THE SEPTEMBER LAWS AND THE ISLAMIST STATE IN THE SUDAN: WHAT WENT WRONG?

THE SEPTEMBER LAWS AND THE ISLAMIST STATE

IN THE SUDAN: WHAT WENT WRONG?

Par

Jack Vahram KALPAKIAN

School of Humanities and Social Science, Al Akhawayn University Ifrane

After the final agreement on peace between the government of Sudan and

South Sudanese Sudan People’s liberation Army was reached in 2004, the Sudanese

government faced a dilemma. It could not present the agreement as anything but a

total ideological capitulation. The peace agreement provided for an interim secular

state, which meant that the government’s leading ideological base of support –

political Islamism, defined in the Sudan as support for the Sharia, known in Sudan

as the September laws. The Sudanese version of the Sharia was imposed on Sudan

in September 1983 without consulting the population by the country’s military ruler

at the time, Gaafar Muhammad an-Nimeiry. Having fought a war in the name of

religion, the peace agreement proved very problematic for the government. The

solution was in Northern Secessionism – the idea that once the South gets its

independence, the North would be free to return to its cultural and religious policies

which could be pursued more freely due to the absence of the Southerners.

The slogan that the Sharia was safe was unfurled and used to deflect criticism.

After the South’s departure, however, Sudan has not known peace and the ideas of

the Northern Secessionists have not led to a united country or to peace in the Sudan.

It is the aim of this short paper is to suggest some reasons behind the failure of the

Northern Secessionist approach. In essence, the approach failed because of the

ethnic diversity of the North itself, economic hardship, and the persistence of vast

regional differences in the distribution of wealth. Letting the South go did not solve

these problems and the Sudan has shown itself very vulnerable to the Arab Spring

and while the Islamist government seems to have survived the first wave of protests

in 2011 and 2012, the loss of the South with the oil revenues it provided has led to

the loss of subsidies. The loss of subsidies has in turn led to wider protests marked

with an increase in the number of deaths among the protesters and a cut in internet

service and telephony over the last few months.

I. Limitations and Approach

The nature and justifications for the Sharia are outside the purview of this

essay, as the author is not a member of any belief community with a claim on the

Sharia. The focus here is on how the current government in the Sudan believes that

partition would lead it to have a free hand in mobilizing the politics of identity in

Sudan and the reasons that the Sharia based project failed after 2011; these reasons

are political and social not theological or jurisprudential. Readers are invited to

formulate their own opinions on the Sharia as it is interpreted in Sudan and to assess

whether it is viable to apply in contexts of religious diversity or not. Furthermore,

346 Annuaire Droit et Religions – Volume 8 – Années 2015-2016

the truth is that the Sharia is contested in the Sudan itself to an extent rarely

appreciated by people unconnected with the country. The methods used to create

this essay include historical research, the use of media reports, official

pronouncements of the Sudanese government and its opponents, and well as other

open source materials. At a macro-level, this essay is structured like a case study

with implicit comparison to the earlier united Sudan. In the interest of full disclosure,

the author is a former Sudanese citizen.

II. Islamist Politics and Sudan’s Government

As clearly argued by John Esposito, John Voll, and Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban,

Islamization in Sudan was not the product of a consultative participatory process.1

Rather, it followed the historic patterns of Islamic rule over the marginal parts of

Sudan, and led to rather expected reactions, especially from the former Southern

region, where Islam and Arab identity are associated, unfairly or not depending on

one’s perspective, with slave raiding and racism. As Fluehr-Lobban argued

persuasively, the diversity of the country was seen by its leadership to be a liability,

and it sought to use Islam as a homogenizing discourse to build up support for

undemocratic government. The Sharia was invoked as way of building up legitimacy

for General Gaafar Muhammad an-Nimeiry’s regime, and as a way of reaching

reconciliation with the Islamist movement, led by Hasan al-Turabi, that was opposed

earlier to his regime. Turabi’s approach entailed implemented the September laws,

as the Sudanese form of the Sharia is called, and using it as a unifying ideology for

the country, save for the 18-month transitional period that followed the overthrow of

Nimeiry, these laws have governed Sudan. Furthermore, the Islamists, as a

movement, have entrenched themselves in all Sudanese political and social

institutions. Through aggressive privatization programs, the Islamist movement,

now largely under General Omar al-Bashir, who has ruled Sudan since 1989, also

controls the Sudanese economy and nearly all the productive enterprises in the

country. This entrenchment began fairly early and was already in effect by the mid-

