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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
Figure 1. Adminstrative Divisions of Sudan, 1991
SUDAN, LIKE MANY AFRICAN COUNTRIES, consists of numerous
ethnic groups. Unlike most states, however, Sudan has two
distinct divisions: the north, which is largely Arab and Muslim,
and the south, which consists predominantly of black Nilotic
peoples, some of whom are members of indigenous faiths and others
who are Christians. British policy during the Anglo-Egyptian
condominium (1899-1955) intensified the rift because Britain
established separate administrations for the two areas and
forbade northerners to enter the south. In the 1990s, many
southerners continued to fear being ruled by northerners, who
lacked familiarity with their beliefs and ethnic traditions and
sought to impose northern institutions on them.
Given its proximity to Egypt and the centrality of the Nile
River that both countries share, it is not surprising that
historically Egypt has influenced Sudan significantly especially
the northern part of the country. Ancient Cush, located in
present-day northern Sudan, was strongly influenced by Egypt for
about 1,000 years beginning ca. 2700 B.C. Although the Hyksos
kings of Egypt temporarily broke off contact, Cush subsequently
was incorporated into Egypt's New Kingdom as a province about
1570 B.C. and remained under Egyptian control until about 1100
B.C. In a move that reversed the pattern of Egyptian dominance, a
Cushite king conquered Upper Egypt in 730 B.C.; in 590 B.C.,
however, the Cushite capital was sacked by the Egyptians and the
court moved farther south along the Nile to Meroe.
By the sixth century A.D., Meroe had broken up into three
kingdoms collectively referred to as Nubia. The people of Nubia
adopted Christianity and were ministered to largely by Egyptian
clergy. The kingdoms reached their peak in the ninth and tenth
centuries. Prior to the coming of Islam, the people had contact
with the Arabs primarily in the form of trade. Sudan became known
as a source of ivory, gold, gems, aromatic gum, and cattle, all
products that were transported to markets in Egypt and Arabia.
Following the Muslim conquest of the area, in 1276 the Mamluk
rulers of Egypt gave Nubia to a Muslim overlord. The Nubians
themselves converted to Islam only gradually; a majority of them
remained Christian until the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
During the sixteenth century, the Muslim religious brotherhoods
spread through northern Nubia, and the Ottoman Empire exerted its
jurisdiction through military leaders whose rule endured for
three centuries.
In 1820 Muhammad Ali, who ruled Egypt on behalf of the
Ottomans, sent 4,000 troops to Sudan to clear the area of
Mamluks. The invasion resulted in Ottoman-Egyptian rule of Sudan
from 1821 to 1885; the rule was accompanied by the introduction
of secular courts and a large bureaucracy. The 1880s saw the rise
of the Mahdist movement, consisting of disciples of Muhammad
Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah, a Sudanese who proclaimed himself
the Mahdi or "guided one," and launched a jihad against the
Ottoman rulers. Britain perceived the Mahdists as a threat to
stability in the region and sent first Charles George Gordon and
then Herbert Kitchener to Sudan to assert British control. The
British conquest led to the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian
condominium and, initially, to military rule of Sudan, followed
by civilian administration. Britain largely ignored southern
Sudan until after World War I, leaving Western missionary
societies to establish schools and medical facilities in the
area.
After World War I, Sudanese nationalism, which favored either
independence or union with Egypt, gathered popular support.
Recognizing the inevitable, Britain signed a self-determination
agreement with Sudan in 1952, followed by the Anglo-Egyptian
accord in 1953 that set up a three-year transition period to
self-government. Sudan proclaimed its independence January 1,
1956. The country had two short-lived civilian coalition
governments before a coup in November 1958 brought in a military
regime under Ibrahim Abbud and a collective body known as the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Abbud's government sought to
arabize the south and in 1964 expelled all western missionaries.
Northern repression of the south led to open civil war in the
mid-1960s and the rise of various southern resistance groups, the
most powerful of which was the Anya Nya guerrillas, who sought
autonomy. Civilian rule returned to Sudan between 1964 and 1969,
and political parties reappeared. In the 1965 elections, Muhammad
Ahmad Mahjub became prime minister, succeeded in June 1966 by
Sadiq al Mahdi, a descendant of the Mahdi. In the 1968 elections,
no party had a clear majority, and a coalition government took
office under Mahjub as prime minister.
