The early days of Inqaz regime in Sudan
Dr Omer M Shurkian*
Introduction
Every big event requires a big move to fix it. Therefore, after the First World War (WW I) in 1918 the leading world powers convened a conference not only to resolve the causes that led to the eruption of hostilities in 1914, but also to ensure that nothing similar to it would happen again. However, the Second World War (WW II) broke again in 1939, because some of those who saw the settlement as an unjust deal went back to war and another conference was necessitated at the end of the war in 1945 to revamp what went wrong and redress the victims of the war. Sudan’s situation is comparable to this because it missed a number of occasions that could have ushered in an era of stability, prosperity and peaceful coexistence among the Sudanese people in order to resolve the war that was going on in the South, and break the cycle of underdevelopment in the other parts of the country. However, a handful of lost opportunities could be considered as causes of such impediment.
Firstly, failure of the Northerner elites during pre-independence era in their deliberations to set up a new political dispensation for a nationalist polity is a stark example. Secondly, the 1965 Round-table Conference to tackle the so-called the ‘Problem of South Sudan’ was a great opportunity to address the concerns of all marginalised areas in Sudan rather than pooling the efforts to focus on one particular region of the country and leaving similar problems to surface in future. Chiefly because the Southerners were engaged in armed struggle against the so-called national governments. Thirdly, a chance provided to the Government of Sadiq al-Mahdi in the 1980s was a golden opportunity that was squandered until it was too late when the Islamists were ready to strike. Sadiq’s administration was, to say the least, characterised by intensive hostilities in all war zones; it committed gross violations of human rights under the pretext of counter-insurgency policy, causing extreme famine in the South, flight of refugees into neighbouring countries, in addition to thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) into Northern cities and so forth. No doubt his indecisiveness in taking the right decisions in the right time was the making of his downfall. After this partial list of lost opportunities and lack of wisdom, and before delving into the litany of Inqaz regime’s crises, let us pose the following question: why have the Sudanese people failed thrice to develop plausibly democratic institutions that could have helped solve the country’s chronic ailments? An answer to this question is so complex an issue. The socio-political nature of Sudanese intellectuals is the antithesis of establishing and evolving democracy in Sudan. Characterised by economic backwardness, Sudan has been submerged in a sense of spiritual malaise, ethnic and cultural diversity, illiteracy and so forth: factors which have been exploited by its elites for their vested interests and power grabbing.
This article discusses three themes. Firstly, it looks at the rise of Inqaz regime and its brutal method of dealing with the opposition parties, the genesis of its ‘civilised project’; the role of Popular Arab Islamic Conference and the ‘open-door or border’ policy for ‘all Muslims’ to enter Sudan and become Sudanese as adopted by the regime and its implications on the country as a whole. Secondly, it examines the economic policies of the regime, especially, the privatisation of a number of public institutions. Thirdly and finally, the article examines the civil war and the culture of martyrdom.
The Rise of the Regime
The Muslim Brotherhood began to work on taking over power militarily since the so-called National Reconciliation in 1977. So, the Islamists decided to seize power in 1985 when their political marriage with Nimeiri’s regime deteriorated. However, the fast moving events and the eventual overthrow of President Nimeiri in a popular uprising in April 1985 forced them to postpone their venture. Nevertheless, the appearance of Lt-Gen ‘Abd al-Rahman Mohamed al-Hassan Swar al-Dahab, one of their crypto-Islamists in the army, as the Chairman of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) suited the National Islamic Front (NIF), which chose to capitalise politically, financially and militarily on Dahab’s tenure, while waiting for an opportune moment to strike a blow against the Government of the day.
