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Sudan
Secular Political Parties
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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