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Sudan
Government and Politics
IN MID-1991, SUDAN was ruled by a military government that exercised
its authority through the Revolutionary Command Council for National
Salvation (RCC-NS). The chairman of the fifteenmember RCC-NS and
head of state was Lieutenant General Umar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir,
who also served as prime minister, minister of defense, and commander
in chief of the armed forces. The RCC-NS had come to power at
the end of June 1989 as a result of a coup d'état that overthrew
the democratically elected civilian government of Sadiq al Mahdi.
Although the RCC-NS initially stressed that its rule was a transitional
stage necessary to prepare the country for genuine democracy,
it banned all political party activity, arrested numerous dissidents,
and shut down most newspapers. Subsequently, members of the RCC-NS
claimed that Western-style democracy was too divisive for Sudan.
In place of parliament, the RCC-NS appointed committees to advise
the government in specialized areas, such as one concerning the
legal system to bring legislation into conformity with the sharia,
or Islamic law.
The factors that provoked the military coup, primarily the closely
intertwined issues of Islamic law and of the civil war in the
south, remained unresolved in 1991. The September 1983 implementation
of the sharia throughout the country had been controversial and
provoked widespread resistance in the predominantly non-Muslim
south. The Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its
military arm, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), were
formed in mid-1983. They became increasingly active in the wake
of President Jaafar an Nimeiri's abolition of the largely autonomous
Southern Regional Assembly and redivision of the south, and as
his program of Islamization became more threatening. Opposition
to the sharia, especially to the application of hudud
(sing., hadd), or Islamic penalties, such as the public
amputation of hands for theft, was not confined to the south and
had been a principal factor leading to the popular uprising of
April 1985 that overthrew the government of Jaafar an Nimeiri.
Although implementation of the sharia remained suspended for the
next four years, northern politicians were reluctant to abolish
Islamic law outright, whereas southern leaders hesitated to abandon
armed struggle unless the legal system were secularized. The continuing
conflict in the south prevented progress on economic development
projects and eventually compelled the Sadiq al Mahdi government
in the spring of 1989 to consider concessions on the applicability
of sharia law as demanded by the SPLM.
On the eve of an historic government-SPLM conference to discuss
the future status of Islamic law in Sudan, a group of military
officers carried out a coup in the name of the newly constituted
RCC-NS. Their intervention in the political process halted further
steps toward a possible cancellation of the suspended but still
valid sharia. Although the RCC-NS initially announced that the
sharia would remain frozen, the government encouraged courts,
at least in the north, to base decisions on Islamic law. SPLM
leaders charged that the government was unduly influenced by Islamic
political groups and announced that the SPLA would not lay down
its arms and discuss political grievances until the government
abrogated the sharia. Because neither the RCC-NS nor its southern
opponents were prepared to compromise on the sharia, the military
conflict continued in the south, where the government's authority
was limited to the larger towns and the SPLA or other militia
controlled most of the secondary towns and rural areas.
Although the RCC-NS banned all political parties following the
1989 coup, members of this ruling body have not concealed their
personal and ideological ties to the National Islamic Front (NIF),
the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. RCC-NS policy decisions
on many social, as well as political and economic issues, reflected
strong NIF influence. For example, the RCC-NS purged hundreds
of army personnel, senior civil servants, and teachers perceived
as being insufficiently Islamic, decreed that men and women must
sit in separate sections on public buses, and forbade any Sudanese
female to leave the country without the written consent of her
father or legal male guardian. Finally, on New Year's Eve 1990-91,
the government announced that the sharia would be applied in the
north.
The RCC-NS policies aroused antagonism in the north as well as
the south, and consequently political instability has continued
to dominate Sudan. During 1990, for example, the Bashir government
announced that at least two alleged coup attempts within the military
had been foiled. In addition, there were several instances of
antigovernment demonstrations being violently suppressed. Opposition
politicians, international organizations, and foreign governments
all accused the government of systematic human rights abuses in
its efforts to quell dissent. Opposition to the Bashir government
induced exiled leaders of banned political parties in the north
and SPLA leaders in the south to meet on a number of occasions
to work out a joint strategy for confronting the regime. Consequently,
in mid-1991 the regime's stability seemed fragile and its political
future uncertain.
Further clouding the regime's prospects for stability was the
threat of famine in many parts of the vast country as a result
of the drought, which had been sporadic throughout the 1980s and
particularly severe since 1990, and of the continuing civil war.
The Bashir government was preoccupied with the political ramifications
of food shortages because it was acutely aware that riots by hungry
Sudanese were one of the factors that had brought down the Nimeiri
regime in 1985. Nevertheless, the government was determined that
any food aid the country received not reach SPLAcontrolled areas.
The efforts to mix politics and humanitarian assistance angered
foreign aid donors and international agencies, resulting in food
shipment suspensions that have aggravated the food shortages.
Data as of June 1991
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