Ironically, in 1989 a conference was held in Kuwait by Islamists leaders. One of the key recommendations of the conference was that the Islamic Movement should not use military coups d’états as a means to seize power, and freedom was a fundamental value for man and should not be violated whatsoever. The democratic system, the conference concluded, was the best arrangement that could guarantee the achievement of Islamic goals and political parties were likened to the sophist schools of thoughts. Paradoxically, Dr Turabi participated in the conference, and all these virtually democratic recommendations were shelved when the NIF decided to launch their putsch in June 1989 – that is, in the same year of the conference and just before the ink that used to draft the resolutions were dried up. The Sudan affair of 30 June 1989 was evidently the natural or inevitable culmination of previous events involving the spasmodic but progressive convergence of general and military discontent. Although like any other military intrusions into politics in Africa, the so-called the National Salvation Government took place in unique circumstances of tight camouflage. So chance cannot be considered by political analysts anxious to discern a pattern or to construct a model as a validity to provide some grounds for accepted interpretations of the NIF coup.
Since the coup plotters used unconstitutional methods to topple Sadiq al-Mahdi’s Government, they resorted to illegal and, most frequently, brutal means to extirpate the Opposition. The regime unceremoniously banned political parties, closed down newspapers, criminalised public demonstrations and meetings, declared state of emergency and imposed dawn-to-dusk curfew in the capital cities. Like every military leader’s tenure, Bashir’s regime acted to reduce the influence not only of politicians but of civil servants. The ruthless selectivity shown in choosing who should serve the new regime, who should be eliminated, incarcerated or driven into exile, was a notable feature of the new regime. On this basis, the purges might be described as that of ‘winner-takes-all’, which a dictator ruler invokes to appropriate to his own elite group or political party not only all power, but also all the profits to be obtained from its exercise. Consequently, the regime dismissed suspected army officers and disloyal civil servants and meted out harsh punishments to currency offenders, including executions. This is an atavistic prescription which can be issued by every totalitarian regime at its genesis.
Dealing with the Counter-Forces
When they usurped power in June 1989, the Islamists posed a stark question of how to deal with the Opposition leaders. Two options were proposed and pondered: either to arrest and murder them without, of course, trial or detain and subject them to severely physical and mental torture until they became insane and then released in the society. Without scruples, they opted for the second option and the outcry of the international community fell on deaf ears. The outcome of this heinous act was the bestial torture meted out to their political opponents in torture chambers, which became widely known as bute al-ashbah (literally meaning in Arabic the ghost houses). Within a short period of its inception, the regime had installed force as the unique basis of Sudan politics, and the dynamic escalation of violence reached a point where it became unstoppable. This resulted in the disappearance of a large number of its political adversaries and the mass escape of highly educated civil servants to seek refuge in exile.
In view of the modern time, the purpose of a state is to provide sustenance and social welfare to its population in the form of a system that nurtures duties and rights of civilians either through customary regulations, as it may originate, or through the application of law and order equally and equitably. But the NIF regime opted for doing a preposterous thing in the Sudanese politics. The regime established parallel institutions to work in tandem with the officially recognised ones. These institutions ran from the para-military forces, euphemistically called the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), to the Popular Police, in addition to a myriad of security organs. To break free from the yoke of traditional diplomacy, the regime established Popular International Friendship Council under the leadership of a secretary-general at the level of state minister. Such an apparatus was a shadowy foreign ministry, which conducted free communications, whose intentions were intelligence gathering, subversive activities and mostly propagandist to brighten the face of the regime abroad. One of these shadowy institutions, and perhaps the most important one, was the Forty-Member Council under the leadership of Dr Hassan ‘Abd Allah al-Turabi, the eminence grise of the Salvation Government or, rather, a political chameleon who had always found a way of schmoozing his way into Governments. This council was, in fact, the cabinet that ran the country. Inside the circles of the regime, the realities of creating an Islamic republic in Sudan were facing a stumbling block.
