The Sudan Handbook

sudan’s fRaGilE statE, 1956–1989 155

included 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, 1969–1985

Military 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 more

The 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).