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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
People's Palace in Khartoum, executive
headquarters of the national government
IN MID-1991, SUDAN was ruled by a military government that
exercised its authority through the Revolutionary Command Council
for National Salvation (RCC-NS). The chairman of the fifteenmember RCC-NS and head of state was Lieutenant General Umar
Hassan Ahmad al Bashir, who also served as prime minister,
minister of defense, and commander in chief of the armed forces.
The RCC-NS had come to power at the end of June 1989 as a result
of a coup d'état that overthrew the democratically elected
civilian government of Sadiq al Mahdi. Although the RCC-NS
initially stressed that its rule was a transitional stage
necessary to prepare the country for genuine democracy, it banned
all political party activity, arrested numerous dissidents, and
shut down most newspapers. Subsequently, members of the RCC-NS
claimed that Western-style democracy was too divisive for Sudan.
In place of parliament, the RCC-NS appointed committees to advise
the government in specialized areas, such as one concerning the
legal system to bring legislation into conformity with the
sharia, or Islamic law.
The factors that provoked the military coup, primarily the
closely intertwined issues of Islamic law and of the civil war in
the south, remained unresolved in 1991. The September 1983
implementation of the sharia throughout the country had been
controversial and provoked widespread resistance in the
predominantly non-Muslim south. The Sudanese People's Liberation
Movement (SPLM) and its military arm, the Sudanese People's
Liberation Army (SPLA), were formed in mid-1983. They became
increasingly active in the wake of President Jaafar an Nimeiri's
abolition of the largely autonomous Southern Regional Assembly
and redivision of the south, and as his program of Islamization
became more threatening. Opposition to the sharia, especially to
the application of hudud (sing., hadd), or Islamic
penalties, such as the public amputation of hands for theft, was
not confined to the south and had been a principal factor leading
to the popular uprising of April 1985 that overthrew the
government of Jaafar an Nimeiri. Although implementation of the
sharia remained suspended for the next four years, northern
politicians were reluctant to abolish Islamic law outright,
whereas southern leaders hesitated to abandon armed struggle
unless the legal system were secularized. The continuing conflict
in the south prevented progress on economic development projects
and eventually compelled the Sadiq al Mahdi government in the
spring of 1989 to consider concessions on the applicability of
sharia law as demanded by the SPLM.
On the eve of an historic government-SPLM conference to
discuss the future status of Islamic law in Sudan, a group of
military officers carried out a coup in the name of the newly
constituted RCC-NS. Their intervention in the political process
halted further steps toward a possible cancellation of the
suspended but still valid sharia. Although the RCC-NS initially
announced that the sharia would remain frozen, the government
encouraged courts, at least in the north, to base decisions on
Islamic law. SPLM leaders charged that the government was unduly
influenced by Islamic political groups and announced that the
SPLA would not lay down its arms and discuss political grievances
until the government abrogated the sharia. Because neither the
RCC-NS nor its southern opponents were prepared to compromise on
the sharia, the military conflict continued in the south, where
the government's authority was limited to the larger towns and
the SPLA or other militia controlled most of the secondary towns
and rural areas.
Although the RCC-NS banned all political parties following
the 1989 coup, members of this ruling body have not concealed
their personal and ideological ties to the National Islamic Front
(NIF), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. RCC-NS policy
decisions on many social, as well as political and economic
issues, reflected strong NIF influence. For example, the RCC-NS
purged hundreds of army personnel, senior civil servants, and
teachers perceived as being insufficiently Islamic, decreed that
men and women must sit in separate sections on public buses, and
forbade any Sudanese female to leave the country without the
written consent of her father or legal male guardian. Finally, on
New Year's Eve 1990-91, the government announced that the sharia
would be applied in the north.
The RCC-NS policies aroused antagonism in the north as well
as the south, and consequently political instability has
continued to dominate Sudan. During 1990, for example, the Bashir
government announced that at least two alleged coup attempts
within the military had been foiled. In addition, there were
several instances of antigovernment demonstrations being
violently suppressed. Opposition politicians, international
organizations, and foreign governments all accused the government
of systematic human rights abuses in its efforts to quell
dissent. Opposition to the Bashir government induced exiled
leaders of banned political parties in the north and SPLA leaders
in the south to meet on a number of occasions to work out a joint
strategy for confronting the regime. Consequently, in mid-1991
the regime's stability seemed fragile and its political future
uncertain.
Further clouding the regime's prospects for stability was the
threat of famine in many parts of the vast country as a result of
the drought, which had been sporadic throughout the 1980s and
particularly severe since 1990, and of the continuing civil war.
The Bashir government was preoccupied with the political
ramifications of food shortages because it was acutely aware that
riots by hungry Sudanese were one of the factors that had brought
down the Nimeiri regime in 1985. Nevertheless, the government was
determined that any food aid the country received not reach SPLAcontrolled areas. The efforts to mix politics and humanitarian
assistance angered foreign aid donors and international agencies,
resulting in food shipment suspensions that have aggravated the
food shortages.
Data as of June 1991
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