sudan’s fRaGilE statE, 1956–1989 155included new opportunities in mechanized agriculture in the rain-watered
areas of the east and west of the country: ‘suitcase’ farming by neglectful
absentee owners from the centre became a favourite new activity of the
commercial sector, to the long term detriment of both the land and local
communities.
At the same time, the state itself was expanding in size and decreasing
in efficiency. Pressure for expansion was coming from the increasing
numbers of school and college graduates who saw it as the major source
of salaried employment. Sudan was becoming a classic parasitic or ‘soft’
state, absorbing resources while producing little if anything in the way
of development. By the 1970s Sudan employed 120,000 in central govern-
ment, provincial and local government had 130,000, over 50,000 were
in the armed forces, with another 100,000 working in parastatals: in all
approximately 400,000 in a population of less than 15 million. It was also
losing control of more of the outlying areas of the country, especially the
south. Following the Six-day War in 1967, Israel began supporting the
rebels in the south, supplying them with weapons from 1969. Within
months of the 1968 elections speculation grew about the possibility of
another coup, and it was no great surprise when this came in May of the
following year.The Second Military Regime, 1969–1985Military coups come in a variety of flavours, conservative, radical and
simply predatory. The coup of 1969 in Sudan was significantly different
to that of 1958. The 1958 coup, led by senior officers, had installed a
conservative ‘caretaker’ regime. That of 1969 was an attempt to create a
‘breakthrough’ regime that would change the political organization of the
country. It was carried out by middle-ranking officers inspired by Gamal
Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers in Egypt in 1952; symptomatically,
Sudan’s new rulers dubbed themselves the Revolutionary Command
Council (RCC).
But while some of the officers were Nasserists, others were moreThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors sympathetic to Sudan’s Communist Party (SCP). The SCP was centred
(www.riftvalley.net).