sudan’s REGional RElations 257LibyaSudan’s relationship with Libya is also largely conditioned by geography,
though a very different kind. While the Nile Valley creates a strong,
umbilical link between Sudan and Egypt, the Sahara desert has isolated
Sudanese territory from the coasts of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. Even the
trans-Saharan caravan roads did not link Libyan space with today’s Sudan
but rather with what is now Chad, while the routes from Kordofan and
Darfur followed the Wadi el Malik to the Nile. In the nineteenth century,
the great religious and commercial Libyan Muslim brotherhood of the
Senussiya had its trade routes oriented due south, not south-east.
No significant diplomatic relationship developed between Sudan
and Libya before Colonel Gaddafi’s coup in 1969. Following the coup,
Libyan interest in Darfur became considerable as Gaddafi saw the area
as essential for his wars of conquest in Chad. Libyan military involve-
ment in Darfur started as early as 1977 when Gaddafi sided with the
Gukuni Weddey wing of the Front de Libération Nationale du Tchad
(FROLINAT) against the Hissène Habré wing in the Chadian civil war.
Darfur was used as a back door to enter Chad. At the same time, several
of the peoples of Darfur were also present in Chad, along the border and
could be used in the Libyan recruitment drive.
The importance of Darfur for the Chadian situation was confirmed in
1982 when Gaddafi’s enemy Hissène Habré launched a raid from Darfur
across the country to N’Djamena and took power. Gaddafi remembered
the lesson and in 1985, after the fall of Nimeiri in Khartoum, he made his
move on Darfur. Nimeiri had become a close ally of the United States
during the late 1970s and therefore supported the Hissène Habré camp in
its confrontation with the Libyan regime, to the point where Washington
had been able to implant a group of anti-Gaddafi rebels in training camps
in Chad. Gaddafi used Nimeiri’s fall to reverse that trend, taking advan-
tage of the coming 1986 elections in Sudan. In supporting the Umma
leader Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was in a good position to win the elections,
he hoped to be given permission to use Darfur as a base in his own
struggle with Hissène Habré. In December 1990 a rebel force under the
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors
(www.riftvalley.net).