Islamic Dawa (Propagation) Organization, and Islamic African Relief Agency, NIF dispensed patronage, promoted Quranic schools, established health clinics, and built mosques. Its associations for students, teachers, and women had branches in the major towns. NIF convened a party conference in May 1985, just a month after the uprising. Its election program maintained that Islam was the official religion of the state and Arabic the official language.15 Shari’a must guide all matters of life and be the source of all laws. The economy, educational system, and social programs must be based on Islamic principles and must promote religious faith. Nevertheless, the Islamic principles of shura (consultation) and equality meant that religious freedom and the rights of minorities would be guaranteed through a federal system in which regions with non-Muslim majorities could exempt themselves from the penal provisions of shari’a. However, all other laws—including trading and banking—must follow shari’a throughout the country. NIF therefore represented the self-consciously maximalist position in favor of assimilation on the basis of a cohesive Arab-Islamic national identity.

The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) had been active among students and workers since the 1940s, but was decimated in July 1971. Secretary General Muhammad Ibrahim Nuqud and other leaders emerged from underground after the uprising. They voiced strong opposition to the September laws and sought a secular, democratic constitution. Nuqud adopted a low-keyed approach to the election, since the party needed time to regroup its supporters and feared that a high-profile campaign might generate a religious backlash, as had occurred in the 1960s.16

Although none of the other ideological parties on the left could expect to win seats, they pamphleted vigorously and plastered walls with posters. The Iraqi-backed Arab Ba’th Socialist Party focussed on attacking NIF.17 Libya supported Revolutionary Committees, which called for direct democracy through popular committees at the grassroots level.18 Some of the parties joined in a National Progressive Front that included Nasirites, pro-Syrian Ba’thists, Marxists, and the Socialist Labor Organization.19 Their small size, foreign support, and mutual competition meant they had little prospect of winning seats. These parties tended to be pan-Arab and thereby privileged Arab identity in their nationalist discourse.

The Sudan National Party (SNP) was led by Reverend Philip Abbas Ghabboush, a fiery Nuba politician who first stood for election from Al-Ubayyid (Kordofan) in 1965 and lived in exile from 1969 to 1978. When he subsequently joined Numairi’s peoples assembly, he pressed for regionalization and development aid to the Nuba Mountains. As a Christian cleric, he denounced the September decrees for making non-Muslims second-class citizens. The SNP election charter stressed the importance of democracy and unity in the context of a secular federal system that would distribute opportunities equally throughout the country.20 Marginalized regions would be assured representation in the central institutions, diplomatic corps, higher educational bodies, and medical services. Freedom of belief and religion would be guaranteed under a secular constitution. SNP’s perspective on national identity was strongly pluralist and adamant on safeguarding minority rights in both the central government and the regions. Ghabboush envisioned Sudan as heterogeneous with a primarily African identity. However, he made an informal agreement with Umma so that Umma did not challenge SNP candidates in the Nuba Mountains and in Ghabboush’s district in Omdurman.

Beja, another important ethnic group in the north, were divided between supporters of DUP and the Beja Congress. Many Beja adhered to the Khatmiyya order, led by DUP’s patron Mirghani, but others supported rival religious orders. The Beja Congress was led by educated professionals who emphasized the marginalization of the Beja by the central government. Parties that sought to represent Fur and other western peoples also mounted campaigns, although they had little prospect of gaining seats. Thirteen northern and southern regional parties coalesced to form Sudan Rural Solidarity (SRS), which stressed the rights of ethnic minorities and the need for balanced economic development.21 Its platform criticized holding elections before ending the civil war since the fighting would prevent most southerners from voting. SRS members soft-pedaled the issue of secularism, since they feared alienating potential Muslim voters among ethnic minorities in the north.

The six parties that competed in the south all supported a secular constitution, but disagreed on the issue of reuniting the south: the two parties based in Equatoria strongly opposed reunification, whereas the four parties based largely in Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile sought to restore the Addis Ababa Accord’s structures. Northern politicians played on Equatorians’ fear of Dinka predominance to keep the southern parties from coalescing. Personal, political, and ethnic rivalries also divided them.

The two parties active in Equatoria—the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) and Sudan African Peoples Congress Organization (SAPCO)—were primarily concerned to maintain Equatoria as a separate region. They sought to convene a constitutional conference, with or without the SPLM, which they criticized as a Marxist movement dominated by Ethiopia and the Dinka people. Disagreements between PPP and SAPCO derived in part from their tribal bases, since PPP obtained its core support from Bari-speaking peoples, who comprised nearly 20 percent of the population of Equatoria, and SAPCO attracted Zande speakers, who totalled 25 percent. That division personalized and heightened tribal and intra-regional fragmentation.22 Tensions also arose because SAPCO leaders had worked closely with Numairi and Tambura’s regional government (1983–1985) whereas PPP, led by the former Reverend Eliaba James Surur, was linked to the transitional government in Equatoria.

Political groups based largely in Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile—the Southern Sudanese Political Association (SSPA), Sudan African Congress (SAC), and Sudan African National Union (SANU)—criticized the TMC for holding partial elections, since most of the voting was canceled in their districts. If SSPA, SANU, and SAC could have contested all the districts, they could form a significant bloc of MPs who would argue in favor of negotiations with the SPLM, for the repeal of the September decrees, and for reunification of the south. Lacking those seats, they lost their leverage vis-à-vis the north and Equatoria. The SSPA was formed in April 1985 by transitional government ministers Samuel Aru Bol and Peter Gatkuoth. SANU, headed by former minister Andrew Wieu Riak, had been central during the Anya-Nya rebellion, but was a spent political force, out of touch with conditions in the south and discredited by the failure of the Addis Ababa Agreement. SAC was led by Khartoum-based intellectuals and activists such as Dr. Walter Kuni Jwok, a Shilluk political science professor at Khartoum University, and Dr. Lam Akol, an engineering professor at Khartoum University who subsequently joined the SPLM in late 1986. SAC adopted the most radical positions, demanding the restructuring of power in Khartoum and stressing Sudan’s African identity.

The fourth party in Upper Nile was the Sudanese Peoples Federal Party (SPFP), formed by Joshua Dai Wal, a Nuer regional MP (1981–1983) and former assistant commissioner for education. Dai Wal had connections to Anya-Nya II23 and denounced the SPLA and Dinka political power. SPFP was the only party in the south to suggest that the September decrees might be frozen rather than annulled.

The fact that elections could be held in a reasonably fair and nonviolent manner after so many years of repression was significant.24 They permitted the open and frank expression of widely varying views and introduced a healthy competition among political forces. However, four structural and political problems risked preventing the institutionalization of an effective system of representation. First, parties had inadequate time to regroup, as the new electoral system and reemergence of political parties took place in less than one year. That gave the advantage to well-organized NIF and also privileged Umma and DUP, which could count on networks of religious adherents in the countryside. Regional ethnic parties lacked the means to communicate with and mobilize their potential constituencies. Other parties had no structure and funds with which they could campaign on such short notice.

Second, the multiplicity of parties and weak internal organization of the DUP distorted the outcome. A candidate could win with significantly less than half of the votes in the district. In addition, DUP—and Umma to a lesser extent—ran more than one candidate in many districts, thereby splitting party votes and generally benefiting the NIF candidate. In the few cases where parties arranged informal electoral alliances, they proved highly effective, for example, in blocking the election of two senior leaders of NIF, Hasan al-Turabi and General Secretary Yasin Umar al-Imam, and ensuring the election of Nuba leader Ghabboush and SCP leader Nuqud.25

Third, nearly 10 percent of the seats were set aside for graduates of postsecondary institutes and universities, who could select the district in which they would vote. NIF mounted a coherent strategy to capture those seats. For example, NIF won two graduates seats in the south that it would not have won if voting had been confined to residents of those districts.26 The strong showing in the graduates’ constituencies compensated for NIF’s weakness in geographic districts.

Fourth, elections could not be held in most of the south, due to the intense fighting in those areas and SPLM’s election boycott. Balloting was postponed indefinitely in 41 of the 68 geographic constituencies: 24 in Bahr al-Ghazal, 15 in Upper Nile, and 2 in eastern Equatoria. Fewer people registered to vote in the entire south than in greater Khartoum, the capital city. Southern politicians feared that if they boycotted the elections, the assembly would function without them and adopt policies starkly inimical to southern interests, as had occurred in 1965. As a result, they contested the elections wherever possible, even though the south gained only 11 percent of the assembly seats.27 Representation was also lopsided within the south, since two-thirds of the MPs came from Equatoria. The south’s numerical weakness was compounded by fragmentation among the parties, which reduced their ability to present a common front against Islamic-oriented political forces.

A complex picture emerged from the elections. Umma won 39 percent of the seats, which was not enough to form a cabinet on its own. DUP gained 24 percent of the MPs, far less than its leaders had anticipated. NIF won a solid 20 percent, but southern, Nuba, Beja, and Communist parties together totalled barely 17 percent of the seats.

Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi had assumed that Umma would win enough seats to

Furthermore, DUP leaders insisted that Umma and DUP formulate a governing agreement based on Islamic principles.29 This twelve-point Charter of National Unity, finalized on 4 May, proposed applying the Islamic draft constitution of 1968 that DUP had authored until the constituent assembly could decide on a permanent constitution. The charter noted that the September decrees should be abolished, because they provided an improper formulation of shari’a; they would be replaced by correct Islamic laws, not by a secular formula.

Meanwhile, NIF issued its own charter that called for a national government that would include all the political parties except the communists, whose views NIF vehemently opposed.30 NIF supported the draft constitution of 1968 and argued that, until a permanent constitution could be promulgated, “the 1983 Islamic laws shall remain in force.” Moreover, “new laws [must be] derived from the holy Quran and the Sunna” and must be more comprehensive than Numairi’s system. Non-Muslims should have special minority status rather than the rights of fully integrated citizens.

The African parties criticized the Umma-DUP and NIF charters for marginalizing their peoples and issued their own Charter of National Unity on 5 May 1986.31 Drafted by the Nuba SNP, the charter rejected the draft constitution of 1968, insisted that the September decrees be totally abrogated, and supported a secular constitution that would recognize the Sudan’s multiple cultures, languages, and religions. The charter demanded that the south have a third of the representation in all national institutions and supported a federal system as the only way to end Arab hegemony and ensure an equitable distribution of national resources. The charter reflected their bitterness at the concentration of power in the hands of the Mahdi and Mirghani oligarchs and their anger that al-Mahdi offered only three residual cabinet posts to the south and one to SNP, whereas they had expected to receive six portfolios, including the important interior and housing ministries. In a statement that accompanied the charter, the African parties denounced “the unilateral attitude of the major parties in assuming the absolute right to form an imposed national government in a paternalistic spirit.”

Umma leaders were taken aback by this attack, having expected that their meeting with the African politicians on 4 May would simply review the names of potential cabinet members. They met again on 5 May—until dawn of 6 May—but failed to agree on the terms for a governing coalition.32 Despite that, the assembly convened a few hours later to elect the speaker of the assembly, the members of the council of state, and the prime minister. When the provisional speaker of the assembly refused to let the leaders of SNP and PPP express their criticisms of the proceedings, the African MPs walked out of the hall as soon as he opened the floor for nominations. Nuba leader Ghabboush shouted, “democracy is now nailed to a coffin and buried!” PPP’s Eliaba Surur warned: “We tolerated the Arabs for all these years and called this an Afro-Arab country, but from now on, it is African only.”33 The rest of the MPs ignored the African walkout and proceeded with the elections as though nothing had happened. Umma’s candidate for speaker was easily elected34 and later al-Sadiq al-Mahdi was handily elected prime minister.35 The five members of the council of state, which served as the sovereignty body to guarantee the constitution, were also elected despite the absence of most African MPs. [See Appendix 3.] Those northern politicians did not seem concerned that voting in the absence of important ethnic and regional political forces could weaken their legitimacy. Al-Mahdi even called the African walkout “a deceptive rather than a genuine move” that proved that the boycotters “hate democracy and attempt to distort its image.”36

The dignity and symbolism of the exchange of power from the transitional regime to the first elected government in eighteen years was all but lost in that acrimony, which continued during the week-long negotiations to form the cabinet. Al-Mahdi made no concessions on portfolios or policies in order to attract African politicians to the cabinet. [See Appendix 4.] He insisted that the south could have only 22 percent of the cabinet posts, which he claimed was their proportion of the population.37 Al-Mahdi personally decided which southern politicians would be selected for the cabinet, based on a list of names provided by the parties. When he met with Ghabboush on 12 May, the Nuba leader rejected the animal resources portfolio as a poor substitute for the interior and housing ministries. Moreover, in line with the DUP-Umma charter, al-Mahdi asked the attorney general to formulate “alternative” laws to replace the September decrees. Al-Mahdi thereby set aside his campaign pledge to provide a political umbrella under which non-Arabs and non-Muslims could stand. His dismissive manner in dealing with African political forces was an inauspicious way to launch the new parliamentary system.

The war of charters among Umma, DUP, NIF, and the African parties and the haste with which the assembly selected the executive officers epitomized the assimilationist approach. The numerical majority could ignore the wishes of the minorities. There were no safeguards to ensure the rights of those ethnic and religious groups. The clear statement of ethnic pluralism in the African parties’ charter was summarily dismissed. Those machinations set the stage for increased polarization in the coming years.

The incoherence of the coalition government’s policies can be illustrated in several arenas: foreign policy, economic performance, plans to restructure the administrative systems in the south, and efforts to amend shari’a law and the transitional constitution. In each case, the lack of a clear vision resulted in contradictions and immobility.

Governments were unable to craft a consistent foreign policy.1 During the first two years, for example, the DUP foreign minister tried to improve relations with Egypt, Iraq, and the United States, whereas Prime Minister al-Mahdi courted Libya, Iran, and the USSR, and criticized the IMF. Those actions sent contradictory signals since Iraq and Iran were at war, Egypt and Libya were at odds, and the U.S.-Soviet rivalry was still intense. Foreign relations also impacted on national identity, as al-Mahdi’s effort to unify with Libya displayed. Al-Mahdi hoped that allying with Libya would make him less dependent on other political parties by enhancing his financial and military resources. But the idea of unity was widely opposed, since DUP preferred to ally with Egypt and Saudi Arabia; NIF denounced Muammar al-Qaddafi’s unorthodox religious views and his suppression of the Libyan Islamist movement; and Fur politicians resented the militarization of Dar Fur by Chad militias, armed by Libya. Southern and Nuba politicians feared that the government would use more Libyan fighter planes to crush the SPLA and also feared that unity would make Sudan more Arab ethnically, tilting the population balance away from the African and non-Muslim citizens. Thus, even foreign policy concerns had ramifications for the issue of national identity.

In its economic policy, the government contended with ongoing protests against escalating prices and shortages of food, fuel, and electricity while seeking to respond to demands from the IMF to reduce public expenditure and privatize public sector corporations. The DUP minister of information criticized the government for failing to define its economic policy, which left it open to pressure from trade unions to increase wages and lower prices.2 NIF criticized the government for contradictory economic policies that increased the cost of living but did not resolve economic problems or even map a clear negotiating strategy with the IMF and other foreign lenders.3 NIF itself induced some of the economic difficulties, since the NIF-linked Faisal Islamic Bank controlled half of Sudan’s sorghum exports and thereby manipulated the price and availability of that basic food. NIF cadres organized demonstrations against electricity and water shortages, high prices, and negotiations with the IMF. NIF-orchestrated protests against shortages in electricity and water shortages in the capital and the lack of equipment in schools led to hundreds of arrests and the declaration of a state of emergency on 25 July 1987. Parliament endorsed that clampdown on 6 October 1987, in the midst of another wave of NIF-supported protests.

NIF benefited from the public’s antipathy to the IMF and its fear of economic chaos, and used the protests to spread its own political views. Demonstrations by NIF students and trade unions in October 1987, for example, combined calls for economic self-reliance with condemnation of the SPLA and demands for comprehensive Islamic laws. The government closed the schools in Khartoum as well as Khartoum University after NIF students clashed with student supporters of Umma and southern movements.

The question of restructuring the administration in the south exacerbated differences among southern politicians and deepened their distrust of the government in Khartoum. Al-Mahdi inherited a system that consisted of three separate regions ruled by military governors, alongside an ineffective Higher Executive Council (HEC). On 1 January 1987 al-Mahdi announced that he would replace the HEC by a Council for the South, headed by Mathew Obur, a discredited former official under Numairi. The three regional governors and five politicians (one from each party) would serve on the council, which would coordinate policy and advise the governors. At that time the southern political parties were divided on the issue of how the south should be ruled. Equatorian PPP and SAPCO and Nuer SPFP opposed reunification, whereas SSPA and SAC strongly supported the reestablishment of one large region for the south. This discord left al-Mahdi free to act as he wished.4

Southern politicians denounced al-Mahdi’s unilateral action, criticized the choice of Obur, and argued that southerners alone should select the council members and governors. Even though the prime minister responded by saying he would let the southern politicians devise an alternative formula, he finalized the Council for the South in March 1987 without taking into consideration the southern politicians’ preferences. SAC and SSPA withdrew from the cabinet in protest, which precipitated a split inside the SSPA and left only three southerners in the cabinet. Divide-and-rule tactics weakened the voice of the south in Khartoum.

Islamic law continued to be the most contentious issue. Al-Mahdi’s inability to alter the September decrees epitomized the incoherence of government policy and the conflicting pressures on the political system. The prime minister sent to the assembly on 10 November 1986 a set of amendments to the transitional constitution that modified the use of shari’a and hudud and increased the powers of the executive vis-à-vis parliament.5 Even those slight modifications in shari’a were protested by NIF for going too far and by secularist African parties and the bar association for not going far enough. The prime minister tried to deflect NIF’s criticism by convening a meeting of Muslim experts from abroad in December 1986, at which NIF MPs heckled al-Mahdi when he argued that the September decrees should be replaced by humane and progressive Islamic laws that would uphold democracy and freedom of expression.

DUP leaders were suspicious of other proposed amendments, such as reducing the quorum for assembly sessions to 30 percent, since that would enable MPs from Umma—who constituted 38 percent of the representatives—to pass legislation without any other MPs being present. Moreover, giving the assembly the power to unseat MPs who changed their party affiliation might be used against the loosely structured DUP. The DUP member on the council of state also noted African politicians’ fear of being second-class citizens in a shari’a-based political system. His views were an early indication of the change taking place inside DUP on that sensitive issue.

The version approved by the assembly on 1 April 1987 dropped the right to unseat MPs, required a 60 percent vote for constitutional amendments (instead of the proposed simple majority), and qualified the government’s right to legislate when parliament was not in session.6 The government did not take practical steps to alter the September decrees until December 1987 when it abolished administrative detention and set the maximum number of lashes at ten.7 NIF denounced those modifications and mounted high-pressure tactics against the government. Its cadres led thousands of demonstrators into the streets to protest that backsliding on shari’a. The prime minister capitulated when he issued draft laws in February 1988 that asserted that shari’a should be followed wherever possible and that non-Muslims in the south should only be temporarily exempt from hudud.8 A Muslim living in the south would have the option of requesting a trial under Islamic laws but a non-Muslim living in the north must follow shari’a.

Al-Mahdi underlined that territorial duality when he presented the government program to the assembly on 15 March 1988. He claimed the program would ensure Muslims their right to “practice their religion and its tenets to the full” while ridding “ourselves of the distortions to Islam which the September 1983 laws represent.”9 Once again, the prime minister failed to satisfy anyone, since NIF sought a comprehensive Islamic system and secularists sought the abrogation of shari’a.

Tensions escalated within DUP and between al-Mahdi and his DUP partners. Sharif Zain al-Abdin al-Hindi, the DUP secretary general who served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister, quit the government and threatened to resign from the DUP because Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani had not convened a party convention and al-Mahdi had failed to craft effective policies. The prime minister responded by calling al-Hindi and the DUP commerce minister uncooperative, the latter having alienated the entire cabinet when he denounced corruption within DUP and criticized al-Mahdi for high-handed actions.10 Then al-Mahdi angered al-Mirghani when he justified dissolving the cabinet on 13 May 1987 by claiming that the ministers were incompetent, while installing a new council of ministers on 3 June 1987 with all the same persons except the outspoken DUP ministers of foreign affairs and commerce. [See Appendix 5.] That maneuver demonstrated al-Mahdi’s leverage over the DUP, as the junior coalition partner.

Relations deteriorated further that month when DUP’s Muhammad al-Hasan Yassin resigned from both the Council of State and the DUP politburo, after criticizing nepotism by the council’s chair, who was al-Mirghani’s brother.11 When DUP nominated another politburo member to replace Yassin, al-Mahdi rejected that choice because he was ineligible for the post since he had been a minister under Numairi. When DUP refused to nominate anyone else, al-Mahdi selected Mirghani Nasri, head of the bar association, whom the assembly confirmed in August over DUP’s objections. DUP then went into “executive opposition,” which meant that its ministers remained in their offices but opposed their Umma partners. Al-Mahdi and al-Mirghani failed to restore the coalition accord.