The Classification of the Sudanese Populace
In actual life, the NIF regime classified the Sudanese people into three categories: firstly, the people of Badr – that is, those who were formerly organised as NIF stalwarts before the so-called Salvation Government. Secondly, the people of al-Fateh, and these were the people who joined the regime after their coup. Thirdly, the undecided ones, and these were the people who were likely to join the regime. There was no political, organisational or job-wise equality among these engineered classes. This classification of the Sudanese people has so much to do with the declared policy of the Islamisation and Arabisation of the Sudanese society. This rigorous approach to Islamise and Arabise the Sudanese society represented the NIF’s pioneering attempt to show how to create a national collective will for the foundation of a new state, but in their own image. They were tinkering at this project through the ideologue figure of the ‘Modern Prince’ – that is, Dr Turabi, who set out the political leadership, strategy and the tactics necessary for the achievement of this end. It is worth noting that Badr was the first battlefield between the Prophet Mohamed and Abu Sufian, the Chief of the Quoreish tribesmen, in 624 A D (2 A H) in which the Prophet and his associates came out victorious. However, al-Fateh (Arabic word for invasion) was referred to the fall of Mecca in 630 A D (8 A H) when the Prophet Mohamed marched into the town with a force of ten thousand of his adherents from Medina. The first category appeared to be the decision-makers and policy architects. Nevertheless, the door of participation for non-NIF members was left ajar. This led to some sycophants, buffoons and opportunists from all walks of life to join the regime and its ruling National Congress Party, which resembled Nimeiri’s defunct Sudanese Socialist Union.
In its ‘civilised project’, the NIF based its ideology on a functionalist perspective despite all its flaws. Believing that religion could promote the social prerequisites of society – such as, a certain degree of stability, value consensus, harmony and integration between its parts, the Islamists ignored its dysfunctional aspects and neglected the many instances where religion could be seen as a divisive and disruptive force. Even in a monotheist society, religion can generate internal divisions within a community over questions of religious dogma and worship, divisions which can lead to open conflict. This functionalist approach of attempting to use one religion to maintain and promote social norms gives little consideration to hostility between different religious groups within the same society. Islam in Sudan has proven to be a direct threat to social order. It is, therefore, difficult to reconcile general theory of functionalism with considerable evidence of religious conflicts. Certainly, religion threatens social integration, for the history of Christianity and Islam, with its many schisms, manifests the greater power of religion not to bind but to divide.
At the genesis of the regime, both regional and international observers were baffled about NIF’s pretence to possess panacea not only for domestic problems, but also to resolve the world’s crises. Consequently, the regime announced a number of programmes as far as the problems of Sudan were concerned: achieving peace in the South, getting rid of armed robbery in Western Sudan, rehabilitating national schemes, attaining efficient civil services, purging the corrupt civil servants, reforming economy, enhancing foreign relations and putting an end to factional squabbles. The world, the NIF leaders argued, was torn asunder between the anarchy of Capitalist West and the tyranny of Eastern Bloc. It was no surprise to learn that Dr Turabi was quoted as saying: ‘The issue of Sudan is finished; I am now busy with the world affairs.’
The Popular Arab Islamic Conference
The Popular Arab Islamic Conference (PAIC), which held its annual conventions in Khartoum, was in fact a gathering of Muslim fundamentalists, who were wanted in their own countries. Domestically, the PAIC drained Sudan financially in a country which was already teetering towards economic collapse, and not to mention the adverse effects it had on the Sudan’s foreign relations. This was all to sow the seeds of the cult of the leader – that is, Dr Turabi. Externally, the PAIC exhibited gross grandeur of its organiser, paranoia and above all an inability to look at reality in the face. Failing to resolve their own domestic problems, the NIF leaders tried to fly before they had mastered walking. The crack appeared in the PAIC when African members fulminated against including the word Arab in the name of the organisation, insisting that though they were Muslims, they were not Arabs. The irony was that these gatherings were not confined to the Islamists, but they were a commonwealth of opposition figures in their respective countries, including leftists, Arab nationalists and others. In the past, the NIF opposed to the idea of International Islamic Movement to be the dominant theoriser and practitioner of drafting policies, setting criteria for membership, participation in summits, representation in the Shura (Consultation) Council and so forth. Yet it saw itself fit to emulate the Islamists’ Internationale through repeating its mistakes and without learning from the failed enterprise of Comintern (Communist International) of Karl Marx. In the end, the Sudanese Islamists’ prediction to be the overall Muslim leaders of the world revealed itself not as a scientific act of knowledge, but as an abstract expression of the effort made, and the practical way of creating a collective extremists’ will. The formation of a collective will would require a point of origin and tools of dissemination, and the Islamists wanted Khartoum to be the springboard for their scheme and all these seasonal delegates to assume the role of the dissemination of Islamic ideology.