In May 1969, the Free Officers' Movement led by Jaafar an
Nimeiri staged a coup and established the Revolutionary Command
Council (RCC). In July 1971, a short-lived procommunist military
coup occurred, but Nimeiri quickly regained control, was elected
to a six-year term as president, and abolished the RCC. Meanwhile
in the south, Joseph Lagu, a Christian, had united several
opposition elements under the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement.
In March 1972, the southern resistance movement concluded an
agreement with the Nimeiri regime at Addis Ababa, and a cease-
fire followed. A Constituent Assembly was created in August 1972
to draft a constitution at a time when the growing opposition to
military rule was reflected in strikes and student unrest.
Despite this dissent, Nimeiri was reelected for another six-year
term in 1977.
During the early stages of his new term, Nimeiri worked
toward reconciliation with the south. As the south became
stronger, however, he considered it a threat to his regime; and
in June 1983, after abolishing the Southern Regional Assembly, he
redivided the southern region into its three historic provinces.
The Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Sudanese
People's Liberation Army (SPLA), founded in 1983, opposed this
division. They intensified their opposition following the
imposition of Muslim sharia law throughout the country. In early
1985, while Nimeiri was returning from a visit to the United
States, a general strike occurred that the government could not
quell, followed by a successful military coup led by Lieutenant
General Abd ar Rahman Siwar adh Dhahab. A Transitional Military
Council was created, but the government proved incapable of
establishing a national political consensus or of dealing with
the deteriorating economic situation and the famine threatening
southern and western Sudan. In March 1986, in the Koka Dam
Declaration, the government and the SPLM called for a Sudan free
from "discrimination and disparity" and the repeal of the sharia.
Sadiq al Mahdi formed what proved to be a weak coalition
government following the April 1986 elections. An agreement with
the SPLM was signed by Sadiq al Mahdi's coalition partners at
Addis Ababa in November 1988; the agreement called for a cease-
fire and freezing the application of the sharia. Sadiq al Mahdi's
failure to end the civil war in the south or improve the economic
and famine situations led to the overthrow of the government at
the end of June 1989 by Colonel Umar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir.
Sudan's economic straits reflected its position as Africa's
largest nation geographically, but one possessed of large areas
of desert and semidesert east and west of the Nile and in the
south the world's largest swamp, As Sudd, which led to tropical
rain forests in the southernmost area. As a result, although the
Nile itself with its tributaries--the Blue Nile and the White
Nile, which joined at Khartoum--constituted a vital
communications link for the country and a source of water for
agriculture, the cultivable area of Sudan was somewhat limited.
Moreover, in years of drought the agriculturally productive
sector declines appreciably, causing the likelihood of severe
famine.
In accordance with the focal role played by the Nile, about
one-third of Sudan's 1990 estimated population of 25 million
lived around Khartoum and in Al Awsat State. The latter included
the rich agricultural region of Al Jazirah, south of Khartoum
between the Blue Nile and the White Nile. Although only one-fifth
of the population lived in urban areas, two-thirds of the total
population resided within 300 kilometers of Khartoum. About 600
ethnic groups speaking around 400 languages were represented.
Arabic was the official language of the country, with English
spoken widely in the south. Ethnic statistics for the 1990s were
lacking, but in 1983 Arabs constituted about two-fifths of the
total population, representing the majority in the north where
the next largest group was the Nile Nubians. Much of the
remainder of Sudan's population consisted of non-Muslim Nilotic
peoples living in southern Sudan or in the hilly areas west of
the Blue Nile or near the Ethiopian border. Among the largest of
these ethnic groups were the Dinka and the Nuer, followed by the
Shilluk. Many of these groups migrated with their herds, seeking
areas of rainfall, and therefore it was difficult to establish
their numbers accurately.
In the early 1990s, agriculture and livestock raising
provided the major sources of livelihood for about four-fifths of
the population. Wherever possible, Nile waters were used for
irrigation, and the government has sponsored a number of
irrigation projects. Commercial crops such as cotton, peanuts,
sugarcane, sorghum, and sesame were grown, and gum arabic was
obtained from trees. Most of these products along with livestock
destined primarily for Saudi Arabia also represented Sudan's
major exports.