Due to their cavalier treatment by al-Mahdi, DUP leaders sought an alternative coalition. Bitter competition with NIF precluded a NIF-DUP alliance and so DUP began to make a surprising shift toward the African parties. Al-Mirghani claimed that NIF’s positions had “aggravated” matters over the past year and its presence in the government would prevent any policy consensus from emerging.12 DUP’s pragmatic shift became evident in January 1988 when it supported the African parties’ call for negotiations with the SPLM, a delay in deciding on the role of religion in politics until the planned national constitutional conference, and the formation of a broad-based government of national reconciliation that would exclude NIF.13

The assembly reelected al-Mahdi prime minister on 28 April 1988 on the basis of a new national charter that was supported by all the parties except NIF and SCP.14 The charter called for “substitute Islamic laws” and “an Islamic economic system,” but angered NIF by emphasizing guarantees of “full rights to the non-Muslims,” not setting a deadline for the legal changes, and calling for negotiations with the SPLM. Al-Mahdi, however, opposed having any constraints placed on his personal power, as the charter implied. Therefore, he abruptly undermined the charter and checkmated DUP and the African parties in May 1988 by adding NIF to the governing coalition and supporting the NIF candidate for speaker of the assembly.15 [See Appendix 6.]

Moreover, al-Mahdi appointed NIF’s Hasan al-Turabi attorney general. Turabi emphasized that NIF would “salvage the country” from the personal rivalries that bedeviled Umma-DUP coalitions. When he threatened to pull out of the government unless it promulgated a comprehensive Islamic code within sixty days, al-Mahdi caved in. The prime minister stated that new Islamic laws would be implemented “before the end of the rainy season”—a time limit that coincided with NIF’s deadline.16 Turabi was not perturbed by the criticism of secularists, since his draft laws “might stir up a controversy, but eventually the assembly is likely to endorse them by a large majority.”17 To him,

In contrast to NIF’s enthusiastic support for shari’a, DUP leaders became wary of Islamization. They were not only concerned about their marginalization in the new government but were also disturbed by the government’s hard-line policy toward the civil war. DUP’s Sid Ahmad Hussain—whom al-Mahdi and Turabi had excluded from the cabinet—warned that forming an anti-southern and anti-Nuba government would fracture the country.18 When al-Mahdi capitulated to NIF’s deadline for new Islamic laws, DUP protested that the government could not be bound by that timetable. Similarly, members of SSPA and SNP who had defected from their parties to join the government were dismayed by al-Mahdi’s about-face, since they had thought that the issue of religion would be deferred until the constitutional conference.19

PPP’s Eliaba Surur, the first African head of the opposition in the parliament, criticized the “mechanical majority” of Arab-Islamic politicians that could ram Islamist legislation through the assembly.20 He lamented the government’s determination to create a national identity based on one race and one religion, denounced the prime minister’s divide-and-rule tactics toward the south, and warned al-Mahdi that he was exacerbating deep ideological, religious, and racial divisions. Surur said he felt comfortable as “an African who wants to be a Sudanese.” He regretted that the prime minister was “uncomfortable with being just an African or a Sudanese” and sought an allegedly “superior” identity as an Arab and Muslim. Turabi and Surur’s perspectives—along with Sid Ahmad Hussain’s warning—expressed succinctly the polarized concepts of national identity. The contest became increasingly acute as Turabi implemented his vision of a monolithic Sudan.

In early September 1988, when the two-month deadline passed, NIF urged an end to the “unreasonable delay” in reinforcing shari’a and successfully pressed the council of ministers to endorse its draft laws on 11 September 1988.21 When the bill was tabled in the assembly on 19 September, African MPs walked out, declaring that the measure would split the Sudanese nation in half. Faced with the automatic majority in favor of some form of shari’a, they did not want to legitimize the debate. Those southern MPs who were members of the governing coalition threatened to withdraw their support should the bill be passed. The Sudan Council of Churches denounced the bill on the grounds that it “jeopardizes the unity of the country,” denies “the equality of all citizens before the law,” and imposes “degrading” hudud punishments on non-Muslims.22 Even the president of the Council of the South, handpicked by al-Mahdi, argued that the time was not ripe for shari’a and that its application should at least be excluded from the south and Khartoum.23

African MPs could not shift the political balance on their own. But they gained support from the DUP, whose leaders feared the economic and social cost of the war as well as NIF’s enhanced power. DUP therefore signed a pathbreaking agreement with the SPLM on 16 November 1988 (detailed in Chapter 6) that called for freezing Islamic laws and convening the constitutional conference by the end of December.24 DUP thereby placed the value of including all the Sudanese peoples in the constitutional consensus above its long-held value of creating an Islamic state. Before taking that step, al-Mirghani had consulted extensively with other politicians and gained overwhelming support. Even a leader of the government-funded Anya-Nya II militia underlined the importance of separating religion and state:25

In contrast, al-Mahdi and NIF fiercely opposed the accord. Although the Umma party endorsed its terms, al-Mahdi focussed on its challenge to his personal authority and insisted that the parliament grant him exclusive personal authority to negotiate with the SPLM and organize a constitutional conference.26 NIF, however, invoked “higher national interests” that required comprehensive shari’a laws, and threatened to leave the government if it froze hudud. When al-Mahdi blocked a formal endorsement of the accord, he once again checkmated the DUP, whose ministers resigned from the cabinet on 28 December 1988.

Both sides used public demonstrations to pressure the government. The DUP-SPLM accord was supported by protesters who invoked the slogan “against hunger … against war” to denounce al-Mahdi and NIF political and economic policies.27 Al-Mirghani had already been greeted with an outpouring of public support when he returned from concluding the accord with the SPLM in Addis Ababa. NIF’s protests, in contrast, quickly became violent. Shots were fired outside al-Mirghani’s home the night before he left for Addis Ababa. On 17 November a SAM-7 missile hit the military transport plane carrying Defense Minister General Abd al-Majid Khalil and Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant General Fathi Ahmad Ali as it took off from Wau in Bahr al-Ghazal. Although al-Mahdi blamed the SPLA, evidence pointed to dissident northern commanders who opposed the defense minister’s endorsement of the accord.28 A NIF demonstration on 22 November attacked southern residents in Khartoum. And rumors of coup plots by mid-rank officers circulated in the capital.29

When the DUP resigned, al-Mahdi quickly formed an Umma-NIF government in which Turabi became foreign minister. [See Appendix 7.] Turabi wielded his enhanced power to dismiss career diplomats, recognize the Afghan guerrilla government based in Peshawar, step up arms purchases, intensify fighting in the south, and consolidate Islamic law.30 Turabi had already precipitated a crisis within the judiciary when he ordered the courts to drop charges of embezzlement and misuse of funds against several of Numairi’s officials.31 Judges, magistrates, and legal advisors to the attorney general struck in protest against this politically motivated interference with the legal process.

Those actions generated strong reactions. Al-Mahdi and Turabi labeled as traitors the leaders of the DUP, African parties, trade unions, and professional associations who met with the SPLM in Ethiopia to call for “a government of national salvation composed of all political forces committed to peace, including the SPLA-SPLM.”32

Most significantly, Defense Minister Khalil resigned on 20 February 1989.33 General Khalil opposed NIF’s dominance of the government and argued that negotiations with the SPLM were essential, in part because foreign governments would no longer arm the Sudanese armed forces. Khalil strongly implied that a government of national reconciliation should negotiate with the SPLM on the basis of the DUP-SPLM accord. His action did not occur in a vacuum. Numairi had fired him in 1982 for protesting against the politicization of the armed forces and the use of the army to quell civilian protests. In recent months Khalil had decried al-Mahdi’s use of Umma-supported militias in the west and south to fight the SPLA and al-Mahdi’s appointment as chief of staff in August 1988 of his cousin Major General Mahdi Babu Nimr, son of the Baqqara Arab chief, Babu Nimr. That move signalled that al-Mahdi might build up the militias to rival or surplant the army.34 Khalil opposed al-Mahdi’s proposal to combine the militias into a Popular Defense Force (PDF) that would serve under the army’s command. NIF endorsed this idea, but the military command wanted to dissolve—rather than reinforce—the militias. Moreover, Khalil objected when al-Mahdi replaced the politically neutral minister of interior with his cousin Mubarak al-Fadhil al-Mahdi on 1 February 1989, a move that signaled potential party interference in the security services as well as the armed forces. Khalil had already been denounced by NIF for endorsing the DUP-SPLM accord, thereby triggering the apparent attempt to shoot down his plane. Thus, Khalil had professional, political, and personal reasons to stand up to the prime minister and NIF.

The next day three hundred senior officers signed an ultimatum that gave al-Mahdi one week to either supply the armed forces adequately or negotiate a peace agreement.35 The memorandum, signed by Commander-in-Chief General Fathi Ahmad Ali, declared that the armed forces were safeguarding the popular uprising of April 1985. DUP, SCP, several southern parties, and the alliance of trade and professional unions endorsed the memorandum and called for a broad-based government to negotiate a comprehensive peace. Al-Mahdi rejected the ultimatum as an illegitimate intrusion by the armed forces into the political arena. The Council of State was divided and unable to act effectively. The officers then submitted a second memorandum on 28 February in which they insisted that al-Mahdi implement all the provisions of the memorandum of 21 February.

Al-Mahdi gave in on 5 March when he agreed to broaden the government on the basis of the seven-point program that the leaders of thirty-eight political parties and two dozen unions signed on 3 March that called for implementing the DUP-SPLM accord.36 NIF rejected the program, since it did not mention retaining Shari’a. Nonetheless, al-Mahdi delayed asking his Umma-NIF cabinet to resign until the high command of the armed forces sent a third memorandum on 10 March 1989 that demanded immediate steps to reconfigure the government and insisted that al-Mahdi accelerate negotiations with opposition parties and unions.37 The new government, installed on 25 March, included not only Umma, DUP, and SNP but also a member of the SCP and two representatives of unions. [See Appendix 8.] The African parties won the right to select the southern cabinet members and the members of the Council of the South.38 A nonpartisan general became minister of defense, but al-Mahdi’s relative remained minister of interior. As a sign of the dramatic change, DUP’s Sid Ahmad Hussain replaced Turabi as foreign minister and chaired the ministerial committee charged with negotiating with the SPLM. That DUP politician had been ousted from the cabinet a year earlier and had played a key role in DUP-SPLM negotiations.

The council of ministers met for the first time on 26 March to approve the phased program, which was approved by the assembly on 3 April by a vote of 128 to 23.39 However, when the assembly voted on 10 April to shelve debate on shari’a until the constitutional conference, NIF MPs stormed out and al-Mahdi and two of his relatives did not attend the session, claiming that as spiritual leaders of the Ansar they could not participate in such a vote.40 Nonetheless, al-Mahdi initialled on 29 June the bill to suspend Numairi’s Islamic decrees.

NIF did not accept its sudden loss of power, which had demonstrated that its basic ideological approach had been rejected by the high command of the armed forces and by all the other political forces. NIF was suddenly marginalized just when it had expected to consolidate its leadership and complete the establishment of an Islamic constitutional system. Therefore, as soon as al-Mahdi acceded to the ultimatum, NIF’s executive bureau resolved not to participate in any government based on the phased program, since that did not uphold shari’a.41 Turabi stated that NIF would not join a government that included leftwing parties and unions. The seven NIF ministers resigned in mid-March, the speaker of parliament resigned on 10 April, and the Khartoum commissioner resigned soon after. Nonetheless, Turabi declared, we “will be back soon, by the wish of the people.” He added that freedom and stability must be in balance: in certain circumstances, “you must forego some freedom.” The NIF executive committee reportedly decided to overthrow the government in a meeting on 31 March 1989.42

The movement then followed a two-pronged strategy that galvanized protests in the streets and simultaneously plotted with like-minded officers in the armed forces. NIF demonstrations began in March, using the occasion of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa (religious edict) that declared the writer Salman Rushdie an apostate.43 Marches by NIF student unions in Khartoum’s secondary schools and universities started on 9 April and continued virtually nonstop into June. Pro-NIF unions organized demonstrations that linked popular complaints about the economy to the deteriorating security situation that NIF itself was fostering. The government failed to contain the demonstrations, which the new Khartoum commissioner denounced as cynical efforts by enemies of democracy to undermine law and order.

NIF stressed that the protests would continue until the government applied shari’a or was overthrown. NIF’s former commissioner of Khartoum, for example, declared that Islamists battled the government in the streets because the government had lost its legitimacy by freezing hudud and surrendering to the SPLM. He asserted that NIF was appealing to citizens to escalate opposition “until [the government] falls or amends its decision to obstruct the shari’a.”44 Similarly, NIF Secretary General Yasin Umar al-Imam maintained that NIF was working to oust the government because the party would “not haggle over something that is the foundation of our orientation.”45 NIF’s second-in-command Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha detailed NIF’s strategy:46

A coup attempt was discovered on 18 June. The prime minister said its organizers had planned to attack the parliament while he was speaking and then arrest all the MPs, cabinet members, and the military high command.47 The plot appeared to be orchestrated by Numairi; later it was evident that NIF-army contacts were behind the scheme. In this tense atmosphere, the interior minister asserted that although48

The coup occurred on 30 June, hours before the cabinet and parliament were expected to vote to freeze shari’a and final steps were to be taken to arrange the constitutional conference. By then, although al-Mahdi’s personal commitment to suspending Islamic law and negotiating with the SPLM remained in doubt, he had been boxed in by the political forces that supported negotiations. The coup d’état dismantled the entire democratic edifice overnight and destroyed the possibility of creating a constitutional structure that would represent Sudan’s diversity.

The sharp cleavage over shari’a brought down the third democratic government in the Sudan. For NIF, democracy was a vehicle through which it could carry out its ideological agenda. When the majority rejected that agenda, NIF decided to impose its ideology by force.

Al-Mahdi also played a major role in weakening the nascent democracy by his preoccupation with his personal power and his reluctance to create a constitutional system. Similarly, al-Mahdi’s inability to think of African politicians as equals—rather than as clients—reinforced instability. His apparently opportunistic shifts in policy made the public cynical about the democratic system.

The politicization of ethnicity and religion and the divergent definitions of the nation exacerbated that instability. Questions of majority and minority rights split the political forces. NIF, Umma, and DUP (until 1988) argued that, since most citizens were Muslim, they had the right to institute Islamic law and need only ensure freedom of worship for the religious minority. African and secularist political forces retorted that imposing the majority’s views on the entire country denied the minority basic political rights. It took three years of debate before the government took steps to resolve that core issue in a way that could include all religious groups in a new national consensus. Over time, those steps might have moved the country away from ethnic nationalism and toward a territorial nationalism based on ethnic pluralism and decentralized authority.

The failure underlined the difficulty of instituting an enduring democracy in a country in which national identity was still contested and acceptance of pluralism and democratic rules remained tenuous. Governing institutions and political processes would be fragile so long as no consensus was achieved on national identity.

Colonel John Garang de Mabior articulated comprehensive goals for the SPLM when it was established in July 1983: the creation of “a united Sudan under a socialist system that affords democracy and human rights to all nationalities and guarantees freedom to all religions, beliefs and outlooks.”1 Garang stressed that the SPLM was not a southern movement, focused on regional issues, but was concerned about the Sudan as a whole and merely happened to emerge in the region where exploitation was most intense: “the marginal cost of rebellion in the south became very small, zero or negative; that is, in the south, it pays to rebel.” As such, the SPLM was the “vanguard movement for the liberation of the whole Sudanese people.” Garang declared that this democratic New Sudan would guarantee equality, freedom, economic and social justice, and would end the monopoly of power by any one group, whether the “gang of generals” in the Transitional Military Council, the family dynasties of al-Mahdi and al-Mirghani, or the ideological sectarian NIF. The SPLM also rejected tribalism and racial distinctions as bases of rule. Although “the emergence of regional political groups [is] a natural revolt against the appalling conditions in which the masses live in those areas,” those conditions cannot be overcome by viewing each region and group in isolation and “the root causes of Sudan’s chronic social and political instability are essentially national. As such, they should be tackled nationally.” Once power was restructured in Khartoum, marginalized areas and peoples would acquire a stake in the economy and a guaranteed position in the central government. Overall, Garang considered that the Sudan was still undergoing a process of “national formation” that would fuse the many ethnic groups into one nation. He asserted: “Our major problem is that the Sudan … is still looking for its soul, for its true identity. Failing to find it … some take refuge in Arabism, and failing in this, they find refuge in Islam as a uniting factor.”2 Others opt for separatism, since they are neither Arab nor Muslim. Instead, just as the African kingdoms of Funj and Fur fostered Arab-Islamic culture while maintaining their special characteristics, so can a New Sudan blend the languages and cultures into a unique pattern in which no single element has hegemony and the specificities of each culture are respected by all. This articulation of goals was squarely within the ethnic pluralist, territorial nationalist framework: the search for a national identity that would embrace all citizens irrespective of their ethnicity.

Garang’s own background indicated the complexity of southern Sudanese identity.3 Born in 1945 in Bor (Upper Nile) of Dinka parents, he was educated in Bahr al-Ghazal and in Tanzania. After studying for his BA at Grinnell College (Iowa), Garang fought with the Anya-Nya in 1971–1972. He reportedly opposed the Addis Ababa Accord and the absorption of the Anya-Nya into the armed forces, but he became a captain and later a colonel in that army and received military training at Fort Benning in 1974. He then gained a PhD in agricultural economics from Iowa State University in 1981, writing on development issues related to the controversial Jonglei Canal. When Garang returned to the Sudan in 1981, he directed research at the army headquarters in Khartoum and taught agricultural economics at Khartoum University. He gained an acute awareness of the political and economic problems facing the south as well as familiarity with the intricacies of politics in Khartoum and within the military elite.

The SPLM’s aims were all-encompassing and highly political, but it was structured along military lines with the SPLM/SPLA high command dominated by commanders in the field. Garang’s leadership was challenged by other southern military officers and civilian politicians who felt they had equal or greater credentials for running the movement. Personal rivals included Major Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, former commander at Bor whom Garang detained in 1987, and Lt. Colonel William Nyuon Bany Deng, former commander at Ayod, who defected in 1992. They chafed at serving under Garang, and Kerubino may have also disagreed with the movement’s dependence on Ethiopia. Some politicians such as the elder statesman Joseph Oduho objected to Garang’s opposition to secession and his insistence that the military wing of the SPLA control civilian operations.4 Garang also suppressed challenges from Anya-Nya, reconstituted as Anya-Nya II in 1983, but gained the support of its Nuer commander, Gordon Kong Chuol, in January 1988, who brought with him two-thirds of the Anya-Nya II fighters.5

Until May 1991 SPLM’s political headquarters was located in Addis Ababa, which provided a crucial sanctuary as well as material assistance and diplomatic support.6 Mengistu Haile Mariam allowed the SPLA to operate a radio station that served as a vital means for the SPLM to transmit its message directly to the Sudanese public. Ethiopia provided transport planes, helicopters, and trucks, airlifted supplies into the south, and let the SPLA set up training camps, logistical centers, and a prison and POW camp on its soil. By 1991, 400,000 southern Sudanese crowded into refugee camps in western Ethiopia. Reliance on Ethiopia, however, opened up the SPLM to charges of manipulation by that Marxist government, including participating in that regime’s combat against insurgencies inside Ethiopia. In fact, assistance from other countries was limited, especially when Libya’s Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi shifted his support from the SPLA to the government after Numairi was overthrown. The SPLM maintained offices in Nairobi and Kampala, which handled diplomatic and relief operations and may have served as conduits for some arms. Only after Yoweri Museveni came to power in Uganda in January 1986 and resumed his longstanding friendship with Garang did the SPLA and the Ugandan army cooperate along their common border, including fending off attacks by Khartoum-supported Ugandan dissidents.7

The SPLA developed a four-pronged strategy to undermine the government and defeat the armed forces in the south, which focussed on mounting protracted operations that would wear down the armed forces. First, the SPLA destroyed internationally funded development projects, forcing a French company to stop digging the Jonglei Canal in November 1983 and Chevron to suspend drilling for oil at Bentiu in February 1984. Garang said those operations were designed “to achieve maximum shock and embarrassment” while Numairi was negotiating with creditors in Paris.8 Later attacks closed down oil exploration at Bor, construction of the international airport in Juba, and tea plantation operations near Torit.

Second, the SPLA blocked communication routes within the south and between the north and the south by blowing up railway bridges, ambushing truck and rail convoys, mining roads, and sinking river barges. The army virtually gave up trying to protect communications routes and vital installations during the summer rains, aside from such essential locales as Juba and Wau. Even airdrops of supplies to garrisons were vulnerable to SPLA’s SAM-7 missiles, which also downed civilian and military planes and helicopters.9

Third, the SPLA isolated strategically located towns and army garrisons and seized populated towns once it established secure lines of communication into Ethiopia. The SPLA was strongest in eastern Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile by 1986–1987, and did not move into Equatoria until December 1984, partly for logistical reasons but also because many Equatorians were suspicious that the SPLA was a Dinka-dominated movement.10 In the winter of 1987–1988, SPLA captured the strategic town of Kapoeta (Eastern Equatoria), astride the only land route from Juba and Torit to Kenya, and the following winter SPLA overran a dozen towns and outposts in all three regions.11 That was crowned by the capture of Garang’s hometown of Bor (Upper Nile), where the 1983 mutiny had touched off the uprising. The 40,000-strong SPLA controlled half of the rural south in 1985–1986, two-thirds in 1987, and nearly 90 percent by 1989.

