Sudan marks turbulent half-century of statehood
Dec 31, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan on Sunday marks 50 years of independence, a turbulent half-century of civil wars, humanitarian suffering, frequent dictatorship and a long search for a way to grow as Africa’s biggest country.
The huge state stretching from Egypt’s southern border deep into the heart of black Africa was among the first on the continent to gain independence, on January 1, 1956.
But political instability kept it lagging behind others when their turn came.
After 58 years of joint Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, Sudan has known four decades of totalitarian power and just 10 years of democratic government made ever vulnerable by economic hardship, labour unrest and partisan squabbling.
Today, it is under military rule, but the year has seen an end to Africa’s longest civil war, with hopes that peace talks in Nigeria could also end a bloody conflict in the western region of Darfur.
The leader of the National Unionist Party, Ismail al-Azhary, who raised the national flag 50 years ago, headed the first government as Sudan’s first prime minister with the Umma Party of the Ansar religious sect partners. This lasted for about three years before General Ibrahim Abboud seized power in a bloodless coup.
Abboud kept power for six years before he was ousted in a popular uprising in October 1964, which was a civilian revolt led with the resolve and strength to topple a military regime.
Azhary’s movement, renamed the Democratic Unionist Party after it was joined by the Khatmiyah religious sect, then took turns with the Umma party in gaining the majority whenever there were general elections.
During these, the Communists and Muslim Brothers took a few seats, backed by voters in what are considered the “graduates’ constituencies”. Islam, including fundamentalism, and radical thinking among intellectuals played a big part in shaping the politics of a nation with a Christian south hostile to domination.
In May 1969, Colonel Gaafer Nimeiry, backed by a Communist Party faction, took power in another bloodless coup and held it through several bids to oust him until April 1985, when army generals backed an uprising while he was undergoing medical check-ups in the United States.
Nimeiry’s regime was bloody. The enemies he saw included the communists who had helped him. He summarily executed Communist Party secretary general Abdel Khaliq Mahjoub and scores of other political figures and army officers.
He caused lasting damage in the economic sector, plunging Sudan deep into foreign debt. While he ruled, the cost of living became unbearable, the rate of the local currency dropped and the nation became one of the world’s poorest.
It still is. When General Omar al-Beshir seized power in June 1989, the US dollar was equal to 12 Sudanese pounds. Now the rate is more than 2,300 pounds a US dollar.
While Nimeiry is credited with 10 years of tranquility after a 1972 peace accord with the first south Sudanese Anyanya rebellion led by Joseph Lagu ended 16 years of a civil war, he backtracked on that agreement cut in Addis Ababa by dividing the south into three regions, prompting the John Garang-led rebellion in 1983.
This long war ended under an Islamic-backed military regime. Beshir’s negotiators in January 2005 signed an accord with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army of the late Garang, killed on July 30 in a helicopter crash only days after he moved to Khartoum as first vice president.
But Sudan is still gripped by a conflict that has raged for nearly three years in the western region of Darfur, claiming more than 100,000 lives and driving about two million people from their homes as displaced and refugees. In the east, local inhabitants have taken up arms, complaining of marginalisation like those of Darfur.
Beshir, now a field marshal, has established an oil industry that meets domestic petroleum consumption and pumps about 300,000 barrels per day for export.
However, ordinary people object to a low per capital income, soaring prices and a lack of benefit from oil proceeds apart from new roads in the capital and a couple of highways.
(AFP/ST)