1990s.2 Once in power, the Islamists quickly realized that Sudan cannot remain both

Islamic and united, because unlike other states that have attempted to implement the

Sharia, the country included substantial non-Muslim communities, since it included

the South with its Christians and traditional religionists.3 Throughout its history in

independent Sudan, effectively 1956-2004, the South was in revolt for about fifty

years. It made sense for many for the country to be partitioned into an Islamic Sudan

and a secular South Sudan:

“Since there is a mistrust of the ‘Arab’as seen from the fiascoes of 1947, 1952,

1955, 1957, 1965 and 1983; there must be a frank recognition that South

Sudan and North Sudan are two distinct territories in every aspect, and that

the sole interest of the ruling elites in Khartoum is to Islamicize and Arabize

the people of South Sudan. The Arabs have pursued the consolidation,

promotion, and legitimization of ‘Arab’hegemony… The people of South

1 C. Fluehr-Lobban, “Islamization in Sudan: A Critical Assessment,” Middle East Journal, 44(4) (Autumn 1990), 610-623. J. L. Esposito, “Sudan’s Islamic Experiment,” The Muslim World 76 (3-4)

(1986) ; J. O. Voll, “Revivalism and Social Transformation in Islamic History,” The Muslim World 76 (3-

4) (1986). 2 M. Viors, “Sudan’s Islamic Experiment,” Foreign Affairs 74 (3) (May - Jun., 1995), 45-58. 3 Fluehr-Lobban, 622.

Jack Vahram KALPAKIAN 347

Sudan have been brutalized for too long. They have no choice but to demand

the total decolonization of their land. This has to translate into the formation

of a separate state of their own where they will have, for the first time, the

freedom to determine their socioeconomic, political, spiritual and cultural

development.”4

The South has seen terrible unrest and civil war since independence and the

rump Sudan, has seen its civil war not only intensify, but be joined by persistent

urban unrest beginning in 2013. In May 2014, the government placed the head of the

Umma Party, Sadiq al-Mahdi, a former Prime Minister, under arrest and took him

into custody. These factors strongly suggest that partition will not insure the

perpetuation of the September laws in Sudan and that the country will not be able to

bypass its cultural and economic divisions through the use of Islam, with or without

the South.

III. The 2013 Demonstrations

As of 16 October 2013, about 200 Sudanese people were killed in peaceful

protests against the government in the country’s urban areas. There have also been

about 700 arrests. Leading figures in the government stand accused of trying to loot

the national treasury at an even faster rate than normal. The regime is accused of

having looted about 9 billion United States dollars and of forming private militias to

retain power.5 The death toll from these protests is minute compared to the suffering

that befell the populations of Darfur and of the South, but it marks a clear transition

in the position of the government in Khartoum. The current wave of protests seems

to indicate the conflict over power in the Sudan has reached Khartoum itself, and

unlike the protests of 2011 and 2012, they are beginning to spread into better off

communities that depended on the subsidies that the government can no longer

provide. Unlike the demonstrations earlier, the new wave of protests seems to have

crossed the lines of class and even some members of the ruling party are turning to

criticizing the regime:

“The revolution is also beginning to win support among Sudan’s upper class.

The recent death of the physician Dr. Salah Sanhouri, a member of a

prominent and wealthy Khartoum family, sent shockwaves through the

Sudanese capital. His funeral reverberated with cries for the fall of the regime.

Participants in the funeral procession drove away Nafie Ali Nafie, assistant to

the president. More ominous for the regime and its chances of quelling the

anti-Bashir movement is that the wave of anger and discontent has reached

beyond the ranks of the opposition into Islamist circles and even the ruling

party, as witnessed by the protest memorandum signed by 31 Islamist leaders,

including Ghazi Salaheddin. The memorandum called on the president to

revoke unjust economic decrees, to halt police repression, investigate the

deaths it has caused and to search for consensus. The ruling party initially

denied receiving the memorandum. Later it vowed to punish those who had

signed it.”6

4 S. L. Laki, “Self-Determination: A Solution to the Sudan Problem,” Northeast African Studies 3 (2)

(1996), 20. 5 A. Natsios, “Sudan: The Next Arab Spring Uprising?” US News and World Report (16 October 2013). 6A. El-Hussein, “Sudan’s Regime Teeters,” Al Ahram Weekly (2 October 2013).