Fourth, the SPLA moved into the north through southern Blue Nile and southern Kordofan. The seizure of Kurmuk in the Ingessana Hills of southern Blue Nile province in November 1987 put at risk that province’s vital hydroelectric installations and agro-industrial areas. African residents of Kurmuk district had long-standing grievances against Khartoum, having been denied the right to vote on whether they wanted to join the south after the Addis Ababa Agreement. Moreover, those Ingessana people were angry at the government and private Arab businessmen for driving them off their traditional lands in order to establish large-scale sugar and cotton-growing projects, and therefore welcomed SPLM’s call to redress the grievances of the marginalized peoples.

The SPLA also capitalized on grievances among the peoples in the Nuba Mountains of southern Kordofan, where ongoing tensions between Nuba and Arab tribes over water and grazing rights were exacerbated by the alienation of land to private mechanized agricultural schemes and by drought, which forced Arab herdsmen to move into the Nuba-populated hills.12 Nuba political groups supported the SPLM’s aim of restructuring the central political system and empowering the marginalized ethnic groups. The SPLA entered the Nuba Mountains in 1985 when its forces killed a hundred unarmed Arab residents of Gardud village in a sudden surprise raid. In 1987 the SPLA mounted a sustained campaign and in 1989 formed a division under Commander Yusif Kuwa that operated near the provincial capital of Kadugli. The government responded by arming Baqqara Arab militias to raid Nuba villages as well as Dinka, Shilluk, and Nuer areas in Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile. Militias captured cattle, sheep, and slaves, thereby depleting the human and material wealth of those areas. Relief workers estimated that 52,000 Nuba villagers were displaced by early 1988.

In the westernmost region of Dar Fur, many peoples resented control from Khartoum, and tension between Fur farmers and Rizaiqat Arab cattle herders escalated in 1984–1985 as drought forced the nomads to encroach upon cultivated land.13 Fur were angry that the central government let Libyan troops deploy in northwest Dar Fur and permitted rebels from Chad to camp inside Dar Fur, where they joined with Zaghawa tribesmen to raid Fur villages. The SPLA claimed that 6,500 foreign troops were camped in Dar Fur by mid-1988, a number that grew as Libya and the rebels prepared to overthrow the Ndjamena government in December 1990. The extent of destruction was indicated in a report in January 1989 that 57 villages had been burned in the Wadi Saleh agricultural district, where nearly 400 had died, 42,000 were displaced, and 12,000 tons of food were destroyed. Further attacks by 3,000 murahiliin (Arab militias) on Jabal Marra in May 1989 burned 40 villages and left 80,000 homeless. Those government-armed murahiliin also attacked displaced persons from the south. In March 1987, in apparent revenge for the SPLA’s killing of 150 Rizaiqat militiamen while they raided Dinka villages in western Bahr al-Ghazal, Rizaiqat murahiliin and Arab townspeople killed 1,000 destitute Dinka displaced persons in the largely Arab town of al-Da’ien. When police tried to shelter the Dinka women and children in the police station and on railway cars, the Rizaiqat torched the wagons and stormed the police station. The SPLA played no direct role in these conflicts, since the vast distance prevented the SPLA from aiding Fur groups or protecting displaced persons.

While fighting in the fringes of the north remained tangential militarily for the SPLA, it symbolized the idea that the SPLM was not only a movement of southerners but had national aspirations and a potential base among other deprived peoples. It reinforced the message that the SPLM sought fundamental transformations in the country’s identity and political structures, not merely cosmetic changes and token concessions.

Government officials and politicians in Khartoum reacted to the challenge presented by the renewed uprising according to their own perceptions of political reality. The dominant triad of Umma, DUP, and NIF viewed the Sudan as predominantly Arab and Muslim, within which the south comprised a discrete entity and southern politicians could be relegated to unimportant portfolios in Khartoum. Political life revolved around the needs and perspectives of the Nile Valley core, which would co-opt or contain African Muslims in the west, far north, and east. They assumed that the Muslim majority had the right to institute Islamic legal codes covering not only personal status within the Muslim community but also political, economic, and social regulations pertaining to the entire country. Non-Muslim minorities would have to accept that Islamic framework, within which they would retain freedom of worship and certain other legal protections. This perspective was embodied in Numairi’s Islamic codes and NIF’s insistence on a comprehensive Islamic system. It was also intrinsic to the visions of al-Mahdi and al-Mirghani, although they believed that tolerant governments would respect the rights of minorities.

From those perspectives, the SPLM’s goals were a clear threat. Nonetheless, northern leaders tried to discount the importance of the uprising. Some asserted that the rebellion was merely “Garang’s movement” and therefore would end if his personal ambitions were satisfied by a high-level post in Khartoum. Others saw the SPLM as an extension of the secessionist Anya-Nya movement and hoped to placate it by restoring the Addis Ababa Accord. Still others argued that the SPLM was not the sole voice in the south, since five southern parties won seats in the 1986 elections. Divide-and-rule tactics could be used to isolate the SPLM. Moreover, governments called Garang a puppet of Mengistu, who sought to impose a Marxist regime on Sudan,14 and claimed that the SPLA would collapse without support from Ethiopia, the Soviet Union, and Cuba.

However, northern politicians primarily viewed SPLM’s challenge to the structure of power in Khartoum as proof that the movement was anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. That threat galvanized them to uphold the dominant paradigm of a Muslim Arab Sudan at all costs. The chairman of the TMC appealed to Libya, Iran, and the Gulf states for financial and military aid on the grounds that Garang would impose an African identity on the Muslim Arab majority in Sudan. When the SPLA captured Kurmuk, al-Mahdi’s officials exclaimed fearfully that Africans were poised to overrun the north. When the SPLA penetrated the Nuba Mountains, the government armed Arab tribes as the first line of defense against African forces. SPLM’s insistence on a secular constitution seemed proof of its anti-Muslim orientation. NIF blamed western Christian churches for seeking to thwart the natural spread of Islam southwards into the heart of Africa and “instigating” southerners to demand secular laws and support the “outlaws.”15 Those powerful negative images “proved” that negotiations were impossible. They reinforced the conclusion that the government and the SPLM were engaged in a zero-sum struggle.

Nevertheless, some politicians in Khartoum addressed Sudan’s problems from perspectives that were compatible with the SPLM and thereby prevented the conflict from becoming entirely zero-sum. After all, the Addis Ababa Accord and the constitution of 1973 had not simply made the south an isolated enclave but had incorporated proportional representation in the central government and acknowledged the validity of Christianity and traditional beliefs alongside Islam. Those inclusive principles gained acceptance among secularists in the north and were compatible with the tolerance and flexibility in sufi movements. For example, the charter of the 1985 uprising rejected Numairi’s September decrees and endorsed the nonreligious constitution of 1956. But the political parties that endorsed that approach had barely 17 percent of the MPs and, on their own, could not resolve the conflict.

Ultimately, economic collapse—more than a change in ideology—compelled politicians to find a way out. By mid-1989, the war cost $3 million daily and the government owed $13 billion to foreign creditors, who no longer supplied aid.16 The fighting wrecked plans to augment Nile waters and end the country’s reliance on oil from abroad. Nearly 5,000 members of the armed forces had died in the south, more than 300,000 soldiers were wounded, and at least 250,000 civilians had died from famine or disease. As early as 1987 the Umma finance minister pointed out that, since the war consumed most of the general budget, neither balanced budgets nor economic reforms were possible so long as the war continued. And DUP’s al-Mirghani stated bluntly: “the war is exhausting Sudan’s resources, lives, and wealth.” Thus, even politicians who strongly supported the Muslim and Arab identity of Sudan came to see a political accommodation with the SPLM as necessary to restore economic stability.

In view of the polarity between the dominant political forces in Khartoum and the SPLM, creating mechanisms to overcome the mutual distrust and resolve the conflict was a laborious process. Nonetheless, over the course of four years, political leaders overcame major obstacles to negotiations. The coup d’état in 1989 cancelled those efforts and deepened the divide.

The basic way by which Garang sought to end the civil war was to convene a constitutional conference to resolve all the outstanding political and legal issues besetting the country. He first proposed this just before Numairi was overthrown, suggesting “a national congress to be organized by the SPLA, progressive and patriotic elements in the Sudanese Army, and other democratic forces in the country to discuss the essence and programme for the formation of a New Sudan and its New Army consistent with its particularity.”17 That concept was not incorporated into the charter of the National Alliance, however, which referred merely to solving “the problem of the south within a framework of regional self-government based on democratic principles” in which the SPLM was considered one of several voices in the south.18

Moreover, members of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and cabinet were angry that the SPLA did not stop fighting when Numairi was ousted. They were annoyed that Garang called on the TMC to relinquish power and criticized the generals’ previous behavior. Garang recalled, for example, that TMC chair Suwar al-Dhahab had urged Numairi to suppress the Bor mutiny in 1983 and that Defense Minister Abdallah had labelled the SPLM “foreign-inspired infidel insurgents” when he was Numairi’s chief of military operations.19

Although the cabinet was taken aback by Garang’s criticism, its members resolved at their first meeting on 25 April to open a dialogue with the SPLM. The next day, the TMC urged Garang to come to Khartoum to talk, decreed a general amnesty for all rebels, and ordered a unilateral cease-fire. The National Alliance

In June 1985 Dafallah and Defense Minister Abdallah both wrote to Garang, sending uncoordinated letters with divergent messages.21 Dafallah focussed exclusively on the south. He downplayed SPLA’s role in toppling Numairi, described the SPLM as one of many actors in the south, and claimed that the transitional government had already taken significant steps by reaffirming its commitment to the Addis Ababa Agreement, recognizing the south’s unique cultural and ethnic characteristics, and preparing to send relief aid and development assistance to that region. Dafallah avoided the fundamental issues of power sharing in the center and Islamic law by arguing that religious laws need not be divisive and that it was possible to preserve the September decrees while meeting the concerns of non-Muslims. SPLM’s most prominent northern member, former Foreign Minister Mansour Khalid, commented sarcastically that the letter reflected the “myopia of the ruling elite.”22

The defense minister adopted a more forthcoming tone in his letter, reiterating his earlier call for a wide-ranging dialogue with Garang and stressing the national orientation of the SPLM:

The SPLM received mixed messages from the two letters which, in any event, were private communications rather than authoritative statements by the TMC and Council of Ministers. The SPLM’s suspicions were aroused further by their timing. The letters reached Garang in late June, just as the army initiated a military offensive in the south and just before Abdallah signed a military protocol with Libya that significantly enhanced the fighting capacity of the armed forces.23

The SPLM was still preparing its response to the letters when the Council of Ministers announced on 24 August 1985 its terms of reference for a national conference.24 That declaration stated that the reasons for fighting had ended with Numairi’s defeat but also affirmed that “our people” are

SPLM leaders were disappointed with the government’s declaration, but responded positively by announcing a temporary cease-fire and endorsing the principle of a constitutional conference. The SPLM stressed that the conference must be national in scope rather than focussed on one region, and must draft a constitution acceptable to all the Sudanese people. On 1 September 1985 the SPLM-SPLA high command issued its response to the prime minister’s letter, which also constituted a preliminary answer to the Council of Ministers. The SPLM outlined steps that “the government of the day in Khartoum … [must do] to ensure the necessary favourable conditions for national dialogue.”25 Those five preconditions for convening a national constitutional conference remained the core of the SPLM position, to which it adhered throughout the subsequent years:

The Council of Ministers responded officially on 10 November 1985, agreeing that the agenda for the constitutional conference should encompass “all major national issues” rather than just the south and agreeing to lift the state of emergency before that conference.26 However, the Council of Ministers rejected all the other preconditions demanded by the SPLM: the conference itself would decide on shari’a, defense pacts, and political structures. Existing laws would be applied in the meantime so as not to prejudge those issues.

Khartoum had not received the text of the SPLM reply until 24 October, due to complications related to its delivery. By then tensions had risen, partly because the government claimed that the SPLA had supported an alleged attempt by Nuba and southern soldiers to mount a coup d’état on 26 September. The prime minister denounced this “racist” sedition which, by supposedly inciting non-Arab Sudanese against northerners, intended first to assassinate members of the TMC, the cabinet, and leading northern politicians and then to bring Garang to power.27 The arrest of prominent southern and Nuba politicians on charges of treason infuriated southern and secularist politicians. The SPLM denied complicity, stressing that it opposed military coups and any form of racism. The SPLM spokesman argued that the TMC itself fanned religious and racial feelings by letting the chief of staff address a NIF demonstration of 10,000 persons on 21 September that clashed violently with southern residents in Khartoum. The SPLM charged the TMC with whipping up anti-southern feelings because the army had suffered reverses in the field. SPLM leaders were also irritated by the transitional constitution (discussed in chapter 4), which retained the September decrees.

In this inflamed atmosphere, emissaries from the National Alliance urgently discussed with Garang the need to hold an unofficial dialogue in the north that would include all the political forces and would clarify central questions concerning the rule of law.28 The alliance convened that conference in Wad Medani in December 1985, where all the members except the DUP endorsed its Democratic Protection Charter.29 DUP leaders rejected the clause that advocated abrogating the September decrees and insisted that issue be postponed until the constitutional conference. (NIF, which was not a member of the alliance, did not send representatives to the meeting and categorically rejected the Democratic Protection Charter.) Garang did not attend, largely due to the difficulty of guaranteeing his security, but the SPLM praised the charter as a major step toward addressing the fundamental issues and fostering democracy.

The Democratic Protection Charter paved the way for a meeting between the National Alliance and the SPLM in Ethiopia in March 1986. By then Garang had met with leaders of several constituent organizations within the National Alliance, including the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) and regional groups representing southern, Nuba, and Fur peoples.30 The SCP-SPLM statement on 1 January 1986 urged the Sudanese people to shed racist and separatist sentiments and to root out religious fanaticism. The joint communique by the SPLM and the Nuba SNP called for a new nonracial Sudan and opposed oppression by dictators and sectarian parties. The joint statement by the SPLM and the Southern Sudanese Political Association (SSPA) stressed that the roots of regional problems lay at the national level and that the government must repeal the September decrees.

The SPLM remained suspicious of the TMC and concerned at the government’s rejection of its preconditions. The transitional authorities were equally suspicious of the SPLM, doubting that it really sought peace. The government’s contradictory words and actions culminated in March 1986.31 On the one hand, officials admitted that they faced a dire military situation in the south, declared that the government’s only precondition for a peace conference with the SPLM was a cease-fire, and welcomed the alliance’s plans to meet with the SPLM. On the other hand, the TMC rushed emissaries to Libya to obtain bombers to strike SPLA-held towns on the eve of that same meeting. The government may have feared that the army’s poor performance would enable Garang to dictate the terms of peace, but aerial bombardments undermined conciliatory statements and deepened the SPLM’s mistrust.

The National Alliance and the SPLM had hoped to convene the national reconciliation conference in January 1986 to draft a new constitution and end the fighting before the elections in April 1986. That timetable proved too optimistic. The conference did not convene until 20 March in Koka Dam (Ethiopia) and members of the government and the TMC did not participate. Although Umma sent a delegation, DUP and NIF refused to attend.32 The Koka Dam Declaration, issued on 24 March, called for the creation of a New Sudan “free from racism, tribalism, sectarianism, and all causes of discrimination and disparity.” Its terms included the five preconditions articulated by the SPLM in September 1985, since the national constitutional conference must convene in an “atmosphere conducive” to achieving results. The parties should agree before-hand that the agenda would cover “basic problems of Sudan and not the so-called problem of southern Sudan.” The government must repeal the September laws, adopt the constitution of 1956 (as amended in 1964), and annul military pacts that “impinge on Sudan’s National Sovereignty.” The government must lift the state of emergency and both sides must enforce a cease-fire. The constitutional conference should be held in Khartoum in June 1986, after meeting the preconditions and finalizing arrangements based on the agreed-upon agenda.

The liaison committee quickly began follow-up discussions33 and participants pledged to approach DUP and NIF to sign the declaration. Although the conferees agreed on basic issues, they differed on the advisability of holding parliamentary elections in April. The National Alliance viewed elections as an important step toward democracy after seventeen years of autocratic rule, whereas Garang considered them illegitimate since a new constitution had not been drafted and SPLM could not participate. In fact, the elections did derail the plans for the constitutional conference outlined at Koka Dam, in part because NIF and DUP’s refusal to participate at Koka Dam was “a serious blow to the peace process … NIF [in particular] held both parties [Umma and DUP] hostage on the issue of sharia.”34 And even though the Umma party endorsed its conclusions, the new prime minister ignored them. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi’s room for maneuver was limited by the Ansar movement, by his DUP coalition partners, by the strongly ideological NIF, and by his own ego, which prevented him from sharing the diplomatic spotlight with anyone else.

As a result, the momentum was lost and the constitutional conference did not convene in June. Al-Mahdi merely sent an emissary to Addis Ababa to ask if the SPLM would join the government, elucidate Garang’s ideas on a governing system, clarify the movement’s preconditions for the constitutional conference, and request a personal meeting with Garang.35 Garang welcomed that initiative but declined to join the government or comment on its composition, since he had objected to holding elections without agreement beforehand on the constitution. He insisted that the Koka Dam Declaration provided the only legitimate framework for negotiations and that al-Mahdi should empower its liaison committee to arrange the constitutional conference. Nonetheless, he was willing to meet with the prime minister.

The two leaders met for nine hours on 31 July 1986 in Addis Ababa.36 Al-Mahdi, who technically met Garang as head of the Umma party rather than prime minister, would not commit himself to a secular code but offered to annul the September decrees within thirty days and replace them with alternative laws that would not hurt the political and civil rights of non-Muslims. He agreed that Sudan’s problems were national, rather than confined to the south; that the government should abrogate the defense accords with Egypt and Libya; and that the state of emergency should be lifted in tandem with implementing a cease-fire. Al-Mahdi sought to form a new committee, rather than use the liaison committee established at Koka Dam.

Al-Mahdi viewed the discussion as relatively successful, but Garang concluded that peace was impossible since the prime minister rejected the Koka Dam Declaration as the sole basis for agreement and would not promise a secular constitution or “commit himself to specifics.”37 Garang wondered why al-Mahdi wanted to bypass the liaison committee and feared that a new committee would make unacceptable changes in order to win over DUP and NIF and would delay the conference in anticipation of weakening the SPLA militarily. SPLM advisor Mansour Khalid noted that Garang did not consider al-Mahdi “a recalcitrant war horse” but rather “a self-absorbed politician … [who] wanted to renegotiate Koka Dam so that he might be the one to define the agenda and determine the action.”38 Garang challenged al-Mahdi to announce the immediate implementation of the prerequisites for the constitutional conference, in return for which Garang would declare a cease-fire.

Later, each accused the other of bad faith. Al-Mahdi said that, since Garang labored “under illusions,” the government must step up its military pressure. He flew to Libya to obtain more bombers. Al-Mahdi denounced Garang after the SPLA shot down a civilian airplane in Malakal on 16 August, killing the sixty people on board. He stated he would not meet with Garang, who was not only the puppet of Ethiopia but also a terrorist who held the southern people hostage.39 The prime minister declared that the constitutional conference could be held even without the SPLM. Garang then criticized the prime minister for shooting down “the whole peace process,” not merely one plane.40 SPLA radio denounced the “semifeudal sectarian parties, dominated by two [Mahdi and Mirghani] families” that aborted the plans laid at Koka Dam. Nonetheless, Garang continued to appeal to al-Mahdi to support those peace efforts, promising that the SPLA would then promptly stop fighting.

Nine months later, both sides resumed their tentative contact, after the armed forces failed to regain any territory, the constitutional conference remained on hold, and differences among political groups in Khartoum over a new constitution became increasingly acrimonious.41 In April 1987 Garang expressed disappointment that the overthrow of Numairi had not led to peace negotiations and stressed that dialogue was essential since neither side could win militarily. He hinted that the government could demonstrate its good intentions by lifting the state of emergency in the north, since he recognized that the fighting made it difficult to lift in the south.42 Garang encouraged nonofficial contacts: in April and May 1987, he met with former Deputy Prime Minister Samuel Aru Bol, head of SSPA, and with DUP’s MP Abd al-Hakim Taifur, as well as with popular delegations from the Nuba Mountains and Kordofan.