This ‘open-door’ policy, as adopted by the regime, led to the influx of Muslim extremists from all over the world into Sudan. The NIF leaders emphatically argued that Islam did not believe in natural or artificial borders. Sudan, therefore, became a base for the activities of the so-called ‘Afghan Arabs’, including Osama bin Laden – the paladin jihad (holy war), who lived in Sudan since 1990 before he was forced to move to Afghanistan in 1996. This incensed and evoked a public denunciation from Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia and a tacit protest from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The United Nations and Inqaz Regime
The ‘open-door’ policy adopted by the regime has had negative implications on the country in the international community and regional arena. For instance, Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden and his operatives and later played a pivotal role in an attempt to assassinate the Egyptian President, Mohammed Hosni Mubarak, in Addis Ababa in 1995 as much of evidence indicated that the culprits hatched their plot in Sudan. This led to the UN resolution 1044, demanding the Sudanese Government to hand over the accomplices to the Ethiopian authorities. However, the punitive measures, taken by the UN Security Council against Sudan in the form of economic embargo, led the country to lose US$20bn, and an annual increase in the prices of basic commodities at the rate of 100%. The capture of Carlos the Jakal, the internationally repute terrorist, in Khartoum and handing him over to the French Government in 1994 proved the United States’ allegations that Sudan was one of the states under the suspicion of giving succour to terrorism. However, the NIF leaders were leading a hysterical campaign against the United States. Anti-US became a rallying slogan among the youths in Sudan, and America-hating became a badge of identity, making possible a flag-burning, rhetoric word or deed that made men feel good. It contained a strong streak of hypocrisy, loathing most what it desired most. While struggling for socio-political hegemony, the NIF leaders did not rely solely on the mobilisation of the Sudanese populace behind immediate and crude slogans, but they also resorted to the incessant repetition of propaganda as the best didactic means to win over the popular mentality which could be put into the field at the favourable moment.
Now, no official consideration appeared to have been given to a return to civilian rule in the strict sense. Instead, via presidential decrees and covert party plans, a new basis for legitimacy of the existing regime had been sought. Having banned political parties, the regime upheld a tendency to create a new quasi-political nexus of associations under another label with the head of state as its central mentor. So the National Congress (NC) was officially declared to be the state party, and the NIF was surreptitiously allowed to continue on the somewhat spurious basis. The NC was presented as a nationalist movement not a political party, and as such Opposition was clearly not tolerable.
The Economy of Inqaz Regime
Before embarking on discussing the economic crises of Sudan under Bashir, it is quite necessary to bear in mind that the economic imperative of human society is crucial for social structure and human circumstances in their absolutism and complexity. This is because the economic bond that fuses the communities together is the first link in human life, and it acts as a material catalyst for civilisations and development. Therefore, economy is a starting point in researching the state of any society, and the social development is always based on economic evolution. Like its predecessors, the NIF regime attributed the marginalisation of regional peripheries to the strains which were imposed on these areas by the colonial policies of the past history of underdevelopment of internal structures. Its programme from the very beginning was economically meagre, focusing mainly on the militarisation of Sudanese society, while shifting the blame for the catastrophic decline in economy and the rise in prices and general inflation to the defunct Government of Sadiq al-Mahdi. The decline in the economy was apparent as exemplified by the liberalisation of wheat and cotton production, resulting in the reduction of cultivated land for the former by 17%, and the loss of hard currency in the case of the latter. Since the economic linkage is the basis of socio-human bond, work and its co-operative organ are the source of social system. A statutory co-operation between the Government and its subjects is a complex one. This is due to the needs of developmental schemes, the communities’ welfare and their structural demands. And for these reasons the failure of the Government to support farmers resulted in catastrophic consequences on the populations and other brands of the Government itself. This was where the balance of economy eschewed, leaving both industrial and agricultural sectors in decline. Flour mills functioned at the rate of 20%, vegetable oil production at 19%, fizzy drinks at 50%, textile industry at 10% and shoes factories at 31%. Of course, the mismanagement destroyed the already strained infrastructure, to say the least.
