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Abstract
Following the secession of South Sudan, Northern Sudan finds itself at a crossroads. Governed since 1989 by the Al-Ingaz regime, Khartoum's political elites are under pressure from the international community and the ordinary Sudanese people to democratise and ditch the autocratic Islamism that has been their hallmark for decades. Omar Al-Bashir and Ali Osman Taha face fierce criticism for presiding over the break-up of Africa's biggest country. Simultaneously, key constituencies in the security services and business community are signalling discontent too, lobbying instead for a further centralisation and the abandonment of the grudging liberalisation that started after Hassan Al-Turabi's removal from power in 1999–2000. Based on interviews with key movement and party members, this article assesses to what extent the Comprehensive Peace Agreement has changed the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Harakat Al-Islamiyya. It examines the internal dynamics within Khartoum's power bloc and argues that the current regime has in many ways become, ‘Al-Ingaz without its Islamic soul’, dixit one senior Islamist. Despite Bashir's controversial speech in Gedarif in December 2010, during which he called for Sharia and an end to multiculturalism in Northern Sudan, NCP ideologues are eyeing a strategic redeployment of political capital and economic investment, seeking to become an ordinary hegemonic party.
Notes
1. Interview in Khartoum September 2011.
2. Interview in Khartoum September 2011.
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4. Roland Paris and Timothy D. Sisk, The Dilemmas of Statebuilding (London: Routledge 2009) p.360.
5. Denisa Kostovicova and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic (eds), Persistent State Weakness in the Global Age (Aldershot: Ashgate 2009).
6. David Keen, Complex Emergencies (Cambridge: Polity Press 2008).
7. Will Jones, Ricardo Soares de Oliveira and Harry Verhoeven, Africa's Illiberal State-Builders. Working Paper, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 2013, online at < http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/publications/working-papers-folder_contents/wp89-africas-illiberal-state-builders-160113.pdf/view>.
8. Richard Caplan, International Governance of War-Torn Territories (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005).
9. Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, ‘Illiberal Peacebuilding in Angola’, Journal of Modern African Studies 49/2 (2011) pp.287–314.
10. Phil Clark, The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010).
11. Jonathan Goodhand, Jonathan Spencer and Benedikt Korf (eds), Conflict and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka (London: Routledge 2011).
12. Interview with an Egyptian intelligence operative outside Egypt, September 2011.
13. Harvey Glickman and Emma Rodman, ‘Islamism in Sudan’, Middle Eastern Review of International Affairs 12/3 (2008).
14. Douglas Johnson, ‘The Sudan People's Liberation Army and the Problem of Factionalism’ in Christopher Clapham (ed.) African Guerrillas (Oxford: James Currey 1998) pp.53–72.
15. Interviews with Ali Geneif, Minister of Agriculture (1989–97), and Yacoub AbuShora, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation (1989–96), December 2010 and February 2011.
16. Douglas Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (Oxford: James Currey 2003) p.56.
17. Abdelwahab El Affendi, Turabi's Revolution (London: Grey Seal Books 1991) pp.58–84.
18. Oliver Roy, L'Echec de l'Islam politique (Paris: Le Seuil 1992).
19. Gilles Kepel, Jihad. The Trail of Political Islam (London: IB Tauris 2002) pp.179–84.
20. Elfatih Shaeeldin and Richard Brown, Towards an Understanding of Islamic Banking in the Sudan. The Case of Faisal Islamic Bank (Khartoum: Khartoum University Press 1985).
21. Jay O'Brien, ‘Sowing the Seeds of Famine’, Review of African Political Economy 33 (1985) pp.23–32.
22. The final years of Nimeiri's rule were marked by the ever more erratic behaviour of the President, who was influenced by a handful of Sufi preachers with unorthodox, extreme interpretations of Sharia (the Divine Path) and its legal expression (Islamic Law); while Turabi's NIF is often faulted for introducing a harsh interpretation of Sharia, it was Nimeiri and his cabal of Sufi preachers who designed and implemented most radical measures.
23. Abdallahi Ali Ibrahim, ‘A Theology of Modernity. Hasan Al-Turabi and Islamic Renewal in Sudan’, Africa Today 46/3–4 (1999) pp.195–222.
24. Abdullahi Gallab, ‘The Insecure Rendezvous Between Islam and Totalitarianism’, Arab Studies Quarterly 23 (2001) pp.98–103.
25. Gabriel Warburg, ‘Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995) pp.219–36.
26. Interviews with Shura Council members, December 2010–May 2011.
27. Interviews with Ali Al-Haj, Ghazi Salah-ud-Din, Hassan Rizzig, Qutbi Al-Mahdi, Mustafa Idriss, Hassan Makki and other Islamist leaders in Khartoum and London, February 2011–October 2012.