Manufacturing concentrated on food-processing enterprises and
textiles, as well as some import substitution industries such as
cement, chemicals, and fertilizers. Industry, however,
contributed less than one-tenth to gross domestic product
(
GDP-- see Glossary)
in the early 1990s, in comparison with
agriculture's more than three-tenths contribution. Sudan was
among the world's poorest countries according to the
World Bank (see Glossary),
with an annual per capita income of US$310 in FY
(
fiscal year--see Glossary) 1991.
Several factors accounted for the relative economic
insignificance of the industrial sector. Historically, during the
colonial period, Britain had discouraged industrialization,
preferring to keep Sudan as a source of raw materials and a
market for British manufactured goods. Following independence, a
paucity of development programs as well as better employment
opportunities in the Persian Gulf states have contributed to a
shortage of skilled workers. In the early 1990s, Sudan also had
limited energy sources--only small amounts of petroleum in the
south between Kurdufan State and Bahr al Ghazal State and a few
dams producing hydroelectric power. In addition, transportation
facilities; were limited; there existed only a sketchy network of
railroads and roads, many of the latter being impassable in the
rainy season. Inland waterways could also be difficult to use
because of low water, cataracts, or swamps. The lack of a good
transportation network hindered not only the marketing of produce
and consumer goods but also the processing of such minerals as
gold, chrome, asbestos, gypsum, mica, and uranium. The lack of
capital accumulation also limited financial resources and
necessitated funding by the government, which itself had
inadequate revenues. Some northern Sudanese hoped that the rise
of Islamic banks might result in more capital being invested in
private industrial development, especially after the World Bank
refused to extend further loans to the country.
Sudan's problems with the World Bank occurred initially in
1984. The World Bank cited Sudan's large external debt--in June
1992 the debt was about US$15.3 billion, of which approximately
two-thirds represented payment arrears--and its failure to take
steps to restructure its economy as reasons for denying credit.
The large debt resulted primarily from the nationalization of
major sectors of the economy in the 1970s and the use of funds
borrowed from abroad to finance enterprises with low
productivity. The government needed to use its revenues to meet
the losses of these enterprises. In addition, the civil war, the
prolonged drought, widespread malnutrition, famine, and the
hundreds of thousands of refugees further sapped the economy.
Not until June 1990 did the government act to reform the
economy by instituting a three-year (FY 1991-93) National
Economic Salvation Program. The program aimed to reduce the
budget deficit, privatize nationalized enterprises, heighten the
role of the private sector, and remove controls on prices,
profits, and exports. In October 1991, other steps toward
economic reform included devaluing the official exchange rate
from LSd4.5 to LSd15 (for value of the
Sudanese pound--see Glossary)
to the United States dollar and reducing subsidies on
sugar and petroleum products. In February 1992, in a further
liberalization of the economy, all price controls were removed
and official exchange rates devalued to LSd90 to the United
States dollar. Officials hoped that these measures would not
cause the inflation rate, which was about 115 percent per year as
of March 1992, to worsen. In a further move designed to curb
inflation, Sudan instituted a new currency, the dinar, worth ten
Sudanese pounds, in May 1992.
Although the World Bank refused to authorize new loans for
Sudan, in July 1991 the Bank granted Sudan US$16 million for the
Emergency Drought Recovery Project. In addition, in the spring of
1992 Sudan received an agricultural credit of US$42 million from
the African Development Bank and some bilateral aid from Iran and
Libya. Like the World Bank, the United States and the European
Community had suspended loans to Sudan but had provided some
humanitarian assistance; the value of United States humanitarian
aid in 1991 was estimated to exceed US$150 million.
Nevertheless, the drought, the famine, and the massive influx
into the north of refugees from the south as a result of the
civil war caused the country's already precarious economy to
deteriorate further and complicated the government's ability to
rule.