However, lack of social security and meagre living conditions had reinforced the conclusions of a research study conducted by Professor Mohamed Hashim ‘Awad. Prof ‘Awad, an economics lecturer and former Minister of Trade, carried out a research work on the standard of living among segments of population in which he concluded that ‘95% of the Sudanese people live below poverty line after the Government has executed its policy of trade liberalisation, and 86% of the population cannot afford to provide their families with the basic needs of living.’ In another study undertaken on the effect of economic hardships on students, the following results were produced: ‘12% of female university students has left their studies for economic difficulties; others eke out a meagre living by selling their paraphernalia and gifts; 10% are suffering from malnutrition; whereas others have drifted into prostitution.’ Nonetheless, it is well perceived that the economic significance services are as a vital precursor for both public and psychological interests of human beings. Consequently, President Bashir’s economic programme hit all these bases of interests drastically, leading to the breakdown of family relations, deterioration of peaceful coexistence and erosion of fraternal ties. The privatisation programme pursued by the regime was tailored to suit the directives of international, financial institutions and the centre of Capitalism in Post-Cold War era. This was done through the abolition of the role of state and public sector in all fields of production, social services, internal and external marketing. However, the door was virtually left open for the private sector to enter into these fields without conditions or competition from the state.
It has been proven with devastating results that private companies and public services do not mix. The reason public services are public in the first place is because they have components that are unprofitable, yet necessary to the public. Private companies exist to make profit. When they take on a public service, it becomes hard for them to maintain a focus on loss-making operations when share-holders are demanding greater returns on their investment. According to the cabinet decision in 1990 to dissolve the public sector, the Sudanese authorities privatised 105 institutions and companies. At the first stage of privatisation programme, 57 institutions and companies were privatised, including 22 companies which were converted to the private sector through sale, partnership, lease and transfer to general companies – that is, 39% of the total institutions. The revenues levied from these companies reached £S12.2bn, £S3.2bn and £S8.3bn in the years 1992/93, 1993/94 1994/95, respectively. The overall objectives of privatisation were:
(1) empowering the capitalist elements of the NIF to control all public institutions and increase their financial opportunities. These elements would then extend to exploit agricultural and industrial production and basic services after decades of confining their activities to commercial transactions;
(2) ridding the state of the cost of reforming the public sector, and guaranteeing quick and large profit to support the state to countenance the expenditure of security, defence and general administration;
(3) reassuring the international, financial institutions that Sudan was committed to their directives, and it should retain its membership to these institutions; this was particularly vital since these funding bodies severed their ties with Sudan in 1991 after it had failed to pay the World Bank’s accumulated debts; and
(4) the Islamic banks were used as a vehicle for the mishaps of NIF’s privatisation policy to achieve the following goals:
1) monopolising basic commodities and raising their prices at will;
2) illegal currency dealings;
3) tax-free dealings with the NIF- affiliated charity organisations; and
4) selling tax-free licences by these charity organisations to traders to use them in tax dodging.