28. Interview with Hassan Al-Turabi, December 2010.
29. Interviews with senior Tigrayan People's Liberation Front officials and Sudanese diplomats, May 2010–June 2011.
30. Interview in Khartoum, September 2011.
31. Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, Conversations with Hassan Al-Turabi (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1998).
32. Interviews in Khartoum with Islamists on both sides of the Bashir–Turabi divide, December 2010–October 2012.
33. Interviews with several of the protagonists in Addis, Khartoum and elsewhere, April 2010–June 2011.
34. Interviews in Sudan, April 2010–October 2012; also Roland Marchal, ‘Le Soudan d'un conflit à l'autre’, Les Etudes du CERI, No. 107–108 (2004).
35. ‘Garang manoeuvres’, Africa Confidential 38/28 Feb. 1997. pp.3–4.
36. Alex De Waal, Is Sudan a Post-Islamist State? Jun. 2008, online at < http://blogs.ssrc.org/sudan/2008/06/01/is-sudan-a-post-islamist-state-iii/>.
37. Interviews with key HI figures, April 2010–May 2011.
38. Philip Roessler, ‘Political Instability, Threat Displacement and Civil War: Darfur as a Theory-Building Case’, Working Paper, 2011, online at < http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id = 1909228>.
39. During a meeting of the Shura Council on 10 December 1998, a document critiquing the shrinking of democratic space within the HI since the coup of June 1989 was submitted after having been signed by 10 senior movement members; the document suggested a transfer of powers from secretary-general Hassan Al-Turabi to President Bashir and became a catalyst in the power struggle, indirectly heavily criticising the Sheikh most notably for a lack of shura and his unwillingness to build stronger institutions to underpin Al-Ingaz’ rule.
40. Interview in Khartoum, December 2010.
41. African Rights, Facing Genocide. The Nuba of Sudan (London: African Rights 1995); Adam M. Abdelmoula, ‘The “Fundamentalist” Agenda for Human Rights. The Sudan and Algeria’, Arab Studies Quarterly 18/1 (1996) pp.1–6.
42. Abdullahi Gallab, The First Islamist Republic. Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan (London: Ashgate 2008).
43. Interviews in Khartoum, December 2010–October 2011.
44. Harry Verhoeven, ‘Climate Change, Development and Conflict in Sudan. Neo-Malthusian global narratives and local power struggles’, Development and Change, 42/3 (2011) pp.679–707; Harry Verhoeven and Luke A. Patey, ‘Sudan's Islamists and the Post-Oil Era: Washington's Role after Southern Secession’, Middle East Policy 18/3 (2011) pp.133–43; Harry Verhoeven, ‘“Dams are Development”: China, the Al-Ingaz Regime and the Political Economy of the Sudanese Nile’ in Dan Large and Luke A. Patey (eds) Sudan Looks East. China, India and the Politics of Asian Alternatives (Oxford: James Currey 2011) pp.120–38.
45. Abdelrahim Hamdi, Al-waraqa al-iqtisādiyya li'l-mu'tamar alwatani al-hākim bi'l-Sudan (Khartoum 2005); for a translation of the paper by Abdullahi At-Tom, see online at < http://lsb.scu.edu/ ∼ mkevane/sudan/ssanewsletter%20Nov%202005%20v1.pdf>.
46. Committee of Anti Dal-Kajbar Dams, The Sudanese Government Plan of Demographic Engineering of Nubia & the Chinese & Egyptian Connection to it (Khartoum: Committee of Anti Dal-Kajbar Dams 2011).
47. Interviews with Abdelrahim Hamdi in April 2010 and February 2011.
48. Verhoeven, ‘Climate Change, Development and Conflict in Sudan’ (note 44) pp.695–700.
49. Interviews with Sudan's top civil servants (level of Undersecretary, Chief Technical Advisor and Director-General) in the Ministries of Water Resources and Irrigation, Agriculture, International Cooperation and the Higher Council for Environment and Natural Resources, September 2009–October 2012.
50. Interviews in Khartoum, August 2009–September 2011.
51. Verhoeven, ‘Climate Change, Development and Conflict in Sudan’ (note 44) pp.685–703.
52. Harry Verhoeven, Water, Civilisation and Power: Sudan's Hydropolitical Economy and the Al-Ingaz Revolution, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, Oxford (2012).
53. Dam Implementation Unit, Merowe Dam Project: A Battle of Dignity and Independence of Decision (Khartoum: DIU 2010); For a discussion of China's role in Sudan's Dam Programme – Verhoeven, ‘Dams are Development’ (note 44).
