The Sudan Handbook

118 the sudan handbook

result of a new source of economic strength; for the first time since the

cotton boom of the early 1950s, a Sudanese government has buoyant

revenues – from oil. Much of this money has been spent on maintaining

and expanding the apparatus of state violence. But the longevity of the

National Congress Party and the Ingaz government may also result from

a restriction of ambitions. Since the split in the Party and the expulsion of

Hassan al-Turabi and his supporters, the government has retreated from

its earlier project of cultural transformation; its concerns are no longer

with Islamization, but rather with the extraction of oil wealth, and the

spending of this wealth, either abroad or in the central riverain area. All

other parts of the Sudan – west, east and south – are significant only

as potential sources of oil, or as potential bases for rivals. Khartoum’s

concern is limited to controlling political challenges and ensuring the

speedy extraction of oil. This pragmatic approach places less strain on

the regime’s resources, but it has fostered a policy of destabilization and

disruption of the margins of the state, designed to preempt any challenge

to oil extraction or the control of the state.

Paradoxically, it has been the National Congress Party, the longest-

lasting of all post-independence regimes, that presided over the break-up

of the modern Sudanese state. The pragmatic strategy of the NCP, a

strategy of minimal aspiration, is one that served earlier states well.

The Fur and Funj states of four hundred years ago had little interest in

transforming the political culture or worldview of their subjects; in each,

a ruling group survived and maintained itself in power principally by

extracting resources – mainly slaves – from peripheral areas, areas they

deliberately kept in a state of instability. A similar governing strategy has

kept the present government in power. But the periphery has fought back

more fiercely than before. It has reclaimed both land and power from the

centre. The future may see a return to an earlier political era in another

sense, a return to a situation where multiple centres of power vie with

each other within the borders of the former Sudanese state.

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors

(www.riftvalley.net).