Al-Mahdi welcomed Garang’s comments and sent him a proposal that suggested that the Koka Dam Declaration has “objective bases which will pave the way to the national constitutional conference.”43 Nonetheless, the prime minister repeated his arguments that modifications were needed since DUP and NIF had not signed it and that “September laws … [should] be replaced by a legal position based on diversity in a way which satisfies the aspirations of the Muslims in areas of Muslim majority and the aspirations of non-Muslims in other areas.” Al-Mahdi again proposed lifting the state of emergency as soon as a cease-fire was enforced and suggested that they agree to a cease-fire for two weeks in April so that relief aid could reach civilians in the south. Finally, he suggested that a national popular committee discuss the agenda, composition, and date of the constitutional conference. He concluded:

The SPLM reacted sharply to the letter, which SPLA radio declared “devoid of the slightest hint that the al-Sadiq government is really serious about peace and dialogue.”44 Al-Mahdi’s view that Sudanese society was defined by its Muslim majority “isolates large segments of the population from the political process and thereby denies them their legitimate basic rights.” In Sudan’s context, “there is no one single definition of a majority.” The broadcast categorically opposed retaining shari’a:

The SPLM’s official response, issued on 27 July 1987, emphasized the gap between the two sides. Sudan must be “a secular, multiracial united state,” not a system with a Muslim majority and a non-Muslim minority. SPLM already accepted the idea of linking a cease-fire to lifting the state of emergency, as the final step before convening the constitutional conference: the cease-fire should not be the first step but should be the culmination of the diplomatic process.

By then the National Alliance had dispersed and could not press to implement the Koka Dam Declaration. Nuba and southern MPs took the lead in organizing popular dialogues with the SPLM, under the umbrella of the Union of Sudan African Parties (USAP).45 Led by Eliaba Surur, head of Equatoria’s Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), those MPs met three times with the SPLM in August and September 1987 to reaffirm support for the Koka Dam Declaration and allay mutual suspicions. The meetings were particularly significant since the PPP had previously denounced the SPLM, criticized Dinka control of the movement, and refused to attend Koka Dam. The participants strongly supported SPLM’s call for a secular state. Islam does not need protection, Surur argued, since Muslims are the majority; rather, minorities require safeguards.

Al-Mahdi denounced those dialogues since they challenged his personal control over policy toward the civil war. When the SPLA seized Kurmuk (Southern Blue Nile) in November 1987 and Kapoeta (Eastern Equatoria) in January 1988, al-Mahdi declared that anyone who met with the SPLM was a traitor. Nonetheless, he allowed four senior military officers to meet secretly with SPLM officials in London just after the SPLA captured Kurmuk, ostensibly to explore terms for a cease-fire and the passage of relief convoys through the south.46 They discussed—and differed over—the thorny issue of Islamic laws.

Meanwhile, the African politicians insisted that they were acting as loyal patriots when they sought to tackle the central ideological issues and enable the SPLM to participate in the constitutional conference. They did manage to draft a Transitional Sudan Charter, which Umma and DUP signed on 10 January 1988 and only NIF and SCP refused to endorse. That charter declared that Sudan had a dual Arab and African identity and that power and resources must be shared equitably.47 Since “Islam is the religion of the majority,” laws to substitute for the September decrees could apply until the national constitutional conference would resolve “the issue of religion in politics.” The charter thereby tried to mollify the traditional Muslim politicians while keeping open the possibility of a significant transformation.

Even so, al-Mahdi rejected the constraints the charter placed on his personal authority, for example by designating an Umma dignatory on the Council of State to head a Muslim-Christian delegation to Addis Ababa to arrange with the SPLM to distribute food and medical aid in the south. Al-Mahdi abruptly halted those talks, using the excuse that the SPLA had captured another garrison town a month earlier. He again hinted that contacts with the SPLM were treasonous. Al-Mahdi’s stance hardened further when he discarded the concept of a government of national reconciliation based on that charter and joined forces with NIF in May, even though NIF opposed negotiating with the SPLM.

Garang called that coalition an “unholy trinity” of “the warmongering sectarian bigots in Khartoum, who masquerade as national leaders.”48 He attacked NIF Attorney General Turabi for drafting new Islamic codes and denounced al-Mahdi’s claim that the army would defeat the SPLA by midsummer. In contrast, Garang praised the new Minister of Defense Abd al-Majid Khalil as a respected officer who had stood up to Numairi and might prevent al-Mahdi from politicizing the armed forces. Furthermore, Garang made two diplomatic gestures. To appeal to the armed forces, he offered to release a lieutenant colonel captured in southern Kordofan and to exchange POWs through the International Committee of the Red Cross. To facilitate negotiations, he suggested convening a “Koka Dam II” conference to include DUP and NIF so that a national consensus would emerge prior to the long-awaited constitutional conference. When he did not receive any official response to these proposals, representatives of the SPLM and the African parties met again in July 1988 to assess the bleak situation.49 They reasserted their support for the Koka Dam Declaration, their commitment to a secular state, and their determination to hold the constitutional conference. Nonetheless, the prospects for a constitutional conference and a secular state appeared remote.

The previous chapter noted the surprising shift in DUP’s position, which broke the diplomatic impasse. DUP leaders had refused to attend the Koka Dam conference and consistently insisted on an Islamic constitution, but they felt severely constrained by the Umma-NIF alliance, concerned about the impact of the war on the country’s economy, and believed that a pragmatic accommodation was essential, given the country’s complex social forces. Whether the shift was purely expedient or represented the start of serious rethinking of the country’s national identity was unclear.

A member of the DUP political bureau had held exploratory talks with the SPLM officials in May 1987, but the crucial meetings took place in mid-1988 when high-level delegations under Sid Ahmad Hussain and retired General Yusuf Ahmad Yusuf met with SPLM officials in Addis Ababa.50 Hussain, DUP’s deputy secretary general, had just been removed as minister of interior in the cabinet reshuffle, and Yusuf was respected by the SPLM for opposing Numairi’s policies in the south in 1983. DUP leaders felt a special urgency since Umma signed an agreement to unite with Libya in August 1988 and the cabinet approved Turabi’s draft Islamic laws on 11 September. Those measures risked fracturing the country even further. Under those compelling pressures, the two sides quickly agreed on steps to convene the constitutional conference. After they signed an agreement in principle on 17 October, DUP gained the support of all the political parties and professional and trade unions except NIF. Therefore, when DUP’s political and spiritual leader al-Mirghani met with Garang, he could state that “we came to this meeting only after ascertaining that the majority of the Sudanese people support this effort and want peace.”51 At the end of four days, they finalized the accord on 16 November 1988.

The joint statement mentioned the peoples’ sufferings, their belief in territorial unity, and their wish to reject worn-out policies that promoted war and caused divisions. In order to enrich democracy, they must not delay a true peace:

They agreed to reserve their substantive differences until that conference. Garang insisted that the SPLM would demand a secular constitution: the SPLM “has not relaxed or abandoned its position…. We are committed to a nonreligious or nontheocratic state. We are for a secular state … [but] we are willing to tolerate a freeze and wait for the scrapping at the national constitutional conference.” But, since DUP accepted a freeze, “it would be unreasonable for us” to insist on annulling the laws immediately. Garang warned that the call for an Islamic state promoted secessionism: “if one of the nationalities [in a multinational state] imposes itself as the state nationality, where do the other nationalities go?” This hinted that an effort to force an Islamic constitution on the country could lead the SPLM to revive the call for a separate southern state. Nonetheless, Garang said he was willing to discuss shari’a at the conference and to let Islamist parties try to convince the SPLM delegates otherwise. His dream remained to “create a New Sudan in which all the main nationalities exist and contribute amicably” and whose people would be comfortable as both Africans and Arabs.

Al-Mirghani carefully placed the accord within a framework acceptable to his party and the Khatmiyya tariqa. He emphasized DUP’s “Islamic and nationalist” orientation while stressing that:

SPLA radio then called on al-Mahdi and Turabi to shift “from the high gear of intransigence and war hysteria to the low gear of tolerance and peace,” since the SPLM was willing “to tolerate the freeze [of hudud] and wait for the scrapping of the laws at the national constitutional conference…. [That provided] evidence of the seriousness of the SPLM/A in the search for a just peace.”52 However, al-Mahdi and Turabi quickly blocked the DUP-SPLM accord since it threatened their rule and demonstrated the limited appeal of their hardline policies. NIF-sponsored protests against the accord degenerated into violent clashes with southern residents. Al-Mahdi was furious that al-Mirghani had one-upped him so effectively. When the prime minister had learned about the first round of talks in August, he had pressed the Ugandan president to arrange a tête-à-tête with Garang that would divert attention from the DUP meetings.53 Then, when al-Mirghani met with al-Mahdi on 20 November to discuss the steps that needed to be taken to freeze hudud, abolish military accords, and set the date for the constitutional conference, al-Mahdi tried to convince him that the SPLM could not be trusted. He further insisted that parliament confer on him a personal delegation of power to negotiate with the SPLM and refused to submit the text of the accord to the cabinet and the assembly for formal endorsement.54

Garang criticized the prime minister’s maneuvers, insisting that parliament endorse the accord since it was the appropriate constitutional body. Then a preparatory committee should organize the conference. The prime minister should not try to renegotiate its terms and delay implementation.55 Garang contacted al-Mirghani on 12 December, worried about the delay and about al-Mahdi’s unanticipated hostility. When Umma and NIF blocked a DUP motion to approve the accord, the DUP felt compelled to resign from the government on 28 December. With Turabi elevated to foreign minister in the narrow Umma-NIF government, Turabi quickly stated that the accord was no longer relevant, urged the army to accelerate its military offensive in the south, and renewed his insistence on comprehensive Islamic laws.56 Although he said that he would formulate a new peace plan, he did not reveal its contents.

Meanwhile, DUP, African parties, unions, and independent intellectuals frantically tried to salvage the situation. USAP’s Surur and a DUP delegation conferred with Garang in Addis Ababa in early February and met with the SPLM in Ambo (Ethiopia) on 9–11 February 1989 to reaffirm the DUP-SPLM accord. The Ambo resolutions proposed that the democratic forces unite “to bring about a government of national salvation composed of all political forces committed to peace, including the SPLM/SPLA.”57 Al-Mahdi claimed that amounted to a call for revolution. Security agents at the Khartoum airport interrogated the participants as they flew home.

The Umma-NIF government moved rapidly toward confrontation as it sought to destroy the SPLA and silence critics in the north. Despite their efforts, a dozen garrison towns fell to the SPLA in January and February and the military balance shifted decisively in the SPLA’s favor. The crisis broke in February 1989 when Defense Minister Khalil resigned and nearly 300 officers issued an ultimatum to force the prime minister to either obtain the arms needed to fight or negotiate with the SPLM. The officers detailed the failure of their efforts to beg and buy arms from abroad, criticized the political dependence on Libya and Iran created by those arms deals, and indicated that military losses made the situation untenable. They pressed al-Mahdi to implement the steps necessary to convene the constitutional conference.

As discussed in the previous chapter, al-Mahdi capitulated to the officers and established a broad-based government whose program included the terms of the DUP-SPLM accord. Hussain, DUP’s chief negotiator with the SPLM, replaced Turabi as foreign minister and was charged with finalizing arrangements for the constitutional conference. The government and then the assembly endorsed the DUP-SPLM accord on 3 April, just as government and SPLM negotiators met in Addis Ababa. The Council of Ministers also began legal proceedings to cancel the defense accord with Egypt. Next, the assembly voted to shelve debate on Islamic laws until the constitutional conference. SPLM welcomed that vote but stated that the assembly still needed to freeze hudud, since the September decrees remained in the statute books, and needed to guarantee that no similar laws would be passed before the constitutional conference.58 As a conciliatory gesture, the SPLA began a cease-fire on 1 May for the month of Ramadan, which it later extended through June. As the government began to prepare draft bills to freeze hudud, the foreign minister met again with the SPLM in Addis Ababa from 10 to 12 June.59 By the end of June, parliament would freeze the September decrees and annul the military accords, paving the way for a formal meeting in Addis Ababa on 4 July between al-Mahdi and Garang. Then, shortly before the constitutional conference would open on 18 September, the state of emergency would end and the permanent cease-fire would begin.

For NIF the situation was urgent, since they had been booted out of the government and were isolated in the assembly. The agreements destroyed their dream of an Islamic state. Mid-level army officers with close ties to NIF agreed that negotiating with the SPLM was treasonous. Garang commented bitterly later: “the peace process was at an advanced stage when the fifteen army officers seized power”60 on 30 June.

The attempts to negotiate indicated not only the complexity of the issues but also the political and personal obstacles blocking their resolution. Nonetheless, it was also evident that important groups and politicians sought to surmount the divide. The SPLM’s aim of establishing a nonreligious, nonethnic government in which all the diverse peoples of Sudan would have an equal share threatened the essence of a Muslim and Arab-oriented country. The SPLM platform was fundamentally unacceptable to the head of the TMC and the prime minister of the transitional government as well as to Prime Minister al-Mahdi and NIF. The leaders of the DUP were the only traditional politicians who tried to bridge the gap; even so, their accord papered over substantive differences on the role of religion in the political system. Resolution of those differences was postponed until the constitutional conference.

The major incentive for a resolution was the heavy cost of the war, which drained the government’s financial reserves and undermined the economy. Even though the fighting was primarily in the south, the strife destabilized parts of the west and risked disrupting vital economic installations along the Blue Nile. Fighting postponed indefinitely the benefits anticipated from oil and water resources. Most importantly, the senior commanders of the armed forces recognized that they could not win the war. Military and economic reasons combined to propel the DUP and army officers to press for peace.

There were also objective grounds for a political agreement, in that there had already been widespread popular opposition to the Islamist measures adopted by Numairi, which catalyzed the formation of SPLM/SPLA in 1983 and then the uprising in April 1985. There was also growing recognition of the need to redress the imbalance of power within the country by establishing a decentralized system that would give meaningful autonomy at the regional level. A wide range of political groups thereby found common ground with the SPLM long before the government negotiated an accord.

Nonetheless, al-Mahdi opposed the accord and continued to seek ways to extricate himself from its terms. Moreover, the well-organized NIF adamantly opposed negotiations with the SPLM that would dilute or revoke Islamic laws and thereby crush its own political ambitions and ideological aspirations. NIF had sufficient support in the middle ranks of the armed forces to underwrite a coup d’état that blocked negotiations.

Lt. General Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir, chair of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) of the Salvation Revolution, underlined the aim of creating an Islamic state and emphasized the officers’ close relationship with NIF:1

The coup d’état enabled NIF to implement its ideology without facing any constraints from traditional Islamic parties or secular groups. NIF purged the government, civil service, and unions of non-Islamists and replaced them with NIF cadres, and then worked to transform public attitudes and behavior. Turabi believed that the government must use law and public policy to reform society, operating within limits set by Islamic law and “public opinion … [which] enjoins what is right and forbids what is wrong.”2 In practice, carrying out NIF’s policies required a high degree of repression. The more people resisted, the more NIF insisted on imposing an exclusive identity. Turabi stated bluntly in 1995 that he would have preferred a peaceful transformation, “but if you are blocked completely … then through jihad. Just fight it out.”3

This chapter analyzes the evolving political system and the control structures that ensured public acquiescence. The following chapters stress the effort to destroy opposition groups and the struggle by those groups to confront the regime.

The military officers established a fifteen-man Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) in which Bashir consolidated power in his hands as RCC chair, prime minister, and defense minister [See Appendix 9]. The RCC appointed a largely civilian Council of Ministers, which operated under instructions from the RCC [See Appendix 10]. On its first day in power the RCC annulled the constitution, abolished the elected assembly, banned political parties and unions, and closed the newspapers.

The initial justifications were typical of most coup d’états. RCC members argued that the armed forces should guard the society and fight corruption.4 They asserted that the multiparty system threatened national unity by promoting dangerous divisions and leading to anarchy.5 The parliamentary system was an alien import from Britain—“a seed that cannot germinate in Sudanese soil.”6 Instead, through indigenous forms of democracy, people would “elect genuine representatives without any trusteeship or tutelage by any sectarian group.”7

Nonetheless, NIF had been talking about the need for a “salvation revolution” for several years and had prepared for the coup once it was excluded from the government in March 1989. The dream of an Islamist political system would not be realized if the national constitutional conference convened in September 1989. Moreover, NIF was likely to perform poorly in the next elections, scheduled for early 1990.

Military intelligence had identified Bashir since late 1985 as a potential organizer of a NIF-led coup and, therefore, transferred him to outlying garrisons, such as Bentiu and Muglad, the latter being a launching point for fighting in the south and the Nuba Mountains. He was already sympathetic to NIF when he was a student at the military academy and his fighting in the south solidified his views. Bashir was a commander in the last army convoy to take the overland route from Kosti to Juba, and he criticized al-Mahdi for failing to equip the army sufficiently, with the result that many garrisons fell to the SPLA in 1988–1989. Since he was posted in the field, he did not sign the high command’s February 1989 ultimatum. However, he later indicated that he supported its demand to purchase more weapons but opposed its call for a peace accord with the SPLM. Bashir had returned to Khartoum two weeks before the coup to prepare to travel to Cairo for a training course, which was “a sure sign that he was not trusted by senior officers.”8 Bashir used that time to prepare the takeover with a small core of military confidants and key NIF cadres such as Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha, with whom he had just met in Muglad. On the night of 30 June, the officers misled soldiers stationed in Khartoum by claiming they were seizing power upon orders from the high command. As a result, no one resisted the takeover. NIF was deeply involved, but its leaders waited to reveal their stake in the new regime.

The members of the RCC were middle-rank officers, whose Islamist core co-opted colleagues from other branches of the armed forces, including three from the south. The cabinet consisted of civilians associated with NIF and technocrats who endorsed Bashir’s anticorruption goals. The RCC dominated policy by making its members rapporteurs of nine policymaking committees. However, their powers were limited by their NIF security aides, who could overrule those ministers and countermand RCC members who were not Islamist.

Behind the official bodies, a shadowy Council of Forty set the regime’s strategy.9 Turabi chaired that secret group of NIF military and civilian leaders, preferring to remain behind the scenes: “I advise our politicians, who want to rule Sudan on the basis of Islamic principles. I do my best so that the Islamic movement fully permeates our society.”10 He added: “I guide and direct [NIF] because I have knowledge of the activities in all the departments.” Under NIF’s constitution, this shura (consultative) body directed the party’s operations. Its members included Taha, the second most senior member of NIF and former MP, who handled NIF-military relations before the coup and became friends with Bashir when they attended the military academy. The Council of Forty also included the pivotal secretary of the RCC, Brigadier General Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Hussain, who was NIF’s covert head in the armed forces prior to the coup and became minister of interior in January 1993. Medical Staff Counsel Dr. al-Tayyib Ibrahim Khair, known as “al-sikka” (iron bar) for his violence as a NIF student activist, was minister of presidential affairs, through which he controlled Bashir’s agenda and oversaw the implementation of RCC and cabinet decisions.

By the time the RCC dissolved in October 1993, it had lost a quarter of its members. Aside from Colonel Pio Yukwan Deng, who died in 1991, and Lt. Colonel Muhammad al-Amin Khalifa, who became speaker of the appointed Transitional National Assembly in 1992, the RCC purged four members for disagreeing with government policy:

Some other RCC members displayed their disaffection with NIF’s power by ceasing to perform their official functions.12 For example, Brigadier Ibrahim Nayil Idam, chief of security in the initial months of the RCC and the only Nuba member of the RCC, was marginalized after he upheld the concerns of Nuba peoples. When he arranged for Nuba leaders to meet Bashir on 19 December 1989, they asked Bashir to dismantle Arab tribal militias and conduct official investigations into Nuba deaths and disappearances. Instead, Idam was removed as head of security and relegated to minor positions in the cabinet.

Brigadier Tijani Adam Tahir from Dar Fur, who was not a member of NIF, negotiated a reconciliation among the Arab and African peoples in that region. But the accord was undermined by government policies that supported Chad rebels and stirred up Islamist Arab revivalism. Information Minister Colonel Sulaiman Muhammad Sulaiman criticized NIF’s political dominance and control over the media.

The strongly Islamist core of the RCC included one military officer from the south, the Equatorian Brigadier Dominique Kassiano. He had led the army attack on the Bor garrison in May 1983 that triggered the formation of SPLM/SPLA. Kassiano remained a staunch supporter of government policy in the south.

NIF also tightened its grip over the cabinet. In April 1990 Islamists became ministers of finance, education, housing, and information and culture. The new finance minister Abd al-Rahim Hamdi had headed the London office of Baraka Islamic Bank and was a founder of Faisal Islamic Bank, both of which had close ties to NIF. In the next reshuffles in January and August 1991, Islamists added the portfolios of higher education, industry, commerce, energy, and mining.13 Colonel al-Tayyib Khair moved from the presidency to become governor of Dar Fur in 1992, where he crushed the Fur rebellion led by Da’ud Bolad, a former NIF student activist who turned against the party due to its intolerance of African cultures.

In a move that signaled disillusionment among the few southerners who supported the regime, the Equatorian minister of labor and social security resigned in July 1992, not long after Brigadier Malwal was ousted.14 Father George Kungwoko Kinga—leader of the Toposa people, former Catholic priest, and member of the Council of the South before the coup—accused the government of Islamizing the south, including forcibly circumcizing young boys. He charged that its peace initiatives were insincere: they were intended to gain time to defeat the SPLA and complete that Islamization process.

