Incoherent and strategic: the NIF/NCP minority policies in Sudan

ABSTRACT

When the National Islamic Front (NIF) regime came to power in Sudan in1989, the international community was alarmed. Among other things, the treatment of Sudan’s minorities was a chief concern. For instance, in his ten-hour visit to Sudan in 1993, Pope John Paul II warned against imposing Islamic law on the country’s large Christian population. The concerns about the NIF regime’s treatment of minorities were due to its ideological background, since particular interpretations of Islamic law discriminate against minorities. The paper examines the regime’s policies toward the largest ethnic minorities in Sudan. It illustrates that the regime’s treatment of minorities lacked coherence toward both Christian and Muslim ethnic groups. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the regime’s minority policies were the result of shifts in alliances that followed internal divisions within the regime. As the Islamist leadership fractured, the ruling faction sought to coopt new allies, including ethnic groups, to strengthen its position in the face of relentless opposition from ousted Islamists. The paper draws on material collected through fieldwork as well as secondary sources to make its claims.

KEYWORDS:

• Political Islam
• Sudan
• minority treatment
• Darfur
• South Sudan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This division is largely a modern construction. As De Waal (2016) illustrates, Fur identity during the independent sultanate of Dar Fur (1600–1916) followed a ‘pattern of ethnic-political absorption’ of various groups, including Bedouins and cultural Arabs (2005, 184). Fur identity, during the sultanate, was multi-ethnic.

2 With the sole exception of the second democratic period (1986–1989) when their share fell to 47 percent (Cobham 2005).

3 The marginalization of the peripheral regions has contributed to discontent among other ethnic groups across the country, such as the Beja in the East and the Nuba peoples in the Nuba Mountains. These groups and others have formed various political and armed groups in response to their marginalization and engaged in conflict with the state.

4 The interviewee suggested that Islamists’ recruitment efforts naturally focused on non-Arab tribes because these tribes were sedentary and thus better versed in Islam. He suggested that it was their sedentary lifestyles that allowed these groups to sustain centuries-old religious educational institutions, in contrast to the nomadic Arab Darfuri tribes. He stated that Arab Darfuri tribes’ knowledge of Islam was considerably lower, and that they sought non-Arab Darfuris to educate their young in the faith (Gargandi 2017).

5 It is worth noting that, nonetheless, and as argued by JEM, the NIF/NCP regime’s efforts to alter the country’s historic patterns of discrimination were not successful, as corruption and nepotism became rampant within the regime and representation of Darfuris began to decline from the mid 1990s and onwards (JEM 2000).

6 It is important to mention that there was a low-intensity insurgency from the Masalit group around the same period who had suffered the brunt of the Arab militias’ attacks. In response, Islamist Darfuris advanced a memorandum calling for the government to decisively deal with the militias. According to Kuperman (2009), the memorandum, the NIF/NCP regime’s conciliatory tone, and the rejection of non-Arab tribes to militarily mobilize against the regime pointed to the fact that non-Darfuris still hoped that the regime could effectively deal with the Arab militias.

7 The war began in 1983 when President Nimeiry (1971–1985) contravened the Addis Ababa agreement that granted the South Sudanese regional autonomy.

8 The decision to grant the South Sudanese the right to self-determination was not unanimously supported within the regime. Opposition to it came from different groups, including Southern Sudanese Islamists who remained committed to an Islamic and non-ethnic Sudan (Berridge 2021) and ideologically right-wing Islamists who still held on to the belief that South Sudan was an integral part of the Islamic republic. Support for South-Sudanese self-determination within the Islamist regime was also rooted in various motivations. While some Islamists supported the decision for pragmatic causes, others, as noted by Berridge (2021, 226), maintained that the secession would allow Sudan to unapologetically identify as Islamic and Arab.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number: 752-2016-1866].