The Girifna protest movement, committed to unarmed opposition to the

government, documented the earliest deaths of protestors as well as the

demonstrations themselves. Since August 2013 to the time of writing, there have

been demonstrations not only in Khartoum, but in nearly all Sudanese urban centers.

During this ongoing round of protests, the regime shut down the internet and several

newspapers, including pro-regime papers that showed an unwelcome tendency of

independent thought.7 Despite the shut-down of the internet in the Sudan, news

continued to flow out through citizen journalism conducted using landline

communication to Sudanese people abroad who then placed the news on the internet

at such sites as the RASD Sudan Facebook group.

IV. Ethnic and Religious Diversity in North Sudan

Sudan remains home to many ethnic groups, with Sudanese Arabs

constituting not more than 55 percent of the population, according to Andrew

Natsios – the former US special delegate to Sudan. The number itself can be

questioned on various grounds, but the simplest and most direct problem with such a

figure is that the Arab community in Sudan is neither homogenous or given to

regard itself as a single community. While there are some people who regard

themselves as Sudanese Arabs without a tribal identity, the vast majority belong to

the tribes arrayed in four different tribal confederations. While the Arab

community’s tribal identities tend to merge in the cities, they remain salient and

relevant politically. Indeed, the tribal identity of the chief of state has always been a

political issue among Sudan’s diverse Arab communities. That Nimeiry was

Dongolawi and the Bashir is a Ja’ali meant that these leaders had to make members

of other Arab communities are included.

Aside from the Arab community, there are various other ethnic groups and

tribes with connections to East and West Africa, Egypt, as well as South Sudan.

These communities are present as local majorities in Darfur, Southern Kordufan, the

Blue Nile State, and the Red Sea region. While Islam is the most widely held faith

by Sudan’s non-Arabs, it is also practiced in a Sufi and syncretic way. These regions

are also the site of several revolts and armed insurgencies against the Sudanese

government arrayed under the Sudan Revolutionary Front. According to Natsios, the

government’s response to the challenge that the SRF poses has been to ratchet up

Arabist discourse in the media and not in a positive way. The state is disseminating

an anti-African discourse to shore up support for Bashir. This is a frightening

development, because we have not seen an official form of racism in Sudan before,

despite the open use of anti-Animist and anti-Christian discourse during the conflict

with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in South Sudan. North Sudan has a

Christian community of about 3 percent of the population, composed partially of

people of Ethiopian and Egyptian origin as well as Levantines and other Middle

Eastern people.

Traditional trans-tribal Sufi orders like the Mahdist Ansar movement and the

Khatamiya are ubiquitous in North Sudan. These two particular orders are the

foundation of the Umma and Democratic Unionist Parties. There are also other Sufi

orders whose involvement in politics is somewhat less pronounced than the Ansar or

7 Girifna, Sudan: The Rising Death Toll of Peaceful Protestors and Internet Blackout (26 September

2013). Available at http://www.girifna.com/8702.


the Khatamiya. To a large extent, the Sufi movement, despite the machinations of

splinter movements from the two main Sufi based parties, has found itself in direct

clash with the Islamist government that arrived with General Bashir. The

government’s particular view of Islam comes from the Sudanese branches of the

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as articulated by Hassan al-Turabi. While much has

been made of the split between al-Turabi and Bashir, the ideology of Bashir’s ruling

National Congress Party remains the same as the ideology of the National Islamic

Front established by al-Turabi, whose discourse always shifts to the liberal end of

the spectrum during his stints in opposition followed by dogmatic and harsh policies

when he is power. The Islamist movement in Sudan is not homogenous. Aside from

personal disputes over leadership, there are also ideological divisions, including the

Sudanese Salafiya al-Jihadiya, or Al Qaeda fi Bilad a-Nilayin. The most spectacular

splinter group was the Justice and Equality Movement which emerged out of the

National Islamic Front’s Darfur branch and was led by Khalil Ibrahim – a former

NIF Minister of Education for Darfur.

V. The Black Book of Sudan: Extreme Regional Disparities Exposed and

Politicized

Ibrahim is regarded as part of the group that produced the Black Book in 2000.

The contents of the Black Book are not as accurate as many Justice and Equality

movement supporters assume, but the overall picture it draws of a country living

under the control of one of its less populated regions is a very compelling one. Like

any other work, the book contains inaccuracies and at least on case an error, but it

appears to be reflective of a very real problem in the case of Sudan: vast regional

disparities in the distribution of power and wealth.8 For our purposes, the work is

both a reflection of an underlying reality in Sudan and a political artifact in and of

itself. Let us assume that the inequalities that the work revealed for the South were

“mitigated” by its independence, there appears to have been no policy in place to

address the problems of the remaining regions at all. Furthermore, the Black Book

cannot be dismissed as mere war propaganda.