54. Eckart Woertz, ‘Arab Food, Water and the Big Gulf Landgrab that Wasn't’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs 18/1 (2011) pp.119–32.
55. Interview with Abdelrahim Hamdi, April 2010.
56. Interviews with senior HI figures, April 2010–March 2011.
57. J. Milliard Burr and Robert O. Collins, Sudan in Turmoil (American Edition) (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers 2010) pp.254–68.
58. Interview in Khartoum, March 2011.
59. Interview with Amin Hassan Omer, September 2011.
60. Interviews with Abdelrahim Hamdi and Egyptian intelligence sources, February–September 2011.
61. ‘Khartoum drops support for Turabi's international Islamic movement’, AFP, Khartoum, 11 Feb. 2000.
62. Interviews with the Al-Ingaz leadership and senior Egyptian sources, December 2010–June 2011.
63. Interviews with Egyptian diplomats and in Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May–June 2011.
64. Dan Large and Luke A. Patey (eds), Sudan Looks East (Oxford: James Currey 2011).
65. World Bank, The Road Towards Sustainable and Broad-Based Growth (Washington, DC: WB 2009).
66. International Crisis Group, Divisions in Sudan's Ruling Party and the Threat to the Country's Future Stability (Brussels: ICG 2011).
67. Interviews with Al-Ingaz economic strategists: Hamdi, Sabir Mohamed Hassan, Ali Geneif and others, April 2010–May 2011.
68. Alex De Waal, ‘Sudan's Choices. Scenarios Beyond the CPA’ in Heinrich Böll Foundation (ed.) Sudan. No Easy Way Ahead (Berlin: HBF 2010) pp.16–18.
69. Interviews with Mohamed Al-Amin Khalifa, Joseph Malwal Dong and Atim Garang, December 2010.
70. Oystein H. Rolandsen, ‘A Quick Fix? A Retrospective Analysis of the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement’, Review of African Political Economy 38/130 (2011) pp.551–64.
71. Richard Cockett, Sudan: Darfur and the Failure of an African State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2010).
72. Hilda Johnson, Waging Peace in Sudan (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press 2011) p.18.
73. Interviews with Ghazi Salah-ud-Din and Amin Hassan Omer, September–October 2011.
74. Interview with one of Khartoum's longest serving cabinet ministers, October 2011.
75. Julie Flint and Alex De Waal, Darfur. A New History of a Long War (London: Zed Books 2007) pp.30–32.
76. Interviews with HI leaders and NCP politicians, December 2010–November 2011.
77. Interviews with the post-Turabi HI leadership, September–October 2011.
78. Interviews with Ghazi Salah-ud-Di, Qutbi Al-Mahdi and Ahmed Daak, October 2011–October 2012.
79. Interviews with several close aides to Bashir and Taha, April 2010–November 2011.
80. Johnson (note 72) pp.88–95.
81. Interviews with several close aides to Bashir and Taha and prominent Al-Ingaz leaders, April 2010–October 2012.
82. Interviews with Ghazi Salah-ud-Din, Amin Hassan Omer, Abdelrahman Al-Khalifa, Sabir Mohamed Hassan, Mohamed Mahjoub Haroon and other members of the NCP negotiating teams in 2002–04 and 2010–12, December 2010–December 2011.
83. Interviews with several members of Sudan's presidential family, June 2012–October 2012.
84. This is exemplified by Gallab (note 42).
85. Interview in London, November 2011.
86. Verhoeven, ‘Climate Change, Development and Conflict in Sudan’ (note 44) pp.679–707; Verhoeven and Patey (note 44); Harry Verhoeven, Black Gold for Blue Gold? Sudan's Oil, Ethiopia's Water and Regional Integration (London: Royal Institute for International Affairs and Chatham House 2011) pp.12–17.
87. Interview with Qutbi Al-Mahdi, September 2011.
88. Interview in Khartoum, June 2011.
89. Roessler (note 38).
90. Flint and De Waal (note 75) p.32.
91. International Crisis Group, Sudan: Preventing Implosion (Nairobi/Brussels: ICG 2009).
92. Interview in Khartoum, October 2011.
93. Hafiz Mohammed, Corruption and the Election. Making Sense of Sudan website, Apr. 2010, online at < http://blogs.ssrc.org/sudan/2010/04/20/corruption-and-the-election/>; Carter Center, Observing Sudan's 2010 National Elections (Atlanta: Carter Center 2010).
94. Interview in Khartoum, September 2011.
95. Harry Verhoeven, ‘The President and His Islamists: Friends No More in Sudan’, Oct. 2012, online at < http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/20121023151652134610.html>.
96. Interview with Ahmed Daak, July 2011.