Since the military coup of June 30, 1989, the constitution
had been suspended, political parties banned, and the legislative
assembly dissolved. For practical purposes, in mid-1992 Bashir
made political decisions in his capacity as president or head of
state, prime minister, commander in chief, and chairman of the
legislative body created by the 1989 coup, the Revolutionary
Command Council for National Salvation (RCC-NS). The RCC-NS
consisted of fifteen members who had carried out the coup along
with Bashir. Several members had ties to the National Islamic
Front (NIF), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, an
Islamist (sometimes seen as fundamentalist) activist group.
Although political parties were illegal under the Bashir
government, the NIF represented the equivalent of a party. The
nature of the relationship between Bashir and the NIF was not
clear. Some well informed Western observers considered Bashir to
be a tool of the NIF in spreading its Islamist programs and its
strong advocacy of the imposition of the sharia. Other observers
believed that Bashir was using the NIF for his own purposes. The
leading figure in the NIF was Hassan Abd Allah at Turabi, an
Oxford-educated Muslim religious scholar and lawyer, who strongly
advocated the spread of Islamism in the Muslim world. As Turabi
was ending his tour of the United States and Ottawa in late May
in the spring of 1992, he was attacked in Canada by a Sudanese
opponent of the NIF and was seriously injured. Whereas by late
July Turabi had resumed meetings with government and Islamic
officials and speeches to Muslim groups in Khartoum and in
London, the effects of his impaired health on the NIF, the RCC-
NS, and the political scene were uncertain in mid-August.
In addition to their legislative functions, members of the
RCC-NS shared with Bashir and members of the Council of Ministers
functions traditionally associated with the executive branch,
such as heading government ministries. The Council of Ministers
included civilians as well as military officers and in practice
was subordinate to the RCC-NS. In April 1991, probably in
response to growing criticism of its authoritarian rule, the RCC-
NS convened a constitutional conference. However, major
opposition groups boycotted the conference. As on previous
occasions, the principal intractable problem proved to be the
inability of Muslims and non-Muslims to agree on the role of
Islamic law as the basis of the legal system at both the national
and local levels.
Another vexing problem historically was the relationship of
regional and local governmental bodies to the national
government. The Nimeiri regime had created a pyramidal structure
with councils at various levels. The councils were theoretically
elective, but in practice the only legal party at the time, the
Sudan Socialist Union, dominated them. In February 1991, the RCC-
NS introduced a federal structure, creating nine states that
resembled the nine provinces of Sudan's colonial and early
independence years. The states were subdivided into provinces and
local government areas, with officials at all levels appointed by
the RCC-NS. Although the governors of the three southern states
were southerners, power lay in the hands of the deputy governors
who were Muslim members of the NIF and who controlled finance,
trade, and cooperatives. Below them the most important
ministerial posts in the southern states also were held by
Muslims, including the post of minister of education, culture,
youth, guidance, and information.
In a further step, in mid-February 1992, Bashir announced the
formation of an appointed 300-member Transitional National
Assembly to include all RCC-NS members, federal cabinet
ministers, and state governors. Bashir also indicated in March
that beginning in May popular conferences based on religious
values would be held in the north and in "secure areas" of the
south to elect chairmen and members of such conferences. The
election process would create a "general mobilization of all
political institutions." Although the agendas for conferences
over the succeeding ten-year period would be based on national
issues set by the head of state and local issues raised by the
governors, the government touted the process as one that would
"fulfill the revolution's promise to hand over full power to the
people." The proposed conference committees were somewhat
reminiscent of the popular committees established by the Popular
Defence Act of October 1989. Initially, these popular committees
had the function of overseeing rationing, but their mandated was
broadened to include powers such as arresting enemies of the
state.