NIF activists became impatient with the military facade, since they wanted to rule directly. When Islamic legal codes were promulgated in 1991, NIF leaflets claimed that “the zero hour is near and the Islamic Republic will be declared in Sudan.”15 In January 1993 Turabi predicted that “Sudan’s military rulers will step down in the coming weeks or months” since they have been superceded by the cabinet and the appointed assembly.16 Turabi hinted at a popular Islamist uprising if the military refused to resign. Bashir retorted that the RCC would not step down until elected officials and institutions were in place at all levels of the political system.17 In fact, however, even though Turabi did not hold an official position, he played a central role in reshuffling the cabinet on 18 January 1993 and 8 July 1993 to consolidate NIF control over economic and social policy as well as security. The changes marginalized non-Arab Islamists such as Nuba RCC member Nayil Idam and the southern Muslim Abdullah Deng Nhial, who was shifted from the ministry of religious affairs to the new ministry of peace and rehabilitation, with the nominal task of reconstructing the south. Key cabinet appointments comprised:

The dissolution of the RCC on 15 October 1993 and formation of a new council of ministers on 30 October 1993 completed NIF’s takeover.24 [See Appendix II.] Before dissolving, the RCC appointed Bashir president. However, he was now a civilian president and therefore did not retain the RCC’s power to issue decrees, declare war, impose a state of emergency, and abolish the state legislatures. Those powers were transferred to the appointed assembly (discussed below). In its final declaration, the RCC made shari’a the guiding principle behind public law and state policy.

General al-Zubair Muhammad Salih, former deputy chair of the RCC, became first vice president in the new council of ministers and therefore Bashir’s successor. Police Major General George Kongor Arop became second vice president, a post traditionally allocated to a southerner but outside the line of succession to the presidency.25 Disaffected RCC members Sulaiman and al-Tahir were removed and Minister of Finance Hamdi was also replaced, since he was the lightning-conductor for criticism of economic policies.26 Bashir tried to woo DUP and Umma to join the cabinet, allegedly offering 60 percent of the seats to them as against 40 percent for NIF; but they did not respond.27 NIF therefore retained all the economic and social portfolios, with Ali Uthman Taha remaining minister of social planning. NIF’s control over security was enhanced when the hawkish Dr. al-Tayyib Khair became minister of interior on 13 July 1994.28 Khair established a central operations room to coordinate civil defense and set up civil defense committees in each state, chaired by the governors. Those measures ensured that NIF would retain control should a serious challenge arise from the armed forces or opposition groups.

Dr. Abu Salih, the increasingly isolated foreign minister, kept arguing that NIF had disbanded and Turabi and Taha did not encroach on foreign policy-making.29 When Turabi hosted an international conference on Christian-Muslim relations in 1994, Abu Salih called it an “academic exercise” without foreign policy implications. He downplayed Turabi’s meeting with the Kenyan president in September 1994 to discuss negotiations with the SPLM and tried to ignore Turabi’s trips to Paris to arrange deals to explore for oil, purchase Airbuses, and acquire military intelligence useful for fighting in the south. Abu Salih also tried to ignore Taha when he orchestrated demonstrations protesting the UN International Conference on Population and Development as anti-Islamic. Abu Salih even tried to improve relations with Egypt, although his actions were continually contradicted by the pronouncements of NIF presidential advisor Ghazi Salah al-Din Atabani and by security forces’ harassment of Egyptian diplomats and seizure of Egyptian property in Khartoum. During that time the tension between Egypt and Sudan escalated to a virtual war along the border, while Abu Salih anxiously sought to downplay bilateral differences. By the winter of 1994–1995, Abu Salih reportedly had dug in his heels, refusing to resign until he was expelled.

The full consolidation of NIF control took place on 9 February 1995 when Taha replaced Abu Salih as foreign minister. Taha’s ally Salah al-Din moved from the presidency to minister of state for foreign affairs. Taha stated that his team would develop a comprehensive strategy based solely on the Quran and Sunna, and would coordinate with other government ministries to ensure harmony in policy and rapid decision-making. In other words, Taha would dominate both the foreign and domestic arenas. In a slap at Abu Salih, Taha remarked that Sudanese diplomats could now “express without hesitation or embarrassment the cultural change that is taking place in Sudan.”30 Those not fully committed to the Islamist course no longer had a role in the government. By then Turabi commented with satisfaction: “El-Beshir’s regime has fulfilled all my political aspirations.”31

However, some of the ministers and advisors overplayed their hand. In June 1995 NIF members of the security apparatus apparently aided Egyptian militants who tried to assassinate Egyptian president Husni Mubarak near the Addis Ababa airport. As evidence mounted of Sudanese involvement, Bashir reshuffled security portfolios.32 He removed al-Tayyib Khair as minister of interior (barely one year after his appointment), making him minister of public service. He reassigned both Naf’i Ali Naf’i, who had been director of foreign security, and presidential security advisor Brigadier General Fatih Urwah, since they were implicated in the assault. He elevated two former RCC colleagues: Colonel Bakri Salih to minister of interior and Brigadier Salah al-Din Karrar to the presidential council. Significantly, however, Bashir lacked the power to remove Khair, Naf’i, and Urwah entirely. They were protected by Turabi and could activate loyal security forces against Bashir. In fact, NIF security personnel may have sought to embarrass Bashir on 29 July 1995 when student protests erupted during the speech he delivered at Khartoum University at the invitation of the NIF-controlled student union.33 When students shouted anti-regime slogans, protested harsh living conditions, and smashed the windows of the interior minister’s car, security forces teargassed them and rushed the president out of the auditorium. Observers wondered whether the student union had deliberately embarrassed Bashir in order to remind him that he lacked popular support and depended on NIF security agents to remain in power.

Bashir argued that pluralist democracy based on political parties was too divisive, and criticized Numairi’s one-party system as totalitarian. He wanted unmediated “popular participation” to manage, build, and secure the country.34 A mobilized public would fight corruption and promote economic production. NIF members argued that the people could be welded into a harmonious unity to promote virtue and prohibit vice, as required by Islam. These concepts meshed with Turabi’s criticism of European democracy for dividing people artificially through political parties and fostering amoral political behavior. An Islamic system would uphold the equality of all citizens and require the ruler to consult (shura) the believers. Moral limits would be placed on the ruler’s actions by the binding contracts between the believers and the ruler (bay’a).

The RCC set up “popular salvation committees” in October 1989 to help distribute food and maintain security in their localities.35 Based loosely on the Libyan model, they were trumpeted as a crucial step toward a democracy-without-parties that would rely on volunteer effort to “save” the country. This approach was systematized during the Conference for National Dialogue on the Political System (July to October 1990), which decided that those 9,000 local committees would select representatives for district-level committees and town assemblies, who would then form a regional parliament. At the apex, two people from each region would comprise the central Peoples’ Parliament. A conference of 1,636 handpicked delegates endorsed that proposal in the spring of 1991 and, the following fall, a national strategy conference established a ten-year plan to guide the congresses’ efforts. Later, Bashir stated that some delegates would be elected by direct elections while others would be selected indirectly by economic congresses and societies for women and youths.36 But elections kept being delayed, apparently because NIF leaders resisted this formula. NIF feared that opposition politicians would infiltrate base-level committees and therefore sought a tightly controlled system. In some cases, however, the peoples committees enabled the local political-economic elite to tighten its dominance over village political institutions, the distribution of economic goods, and representation at the regional-level.37

Despite the talk of elections, the RCC suddenly announced in January 1992 the establishment of a 330-member Transitional National Assembly (TNA). This was the first all-appointed parliament in the Sudan’s history. The TNA was instituted before any of the local committees had been elected. Instead of building the legislative system from the ground up, the process was reversed. TNA members included many ex officio members of the RCC, federal ministries, state governments, and state level popular committees.38 Leaders of the major tribal groups were appointed to the TNA to simultaneously co-opt them and bolster its own legitimacy. Bashir assigned the TNA limited advisory tasks: it would endorse national plans and programs, including federal laws, treaties, and budgets; give advice to the RCC; and mobilize the public.

RCC members Malwal and Mukhtar criticized that appointed system. Malwal claimed that 80 percent of the TNA members were NIF cadres and the rest sympathized with NIF or were technocrats. Security forces scrutinized all the names before their selection. Mukhtar argued that an elected parliament was preferable as the means to express the views of the people.39

Despite limited information on the internal workings of the TNA, one can glean examples of dissent within its committees. Most government bills were passed without serious debate, but some members expressed concern that drafts were introduced by NIF task forces without the knowledge of either the attorney general or the relevant TNA committee. Attorney General Shiddu was “acutely embarrassed” that he had not seen many of the bills that he had to defend.40

Members were also annoyed that the government ignored legislation passed by the TNA. The chair of the economic affairs committee, Badr al-Din Sulaiman, a former minister of finance under Numairi, developed serious critiques of economic policies.41 His committee suggested ways to curtail speculation in foreign currency, shield lower-income groups from the escalating cost of living, and modify criminalization for possession of foreign currency. In 1994, TNA members were furious that the government increased electricity rates even though the TNA had rejected that increase.42 They criticized the unrealistic exchange rate to transfer remittances of Sudanese working abroad, which one member charged violated Islamic law and committee chair Sulaiman termed “the worst law made by this government.” His committee excoriated the government for inaccurate figures on exports and money supply, unrealistic projections concerning inflation, and ill-considered agricultural policies that made the economy “a mess.” Nonetheless, the TNA passed the budget and government policies remained unchanged.

Similarly, in March 1995, a TNA committee found evidence of serious malpractices and corruption in the sale of public sector companies to private interests, including failure to pay in foreign currency, to advertise and open for bidding, and to state the companies’ true value.43 Those malpractices enabled NIF associates to buy state corporations at low prices. The minister of trade dismissed the committee report on the grounds that TNA members were “employees” and therefore had no right to investigate him.

In December 1993 the TNA suffered a dramatic defection when the deputy speaker—and the highest-rank southern politician—denounced the government and applied for political asylum in London.44 Aldo Ajo Deng, a long-term Dinka politician who served in al-Mahdi’s cabinets and headed the TNA’s human rights committee, announced that he opposed the regime’s Islamist tenets and discriminatory policies. He criticized the dismissal of 40,000 civil servants and military and security personnel, who were replaced by NIF cadres, and decried the transformation of the judiciary into “a partisan body.” Deng denounced the government’s effort “to Islamize the south” through military jihad and drafting teenagers into militias in which they were compelled to convert to Islam. Deng’s defection stunned the regime, which quickly revoked his membership in the TNA and denounced his “betrayal.”

Since the appointed TNA lacked credibility and legitimacy, the government continued to talk about elections. Bashir claimed to favor elections that would be “open to all citizens in all areas,”45 whereas Turabi viewed elections as premature since “absolute freedom in the Sudan breeds a lot of chaos.” If local elections succeeded, then it might be “safe” to attempt regional and federal elections. NIF really feared that its cadres would lose if elections were free and fair.

The government began electing 9,000 basic level committees in May 1992,46 and instructed governors to convene local level mu’tamarat (conferences) in June and regional level conferences in July. The central government prepared their agendas, guided by its ten-year strategic plan for a development jihad. The limited information available indicates that few elections were actually held in 1992, due to NIF opposition, and that NIF fared poorly. In Banat district (Omdurman), for example, voters snubbed their noses at the Islamists by electing a well-known beer brewer to the local committee. The initial plan was for government appointees to hold a quarter of the seats on the popular committees. But when NIF leaders realized they were losing the popular vote, the NIF official who headed the committee system arbitrarily increased the official share of seats to 50 percent plus one. As a result, NIF appointees could always outnumber the elected members.

During 1993 officials claimed that 1,600 basic congresses were held in villages and districts, in which more than five million citizens participated.47 No political parties were allowed since the government argued that congresses provided the best way to express the pluralism of opinions. When local elections were finally held in fall 1994, turnout was minimal and, in some cases, opponents of the government defeated NIF candidates. For example, in Atbara—the main industrial and railway city, which had a history of politicized trade unionism—most NIF candidates lost to members of the (illegal) Communist and Democratic Unionist parties. Security forces then arrested nearly two hundred persons, including the successful candidates, and the government voided the election results.48 Regional-level elections in the spring of 1995 were also problematic, even though the government tried to avoid the previous fiasco by requiring candidates to support the government credo. Bashir declared that those elected would “uphold justice” and proclaim “There is No God but Allah:”49

Problems in registering voters delayed elections until 8 March, following Ramadan. By mid-March the chair of the elections commission admitted that elections might fail because of lack of funds and weak voter registration.51 In fact, turnout was less than 10 percent. In Khartoum state, the government conceded that only 29,000 persons voted, out of a potential 1.5 million; outside observers said the turnout was 12,000. Some polls closed after only two of the allotted ten days had passed, due to the paucity of voters. A foreign correspondent noted that people usually vote in order to avoid trouble: the virtual boycott signalled the public’s lack of support for the regime. The six Catholic bishops even issued a daring pastoral letter that called on parishioners to boycott the polls since the elections were imposed on the people, parties were banned, and all candidates had to support a predefined Islamist orientation. Outside Khartoum, however, there were apparently greater efforts to ensure that representation on local and regional councils reflected the area’s ethnic and tribal composition and therefore would acquire legitimacy. Through its power to appoint 10 percent of the members, the government also guaranteed that even fractions of ethnic groups would be represented.52 This won the favor of small groups that had previously been too small to win seats and, in addition, provided an avenue for local elites to attempt to manipulate and benefit from the political system.

Long-delayed elections for the 400-member national assembly and the presidency were held from 6 to 17 March 1996. According to Constitutional Decree #13 (24 December 1995) MPs were selected in two stages: 125 were chosen by the national congress that NIF stage-managed in January 1996, for which NIF stalwart Ghazi Salah al-Din served as secretary general. That congress, which was composed of thousands of representatives from regional committees and professional groups, set the guidelines for government policy. Civilian leaders of NIF thereby ensured their control over a third of the seats in the assembly. The remaining 275 seats were open to direct election, of which fifty were filled by NIF cadres who ran unopposed. According to the constitutional decree, the electoral committee could “persuade” a nominee to withdraw due to moral or educational shortcomings or inadequate commitment to the regime’s national charter and policies.53 At the last minute, all voting was cancelled in the south for “security reasons” and the constitutional decree authorized the president to appoint MPs for those forty-six seats, pending elections.54 Even if elections had taken place there, results could have been distorted since soldiers could vote in whatever district they were stationed.

Turabi was the only senior NIF official to stand for competitive election, selecting the constituency in which he had been defeated in 1986. Those who ran against him complained that policemen and election officials threatened their supporters, kept their representatives from monitoring inside the polling station, prevented them from placing their wax seals on the ballot boxes, tried to bribe their representatives, and removed names of their supporters from the voting list.55 Turabi expressed concern that voters might be slow to vote; nonetheless, he reportedly received more votes than were actually cast in his constituency, testimony to the urgency with which his aides sought to ensure his election.

Bashir ran for president against forty-nine other candidates. He had hoped to persuade al-Mahdi, Mirghani, and Garang to compete, but they refused to contest an election run under a one-party system during a state of emergency. Twenty-one of the presidential candidates collectively demanded that elections be cancelled because they were not allowed to hold public meetings, publish manifestos, or have access to the media. The results were hardly surprising: Bashir won 75.7 percent.56

Election officials claimed that the turnout was 72 percent whereas opposition politicians argued that 95 percent of the public boycotted the polls. Independent observers concluded that 7–15 percent had voted in Khartoum. NIF security officials could easily rig the elections, since those officials stored the unsealed ballot boxes in their offices every evening and returned the boxes to the polling places the next morning. No record was kept of who voted, what polling station people voted at, or what date they voted. The registration cards were suspect, since they were based on ration cards and therefore included babies and people living abroad. Ballot-box-stuffing and multiple voting were simple to arrange under that system.

The relationship between the assembly and the presidency immediately became contentious. On 1 April Turabi was elected unopposed speaker of the national assembly to cheers of “Allah Akbar” and “La ilaha ila Allah.” He articulated an ambitious agenda to “continue the Islamic path.”57 For the first time since 1989, Turabi assumed a central public role. A skillful speaker could use the assembly’s power to approve legislation and question ministers to limit presidential authority, thereby isolating Bashir.58 Bashir recognized that danger and tried to convince opposition figures to join the council of ministers in order to make himself less dependent on NIF. His failure was indicated in the strongly NIF composition of the cabinet, announced on 21 April. Bashir’s room for maneuver was also limited since he would not compromise on the government’s core tenets:59

The elections sought to put a veneer of legitimacy on the political system. Instead of consolidating the regime’s legitimacy, however, the election emphasized its narrowly partisan and ideological nature. The newly elected MPs seemed to feel insecure and isolated. An MP even argued that he presently rode the bus to the national assembly although he feared he would be killed on a public conveyance: with “strong opposition at home and abroad, something should be done to protect our lives and persons as MPs.”60

In addition to establishing the facade of a mass base and electoral legitimacy, the rulers sought to create the appearance of geographically decentralized rule. Their federal system was based on NIF’s Sudan Charter, which called for the central government to retain authority over national defense and security, foreign policy, nationality and immigration, trans-regional communication, and external and interregional trade. Most importantly, Khartoum controlled the judiciary and legal codes, the financial system, economic planning, natural resources, and education. Decentralization was tightly circumscribed. These views were reflected in the recommendations of conferences on the peace process (October 1989) and the political system (October 1990), which led to the decree of a federal system on 4 February 1991. Each of the nine provinces became a state in which Islamic law would govern all aspects of public and private life, since the Muslim majority should have the right to “practice the values and rules of their religion to their full range — in personal, familial, social or political affairs.” (Shari’a laws are detailed in chapter 8.) The three states in the south were exempt from a few Islamic punishments, as articulated in NIF’s charter:

Real power remained concentrated in Khartoum since the national laws prevailed over regional laws and the federal president appointed the governors and state administrators.61 Bashir frequently shifted them: he replaced most of the military governors with civilians on 16 September 1993, then replaced several of those governors a year later, and decreed additional personnel changes in January 1995. Thus, states lacked any genuine autonomy. In the south, the Christian governors wielded less authority than their Muslim deputy governors and ministers, who controlled finances and set policies for the economy, education, youth activities, information, and culture. Moreover, southern judges, policemen, and prison officers were retired or transferred north to be placed in marginal positions.62 Posting NIF-affiliated officials in the south and displacing southern officials enabled the government to promote Arabization and Islamization behind a facade of regional self-rule. Similarly, in the north, apolitical bureaucrats served as most of the state ministers, but NIF militants held the crucial positions of wali (governor), deputy governor (who was also minister of agriculture), state minister of social planning, head of the general secretariat, and general secretaries for all the provinces and ministries.63 In the case of Kassala state, the NIF minister of agriculture also headed an Islamic investment shareholding company that sought to dominate the agricultural sector.

When Ali al-Hajj became minister of federal government affairs in July 1993, he even altered several borders to remove valuable resources from the south,64 e.g., South Kordofan gained control over the oil-rich Pan Thau area of Bentiu, and Dar Fur acquired copper-rich Hufrat al-Nahhas. Thousands of acres of agricultural land and gum arabic forests in Upper Nile were transferred to South Kordofan and White Nile states in 1995, over the protests of southern officials and farmers. All those changes transferred vital economic resources from the south to the north, merely by altering boundary lines.

Al-Hajj transformed federalism by dividing every state into three separate states on 1 February 1994, thereby increasing the total from nine to twenty-six.65 The sixteen states in the north and ten in the south would each have their own executive and legislature. Nonetheless, Khartoum appointed the governors, ministers, commissioners, civil servants, and members of the judiciary. State judiciaries were abolished. Bashir claimed this change brought the government closer to the people and deployed available development resources more effectively. He asserted that the central administration would shrink, since employees and assets in Khartoum would be reassigned to the new states and the approximately four governates within each state.66 Bashir conceded there would be short-term financial costs, but insisted that several states would quickly achieve financial self-sufficiency. That was highly unrealistic, since provinces had always relied on Khartoum to cover basic expenses. Indeed, in August 1995 Bashir established a special fund to assist the poorest states, since they could not pay salaries, much less provide services. Moreover, particularly in the south, extreme administrative fragmentation exacerbated ethnic differences, since politicians from each ethnic group sought to control their piece of turf. Similarly, in Kassala state, the government favored one faction of the Hadendowa by creating a separate province for it.67 The regime intended to foster fragmentation and competition in order to absorb people’s energies at the local level and diffuse opposition.

Furthermore, the government reestablished in 1994 the Council of Native Administration in each state, which Numairi had abolished in 1971. This reasserted tribal responsibility for justice and the allocation of resources, but at a diminished level since the councils were merely advisory to the wali. Nonetheless, they brought all of the influential tribes into the local and state governing processes, providing them with a stake in the system. Michael Kevane and Leslie Gray note the irony that this resulted in “having traditional ‘tribal’ leaders wield authority in the new and modern Islamic state.”68 They comment that, lacking a grassroots power base of its own in the rural areas, NIF needed to gain legitimacy from those local elites, ensure that they would support it, and use them to marginalize the Ansar and Khatmiyya. Given the opportunism of that alliance, one cannot evaluate the rapidity with which support would evaporate should the political winds shift.

