278 thE sudan handbooktens of thousands of people living along its path. The scheme may yet
be revived.
Development was central to Nimeiri’s attempt to spearhead Sudan’s
modernization and national renewal. But the foreign assistance it
provided, however, coupled with Khartoum’s manipulation of Sudan’s
strategic advantages in the Cold War, instead became critical to his
regime’s survival. Rather than a bread-basket, the reality that emerged
was a story of wasted resources, mismanagement and corruption. In the
phrase of the time, not a breadbasket but a basket-case. Skilled northern
Sudanese left the country to earn their living in the Arab world, contrib-
uting to a growing remittance economy in Sudan itself.
Nimeiri is said to have boasted that Sudan could soak up development
finance like a sponge. This proved true, with far-reaching consequences:
debt built up on the back of reckless, unchecked borrowing, and much aid
was diverted into private consumption or to maintain Nimeiri’s increas-
ingly corrupt patrimonial rule. Sudan was unable pay its debts when
these fell due in 1977–78. Economic crisis necessitated tactical domestic
political changes for Nimeiri and closer relations with the US govern-
ment, whose support for Khartoum was especially important at the IMF.
Sudan’s unrealistic Six Year Plan of Economic and Social Development
(from 1977–8 to 1982–3) was replaced by a more modest IMF-inspired
plan, which froze new development projects and attempted to address
the chronic balance of payments deficit. The ensuing cycle of economic
crisis, concurrent as it was with the growth of a private remittance
economy of Sudanese working in the Middle East, defied all known
rules of economic gravity.
Support for Sudan from the United States became critical to Nimeiri’s
survival. By the early 1980s, Sudan was an important regional actor in
the confrontation between the West and the Soviet bloc. Relations with
America had improved after the 1974 coup in Ethiopia that brought a
pro-Soviet regime to power. Khartoum’s support for the 1978 Camp David
agreement, cooperation in the CIA’s covert war against Libya in Chad,
and Iran’s 1979 Islamist coup also strengthened ties. Valuing Nimeiri’sThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors hostility towards Libya, and regarding Islam as a useful proxy against
(www.riftvalley.net).