The Sudan Handbook

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lifted, and most of the publicsector corporations were either privatized

or disbanded. Economically, liberalization freed the government from

the burden of securing funds to finance subsidies and support mostly

indebted and unproductive parastatals, as well as maintaining large

number of public sector employees. At the political level, privatization

enabled the regime to deal with the trade union movement. By reducing

the workforce in various institutions and reducing the role of the state as

the main employer, the regime could neutralize the impact of potential

strikes on government operations and service. Privatization also allowed

the regime to pursue an undeclared policy of transfer and redistribution

of wealth for the benefit of its own Islamist business class. On its part,

the rise of the oil industry with the commencement of production and

export of oil in 1999 enhanced the resources at the disposal of the regime

and had far reaching political implications.

War and Peace

When the Islamist regime assumed power in mid-1989, the rebel

movement, SPLM/A occupied around 80 per cent of the countryside

of the southern region, some parts of the Nuba Mountains, and parts

of the southern Blue Nile. The regime approached the civil war in the

south with a view to turning the challenge posed by the conflict into

an asset. Through its tough militarist approach it sought to use the

war as a tool in its control mechanism. In ideological terms the regime

presented the civil war as a problem that threatened the very survival of

the Sudanese nation; every citizen was therefore expected to contribute

to the government’s war effort, its jihad against the enemies of Islam and

the nation. Within this framework, it set up the Popular Defence Forces

(PDF) as a government militia to support the armed forces in the war

zone. The PDF mobilization, the mandatory military service for youth

and students, and the intensive religiously-inspired propaganda associ-

ated with this mobilization, were all meant to keep younger generations

within the orbit of the Islamist regime and prevent the opposition forces

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors from attracting a following among them. At another level, the regime

(www.riftvalley.net).