Overthrowing civilian politicians, Colonel Nimeiri neutralized opponents and pursued dictatorial policies, undoing peace agreements with Sudan’s non-Muslim south.
On January 1, 1956, Sudan gained independence as a parliamentary republic. However, civil war
Following inconclusive elections in 1965, a government was formed by Umma leader, poet, and ex-foreign minister Muhammad Ahmad Mahgoub, whose brutal offensives in the south resulted in systematic property destruction and numerous atrocities against civilians. However, in October, 1965, Mahgoub’s fragile coalition collapsed over control of Sudan’s foreign relations. He resigned after a vote of censure eight months later. Following the deaths of Ansar leader Abdel Rahman al-Mahdi in 1959 and his son Sadik two years later, Ansar leadership was split between Sadik’s brother El Hadi
Seeking to reduce regional disparities and negotiate peace with the southerners, Sadiq’s gradualist approach was criticized by intellectuals, labor unions, and some army officers. Despite electoral gains in March, 1967, Sadiq’s government fell when powerful northerners rejected his proposed constitutional guarantee of religious freedom and Sadiq refused to declare Sudan an Islamic state—concessions demanded to end the civil war. Returned to power, Mahgoub dissolved parliament, where Sadiq held a majority. Each leader refused to recognize the other. By early 1968, two governments were in session, one in parliament and another on its lawn. To clarify who had authority to issue orders, army commanders turned to the Supreme Court, which backed Mahgoub. No party gained a majority in subsequent elections, and the DUP and Umma traditionalists allied under Mahgoub, whose commitment to democracy was questioned when he clamped down on the press and pro-Sadiq demonstrations.
On May 25, 1969, preempting communist, nationalist, and traditionalist plots, Colonel Gaafer Muhammad al-Nimeiri and nine other army officers overthrew Mahgoub’s government on the grounds that civilian politicians had paralyzed decision making, ignored economic and regional problems, and failed to approve a constitution. Influenced by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, the coup leaders called themselves the Free Officers’ Movement.
Son of a postman and great grandson of a tribal leader from Wad Nimeiri near Dongola in the far north, Nimeiri was born January 1, 1930, in Wad Nubawi, near Khartoum. Active in nationalist movements as a youth, he was expelled from school for leading a 1948 strike against British rule but graduated from Sudan Military College in 1952. By 1960, he had joined a group of pan-Arab socialist officers implicated in plots against Abboud. Nimeiri completed studies at the U.S. Army Command College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1966.
As a result of the May Revolution, as the 1969 coup came to be known, Nimeiri chaired the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), modeled on Nasser’s. To dispel notions that the coup had installed a military dictatorship, former Supreme Court chief justice Babiker Awadalla,
The Ansar sect posed Nimeiri’s greatest political threat. Demanding elections and assuming that Nimeiri would strike against him, El Hadi withdrew to a stronghold on Aba Island in the Nile, south of Khartoum. In March, 1970, hostile crowds prevented Nimeiri from visiting Aba. Fighting erupted between RCC forces and the Ansar. Following an ultimatum, army and air units assaulted the island, killing some three thousand people. El Hadi escaped but was killed crossing the Ethiopian border. Sadiq was exiled to Egypt, where Nasser promised to prevent him from succeeding his uncle as Ansar leader.
Neutralizing this opposition, Nimeiri moved against the Sudanese Communist Party, which had been banned by earlier regimes. Supported by railway unions and sharecroppers, the Communists distanced themselves from the Moscow-supported regime. Their secretary-general, Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub,
Becoming Sudan’s first elected president with a 98.6 percent vote in September, 1971, Nimeiri shifted to a more pro-Western stance. Still affirming his commitment to a socialist state, he sought Saudi, Egyptian, and Western support, despite a disruption in relations with the United States by the 1973 murders of American diplomats in Khartoum by Palestinian terrorists. Banks were privatized and foreign investment was encouraged. Nimeiri’s greatest accomplishment, the Addis Ababa Accords,
After a July, 1976, Ansar-inspired rebellion brought mass arrests and more than seven hundred deaths, Nimeiri adopted more conciliatory policies. In a much lauded “national reconciliation,” he signed an agreement with Sadiq al-Mahdi restoring civil liberties, freeing political prisoners, reaffirming a nonaligned foreign policy, and promising government reform in return for the National Front’s absorption into an increasingly incoherent SSU. Although reelected in 1977 and again in 1983, Nimeiri’s popularity waned when he became the only Arab leader to support Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat’s
Nimeiri’s regime promoted Islamist rigidity in the north and devastation in the south. A consummate but increasingly dictatorial political chameleon, Nimeiri censored the press, closed universities, imprisoned opponents, and thwarted anyone who appeared to be gaining power. Amid minimal progress and growing instability, he allied with Islamists to shore up his popularity. In June, 1983, he violated the Addis Ababa Accords by redividing the South. That September, he applied a harsh interpretation of Islamic law to all Sudanese regardless of religion.
Meanwhile, significant petroleum discoveries were made in the south, where the Sudan People’s Liberation Army
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Khalid, Mansour. Nimeiri and the Revolution of Dis-May. London: KPI, 1985. An account of the Nimeiri era by a former cabinet member. -
Waal, Alex de. Politics and Famine Crimes. London: James Currey, 1998. Good on the dynamics of Sudan’s north-south conflict. -
Woodward, Peter. Sudan, the Unstable State, 1898-1988. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 1990. An excellent political history of twentieth century Sudan.
First Sudanese Civil War Erupts