The Sudan Handbook

sudan’s REGional RElations 255

drove the Egyptian regime from the country.

The Unionist Party, which won the pre-independence elections in

Sudan, derived its name from its programme of union with Egypt. But

most Sudanese – including most Arab Sudanese – were not enthused by

the idea of reunion with the former colonial master. The Unionist Party

therefore found many excuses not to live up to its name and keep the new

country independent. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, reluc-

tantly had to tolerate this manifestation of Sudanese nationalism, but

the ambivalence of his attitude was evident in Egypt’s role in southern

Sudan. In the 1950s the Egyptians courted southern Sudanese politicians

in an attempt to unsettle the government in Khartoum. However, much

as the Egyptian government disliked an independent Sudan, they liked

the idea of two independent Sudans even less. When discontent in the

south turned to outright war in the 1960s, Egypt gave direct military

support to Khartoum.

Sudanese views of Egypt, and of Egyptians, mirror this ambivalence.

In northern Sudan, there are links created with Egypt through Islamic

practice, Arab identity and certain shared customs, but suspicion of

Egyptian ambitions and motives persists. In the south, Egypt is remem-

bered not only as the former colonial master but also as the driver of the

nineteenth-century slave trade. Sudanese views of Egypt may fall easily

into stereotypes – themselves contradictory – running from ‘our brother

country’ to ‘those slave drivers’, depending on who you talk to.

For some in Cairo, it is hard to shed the notion that Egypt must be

prepared to intervene in Sudan. I remember being told in 1989 by the then

Egyptian head of military intelligence that ‘one day we will have to go

back and re-conquer that country because these people are such a mess

and they are incapable of governing themselves.’ He was commenting

on the possibility of a coup in Khartoum – which did occur three months

later – and he felt disgusted by the confusion of Sudanese politics and by

the war that was raging at the time.

But impatience and anxiety over the Nile on the part of Egypt is

tempered with a pragmatic desire to avoid direct conflict. After 1989, Cairo

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors was wary of the new Islamist regime in Khartoum, but nevertheless made

(www.riftvalley.net).