There can be no doubt that the current dictatorship has been pernicious for

the human development of the regions outside of the North and Khartoum. There

can be no question that the data support the claims made in the Black Book that the

Sudan has been governed to benefit those regions disproportionately at the expense

of all others – who account for 80% of the population, or around 25 million people.

While data here has only referred to the more recent period, the Black Book data on

access to power goes back to 1956, encompassing a range of governments from

military and Islamic dictatorships to democracy, with the Northern bias a constant

factor – the apparent robustness of this phenomenon to political change should not

be overlooked.9

8 A. El-Tom, “The Black Book of Sudan: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in Sudan,” Journal of African

National Affairs 1 (2) (2003), 25–35. Available at http://web.archive.org/web/20080516091953/;

http://www.ossrea.net/publications/newsletter/oct02/article9.htm. 9A. Cobham, “Causes of conflict in Sudan: Testing the Black Book,” QEH Working Papers QEHWPS

121, (Oxford: University of Oxford, Queen Elizabeth House, January 2005), 10.


Cobham’s evaluation of the document has become a classic in no small part

due to the refinement of methods that his critique included ; for example, he

combined the tables assigning the history of regional ministerial representation in

one table that allows an analyst or a scholar to read the arguments raised by the

document at a glance.

Table: Cobham’s Summary of the Black Book’s Tables on Representation

Regimes to the Right Azhari,

Khallel

Abboud

First

Dem.

Nimeiry Trans.

Mil.

Council

Second

Dem.

Bashir

Bashir

w/Turabi

Bashir,

post-Turabi

Region Pop. %

2001

1954-

1964

1964-

1969

1969-

1985

1985-1986 1986-1989 Jun 1989 July 1989-

Dec 1999

Dec. 1999

Eastern 11.7 1.4 2.05 2.5 0 2.6 0 3.0 3.3 Northern 4.7 79 67.9 68.7 70 47.4 66.7 59.4 60.1

Central 36.9 2.8 6.2 16.5 10 14.7 0 8.9 6.6

Southern 16.0 16 17.3 7.8 16.7 12.9 13.3 14.9 13.3

Western 30.6 0 6.2 3.5 3.3 22.4 20 13.8 16.7

Source : A. Cobham, “Causes of conflict in Sudan: Testing the Black Book,”

QEH Working Papers QEHWPS 121, (Oxford: University of Oxford, Queen

Elizabeth House, January 2005), 11.

The overwhelming dominance of the Northern region in all administrations

cannot be ignored. The region was over-represented by a factor of 10 in the least

regionally biased administration, that of the second democracy under the Umma

Party and Ansar movement. Since the publication of the Black Book, the Bashir

government attempted to introduce “tribal federalism,” as an attempt to appear to

share power, but these moves created structures that were still dependent on

Khartoum. Power and wealth in the Sudan remain concentrated in the North, so the

departure of the South did not aid in removing this fundamental threat to the

country’s stability. The document served as the justifiation for the revolt of the

Justice and Equality Movement and was adapted by the Sudan Liberation Army

factions hostile to Khartoum’s offers.

VI. Ongoing Insurgencies

Upon the indepedence of the South, the Northern sections of the SPLA

formed a separate political and military movement called the SPLA-North. As the

Bashir government retracted from the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement

which covered the whole country and not the South, the SPLA-North found itself

returning to the field in the two Sudanese states where it enjoyed significant support :

the Blue Nile and Southern Kordufan. Soon thereafter, the SPLA-North joined with

the Justice and Equality Movement, several Sudan Liberation Army factions, as well

as some rebel movements in Eastern Sudan to form the Sudanese Revolutionary

Front. There are various estimates on the size of the forces fielded by the SRF, and

these range wildly without strong evidence. Nevertheless, the SRF represents a

substantial force at this stage, with the ability to operate across vast areas of Western

and Eastern Sudan a well as its too core SPLA-N areas. To complicate matters for

the regime, the vast majority of its members are Muslim, with a clear prefernce for

secular governance. Given the conflict between the two Sudans over Abyei and the

status of Southern Kordufan and the Blue Nile State, it is likely that the SRF is

receiving assistance from the South in retaliation for Khartoum’s support of


insurgencies in the South. 10 Far from being a loss to the South, Khartoum’s

insistence on keeping the disputed areas and preventing popular consultings in the