The control exerted by the RCC-NS over various parts of the
country varied. For example, western Sudan, especially Darfur,
enjoyed considerable autonomy, which at times approached anarchy,
as a result of the various armed ethnic groups and the refugee
population that existed within it. The situation was even more
confused in the south, where until 1991 the government had
controlled the major centers and the SPLM occupied the smaller
towns and rural areas. The government launched a military
campaign in 1991-92 that succeeded in recapturing many military
posts that had served as SPLM and SPLA strongholds. The
government's success resulted in part from the acquisition of
substantial military equipment financed by Iran, including
weapons and aircraft bought from China. Another reason for the
successes of the government forces was the split that occurred in
August 1991 within the SPLA between Garang's Torit faction
(mainly Dinka from southern Al Istiwai) and the Nasir group
(mainly Nuer and other non-Dinka from northern Al Istiwai). The
two groups launched military attacks against each other, thereby
not only destroying their common front against the government but
also killing numerous civilians. The Nasir group had defected
from the main SPLA body and tried unsuccessfully to overthrow
John Garang over human rights violations, Garang's authoritarian
leadership style, and his favoritism toward his ethnic group, the
Dinka. Abortive peace talks with representatives of both groups
as well as the government were held in Abuja, Nigeria, in May and
early June 1992. (In December 1989 former United States president
Jimmy Carter had attempted without success to mediate peace talks
between the government and the SPLA.) The Torit faction sought a
secular state and an end to the sharia; the Nasir group wanted
self-determination or independence for southern Sudan. During the
talks, both groups agreed to push for self-determination, but
when the government rejected this proposal, they decided instead
to discuss Nigeria's power-sharing plan.
A major basis of southern dissidence was strong opposition to
the imposition of the sharia--the SPLA had vowed not to lay down
its arms until the sharia was abrogated. The other source of
concern was the fear of northern pressures to arabize the
education system (the Bashir regime had declared Arabic the
language of instruction in the south in early 1992), government
offices, and society in general. These fears had led to the civil
war, which, with a respite between 1972 and 1983, had been
ongoing since 1955.
The Bashir government's need for assistance in pursuing the
war in the south determined to a large degree Sudan's foreign
policy in the 1990s. Bashir recognized that the measures taken in
the south, which outside observers termed human rights abuses,
had alienated the West. Historically, the West had been the
source of major financial support for Sudan. Furthermore, Sudan's
siding with Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War had antagonized
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, principal donors for Sudan's military
and economic needs in the preceding several decades.
Bashir therefore turned to Iran, especially for military aid,
and, to a lesser extent, to Libya. Iranian president Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani visited Sudan in December 1991, accompanied by
several cabinet ministers. The visit led to an Iranian promise of
military and economic assistance. Details of the reported aid
varied, but in July 1992, in addition to the provision of 1
million tons of oil annually for military and civil consumption,
aid was thought to include the financing of Sudanese weapons and
aircraft purchases from China in the amount of at least US$300
million. Some accounts alleged that 3,000 Iranian soldiers had
also arrived in January 1992 to engage in the war in the south
and that Iran had been granted use of Port Sudan facilities and
permission to establish a communications monitoring station in
the area; these reports were not verified as of mid-August 1992,
however.
The only other country with which Sudan had close relations
in the early 1990s was Libya. Following an economic agreement the
two countries signed in July 1990, head of state Muammar al
Qadhafi paid an official visit to Khartoum in October. Bashir
paid a return visit to Libya in November 1991. Libyan officials
arrived in Khartoum for talks on unity, primarily economic unity,
in January 1992.
While the government was cultivating relations with Iran and
Libya, the SPLM and SPLA were seeking other sources of aid in
Africa. They had lost their major source of support when the
government of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia was overthrown in
May 1991. The SPLM and SPLA subsequently sought help from Kenya,
Uganda, and several other African countries, thereby creating
tensions between those nations and the Bashir regime.
Furthermore, Sudan's relations with Egypt had soured in 1991 as a
result of the Bashir government's failure to support Egypt's
position in the Persian Gulf War. One manifestation of the
deteriorating relations occurred in April 1992 when Sudan became
involved in a border confrontation with Egypt. The disagreement
resulted from an oil concession Sudan had granted to a subsidiary
of Canada's International Petroleum Corporation for exploration
of a 38,400-square-kilometer area onshore and offshore near
Halaib on the Red Sea coast, an area also claimed by Egypt.
In the matter of determining Sudan's foreign policy as well
as domestic policy, the military had played a major role since
independence. Initially, the military was seen as being free from
specific ethnic or religious identification and thus in a
position to accomplish what civilians could not, namely to
resolve economic problems and to bring peace to the south. Such
hopes proved futile, however. The growing civil war in the south
from 1955-72 and again from 1983 to the present, as well as the
rising strength of the SPLA and the SPLM posed tremendous
problems for the military and for the internal security forces.