Over the course of seven years, the Islamist regime shed its overtly military image and established multitiered political structures that claimed to be rooted in grassroots congresses and direct elections. It also established a federal system that claimed to voice the needs of the diverse peoples who lived far from Khartoum. Those claims were belied by the reality of centralized control under a monolithic ideology. Any potential for liberal or ethnic pluralist systems was stifled by control structures that enforced the regime’s assimilationist approach. The content of the Islamist ideology, the mechanisms of control, and the modes by which divergent voices were silenced are analyzed in the next chapter.

NIF had struggled for a long time to institute a comprehensive Islamic legal system. Numairi had promulgated an Islamic penal code and partially Islamic commercial and tax codes, but the elected government had not passed NIF’s proposed code in 1988 and had stopped enforcing the religiously prescribed punishments (hudud). On the eve of the coup, the government froze the application of Islamic law until the constitutional conference could resolve the thorny issue of the country’s basic laws. Those actions triggered NIF’s coup d’état.

The legal underpinnings for an Islamist political system were consolidated when the National Founding Conference for the Political System (April–May 1991) adopted a National Charter for Political Action which emphasized that “our intellectual, spiritual and cultural values spring from our subservience to one God and our belief that He is the sole authority in this world and the world after.”2 Adherence to those principles “is the only guarantee for a righteous society” and jihad (holy struggle) against internal and external threats is a religious obligation. Those principles were also embodied in the Islamic Penal Code (March 1991), which restored amputation and flogging. Crimes punishable by death included murder, apostasy from Islam, adultery by married persons, corruption, embezzlement, trafficking in narcotics or black market goods, disregarding currency regulations, and organizing strikes. Public order emergency courts, whose judges were officers in the police or army, flogged illegal vendors on the spot and confiscated or destroyed their equipment. Although Turabi stressed that those punishments would deter theft and misbehavior “in order to morally educate the people,”3 their severity and the lack of appeal militated against any educational impact.

The civilian government established in October 1993 made commitment to Islam the guiding religion obligatory for citizens. Bashir claimed that God supervised the judiciary, for He is “the all-knowing and all-seeing,” and stressed that the permanent constitution would be grounded in Islamic law. Similarly, Turabi declared:4

The application of shari’a raised the issues of jihad, apostasy, applying Islamic law to non-Muslims, and inculcating Islamic morality. The regime sought to regulate all aspects of citizens’ lives and create a homogeneous society.

Ulama (religious scholars) who met in Kordofan in 1992 issued a fatwa (Islamic legal opinion) stating:5

The Penal Code (1991) defined an apostate as a Muslim who “advocates abandoning the faith of Islam or declares expressly or by a categorical act that he abandons the faith of Islam.”8 The code mandated the death sentence unless the person recanted. Turabi, however, widened the meaning to include treason: “active subversion of the constitutional order” and “actual insurrection against society” not merely “intellectual apostasy.”9 Thus, political opposition by a devout person could result in a charge of apostasy. In practice, however, when three people were convicted of apostasy in 1994, none were executed.

The application of shari’a to non-Muslims followed NIF’s Sudan Charter (1987). Islamic jurisprudence was the general source of law since it

Since the regime must reform society and foster the “spiritual development of the individual,”12 officials insisted that public behavior fit their interpretation of Islamic codes. The Khartoum commissioner closed all public places and businesses at midday on Fridays for prayers, including shops owned by Christians or Jews. The puritanical perspective disapproved of “nakedness,” social mixing of men and women, and such customary religious practices as the veneration of saints and the zar ceremony to exorcise spirits. The government banned teaching art and music, which spread harmful western and African influences.13 The ministry of culture threatened to disband the Union of Musicians and Artists, since singing and dancing were perverse and anti-Islamic, and Friday sermons broadcast on official radio stations campaigned against singers and artists for spreading immorality. Khartoum State’s public order act (1992) restricted music, dance, and wedding celebrations, and banned men and women from dancing together. Police broke up concerts and wedding parties for violating that act and NIF cadres assaulted female singers and zar drummers. The musicians’ union protested in vain that “music and musicians [must be protected] against their enemies, the jaundiced and religious fanatics.”14 Those attacks culminated in the stabbing to death of a singer in the Musicians Club on 10 November 1994. A British journalist commented that the government was “widely blamed for creating the climate of intolerance on which fanaticism thrives” and even an Islamist academic complained that “these people are breeding prejudice and hatred as never before.” A TNA member added: “Many in this government understand Islam in a shocking, horrible, ugly, and twisted way. They are putting people like myself, who believe Islam can be humane, in a very difficult situation.”15 Nonetheless, the police continued to raid clubs and private parties in search of liquor, immodest dress, and mixed dancing.

Health care was also affected by the Islamist approach. In February 1995 the ministry of health banned the import of medicines that contained alcohol, arguing that such medicines violated shari’a. The ministry closed the thirteen pharmaceutrical companies that imported those drugs and syrups, and even banned chloroquine, the vital treatment for malaria. Others noted that Islamic law permits the use of alcohol for medicinal purposes and an importer exclaimed: “Our people are dying of malaria. If the decision to ban medicines is implemented, malaria will spread and many more will die.”16 That summer the ministry of health reported a widespread malaria epidemic. By then medical and health services had virtually collapsed, with rehabilitation programs halted and 80 percent of pharmacies closed. The Khartoum hospital discontinued certain complex operations and closed its dialysis unit, due to the lack of medication. Doctors objected to the “popular salvation committees” that ran the hospitals. So many doctors fled abroad that the government banned all travel by medical personnel. In that context, the ban on importing those medicines further undermined the fragile health of citizens.

Bashir stated that the ideal Sudanese woman “should take care of herself, her children, her home, her reputation, and her husband.”17 The family code (1991) not only enshrined shari’a provisions for inheritance, divorce, and child custody but further limited women’s rights. For example, shari’a requires four male witnesses to prove adultery, whereas Sudanese courts could convict a woman based on physical evidence (e.g., pregnancy) without eyewitnesses and without the woman testifying in her own defense. This paternalistic morality was upheld by the committee charged with codifying Islamic law, which concluded that women must not go outside after dark without a male companion and men must not work in women’s beauty salons. As a result, some towns banned women from selling in street markets after dark, forbade male hairdressers from serving women, and prohibited women from working in cafes. Additional restrictions banned women from traveling abroad without a male companion, riding alone in taxis, and working in offices alongside men, and enabled the husband to decide whether his wife could visit her parents, relatives, and female friends. The regulations peaked in October 1996 when Khartoum state separated men and women in public transportation, theaters, cinemas, weddings, parties, and picnics, enjoined Muslims not to look at members of the opposite sex, and forbade men from watching women playing sports. Those regulations contradicted family traditions that fostered relatively relaxed relations among men and women, frequent visits to relatives’ homes, and toleration of a multiplicity of religious practices.

A presidential decree in December 1991 ordered female students and civil servants to adopt the dress code established by an all-male committee, which required a long opaque dress to the ankles and a veil covering the head and forbade trousers, accessories, and perfume.18 Since women preferred the colorful thobe, they ignored the code until NIF’s Guardians of Morality and Advocates of the Good and members of neighborhood committees began to flog women in the street. The education minister further decreed in 1994 that female students must cover their body and head and high schools must be segregated by gender.19

NIF considered that women should work only if they did not have children, if their income was required by their family, and if the work was an extension of domestic roles, such as teaching girls and providing health care in clinics for mothers and children.20 NIF attacked as anti-Islamic the informal jobs by poor women in public places. NIF targeted vendors of home-brewed beer (marisa)—a staple in the diet in the south and west—but also fined, flogged, and detained women who sold tea and prepared food in the street. Even in a remote village in Kordofan, NIF-appointed district officials flogged women for selling marisa, tea, and groundnuts at truck stops, thereby asserting the power of the Arab male politico-economic elite over socially and economically marginalized Hausa and Burgo women.21

The government pensioned off a disproportionate number of women from government jobs, although it was not always clear whether they were fired because of gender or because they criticized NIF.22 Half of the judges fired in the first wave of dismissals were women, but some pro-NIF women were subsequently appointed to the judiciary and about thirty women were included in the appointed Transitional National Assembly. When several women were dismissed from the diplomatic service in January 1990, the government avoided claiming that the work was inappropriate and, instead, alleged that they had “acquired a taste for wine,” insinuating that they had loose morals.

NIF devised a systematic plan to transform the civil service, armed forces, and security structures, according to an official who defected in 1995.23 By 2003 the Popular Defense Force (PDF) would replace the armed forces, popular police would replace the regular police, NIF would monopolize the civil service, and NIF would control all sovereign and constitutional positions. In actuality, NIF largely completed those transformations by 1997.

Many NIF cadres joined the civil service in the 1980s, accepting low-level posts in remote districts in anticipation of working their way up to policymaking positions. NIF activists entered the armed forces, especially through the medical and engineering corps that required university-educated personnel. NIF also organized courses on Islam for officers, attended by several future members of the RCC, including Bashir. Turabi reflected that24

Once the officers seized power, they purged their opponents. For example, the RCC fired 14,000 civil servants and staff of public sector companies in 1989, many on orders from NIF cadres such as minister of cabinet affairs al-Tayyib Ibrahim Khair. When the government dismissed more than a hundred career diplomats, whom it replaced with young NIF activists, some senior diplomats resigned to protest the politicization of the diplomatic corps. The RCC removed thousands more civil servants, allegedly on austerity grounds. A foreign journalist described the outcome: senior civil servants cowered before young military officers and members of the PDF who stalked government offices.25

The judiciary was particularly hard hit. By mid-1991, Bashir fired 128 judges and legal advisors, including fourteen judges from the Supreme Court and twelve from the Court of Appeals. The judges had struck to protest martial law courts, the lack of due process in court hearings, and the president’s appointing the chief justice, thereby making the judiciary subservient to the executive branch. Judges were replaced by “unqualified, fanatic individuals, often with little or no legal training at all,” according to a former leader of the Bar Association.26

The RCC quickly purged the high command of the armed forces, which had opposed the coup. By October 1993 the RCC fired 1,500 officers and continued to do so despite the heavy fighting in the south. For example, 227 officers were fired in early 1995, including fifty-seven brigadiers and generals. Turabi stated frankly that the army should be “dissolved” into the Popular Defense Force (PDF) that would mobilize the public behind the jihad.27 Al-Mahdi had proposed a PDF in 1988, but set aside the idea due to overwhelming opposition from the military high command. Bashir called the PDF “the legitimate child of the armed forces,” which would be the “school for national and spiritual education.” Through the PDF “the Sudanese citizen’s mind can be remolded and his religious consciousness enhanced” and the regime can “restructure and purify society.”28

The PDF had four distinct components: (1) preexisting Arab tribal militias, (2) NIF volunteers, (3) drafted students and civil servants, and (4) forcibly enrolled teenagers. The first comprised Arab tribal militias and southern units opposed to the SPLA. The PDF commander distributed arms and ammunition to those cavalry and foot units, called on the Arabs to defend the cultural and religious purity of the north, and coordinated their raids with the army.29 As unpaid auxiliaries, they kept their booty, including captured people, cattle, and grain.

The second category comprised volunteer students and professionals, committed to NIF. Information is primarily available on those who died fighting in the south, including a former minister of industry and Turabi’s youngest brother, who died with eight PDF recruits when their vehicle hit a land-mine in Western Equatoria.30 Those ill-trained volunteers were zealous in their religious commitment. Young people from NIF’s “Shabab al-Watan” (The Nation’s Youth) also fought with the PDF.

Third, starting in December 1990, all civil servants, teachers, professors, and students underwent compulsory military training for six-week periods.31 The first group of 1,500 men sent to al-Qutaina camp, near Khartoum, included diplomats, judges, and professors, who were mostly over fifty years old and were fired if they refused to enroll. Male students entering universities and higher institutes first had to train in PDF camps. Recruits were exposed to harsh living conditions and religious lectures. Conditions were difficult enough that students mutinied at al-Qutaina in December 1991 and evasion remained widespread. In April 1994 the army commander threatened to punish students who failed to join the armed forces or the PDF.32 By then PDF training was compulsory for students in their final years of basic education and in secondary school, so as to create a responsible, disciplined generation to build the Islamist nation, according to Bashir. Such training could not prepare them for combat, but it indoctrinated inductees and identified refractory individuals.

Fourth, in 1994–1995 every male between the ages of eighteen and thirty became liable for recruitment in the PDF, because of the huge number of casualties in the south and because people failed to volunteer. In one account, when the PDF sent draft notices to 10,000 persons, only eighty-nine responded. An estimated 9,000 had died and 15,000 been wounded in the first half of 1995 alone. Youths were seized off the street and taken to training camps.33 For example, in January 1993 soldiers stopped all buses in Al-Ubayyid and removed all the teenagers to army trucks. They seized boys on the roads and in the markets, even in the capital city. Governors had to enroll the general public in the PDF,34 which led to mass military drills in empty lots in city neighborhoods and villages. When Bashir declared that one million Sudanese must be mobilized in 1995, each governor recruited thousands of men, who graduated in batches of 50,000 during 1995–1996.35 Bashir lauded them as “bold militant” mujahidiin who raised aloft the banner of jihad and resisted imperialist attacks on Islam. The vast expansion of the PDF and its use as cannon fodder in the south were criticized by regular officers in the armed forces, who were also angry that NIF cadres and PDF soldiers replaced career officers and that they were not paid salaries or rations on a regular basis.36 Bashir arrested some senior officers when they complained privately to him about the government’s neglect of the armed forces.37 Displacement by the PDF peaked in 1997 when the PDF head joined the armed forces’ central command.

The pattern of purges and replacements was duplicated in the police and security services.38 The RCC immediately fired 400 police officers, and later pensioned off thousands more. Government organs, controlled by NIF cadres, included state security, military intelligence, police security, and foreign security, which monitored exiles. NIF also operated its own units: Revolutionary Security Guards, Guardians of Morality and Advocates of Good, Turabi’s private security detachment, and the People’s Police.

NIF’s Revolutionary Security Guards detained and tortured political dissidents in unofficial prisons outside the control of the prisons’ authority.39 Labeled “ghost houses” by former detainees, those torture centers were located in forty-two buildings in Khartoum by 1993 that, ironically, included the headquarters of the banned Bar Association and of the former Elections Commission. In one instance, a former regional minister of health reported that he searched ghost houses in Sennar for a teenage girl, whom he found unconscious. He took her to a hospital, where medical tests confirmed that she had been repeatedly raped. The minister charged that NIF-supervised security guards used “ugly forms of torture” in ghost houses.40 Human Rights Watch/Africa reported that torture techniques included immersing the head in cold water, hanging by the hand on the bars of the cell, burning with cigarette ends, electric shock, mock execution, rape, and pulling out fingernails.

The regular security and prison services resented those NIF operations.41 In 1991 RCC’s Faisal Abu Salih resigned as minister of interior because NIF interfered in security matters and even issued passports without consulting his ministry; the police commissioner of Khartoum resigned to protest “security chaos” after a struggle in the airport between police officers and NIF security personnel; and the head of the riot police threatened to march his forces on the Revolutionary Security Guards’ headquarters to arrest rogue security officers and denounce ghost houses. After NIF consolidated its control, such protests ended.

NIF’s Guardians of Morality and Advocates of Good were formed in 1983 to help Numairi enforce the Islamic penal code and emergency decrees. After the coup the Guardians coordinated the People’s Police, an outgrowth of local people’s committees that the Civil Defense Act (1991) established supposedly to help cope with natural disasters such as floods and to protect the country from external attack.42 People’s Police, who received only three months’ training, patrolled residential areas and markets to combat vice and enforce the public discipline law. They had wide latitude in defining moral offenses and imposing punishments. By 1995 they manned 120 police stations in Khartoum and guarded camps for displaced persons outside the capital. Their security grid on neighborhoods enabled the government to act swiftly at the slightest sign of unrest.

The RCC banned trade union activity and imposed death sentences for strikes and political opposition, since the State of Emergency forbade “showing any political opposition by any means to the regime.”43 The RCC detained the heads of the dissolved trade unions and professional associations after they submitted a petition on 1 August 1989 that asked the RCC to reopen their offices, return their assets, and resume regular union activities. When doctors struck in November 1989, Bashir sought to purge this “fifth column” on the grounds that “anyone who betrays this nation does not deserve the honor of living.”44 However, the RCC adopted a different policy toward religious institutions and student unions, which initially remained open. Overall, since only the Islamist perspective was legitimate, any criticism constituted treason. The regime could not countenance independent groups that fostered alternative cultural visions and challenged its hegemony.

The RCC appointed a new General Union of Sudanese Workers to coordinate the trade and professional unions and redraft their statutes.45 The Penal Code (1991) decreed three years’ imprisonment for medical personnel who struck and also for workers who blocked transportation by sea, land, or air.

Then, the Trade Union Law (1992) restricted sharply the autonomy of unions and denied many workers and employees the right to join or organize unions. The general registrar of trade unions gained the power to inspect all documents, offices, and accounts. Simultaneously, all non-NIF staff were fired from the registrar’s office to ensure that those controls would be enforced. When the government held elections for unions that summer, Amnesty International reported that hundreds of union activists could not campaign because they were forced to spend entire days at the security headquarters and because the government threatened them with a “bleak future” if they stood for elections. Despite that intimidation, anti-regime candidates performed sufficiently well that the government decreed that government appointees must hold the majority on each union’s board. Just as basic-level committees (discussed in chapter 7) would have 50 percent plus one of their members appointed by the government, similarly the boards of unions and associations would have an official majority of one.

The severity of government controls can be illustrated by the Bar Association, which was active under previous military rulers and outspoken during the parliamentary period, campaigning against Islamic laws and drafting a penal code consonant with internationally recognized standards.46 The RCC immediately dissolved the Bar Association and detained ten leaders, who had protested the dismissal of judges, dissolution of unions, and establishment of military tribunals. The government then created a new Bar Association managed by an appointed steering committee, which took over the assets of the dissolved association and endorsed the Islamic laws. After the new Trade Union Law came into effect, the government amended the Advocacy Act (1983) in January 1993 to transform the Bar Association into a trade union, subject to the registrar of trade unions and the minister of labor. That undermined its autonomy and meant that security forces could seize case files. Moreover, in March 1993 the registrar suddenly announced elections two days later. Despite urgent appeals to the high court to cancel the elections, they were held and, predictably, won by NIF cadres. Lawyers and judges became tools of the regime, promoting its Islamist image and excluding all other legal traditions and independent perspectives.

Although the regime sought a homogeneous religious culture, the RCC initially exempted Muslim and Christian organizations from the ban on associational life. That enabled sufi turuq, ordinary mosques, and churches to continue functioning.

Christian denominations were already circumscribed by Ottoman regulations and the Missionary Societies Act (1962).47 Governments often withheld permits to build or repair churches and declared certain geographic areas out of bounds for Christians. Christians reacted with dismay to the Islamic constitutional system. Since non-Muslims would not be allowed to exercise authority over Muslims, they would be excluded from most senior positions. Applicants for government jobs had to provide legal testimonials to prove they were Muslim. The government dismissed hundreds of Christians from the civil service and judiciary, including the Coptic senior judge on the supreme court, Henry Riad. The two key exceptions were Second Vice President George Kongor, appointed to that ceremonial post in February 1994, and Coptic Archbishop Kosmos Filou Saous, Bashir’s advisor on Christian affairs.

Non-Muslims faced mounting social and legal discrimination. Christian civil servants had to train in the Popular Defense Force even though its ideology promoted jihad and disparaged Christianity. TV commentators warned viewers they would go to hell if they were not Muslim. The media broadcast Friday prayers but cancelled the Catholic Church’s weekly Sunday radio program in 1992. Catholic religious tracts could not be printed. The Anglican Bishop of Khartoum was even lashed on charges of adultery.48 Christian businessmen had difficulty obtaining and renewing licenses and became frightened when two Copts were executed for violating foreign currency regulations in 1990–1991. One was a Sudanair pilot, son of the Coptic bishop of Khartoum, who was offered a pardon if he would convert to Islam.49 After he died, thousands of Muslims and Christians expressed solidarity by joining the Coptic community’s silent funeral march through Khartoum.

Indeed, by then the government closed more than thirty churches in Khartoum that served displaced persons from the south and west, and suppressed a Catholic society that aided street children.50 When the government forcibly relocated squatters from the capital to remote sites, it blocked churches from assisting the people and operating schools in those new locations. In contrast, Islamic agencies opened Arabic-language schools and provided social aid, through which they encouraged conversions to Islam. In al-Da’im and Damazin, local authorities prohibited all Christian worship, prevented church agencies from operating in displaced persons camps, expelled priests and nuns from church centers, and destroyed church compounds, thereby eliminating kindergartens and classrooms as well as chapels. Intimidation was most acute in the south, where security forces arrested and expelled Sudanese and foreign priests. When Christian schools were nationalized in 1992, the government Arabized and Islamized their curriculum throughout the country. When Arabization began in Juba (Equatoria), many children tried to flee—soldiers shot them dead and their bodies floated down the Nile, book bags still fastened to their backs.