As mentioned earlier, the dialogue on development has identified culture and economy as two important elements in the developmental process. It is, therefore, recommendable that the economic development of a certain area should be tailored towards the cultural motives of its inhabitants, including customs and traditions. An example of failure as a result of not linking development with culture was the collapse of Babanousa Dairy Factory, which was established contrary to the local culture, social and economic activity in the area. The Arabs, who were supposed to provide milk for processing, were nomads and at a certain period of time in the year, they would move away with their herds in search of water and green pastures, thus depriving the factory of milk as a raw material. The factory attempted to compensate for its loss of profit by processing hibiscus as an alternative raw material but to no avail. This can even go deeper than that, as development can evolve according to the cultural heritage of a nation that extends to the historical roots of their people.
The Civil War and the Culture of Martyrdom
Sudan’s history as an independent country has been grim, and the South has been in the public domain since the 1940s for so many a reason. In all these reasons, the Northern elites, who inherited power from the Condominium Rule in 1956, stood culpable for the continuation of bloodshed and the ensuing tragedies of protracted civil wars. These wars were certainly about unemployment, discrimination and prejudices, low income, lack of opportunities, the unequal distribution of national wealth and power in the society. They were also, to a degree, spontaneous, emotional and in the event not wholly successful protests against an intuitional structure in which the people concerned knew themselves to be marginalised. These inequalities had produced poverty due to the status quo of marginalisation. However, the acts of the elites alerted a strong, but real, a feeling of marginality, helplessness, dependence and inferiority, a sense of resignation and fatalism among the victims of banishment. To break free from this unbearable situation, the Southerners took to arms to demand the redress of these fundamental issues in 1955. However, some of their demands were achieved at a certain stage of struggle in a partial settlement. It was incumbent upon the Southerners at that moment of history to stand up and voice out their opinion about what the ruling leaders in Khartoum were doing. Cleary what Khartoum was doing was not about the national unity. Not surprisingly, when the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) appealed to the virulently marginalised population in the different localities of the country, they joined the movement in their droves.
For so long a time, the nationalist Governments have perceived the control of the South – either by assimilation, coercion or subjugation – as a vital objective for the maintenance of national unity, stability and security. In fact, the South has been presented by the ruling Northern elites to the Arab and Muslim worlds as an open window of hostile Christian and imperialist powers: an appeal which did find listening ears among them and the response was generous in terms of financial grants and military hardware, if only to murder their own citizens in the war-ravaged regions of the country. Against this backdrop, the successive regimes elected to deal with the Southerners in an obsessively brutal approach rather than tackling what was apparently deemed to be a political question in a plausible style. The hostility of the ruling elites against the Southerners and, by association, those who took to arms as the only means available for them to restore their civic rights, was reflected in discriminatory practices and prejudices against non-Muslims. Instead of breeding a ‘culture of high aspiration, harmonious relationships and mutual respect,’ the NIF ideologues set about creating a sense of belonging to a ‘culture of martyrdom’. The repeated mobilising slogans generated by this ‘culture of martyrdom’ and the sense of resignation and fatalism created the psychologically ill society of youths. The use of the term culture here implied that the behaviour of these youths was internalised via prolific politicisation and socialisation process and, once internalised, they were resistant to change at least for a foreseeable future. The result was sending the multitude of young men as cannon fodder to the war zones in the South, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile.
With unprecedented rigour, Bashir’s regime pursued the policy of Arabisation and Islamisation of knowledge, which emphasised the importance of Arabic language in teaching. The policy deliberately targeted educational institutions, believing secular learning to be blasphemous. This policy spawned fanatical warriors who were willing to be sent to the battlefields to kill thousands of Sudanese citizens redefined as infidels. Worse still, this ‘culture of martyrdom’ and life after death in paradise corrupted the minds of the youths with a seriously damaging effect. To avoid this state of the stultification of mind, the grand royal princess of Senegal, Samba’s aunt, was obliged to send her nephew to France to study science and technology. After witnessing the Senegalese people being mowed down by the modern weaponry of the invading French soldiers, the princess categorically rejected the education system that was taught in Senegal before the French colonisation. Taking a crucial decision on the quality of education needed by an African child, the princess was quoted as saying: ‘The time has come for our children to learn how to live and not only how to die.’
