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Sudan
Development of the Armed Forces
The military force that eventually became the Sudanese army was
established in 1898, when six battalions of black soldiers from
southern Sudan were recruited to serve with Britain's General
Herbert Kitchener in his campaign to retake Sudan (see Reconquest
of Sudan , ch. 1). In the succeeding thirty years, no fewer than
170 military expeditions were sent to establish order, halt intertribal
warfare, and restrain occasional messianic leaders, mostly in
Darfur in the west.
During the period of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium (1899- 1955),
participation of southerners in northern units of the Sudanese
armed forces was all but eliminated. The British had developed
a policy of administrative separation of the Muslimdominated northern
Sudan and the mostly non-Muslim south, where the separate Equatoria
Corps commanded by British officers was maintained (see The Anglo-Egyptian
Condominium, 1899-1955 , ch. 1). Sudanese troops in the north
were commanded largely by Egyptian and British commissioned officers
until an anti-British mutiny in 1924, apparently incited by Egyptian
officers, caused Egyptian troops and units to be sent home. In
1925 local forces were designated the Sudan Defence Force (SDF),
and the Sudanese assumed an increasing share of responsibility
for its command.
After 1900 the British sought to develop an indigenous officer
class among educated Sudanese, mostly from influential northern
families. Consequently, the SDF came to be viewed as a national
organization rather than as an instrument of foreign control.
The prestige of the 20,000-man SDF was enhanced by its outstanding
performance in World War II against numerically superior Italian
forces that operated from Ethiopia. In the decade between the
end of World War II and Sudan's independence, the SDF did not
grow significantly in size, but Sudanese assumed increasingly
important posts as British officers were reassigned or retired.
Sudanese officer candidates were screened and selected, but Sudanization
of the armed forces in practice meant their arabization. The underdeveloped
education system in the south produced few qualified candidates,
and most lacked fluency in Arabic, the lingua franca of the armed
services. The British had hoped to use the recruitment of southerners
into the army after World War II to spur their integration into
Sudanese national life.
On the eve of independence, in 1955 the SDF's Equatoria Corps--made
up almost entirely of southern enlisted men but increasingly commanded
by northerners as the British withdrew-- mutinied because of resentment
over northern control of national politics and institutions. Northern
troops were sent to quell the rebellion, and the Equatoria Corps
was disbanded after most of its men went into hiding and began
what became a seventeen-year struggle to achieve autonomy for
the south.
At independence in 1956, Sudan's 5,000-man army was regarded
as a highly trained, competent, and apolitical force, but its
character changed in succeeding years. To deal with the southern
insurgency, the army expanded steadily to 12,000 personnel in
1959 and it leveled off at about 50,000 in 1972. After independence,
the military--particularly the educated officer corps--lost much
of its former apolitical attitude; soldiers associated themselves
with parties and movements across the political spectrum.
Data as of June 1991
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