Church leaders tried to counter these restrictions and changes. For example, in 1991 the general secretariat of the Sudanese Catholic Bishops’ Conference, whose members included Archbishop Gabriel Zubair Wako of Khartoum, circulated a pastoral letter protesting shari’a-based discrimination and encouraging resistance against the actions taken against church institutions and clergy.51 The government, claiming that the pastoral letter violated national security and provoked strife among Sudanese, ordered the bishops to meet with security officials on 15 January 1992 and accelerated actions against church officials. When the Bishop of Al-Ubayyid, Monsignor Macram Max Gassis, went abroad for medical treatment that fall, he remained in exile to call attention to the situation facing Christians in western Sudan. Bishop Gassis testified that officials harassed and arrested priests, nuns, and catechists and hampered church efforts to help displaced persons in Al-Ubayyid. He detailed the “marked deterioration” in human rights since the coup:52

The government made cosmetic changes in response to international criticism of its human rights record that culminated in a UN General Assembly resolution on 18 December 1992. That Christmas Eve, the government lifted the nighttime curfew in Khartoum so that Christians could attend midnight mass. Officials attended church services throughout the country to show solidarity with their “Christian brethren”55 and the government welcomed Pope John Paul II to Khartoum on 10 February 1993. Nonetheless, in Bashir’s presence, the Pope denounced government policies and called for respect for human rights and religious freedom. His open-air mass to a half million persons included many Muslims, so strong was his appeal as a religious authority who might deliver them from their plight. The government subsequently tried to open an embassy in the Vatican and Turabi met briefly with the Pope, but the Vatican remained wary of endorsing the regime.56

Despite the effort to present a tolerant image, policies became increasingly restrictive. Turabi took the lead in convening conferences on religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence (April 1993)57 and on religious dialogue (October 1994), designed to persuade foreign clergy and scholars that the government did not discriminate against non-Muslims. Whereas Bashir stated forthrightly that he planned to transform the Sudan into an Islamic state, by any means, Ghazi Salah al-Din of the foreign ministry offered as evidence of the lack of discrimination the facts that the second vice president was Christian, non-Muslims could drink alcohol in the north, and Islamic laws were not fully applied to non-Muslims in the south, where Christian politicians were active.58 Turabi denied that the government destroyed churches and proclaimed that the Catholic Church and Islam form “one front against atheists, materialism, and secularism.” However, Sudanese clergy called the conference “a fraud perpetrated against the local Church” and the Catholic Archbishop of Khartoum declaimed: “It is a grave error to believe that we are living in a paradise of religious tolerance…. Christians suffer discrimination at school, in their place of work, in the army or when seeking lodging or employment.” Trust broke down, he maintained, when those Muslims who opposed dialogue with “the kuffar” (non-believer) gained “ascendancy.”

Shortly after the conference, the government simultaneously repealed the Church Missionary Societies Act of 1962 and introduced a new law to govern Christian institutions, which amended the Organization of Voluntary Work Act (1994) to transform churches into nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This was even more restrictive than the Missionary Societies’ Act and would completely destroy their autonomy. As NGOs, churches and church societies must register with the state. Their application could be amended or rejected. The government could change their constitutions and bylaws, alter their boards of directors and personnel, investigate their sources of income and expenditures, and confiscate their property. The Catholic bishops protested that churches could not be classified as NGOs and emphasized the importance of freedom of worship, evangelism, and charity, and their connection to an international hierarchy.59 Since the Church is of divine origin, they maintained, a government bureaucrat could not determine its nature and organization. Subsequently, the government delayed promulgating the new law and the churches’ status remained in limbo.

The government allowed NIF’s charitable associations to expand, since their proselytizing advanced its religious goals. Those agencies included NIF’s al-Da’wa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Call), chaired by former TMC Head General Suwar al-Dhahab, and the African Islamic Agency, chaired by al-Jazouli Dafallah, prime minister during the transitional period. Those Islamic NGOs and charitable funds, funded through Islamic banks, were also powerful economic actors, since they monopolized certain trade activities and sold food at subsidized prices that undercut local merchants.60

In contrast, the government criticized Islamic practices that did not conform to its particular line and especially targeted the Khatmiyya and Ansar movements, linked to the banned Democratic Unionist and Umma parties, respectively.61 NIF leaders could not forgive Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani for his accord with the SPLM and his opposition to NIF’s policies during the coalition government in 1988. In 1991 the government confiscated the personal property of the Mirghani family, including their financial assets and land and, in 1992, the government formally dissolved the Khatmiyya tariqa. All its property and assets, including mosques and shrines, became the property of the state. The government had already confiscated a large plot of land belonging to the Mahdi family on Aba island, the Ansar stronghold, in 1990, and on the eve of Id al-Adha in 1993 nationalized their complex in Omdurman: the mosque of Khalifa Abdullahi, the office of Imam Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, and the tomb of the Mahdi. Those actions made it difficult for the Khatmiyya and Ansar to congregate and potentially reduced their political and economic power. Nonetheless, the measures also signalled the government’s insecurity and failure to rout alternative forms of Islamic expression.

Although many sufi turuq initially welcomed the government’s support of Islamic law, they tended to turn against the regime as NIF’s power grew. NIF opposed sufism, since its religious rituals did not conform to NIF’s doctrinaire approach. Therefore, after curtailing the Ansar and Khatmiyya in 1990–1993, the government tried to suppress the turuq in 1993–1994. For example, security forces attacked a sufi mosque near Khartoum during Ramadan and detained the shaikh for a fortnight.62 The regime also targeted the Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya tariqa, whose two principal shaikhs in Omdurman were detained after they declared the regime un-Islamic and asserted that NIF really aimed to amass political power and economic riches.63 The Ansar al-Sunna adhered to a Wahhabi-related purism that sought to return to the practices at the time of the prophet. Pressure on the Ansar al-Sunna culminated on 5 February 1994 when five men killed twenty-six worshipers inside the mosque. Although the government attempted to blame anti-regime groups, the gunmen themselves claimed that Turabi ordered the attack.

Bashir allowed the Ansar al-Sunna to resume functioning in November 1994, apparently because he realized that NIF’s attack on this respected and rapidly growing religious movement damaged the regime’s credibility among pious Muslims. The president let the Ansar al-Sunna transmit Friday prayer services on television and spoke at its mosque after Friday prayers, where he emphasized the importance of Quranic schools (khalwas) to reinforce piety.64 Promoting the Ansar al-Sunna helped Bashir balance the power of NIF, which opposed alternative Islamic currents that threatened its cultural hegemony and its right to define Sudan’s Islamic revival. In fact, in 1994 Bashir convened a conference of Islamic movements that established a formal organization, headed by the minister of social planning, that brought together Islamic turuq, religious institutions, and NIF’s NGOs.65 That body and its affiliates at state and local levels controlled Islamic religious activities throughout the country, bringing sufi and fundamentalist groups into a formal alliance that deliberately marginalized the Khatmiyya and Ansar.

Schools and universities were crucial arenas for the struggle to create an Islamic state and a pious society. Through education, NIF could stem the western cultural invasion and foster “true” Muslim citizens.66 NIF had already worked to Islamize the educational system through NIF teachers in secondary schools who recruited students to their ranks. Moreover, even though only a fifth of the students at Khartoum University were affiliated with NIF, NIF controlled its student union from 1978 to 1984. NIF also developed a sophisticated patronage system that attracted support for careerist reasons by providing scholarships to study abroad, financial credit to establish businesses, and employment for university graduates in Islamic banks and firms.

The government’s approach to education resembled its takeover of the civil service and armed forces. The new regime purged the ministry of education, replaced administrators and teachers with NIF adherents, banned the elected faculty unions, and Islamized the curriculum. Conferences on education in September 1990 and February 1991 legitimized those measures. NIF-controlled student unions in the universities continued functioning, since they supported the regime. [The political role of student unions is addressed in chapter 9.]

President Bashir, who was automatically chancellor of the universities, made a NIF activist head of the National Council of Higher Education, dismissed the vice chancellors of ten universities, appointed new administrators sympathetic to NIF, and abolished the election of senior administrative officers at Khartoum University.67 In 1993 the government ordered the college of nursing at Khartoum University, headed by female deans since the 1960s, to appoint a male dean since women should not run institutes of higher education. The government doubled the number of entrants to the established universities, created nine new universities in provincial capitals,68 and stopped providing scholarships for study abroad. Arabic became the medium of instruction in all public universities in order to foster a common national identity and “get rid of foreign languages from their vocabularies.”69 Arabization made it difficult for southern students to pass the required entrance examinations. At some universities, the government required all students to study Islam, irrespective of their beliefs. The government also closed the Institute of Music and Drama because it promoted un-Islamic values. (NIF objected to classical Arabic music, not only western and folk music.)

Those measures had a drastic impact on the quality of higher education. The government dismissed or “retired” professors who opposed the regime, and hundreds left for jobs in the Gulf or political asylum in the West. The U.S. ambassador noted in 1992: “Every dean or senior faculty member I knew when I came here has been replaced by a member of the NIF.”70 Even the NIF activist who had enthusiastically promoted Islamization when he served as vice chancellor of Khartoum University conceded that the government was destroying the universities: low salaries, lack of books and laboratories, and huge numbers of students made teaching impossible. He noted that more than a hundred professors left the university from 1992 to 1994, including for example all the professors of accountancy.71 Denuded of instructors, universities hired unqualified replacements or graduate students to teach undergraduates. The vice chancellor of Gezira University in Wad Madani also complained about the lack of funds and poor conditions facing students in classrooms and dormitories. Conditions were even worse in the new universities, which lacked buildings, books, and teachers. A new minister of higher education instituted a systematic review of the university system in 1996, which found an 80 percent shortage in teaching staff and recommended that most new programs be consolidated or closed.72 When his committee reported to the national assembly, the government fired the minister and replaced him by his predecessor, the very person who had initiated the policies that the report attacked.

The government brought private education under its control through the General Education Act (1991), which abolished the Private Schools Act (1950) and authorized government supervision of private and foreign schools.73 In February 1992 the government announced plans to nationalize Christian schools and, the next year, confiscated seventeen Egyptian schools in 1993 as well as the Khartoum branch of Cairo University.74 The government did allow the American School and Unity High School to remain autonomous and not Arabize their curricula, but then forbade those students from taking the certifying examination necessary for entering universities in the Sudan.

Bashir emphasized that the media must reflect Islamic values, mobilize the public behind the national goals of the regime, and protect the Sudan from the “western foreign mass invasion.” The government controlled and channeled information in the newspapers, radio, and television. And the RCC quickly banned the journalists’ union, restricted the import of foreign newspapers, closed all newspapers affiliated with political parties, and shut down nearly all the independent newspapers. The RCC appointed prominent NIF writers and politicians to edit the three government newspapers.75 Those controls were systematized through the Press and Publications Act (1993) and the Foreign Information Council, chaired by NIF ideologue Ghazi Salah al-Din Atabani. Salah al-Din pushed aside the RCC’s minister of information, who wanted diversity in the press. The next minister of information was an NIF leader who claimed the right to tell editors what he thought of their performances, and close newspapers if editors did not respond appropriately. Consequently, the government suspended or closed newspapers that criticized leading politicians, aired opposition views, or seemed to question official policies.

The most significant case involved al-Sudan al-Duwali (Sudan international), an independent newspaper published in Beirut by an Islamist member of the TNA, Mahjub Muhammad al-Hassan Urwah.76 Urwah transferred its operations to Khartoum in January 1994, since he had close ties to the regime through his cousin and brother-in-law Fatih Urwah, head of Bashir’s security council. However, on 14 February 1994 security forces arrested the news editor, seized the paper’s financial records, and suspended publication for two weeks, apparently prompted by an article on the escape abroad of communist leader Muhammad Ibrahim Nuqud. Despite that warning, the newspaper published articles that argued that the armed forces were suffering heavy losses in the south, Muslim youths were being sacrificed needlessly on the battlefield, and the civil war must end with a political solution. Articles detailed torture by security forces and supported the return to multiparty politics. The last straw was an article that criticized corruption among NIF leaders, with specific references to Minister of Social Planning Ali Uthman Taha and Issam Hasan al-Turabi, a son of Hasan al-Turabi. (The article claimed that Issam al-Turabi was detained for barely one hour on charges of dealing in foreign currency, a crime that warranted the death penalty.) Bashir banned the newspaper on 4 April 1994, seized the printing press, detained two editors, and arrested Urwah at the airport as he returned from abroad. Bashir accused the newspaper of “raising doubts about the purpose and struggle of the armed forces and PDF,” insulting Islam, and seeking to “kill respect for the revolution.” Although Urwah was also accused of plotting with foreign intelligence services, he received only a six-month sentence and was released after three months, due to his high-level connections. The newspaper never reopened.

The numerous closures of newspapers included, in 1995, al-Kura (football), for publishing an article on “superstitious matters” that described the practices of a faith healer, and the cultural weekly Al-Zilal (shadows) for interviewing a former member of the RCC, who attacked government policies and the lack of democratization.77 Al-Rai al-Akher (another opinion) was suspended in September 1995, even though its editor was a staunch NIF cadre, since articles criticized the regime’s economic failures and called for a UN-supervised referendum in which southerners could choose between federation and independence.78 The next spring the newspaper was closed after reporting that ninety-five imprisoned officers seized their jail in al-Du’aim. Those actions indicated that the government would not even allow newspapers owned and edited by NIF members to express criticism. By the summer of 1996 restrictions were so tight that only two government-owned daily newspapers remained.

The government harassed correspondents from foreign newspapers, prevented foreign newspapers from entering the country, and banned the import of satellite dishes. Nonetheless, it could not prevent international radio and television programs from penetrating its borders. To counteract that, the government established a television channel to export the Islamic salvation revolution to Africa and the Arab world.79 The station received eight new transmitters in January 1995 and leased time on Arabsat, apparently funded by an international Islamic group in which Turabi had a share.

In sum, the government restricted access to independent sources of information and compelled the media to promote the official version of the news. That official message fostered a homogeneous cultural and political identity, based on the particular Islamist ideology endorsed by the ruling authorities. The press restrictions prevented the public from debating the critical issues facing the Sudan and covered up abuses of power by officials.

The restrictions constituted an extreme version of the control model. The government eliminated most autonomous institutions, suppressed trade and professional unions, banned independent political parties and newspapers, and sought to restructure social and cultural life to conform to its vision of an Islamist society. Christian and Muslim religious bodies were closely monitored, curtailed, and sometimes closed.

Islamist associations monopolized the political, economic, and social arenas, and NIF cadres dominated the civil service, schools, and diplomatic corps. They controlled the security and military apparatuses and operated parallel intelligence, police, and paramilitary forces. Those policies destroyed the civil society that was emerging from 1985 to 1989, during which a wide range of political, economic, social, and religious organizations expressed diverse views. The NIF regime silenced those debates and reopened the core issue of national identity in an acute form. If the Sudan were defined as a purely Arab-Islamic state, then the African groups would have no place within that nation-state. Territorial nationalism would be a hollow concept. The exclusivist definition of the nation led to renewed calls for secession by residents of the south. Northern politicians who opposed the NIF regime feared that separatism and were thus compelled to offer an alternative vision that would respect the differences among the country’s peoples. The efforts by northern and southern politicians to come to grips with their national identity and to build an effective opposition are analyzed in the subsequent chapters.

That multifaceted opposition indicated the regime’s weak public support, but did not shake its control fundamentally. In the past, attempts at coups d’état and opposition from abroad had never succeeded in overthrowing a military regime. Grassroots protests succeeded only when the military was divided, with a significant number of officers ready to side with the protesters. In Bashir’s case, he stated bluntly: “we will not relinquish power unless through the barrel of the gun.”1 By 1993 the northern opposition forces appeared adrift, lacking a strategy to overthrow the regime and preoccupied by personal and factional differences involving Umma and DUP as well as secularists versus traditional religious groups. Moreover, southerners were sharply divided on the issue of unity or secession. Antagonistic to NIF and suspicious of traditional sectarian groups, many southerners reemphasized their own ethnic nationalism. Nonetheless, divisions within the south made attaining independence unlikely. The combined impact of the disorganized northern political movement and the weakened SPLA dimmed the prospect of overthrowing the regime.

The Charter of the National Alliance (April 1985) and the Charter to Protect Democracy (Wad Medani, December 1985) called for civil disobedience in response to a coup d’état. In addition, the high command of the armed forces pledged to uphold the democratically elected government. The coup d’état was therefore directed against the high command as well as political parties and unions. The RCC jailed senior politicians and military officers; others fled the country.

The first test of the regime’s intentions came on 1 August 1989 when the presidents of eight trade unions and professional associations submitted a formal memorandum to a member of the RCC. The memorandum outlined the government’s obligations under the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Arab Legal Union, which included the democratic election of union officials. The RCC immediately arrested all eight presidents because they “work[ed] against the revolution.”2 It was noted in chapters 8 and 9 that the RCC canceled the trade union law, detained hundreds of union activists, and arrested the leaders of the banned Bar Association. Meanwhile, the detained activists began to plan the political effort that coalesced into the NDA, comprising the fifty-one banned unions and twelve banned political parties. John Garang also urged urban political forces in the north to rebel, complementing SPLA’s fighting in the south.3

The NDA was announced on 21 October 1989, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the popular uprising against Abbud. Its charter called for a nonviolent campaign to overthrow the dictatorship, abolish Islamic laws, and form a new transitional government. “Free democratic patriotic [military] officers” and police officers issued supportive leaflets. Civil disobedience began after leaders of the banned professional unions met on 24–25 November and the banned Doctors Union declared a seven-day strike on 27 November 1989.4 The union submitted a memorandum to the minister of health, demanding improvements in the hospitals and calling for the restoration of constitutional democracy. Although doctors associated with NIF’s Islamic Medical Association refused to strike, they conceded that the strike was 80 percent effective in Khartoum’s government hospital and 40 percent effective in hospitals in Khartoum North and Omdurman. The RCC dismissed and arrested many doctors, and tried four doctors under the emergency laws, charging them with inciting “opposition against the government.”5 Denied defense counsel, they pleaded guilty and one doctor was sentenced to death by hanging.

NDA planned to follow up the doctors’ strike with strikes by the unions of engineers, bank employees, and pharmacists on 3 December that would paralyze public services. The engineers union made a serious mistake, however, by announcing the strike beforehand, which enabled security forces to round up the leaders. Nonetheless, students at Khartoum and Gezira universities mounted protests, which resulted in the death of three students on 8–9 December. Professors held a two-day sympathy strike on 9–10 December, demanding an investigation into the deaths and an apology from the police.

Bashir rescinded the death sentence and released two doctors in May 1990 due to diplomatic pressure by Egypt and international human rights organizations. But it was a long time before the NDA attempted to mount another civil uprising. This was partly because of distrust and competition within the NDA and partly because purges and the flight of political leaders made concerted action difficult. Umma and DUP continued to compete for political primacy, expressed in each party’s suspicion that the other might make a deal with the regime and in Umma’s emphasis on independent action since DUP’s Mirghani presided over the NDA. Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi’s views on Islamic law and the civil war were not substantially different from NIF, even though he sought to act within a democratic rather than authoritarian context. The fact that Turabi was his brother-in-law augmented suspicion of his potential moves. Moreover, Umma and DUP mistrusted as a communist secularist the NDA spokesman Faruq Abu Isa, the Cairo-based head of the Arab Bar Association, particularly as he often issued pronouncements that were more radical than the sectarian members of the NDA wanted. Umma and DUP preferred a shari’a-based government to an explicitly secular constitutional system. African and southern parties felt marginalized inside NDA, as they had been in the elected parliament. Thus, the NDA contained many unresolved political contradictions within itself.

Moreover, purges in the civil service, public sector, and unions made strikes increasingly difficult, and the RCC preempted opposition by frequently arresting politicians and union activists. The RCC imprisoned Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani for more than five months and held former Prime Minister al-Sadiq al-Mahdi for six months, until mid-January 1990. Al-Mirghani, who suffered two heart attacks while jailed, was then allowed to travel abroad for medical treatment, where he remained along with most DUP leaders.6 Umma’s minister of interior, Mubarak al-Fadhil al-Mahdi, escaped to Libya immediately after the coup and became a NDA leader, based in London. Dr. Umar Nur al-Da’im, secretary general of Umma, remained in Khartoum until 1993, when he went into exile. The Ba’ath head, Taisir Muddathir, fled the country, as did SCP’s al-Tijani al-Tayib and Muhammad Ibrahim Nuqud. The most prominent northern politicians who remained in Khartoum were al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and Sid Ahmad Hussain, the highest-ranking member of DUP still inside the country, whom NIF hated for his role in negotiating accords with the SPLM. Al-Mahdi and Hussain lived under virtual house arrest, banned from travel outside the capital, and detained frequently for long periods. In fact, NIF welcomed the departure of prominent politicians:7

When the November uprising failed, the NDA sought to establish relations with the SPLM and to create an organized opposition within the armed forces. SPLM and the Umma party signed a pact on 22 February 1990 to remove the military dictatorship, which was followed by an agreement on 5 March 1990 between the NDA and the SPLM to join forces to topple the junta and NIF.8 Soon after, military officers began to attempt coups d’état, first in March 1990 by Major General Ali Hamid9 and then in April 1990 by a group of serving and retired officers.10 Within hours, the government executed twenty-eight officers and buried them in the desert outside Khartoum. Several of these officers were already detained and therefore could not have participated in the coup attempt. The government claimed they were tried before a military court, but most were apparently executed without even the semblance of a trial.

