The Sudan Handbook

276 thE sudan handbook

Following the May 1969 coup in Khartoum, the government of Sudan

briefly turned to the Soviet Union for support and drew on socialist

inspiration to drive state-directed economic development. President

Nimeiri, combining Arab nationalism and anti-Americanism, dreamed

of Khartoum becoming the Havana of Africa. During a programme of

extensive nationalization, Sudan saw thousands of Western expatriates

leave and Soviet and East European technicians arrive. But Sudan’s Soviet

moment was short lasting. After the failure of the Sudan Communist

Party’s July 1971 coup attempt, and Moscow’s botched response to it, the

majority of Soviet personnel left Sudan and Nimeiri opened up to the

West, switching to Western assistance and especially US aid. This Soviet

period may have been brief, but it was a turning point in that control of

commerce was taken into Sudanese hands; from then on, most expatri-

ates going to Sudan were aid or development workers, or engineers in

extractive industries.

Nimeiri sought political legitimacy through economic development,

partly as a result of his new alliance with political forces in southern

Sudan following the 1972 Addis Ababa peace agreement. International

assistance was mounted to support reconstruction and refugee resettle-

ment in the south; a Relief and Resettlement Conference on the Southern

Region was held shortly afterwards. Three months after an official Appeal

for Assistance to the Government of Sudan in July 1972, US$12.5 million

was sent or pledged to Khartoum, including US$7.8 from the United

States. Assistance also came from Eastern Europe and China. The United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially played a

coordinating role, sub-contracting most of the projects it supported to

international non-governmental agencies such as the Lutheran World

Federation, which built schools, for example, in Upper Nile. During this

period an international presence became active in southern Sudan: Juba,

the region’s new capital, became second to Khartoum as a centre for

international development operations. It was home to at least six UN

agencies, four bilateral development agencies and 22 international NGOs,

all involved in post-war refugee repatriation, construction and develop-

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

(www.riftvalley.net).