The civil war was extremely costly; according to one Sudanese
government estimate, it cost approximately US$1 million per day.
Furthermore, it disrupted the economy--Bashir stated in February
1992 that the loss of oil revenues alone since 1986 amounted to
more than US$6 billion. In addition, based on United States
Department of State estimates in late 1991, war had displaced as
many as 4.5 million Sudanese.
To counter the SPLA, the government armed various non-Arab
southern ethnic groups as militias as early as 1985. In addition,
in October 1989 the Bashir government created a new paramilitary
body, the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) to promote the Islamist
aims of the government and the NIF. Although the Bashir regime
prominently featured the PDF's participation in the 1991-92
campaign in the south, informed observers believed their role
lacked military significance.
In view of the ongoing civil war, internal security was a
major concern of the Bashir regime, which reportedly had been the
object of coup attempts in 1990, 1991, and 1992. In this regard,
the government faced problems on several fronts. There was the
outright dissidence or rebellion of several southern ethnic
groups. There was also the creation in January 1991 of an
opposition abroad in the form of a government in exile. This
body, called the National Democratic Alliance, was headed by
Lieutenant General Fathi Ahmad Ali, formerly commander of the
armed forces under Sadiq al Mahdi. There also was increasing
opposition in the north on the part of those who favored a
secular state, including professional persons, trade union
leaders, and other modernizers. Such persons opposed the
application of Islamic hudud punishments, the growing
restrictions on the activities and dress of women, and the
increasing authoritarianism of the government as reflected, for
example, in the repression of criticism through censorship,
imprisonment, and death sentences. On a wider scale, members of
the public in the north staged protests in February 1992 against
the price increases on staples after price supports were removed.
As a result of the repressive measures taken by the
government and the actions of armed government militias in the
south as well as retaliatory measures of the SPLA forces, the
human rights group Africa Watch estimated that at least 500,000
civilian deaths had occurred between 1986 and the end of 1989.
The overall number of deaths between 1983 and mid-1992 was far
greater, an outcome not only of the civil war, but also of the
famine and drought in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In late
1989, the government, which has considered famine relief efforts
a political football, ended its cooperation with relief efforts
from abroad because it feared such measures were strengthening
southern resistance. The pressure of world public opinion,
however, obliged Sudan to allow relief efforts to resume in 1990.
The United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) had
initiated Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) in March 1989, which had
delivered more than 110,000 tons of food aid to southern Sudan
before it was obliged by renewed hostilities to close down
operations in October 1989. OLS II was launched in late March
1990, via the UN and the International Committee of the Red
Cross, to bring in food flights via Kenya and Uganda. In the
spring of 1990, WFP indicated it was helping 4.2 million people
in Sudan: 1.8 million refugees in Khartoum; 1.4 million people in
rural areas of the south; 600,000 who had sought refuge in
southern towns; and 400,000 in the "transition zone" in Darfur
and Kurdufan, between the north and the south.
In addition to these sources of suffering, the government,
beginning in the 1980s, had undertaken campaigns to destroy the
Dinka and the Fur and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur. As of 1991
the Bashir regime was also using armed militias to undertake
depopulation campaigns against the Nuba in southern Kurdufan.
Moreover, the government had to deal with the return in 1991 of
Sudanese citizens who had been working in Iraq and Kuwait;
according to estimates of the International Labour Organisation,
such persons numbered at least 150,000. Finally, during late
November 1991 and early 1992, the government forcibly uprooted
more than 400,000 non-Arab southern squatters, who had created
shanty towns in the outskirts of Khartoum, and transported them
to the desert about fifty kilometers away, creating an
international outcry.
In summary, in August 1992 the Bashir government found itself
in a very difficult position. Although the country's economic
problems had begun to be addressed, the economic situation
remained critical. At the peace negotiations in Abuja, slight
progress had been made toward ending the civil war in the south,
but the central concerns about imposition of the sharia and
arabization had not been resolved. Moreover, the regime appeared
to be facing growing dissension, not only in the south but from
elements in the north as well. These considerations raised
serious questions about the stability of the Bashir government.
August 14, 1992
Helen Chapin Metz
Data as of June 1991
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