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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
The two most important secular political parties in the north
were the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) and the Baath. The SCP
was formed in 1944 and early established a strong support base in
universities and labor unions. Although relatively small, the SCP
had become one of the country's best organized political parties
by 1956 when Sudan obtained its independence. The SCP also was
one of the few parties that recruited members in the south. The
various religiously affiliated parties opposed the SCP, and,
consequently, the progression of civilian and military
governments alternately banned and courted the party until 1971,
when Nimeiri accused the SCP of complicity in an abortive
military coup. Nimeiri ordered the arrest of hundreds of SCP
members, and several leaders, including the secretary general,
were convicted of treason in hastily arranged trials and
summarily executed. These harsh measures effectively crippled the
SCP for many years.
Following Nimeiri's overthrow, the SCP began reorganizing,
and it won three seats in the 1986 parliamentary elections. Since
the June 1989 coup, the SCP has emerged as one of the Bashir
government's most effective internal opponents, largely through
fairly regular publication and circulation of its underground
newspaper, Al Midan. In November 1990, Babikr at Tijani at
Tayib, secretary general of the banned SCP, managed to escape
from house arrest and flee to Ethiopia.
The Baath Party of Sudan was relatively small and sided with
the Baath Party of Iraq in the major schism that divided this
pan-Arab party into pro-Iraqi and pro-Syrian factions. The Baath
remained committed to unifying Sudan with either Egypt or Libya
as an initial step in the creation of a single nation
encompassing all Arabic-speaking countries; however, the Baath's
ideological reservations about the existing regimes in those two
countries precluded active political support for this goal. The
Nimeiri and Bashir governments alternately tolerated and
persecuted the Baath. The RCC-NS, for example, arrested more than
forty-five Baathists during the summer of 1990. Restrictions
against the Baath were eased at the end of year, presumably
because Sudan supported Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
Data as of June 1991
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