Every nation acknowledges its sovereignty and struggles to protect its interests from aggressive foreign powers. Not only can the conflict for existence be confined to different nations, but it can also erupt from the same nation if it comprises competing classes and groups with various vested interests. Sudan is an instance where the historically ruling oligarchy, though never threatened by a foreign power nor under the verge of annihilation by internal forces, have adopted race and religion to deny the rest of population justice, power-sharing and equal distribution of national wealth. At its extremity, the NIF regime went beyond the norms by engaging in the process of decimating those who opposed to their vision of faith and policies. This was the vintage characteristic of an artificial state where the boundaries of the nation was vulnerable to ideological and whimsical factors before the true picture of a social reality.
Conclusions
When NIF seized power in June 1989, the leaders identified the thesis of Sudan’s ailments as failing economy, party bickering, the widespread civil war that engulfed other territories in the country, lack of security and stability, souring foreign relations and rampant corruption. The new regime applied its synthesis in its religious dogmatism and ideology, it unleashed unprecedented and unintended consequences. This, in turn, created antithesis in sinking economy, grave human rights abuses, urban protests and industrial strikes, famines, political instability, IDPs and refugee crisis in neighbouring countries and Sudan’s severed ties with a number of foreign countries. It was not difficult to proclaim the evils of corruption, financial misappropriation, party bickering, foreign intelligence’s activities and tribally divisive actions during Sadiq’s Government. But the real test appeared when the authorities had attempted to resolve them. Therefore, it did not take long to find out that the pretence of concern for the good of the people at large had been stripped, because in circumstances where power is everything it could be argued that the general prosperity of the country is not important.
It came to pass that the early days of the Inqaz regime were characterised by the rule of terror, tyranny, and the unprecedented violations of human rights, rendering the Sudanese people exposed to multiple frustrations, pressures and the excruciating agony of life in their own country. This was in parallel with the intensification of civil war not only in South Sudan, but also in the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile, and Western and Eastern Sudan regions. The lives of ordinary Sudanese were made worse by lack of basic needs of life, the spread of famine and the collapse of middle class to the point of begging. Moreover, lack of security, vagrant childhood, breakdown of families, destruction of social fabric, fear and escape of skilled, talented cadres and youth. These factors undoubtedly contributed to the collapse of economy and social stability. The imposition of a backward system under the so-called the ‘civilised project’, which aimed at re-educating the society in an Islamic image, was in fact meant to preach racial prejudice and religious intolerance. In the end, this had led to the imposition of the monolithic notion of one-party system. Eventually, the Inqaz leaders failed abjectly to live up to their pledges to the Sudanese people that they had come as saviours.
Any regime change is often faced with three options among which to choose and adopt. The new regime has to replace the entire ancient regime with a popular one which it had hoped to fulfil the aspirations of the populace, retain some of the programmes of the defunct regime while applying its new doctrine or reject altogether the deposed system as too deformed to be reformed and subscribe its new dispensation. The NIF regime, however, opted for the third option however diabolic it was. In this aspect, the NIF leaders used a religious fervour because they clearly knew that it was not possible ever to start a movement on a large scale in a Muslim country unless it was based on some religious grounds. To this, they added such motives as racism, the love of the fatherland and the independence of Sudan’s resolution. Eventually, the NIF leaders were charged with devising a conscious strategy of pathological lies with a meticulously calculated aim to put the message across claiming that they were the only citizens in Sudan who stood for the Sudanese people and the only citizens who were telling the truth for the interest of the country.
* The writer is the author of War in the Muba Mountains of Sudan (1983-2011): The Root Causes and Peace Settlement; The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), CASAS BOOK SERIES NO 117: Cape Town, South Africa, 2016. He also published five books in Arabic on the political crises of Sudan. He is currently working on a book on the uprising of the marginalised people of Sudan. He can be reached at: [email protected]