Blue Nile and Southern Kordufan gave the South a card to use against the

government in Khartoum. Also, the government’s attempts at linking full

implentation of the CPA with being given a free hand in Darfur led to a link between

the SLA and JEM rebels in Darfur with the SPLA. The resulting insurgency is

proving more difficult to deal with than the SPLA’s own insurgency in the South

until 2004. In 2008, the JEM raided Khartoum itself – a feat that the SPLA never

contemplated let alone accomplished.

VII. Economic Hardship

The SPLA and the Sudanese government were expected to be cooperative,

because while the South had the oil, the pipelines ran through the North. This

expectation has not materialized, and upon the attempts of Khartoum to impose an

outcome by force in Abyei in 2012, the SPLA attacked the North’s few oil

producing areas, destroying the oil infrastructure in Heglig before withdrawing. The

South then proceeded to arrange for alternative pipelines through Kenya and

Ethiopia to bypass Khartoum. It also began deliberately halting exports and cutting

down Khartoum’s transit fees. The result has been a near collapse of the economy in

the North. Realists would recognize this strategy quite easily, and unfortunately it

also means that independence has solved neither country’s problems. Rather than

seeing independence as an opportunity to start anew, the two countries simply

viewed it as another phase of their conflict, which meant that the oil could be

exploited to anyone’s benefit. As Eric Reeves, a Sudan specialist at Smith College

argues, the Sudanese economy is likely to remain in both a fiscal and a monetary

free fall for quite awhile.

But with the loss of oil revenues (paid in hard currency) from concessions in

South Sudan, and the failure of the “gold mining alternative” (exacerbated by the

declining value of gold), the country simply does not have any foreign exchange

currency (Forex). Only such currency can be used at this point for purchases abroad ;

the Sudanese Pound has rapidly declined in value over the past two years and more,

leaving a painfully low exchange rate (8.3 – 8.5 Sudanese Pounds to the U.S. dollar

this week on the black market – an all-time low, and still continuing in decline).

Unable to purchase from abroad, the regime has no way to provide the wheat that is

critical in the Sudanese diet and has been purchased abroad for years. There is no

way to import parts and services, even for the most critical sectors of the economy.

This in turn only accelerates the drive to acquire hard currency, and further deflates

the value of the Pound – this in turn produces more inflation, already running at 50

percent or more. And if the regime should, as it may yet do, simply turn on the

printing presses to create more Sudanese Pounds, the effect will be purely

inflationary – there will be no stimulus effect, no additional money of value in the

pockets of ordinary Sudanese, just much higher prices. Hyper-inflation will collapse

the economy altogether. Since over half “ordinary Sudanese” now live below the

10 BBC, “South Sudan Nhial Deng Nhial : We are on brink of war,” (9 December 2011). Available at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16115699.


international poverty line, declining purchasing power becomes a matter of life and

death.11

The Sudan is risking Zimbabwe-like inflation and risking the loss of its

economy without any hope of reconstruction or reprieve. Getting out of the current

economic morass with its attendant problems means that the Sudanese government

will have to reach some sort of accomodation with the South Sudanese. Such an

accomodation will not come gratis, and it will come an an immense political price.

Such a price may include referunda in Darfur, Southern Kordufan and the Blue Nile

on self-determination, and it may well include ideational conditions on the North in

terms of nature of the polity it would form. Given the history and suffering that

Southerners blame the Sudanese government for, restoring the hydrocarbon

relatioship will likely come at a price that the North probably has never expected.

Obviously, Sudan’s problems preceded partition and continued long after it. They

are also no problems given to solutions that can be addressed simply through

political or economic means alone. Obviously the two Sudans need to undergo a

reconciliation process at both the internal and external levels.