The executions shocked Sudanese in the north. Clandestine manifestos claimed that NIF sought to destroy the armed forces and replace it by the NIF-run PDF. Imams (preachers) protested that the RCC had damaged the reputation of Islam by executing people during Ramadan. The officers’ female relatives demonstrated every year in Khartoum, appealing for proper burials.11

By the summer of 1990 discontent spread among low-rank Nuba and southern officers, who protested the Islamization and Arabization drives, the escalation of fighting against the SPLA, and the alleged policy of sending southern and Nuba troops to fight fellow Africans.12 The death sentences imposed on twelve dissenting officers were not carried out, however.

Meanwhile, senior officers organized themselves as the Legitimate Command (LC) of the Armed Forces under General Fathi Ahmad Ali (former commander in chief), General Abd al-Rahman Sa’id (former deputy chief of staff for operations), and Brigadier al-Hadi Bushra (former deputy director of intelligence).13 They announced on SPLA radio on 25 September 1990: “ana Sudan” (I am Sudan) and denounced the RCC for violating the armed forces’ pledge to uphold democracy. The LC signed an accord with the SPLM, when they met in SPLA-controlled territory in the south in December 1990. They called on officers to resign and enjoined garrison commanders to negotiate cease-fires with SPLA units in their vicinity. One cannot ascertain the impact of those appeals, especially as the RCC cashiered large numbers of officers that winter. The LC did not command troops inside Sudan and could not form an armed force in exile, since Egypt—which served as its principal base—would not allow armed operations from its soil. Over time, General Ali was increasingly perceived as an arm-chair general, living in Alexandria (Egypt) and lacking a strategy to overthrow the regime. Other exiled officers chafed at his inaction.

Nonetheless, officers attempted at least three more coups in 1991–1992. On 15 April 1991 (the first day of Id al-Fitr), the RCC executed twenty serving officers for attempting a coup on the anniversary of the previous year’s executions. The RCC then made more arrests and dismissals.14 On 20 August 1991 the RCC arrested thirteen serving officers, ten retired officers, and politicians from Umma and DUP, charging that LC-organized armored units planned to attack Khartoum on 28 August when their routine desert exercises finished and while President Bashir was in Libya for Qaddafi’s annual celebrations.15 The government claimed that the attempt was funded by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which opposed Khartoum for supporting Iraq in the Gulf crisis. In fact, DUP’s Mirghani had just traveled to Saudi Arabia and the commander of the armored brigade had recently returned from a tour of service in the UAE. Faced with international protests, Bashir commuted the death sentences against thirteen officers. Then in February 1992 nineteen officers were sacked and forty-one more arrested for planning to bomb the RCC headquarters.16

Meanwhile, the RCC had exempted student associations from the ban on unions. In Bashir’s words, student groups “operate, issue their papers and do everything from within Khartoum University…. The youth have not opposed the coup and they are a sector which can be put to use and whose capabilities can be touched off.”17 A professor observed that the government “decided to let controversy be aired freely in the vacuum of the campuses so as to avoid having the students tempted to spread outside.”18 Nonetheless, students became active in December 1989 in support of the doctors’ strike and in reaction to student council elections on 28 November, in which NIF won all forty seats at Khartoum University and all thirty seats at the Khartoum branch of Cairo University.19

Student protests had multiple causes. They protested campus issues, such as the abolition of free lodging and meals, the politicization of financial aid, suspending students, and firing professors.20 Such protests swept Khartoum University in September 1990 and July 1991 and Gezira University in late 1990. Students joined public demonstrations against deteriorating living conditions, food shortages, and high bread prices. They further objected to compulsory training in the PDF21 and the Islamization and Arabization of higher education, and commemorated the popular uprising of 1985 and the anniversary of the execution of the twenty-eight officers.22 Daring protests were mounted at the Khartoum University convocation in 1991, attended by RCC Deputy Chair General al-Zubair Muhammad Salih, where students chanted slogans against the government and a student manifesto blamed the regime for destroying the Sudan’s political, economic, and social systems; decried the widespread arrests; denounced the federal system as a fraud; and castigated the government for replacing civil servants with NIF cadres. Two student leaders were arrested.

The government allowed students to express their views on campus so long as NIF controlled the Khartoum University Student Union (KUSU). However, the regime restricted KUSU after NIF lost KUSU elections in autumn 1990 to the National Democratic Forum, which combined students from Umma, DUP, and SCP. The government-appointed Vice Chancellor Muddathir al-Tanjari closed the university to avoid clashes that fall and barred the KUSU president from addressing the graduation ceremony in 1991. Even so, Tanjari criticized security forces for entering the campus without his permission, shooting at random, and chasing students into his own office in July 1991.23 When NIF students seized the KUSU building in September 1991 after KUSU opposed the Islamist “educational revolution” and dissolved several pro-NIF student groups, security forces stormed the campus.24 After thirty-six students were injured in clashes, the government dismissed nineteen students, closed the university temporarily, prevented KUSU from using its campus building, blocked KUSU’s access to union funds, and banned all politically affiliated student groups. Even though KUSU had to operate off campus, without access to its funds, the anti-NIF student bloc won the KUSU election again in October 1991. Tanjari was replaced by his militant NIF deputy Dr. Ma’mun Muhammad Ali Humaida in February 1992. He forced students to take long-postponed examinations by transporting them at night to testing centers, including some located in military barracks and police stations.25 More than three hundred students were dismissed, and dozens were arrested.

Tempers flared when KUSU elections were canceled in 1992. When the elections were held a year later, the elections committee announced that NIF won by a narrow margin, defeating the “neutral” list (Umma, SCP, African, Ba’ath, and Nasirite) and the anti-regime Muslim Brotherhood. Student demonstrators occupied Humaida’s office and accused NIF of rigging the elections by bussing in outsiders to vote. Security forces used teargas to disperse the demonstrators, who smashed windows and doors, cut telephone and electricity lines, and stoned policemen and university guards. Forty students were injured and some three hundred arrested.

Troubles were not confined to Khartoum University. The government banned the student union at the Sudan University for Science and Technology, after protests against shortages of water and electricity led to clashes with pro-NIF students.26 When Gezira University students struck, security forces arrested 170 students and lashed several male and female students in front of the vice chancellor and the regional governor. Student protests were difficult to contain, since they arose quickly and with minimal prior organization. The effort to indoctrinate students through the PDF evidently failed as each year witnessed new confrontations on the campuses and in the streets.

Although the government silenced the professional unions in the fall of 1989, workers continued to organize work-actions. The Railway Workers Union, headquartered in the industrial city of Atbara, was particularly active, since it could close down that vital transportation system. The arrest of thirteen railway personnel in 1989, for example, led to go-slow actions that spread to railway junctions at Port Sudan, Khartoum, Babanusa, and Kosti, and ended only when the government agreed to release union leaders.27 A year later army units repressed strikes against the lack of basic foods and the rising cost of living. Thousands of railway workers were fired after they sabotaged rail tracks and paralyzed the system. A detained union leader died on 26 November.

In September 1990 the banned federation of trade unions requested an increase in the minimum wage and criticized government support for Iraq in the Gulf crisis,28 which deepened the country’s economic problems by causing Gulf countries to stop exporting oil to Sudan and to expel Sudanese employees. The banned Sudanese Women’s Union also blamed government policies for economic deterioration, price increases, escalating the war in the south, dismantling the public sector, and damaging public education. Although the government arrested nearly fifty union leaders on 15 October 1990, violent protests swept Eastern, Northern, and Kordofan provinces during November, in which at least eight people died.29 In al-Ubayyid, for example, residents burned the governor’s home and ransacked the town market.

Protests subsided during 1991 but erupted again in February 1992, triggered by increases in the price of bread, sugar, and petrol.30 Some three hundred people were arrested, including numerous high school students. Sustained protests resumed in Khartoum and Omdurman in December 1992, beginning with peaceful demonstrations against the cost of living and high rate of inflation.31 The arrest of twenty-five women indicated their prominent role in challenging the deepening economic crisis. Demonstrations spread to Atbara, al-Fashir, Niyala, Qadarif, and Kassala. In al-Ubayyid the outcry against tripling the price of sugar caused Bashir to heed the warnings from internal security agents and cut the price of sugar as well as cancel a deal to export 50,000 tons. Student protests at Gezira University on 5 January 1993 swelled as crowds burned two gas stations and the customs office in Wad Medani. When discontent simmered throughout 1993, security officials warned Bashir that spiraling inflation and food shortages might trigger a popular revolt. By October 1993 high school students in Khartoum shouted, “We are ready to die for a new government,”32 and residents protested deteriorating living conditions and fuel shortages that hampered the harvesting and transport of crops. Once again, protests flared in the capital city, Wad Medani, Atbara, and al-Ubayyid as well as Kassala and Gedaref, Sudan’s grain belt and the religious center of the Khatmiyya order. The government arrested numerous activists from the unions and DUP and contained outbursts with security forces, PDF, people’s police, and motorcycle-riding NIF militants.33

The presence of al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and millions of followers of the Ansar enabled its political organs to remain active and central to the political opposition. Al-Mahdi was captured a week after the coup and detained for six months, during which security personnel conducted at least one mock execution. Afterwards, his movements were restricted to the capital city and he was frequently placed under house arrest. Nonetheless, he continually criticized the government and called for the restoration of democracy in interviews published abroad and in sermons to the Ansar. The government generally did not dare to prevent him from delivering sermons, but did stop him from addressing other audiences. For example, when the student union at the private Omdurman Ahlia University invited him to speak in January 1993, security forces held him for questioning for twenty-four hours, thereby making it impossible for him to deliver his lecture.34

Al-Mahdi was frequently harassed after his sermons. He was held for twenty-four hours in April 1993, after he defied a ban on leading prayers by addressing on 5 April hundreds of thousands of Ansar at the Mahdi center during Ramadan.35 Al-Mahdi had attacked the regime for religious extremism, distorting Islam, and denying human rights, which risked leading to intervention by international forces, as in Somalia, and to popular armed resistance. To al-Mahdi, the best solution was neither intervention nor armed resistance but the peaceful return to democracy. Dialogue with the regime was impossible unless it restored democracy and convened the national constitutional conference that would end the civil war by logic and dialogue, not terror and repression. When the Ansar marched in Omdurman four days later, following Friday prayers, several leaders were detained for twenty-four hours. Al-Mahdi was held briefly the next week to prevent him from meeting two British members of parliament. Then on 19 May 1993 (the eve of Id al-Adha) the government seized a key Ansar mosque and the Mahdi’s tomb, claiming to have found Umma, NDA, and military documents and weapons inside the mosque complex. The confiscations limited the Ansar’s ability to congregate, but also signalled the government’s insecurity.

The government looked for ways to charge al-Mahdi’s supporters with sedition. From April to June 1993, the RCC arrested nearly seventy Umma leaders and four hundred Ansar on charges of conspiring to topple the regime. Detainees included the imam of Wad Nubawi mosque in Omdurman and the head of the Ansar office of dawa (Islamic propagation). Then the government claimed that the Legitimate Command had plotted to topple the regime by training young Sudanese communist graduates of Egyptian universities in handling firearms and explosives.36 They were said to have trained in Lebanon in 1991 under the auspices of the Communist Action Organization but without the knowledge of the Lebanese government. The Egyptian government supposedly agreed to supply helicopters and weapons to support the LC invasion of Sudan. The unit was allegedly sent to Khartoum to blow up public buildings and assassinate Bashir and other officials. The government claimed that the unit blew up the Jabait bridge on the highway to Port Sudan. (Later, the Beja Congress claimed responsibility for that operation.) The government tried eleven people, sentencing five to two to ten years in jail. If true, this represented the most systematic effort in the early 1990s to undermine the regime from exile.

Even as sporadic protests continued in the north, the coup caused acute crises within the south. It wrecked prospects for a constitutional conference to restructure political life along ethnic pluralist lines. The regime’s intense Islamization drive created an equally intense reaction in the south, expressed in the renewed demand for secession and political independence. Garang had difficulty clinging to the goal of a pluralist Sudan, which seemed unrealistic with NIF in power. Southern politicians were also dubious of northern groups’ support for equality since they had endorsed an Arab-Islamic identity when they were in power. The struggle over the country’s national identity, therefore, became more complex and conflictual.

At first the SPLA continued to perform well militarily, holding off the army’s offensive launched on 16 October 1989 and recapturing Kurmuk and additional garrisons the next month. In 1990–1991 an SPLA offensive moved into Western Equatoria and western Bahr al-Ghazal. By the spring of 1991 the SPLA controlled Upper Nile, Equatoria (except Juba and Yei), and much of Bahr al-Ghazal.

However, the SPLA suffered a nearly fatal blow in May 1991, when the fall of Mengistu Haile Mariam caused the SPLM/A to lose its political and military sanctuary in Ethiopia. SPLA officers stationed in Nasir, on the border, were overwhelmed by thousands of refugees fleeing Ethiopia. The Sudanese air force bombed their temporary camps to prevent food and medical assistance from reaching those remote locations. Since Bashir expected the SPLA to capitulate, he stressed that an Islamic federation would solve the country’s problems.37 But Garang continued to reject an Islamic constitution, insist on the separation of politics and religion, and call for the overthrow of the regime.38

In contrast, some of the officers based in Nasir concluded that the goal of a unified, multireligious Sudan was unrealistic since the RCC would never compromise on its ideology. Instead, the SPLM should negotiate to gain the south’s independence and let NIF create a homogeneous Muslim state in the north. Lam Akol argued that Khartoum would let the non-Muslim south secede, to ensure its dominance in the north. Akol persuaded Riek Machar, garrison commander at Nasir, to support secession and try to overthrow Garang. Gordon Kong Chuol, another member of the SPLA High Command, completed the triumvirate.39 Kong had led Anya-Nya II before joining the SPLA and, therefore, always preferred secession. Akol, Machar, and Kong declared on 28 August 1991 that they had removed Garang in order to end his human rights violations and to achieve independence. They accused him of ruling the SPLM autocratically, jailing officers who challenged him, and forcibly recruiting teenagers into the SPLA. Their manifesto focused on the profound differences between the north and south:40

Nonetheless, Garang recognized the need to respond to the Nasir group’s challenge. He convened a meeting in Torit in early September 1991 to reassess the structures and goals of the SPLM for the first time since its formation in 1983.41 The High Command set up committees to review issues of control and accountability and to initiate civilian administration. Until then, military officers ruled their areas of operation, which caused tension with indigenous civilian leaders and accusations of arbitrary behavior against the population. The meeting also decided to review the cases of commanders detained by the SPLA. But the most significant decision was to modify the SPLM’s political goals. The Torit meeting proposed four options: “a united secular democratic Sudan, confederation, association of sovereign states, or self-determination.” For the first time, the SPLM hinted that the south would secede if the government maintained its centralized Arab-Islamic system. That shift sought to undercut the Nasir group by acknowledging the widespread yearning for independence. The idea that Sudan comprised two ethnic nations challenged the elusive goal of territorial nationalism.

Ironically, the government benefited substantially from the split inside the SPLA. The government had encouraged the split by sending false signals that it might let the south secede. Once the split occurred, the government developed a four-prong strategy that encouraged SPLA factions to fight each other, backed off on offering independence, mounted large-scale offensives against Garang’s forces, and used the disintegration of the SPLA to facilitate its repression of African peoples in South Kordofan, Dar Fur, and Southern Blue Nile.

First, the government encouraged SPLA-Nasir to attack SPLA-Torit in Bor and Kongor districts in October–November 1991, the fall of 1992, and February 1993. The largely Nuer forces of SPLA-Nasir—joined by thousands of Nuer tribesmen—devastated Dinka villages, destroyed crops, and seized cattle, children, and women to sell in Malakal, Kosti, and Khartoum. In late 1991 alone, 200,000 Twic Dinka fled their homes, retaining only 50,000 out of 400,000 head of cattle.42 When SPLA-Mainstream (formerly SPLA-Torit) then attacked SPLA-United (formerly SPLA-Nasir) at Kongor on 27 March 1993,43 they killed more than sixty civilian and military leaders of SPLA-United who were meeting to endorse establishing an interim period of self-rule, followed by a referendum to choose between independence and unity. The gathering included Colonel William Nyuon Bany, who had defected to SPLA-United on 6 September 1992, and Commander Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, leader of the 1983 Bor mutiny whom Garang had detained for five years.44 Although Garang appealed to SPLM-United to rejoin his forces, the mutual killings deeply embittered relations. Despite a U.S.-brokered cease-fire on 28 May 1993 that designated Kongor a demilitarized “famine zone” where international relief agencies could operate, clashes continued.45

The intra-SPLA fighting undermined Machar and Akol’s credibility. Instead of fighting the government, they accepted the army’s logistical support and weapons to attack their rivals. SPLA-United suffered defections because of this collaboration and because supporters were shocked at its devastation of southern villages, which belied its concern for human rights. An aide resigned on 30 October 1992, charging that SPLA-United did not check the Nuer troops who killed and abducted Dinka civilians in Bor and Kongor and thereby destroyed Machar’s claim to be morally superior to Garang.46 After Akol signed a political accord with the government (discussed below), more commanders accused SPLA-United of relinquishing the call for independence and fostering tribal warfare.47

Second, the government took advantage of the schism by making SPLM-United dependent politically and militarily on Khartoum. The key government interlocutor, Dr.Ali al-Hajj Muhammad, met Akol in Nairobi in November 1991. Akol claimed that al-Hajj assured him that the government would let the south secede in return for which Akol accepted its financial and military support, including airdrops of ammunition to SPLA-United outposts.48 Al-Hajj and Akol finalized that accord in Frankfurt (Germany) on 25 January 1992. They agreed to an immediate cease-fire and an interim period of indeterminate length49

SPLM-United resumed separate negotiations with the government in Nairobi from 10 to 26 May, 1993.50 Although they disagreed on the length of the interim period, on whether the south would comprise one or more geographical units, and on whether the referendum would include the option of separation, they agreed on the allocation of powers between the south and the federal government and on a formula for sharing resources. They further agreed that the national-level constitution would apply laws based on general principles common to the states, provided that “the States shall have the right to enact any complementary legislation to the federal legislation on matters that are peculiar to them.” Akol admitted this meant that Islamic law would apply nationally, leaving the south with a partial exemption. In essence, SPLM-United capitulated to NIF’s ethnic nationalism, making the African south subservient to the Arab-Islamic north.

The cease-fire signed in Frankfurt in January 1992 was followed by cease-fires with Akol and Kerubino at Fashoda,51 Bentiu, and Fanjak (Upper Nile) in August, September, and November 1993, respectively. The truce with Kerubino was particularly important, since he operated near the long-closed Bentiu oil fields.52 Government troops could then freely cross territory held by SPLA-United in order to attack SPLA-Mainstream.

Third, the government launched full-scale offensives in the south. The southern dissident officers provided the army with valuable information on the deployment and military strategies of the SPLA. The armed forces mounted a four-pronged drive with 80,000 troops in mid-February 1992, which the government called a jihad against the infidels and traitors in order to consolidate the Islamic state. They captured oil-producing Unity Province, dominated the border with Ethiopia, partially cut SPLA supply lines to Kenya, and relieved the siege on Juba.53 Nonetheless, they suffered 20,000 casualties in the five-month offensive—10 percent of the troops fighting in the south.54 Ill-trained recruits to the Popular Defense Force (PDF), placed in isolated garrisons, were cut off from supplies during the summer rains. Some reports indicated that the army had to train 17,000 to 19,000 new recruits before it could resume the offensive the next winter.

The government partially resolved that problem by arming Arab militias, under the umbrella of the PDF, to raid Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile and escort troop trains into the south. Militias looted villages, burned houses and granaries, stole cattle, and killed or captured civilians. A PDF publication specified that, following Quranic injunctions, each foot soldier should obtain one portion of the booty and each member of the cavalry (whose definition was expanded to include members of the air force, mechanized brigades, and artillery) should obtain two portions.55 Fighters were encouraged to seize women and children as servants or concubines and apparently received bounties if women became pregnant, since the children’s identity would be Arab and Muslim. The loss of control over Eastern Equatoria hurt SPLA-Mainstream severely, since that dominated the land routes to Kenya and Uganda and provided income from gold mining, tea plantations, and teak forests. Garang relo