Sudan
Letter from a Devastated Land
I arrived in Khartoum on April 15, nine days after the coup, as soon as the borders opened. In Cairo, I had watched film clips of the noisy, jubilant crowds that had brought down Numairi, but Khartoum was eerily silent now. The high of the revolution” had given way to the sense of crisis that once again grips this country. While political skirmishes went on concerning who would be in the civilian cabinet, the abiding, bedrock realities that pervaded the country were the civil war in the south and the drought and famine in the west and northeast.
George Bush in Khartoum
Khartoum. The hand-painted sign on Nile Avenue here best captured the attitude of urban Sudanese toward the visit of Vice President George Bush to their country in early March, just four weeks before the popular overthrow of President Ja‘far Numairi. “Vice-President and Mrs. Bush,” read the sign, “are mostly welcome.” The millions of Sudanese starving in the countryside would have been much less hospitable.
The Generals Step In
Mass demonstrations in Khartoum at the end of March 1985 initiated a series of events which culminated in the overthrow of President Ja‘far Numairi’s regime in Sudan by the Sudanese military. What began as popular protest against increases in the price of basic commodities was transformed within a week into a broad movement of political opposition. The rise in food prices was only one manifestation of the deep economic problems facing Sudan. The outbreak of overt opposition to the regime was a clear indication of the political bankruptcy of Numairi’s economic and social policies.
Sudan’s Economic Nightmare
Ten years ago, Sudan was described in a Food and Agriculture Organization report as a potential “breadbasket of the world.” Hopes for the development of Sudan’s economy were running high at the time: the investment of Arab oil-generated revenues in Sudan's agricultural sector seemed to hold immense promise. Vast quantities of hitherto unused arable land could be brought under cultivation. This would transform the Arab world from an area of food deficit into one of food surplus, laying the basis also for the development of extensive processing industries in Sudan.
Khartoum’s Greatest Challenge
Colonel John Garang’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) played no direct role in the April 6 coup in Khartoum. But as the only organized, fighting resistance to the regime of Ja‘far Numairi, it laid the groundwork by chipping away at the state in a guerrilla campaign that cost the government one million Sudanese pounds ($400,000) a day. The new military rulers have given top priority to ending the rebellion, which has paralyzed vital economic projects and drained army morale and resources for more than two years.
Sudan’s Revolutionary Spring
Khartoum, April 23. General ‘Abd al-Rahman Siwar al-Dhahab, in power since April 6, was expected to name an interim cabinet on Monday, April 22, to govern the country under army supervision for a transitional period of one year. In the meantime, General Siwar al-Dahab appointed an interim cabinet for southern Sudan, headed by General James Lawrence Marou, a member of the Transitional Military Council. Two high level officers of the Sudanese Army traveled to Libya on Sunday, April 21, to try to improve relations between the two countries.
From the Editors (September/October 1985)
The popular revolution in Sudan this spring may well represent more than just a local political transition. The overthrow of Numairi’s 16-year reign marks the end of a decade and a half of regime stability throughout the Arab world, with the exception of the two Yemens. This era of enormous wealth and scandalous waste, of construction and corruption, welfare and war, all financed by the flood of oil revenues, served to embalm and preserve these decrepit regimes from the effective opposition of their subjects. Sudan had become, in many ways, the weakest link. But Sudan is not unique. All of the most populous Arab countries—Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, for instance—have witnessed serious mass protests in recent years.
War Crisis Escalates
Political developments in Africa have lately slipped out of the headlines, but the confrontations brewing there could dwarf earlier conflicts in both military fury and political complexity. The US-backed regimes in Somalia and Sudan each face the possibility of sudden coups d’etat or civil wars. The Soviet-supported Ethiopian government is losing another in a long sequence of campaigns to stamp out nationalist guerrillas in the former Italian colony of Eritrea. Addis Ababa also faces ongoing revolts by three minority nationalities who are increasingly linking up with one another to topple the military authorities.
Letter from the Horn
Khartoum, May 1980: Hundreds of Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis were rounded up and put in prison in nearby Omdurman when Ethiopian leader Menguistu Hailemariam visited here May 25 to help celebrate the eleventh anniversary of Sudanese President Jaafar al-Numayri’s seizure of power. The purpose of the visit was to consolidate and formalize newly improved relations between the two countries. Sudan and Ethiopia have been at loggerheads since the 1960s, when Sudan provided assistance and haven for the Eritrean liberation movement and Ethiopian dissidents, and Ethiopia became the base for southern Sudanese opposition.