VIII. The September Law, the Sharia and Sudanese National Identity

Considered

Given the enormity of the challenges that Sudan faced and continued to face,

what role was played by the Sharia? Applying it in the form of the September Laws

and then using it to sell the Comprehensive Peace Agreement means that it is an

ultimately an instrument rather tna an end in and of itself. The depth of the

ideological commitment to the Sharia is sometimes invoked by scholars interested in

sparing the Sudan the harsh winds of the Arab Spring, but these arguments miss an

important point: both Bashir and Nimeiry used religion as a way to undermine

demands for democracy and civil society. The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood also

used religious discourse to justify the takeover of many parastatal enterprises,

ministries and to gain priviledged access for its members in the Sudanese economy

suggesting that its use of the Sharia was also instrumental. Given the diversity of

Sudanese Islam and the presence of about one million non-Muslim people in the

North, the Sudan needs to consider the nature of the relationship between the Sharia,

Islam and national identity in the country. The events that have transpired since the

indpendence of the South strongly suggest that the Sudan needs to have the

conversation it did not have in 1983 – an open and free discussion on the role of

religion in public life.

11 E. Reeves, “Uprising in Sudan: What we now Know” South Sudan News Agency (1 October 2013). Available at http://www.southsudannewsagency.com/opinion/analyses/uprising-in-sudan-what-we-know-

now-october-1-2013.


CONCLUSION

WHAT WENT WRONG AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT ?

That the Sudan’s history is marked with an attempt to enforce a particular

identity particularly under Abboud and Nimeiry is precisely what went wrong. The

idea that allowing the South to become independet would solve the problems facing

the Sudanese state, advocated primarily by the Northern Secessionists, particularly

those represented by Bashir’s uncle, El Tayib Mustafa,12 has been shown to be a

pipedream at best. The theory was that the state can force both a Salafi Arab identity

on the country once the South has departed. The idea was itself based on several

fallacies that were a direct result of the government believing its own propaganda : 1)

the idea that the Second Sudanese Civil war was a war of religion against Christians

and Animists, 2) that the root of the Sudan’s problems lay in foreign missionary

activity in the South during the British period, and 3) that the Muslim North has a

common Islamic identity. None of these three assumptions were correct, because the

war was also a war over the distribution of resources and the national wealth, even

before oil was discovered. The events of Darfur have totally discredited this theory,

because all the combatants are Muslim. Finally, the idea of placing blame on the

British has no credit either. Islam was rapidly spreading in South Sudan until

Abboud tried to spread it by force. Ironically, a Muslim South would have been

more likely under a secular state than an Islamic one. But since history cannot be

undone, it is important to look at wht can be done to avoid catastrophe in the North

at this stage. At the most fundamental level, the Sudan must avoid a Syrian or

Somali scenario, and this entails some actions from the government. Fortunately,

these are by enlarge passive acts of ommission.

Refrain from the use of violence against protestors.

Allow for open opposition to the regime, including the right to move

information in and out of the country.

Offer the SRF negotiations. Bombing SRF controlled areas simply creates a

flow of anti-government refugees to the cities.

Look carefully at nationalizing privatized firms that were sold to regime

supporters at low prices and then re-privatizing through a coupon program that

would encompass the whole country.

Begin a process of dialogue with all the factions of the Umma and

Democratic Unionist Parties over the future of the country.

Accept the dual identity of the Sudan as both an Arab and an African country,

and this means that the recent trend towards racism in propaganda needs to be

reversed.

Initiate debate between the Sufi, Traditionalist and Salafi movements within

Islam in North Sudan, and marginalize movements that refuse to participate.

On the short term, consider linking the Sudanese pound to a basket of

commodities or alternatively allow the use of an alternative hard currency legally.

Fortunately, while these recommendations may appear idealistic, they are

also the only way that the country can avoid a gradual erosion of the state. As the

state atrophies, the Somali and Syrian scenarios gain credibility and strenght. In

addition, the process of dialogue can assure the Islamist movement a place in the

12 M. E. Ahmed, “Regional Apostasy and Tribalism Prepare the State of Sudan for Extinction,” Al Sharq

Al Awsat 10175 (7 October 2006). In Arabic.


future of the Sudan. As things stand, it is not likely that the movement and its

leadership would survive an outright SRF victory. In an age marked with mind-

numbing flows of information and images, the Sudan is risking the creation of

enemies in both Muslim and non-Muslim sections of Sub-Saharan Africa through its

use of terms like “‘aabid” in the state media to refer to the country’s African

communities. Finally, the government has to begin a process of figuratively burying

the dead. Sudanese media and place names includes images and celebrations of the

war dead in the war against the South, and this is preventing the government from

being able to come to terms with partition and moving on. Building peace will

require a process of mutual de-othering with the peripheral regions as well as the

South.

Documents

THE SEPTEMBER LAWS AND THE ISLAMIST STATE IN THE SUDAN: WHAT WENT WRONG?