Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean
Thomas: Welcome back to Conflicted with me, Thomas Small.
Aimen: And me, Aimen Dean, still alive and still kicking.
Thomas: We're both alive and back with our second episode in our epic Sudan series. Four episodes taking you from the country's ancient roots all the way through to the war raging there today.
And this week, Aimen, we're into the 20th century, and of course, when we talk about the early 1900s in Africa, Aimen, more often than not, we'll be going back to talking about our old friends-
Aimen: The British Empire strikes back.
Thomas: We've talked about the consequences of the end of colonialism so many times before on Conflicted, dear listener. And this week is no different because as the British lost their hold in Sudan, new nationalist movements sprang up from the well.
What way would the new nationalism go? Toward liberal democracy, communism, or will the Islamists win the day and create an Islamic state in Sudan, perhaps like the one the Mahdi created, as we heard about in the last episode, or perhaps the whole effort will descend into chaos in fighting and civil war. What do you reckon, Aimen?
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Aimen: Of course it's going to be chaos, Thomas, what else?
Thomas: Well, let's find out.
Aimen: Can I make a joke about colonialism basically here? I mean, I always think that colonialism is preferable to anything else. At least you can have some cologne and basically you feel refreshed from the smell.
Thomas: Aimen, that was terrible. Well, Aimen, speaking of colonialism, this quote is from a history of Sudan published in Britain in 1955, so very soon before their empire in Sudan collapsed. Here's the quote, it's a bit long, but it's very illustrative.
“At the close of the last century, the whole of the vast heterogeneous area of the Sudan was in a dark age of chaos. Security and justice were no more than names. Savagery and barbarism were the only realities. And practically nothing was known about the country by the outside world.
A wonderful transformation has since then taken place. Persification has been completed. Law and order established, great schemes of development have been brought to fruition and provided funds for all the appurtenances of civilization. Great Britain, having duly played her part, is now about to stand aside and give the Sudanese the full freedom which they desire.”
How's that for some typical British self-regard, Aimen?
Aimen: Of course, pat yourself on the shoulder and say, “Job well done, mate. Job well done. The savages are now civilised.”
Thomas: Well, as we'll see dear listener, the freedom that Sudan won for itself when the British left would not result in much happiness. And also, the memory of the Mahdi and his ideal of an Islamic Sudan would never go away. It would continue to animate Sudanese dreams of modern statehood, as we will see.
But first, the colonial period. We left Aimen last episode with the end of the Mahdi. The British had triumphed using their Maxim guns over the Mahdi's forces and clamped control down on Sudan.
And in 1899, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was born. Now, the British obviously were ruling in Egypt, but it was a very weird arrangement. It wasn't straightforward British domination.
It was a patchwork of jurisdictions and legal and governmental accommodations and fictions. I mean, officially Egypt remained in the Ottoman Empire. It was a very strange arrangement known as the condominium.
Aimen: It resembles more or less a Russian doll, that a doll within a doll within a doll. It's like, okay, Sudan is part of Egypt, and Egypt is part of the Ottoman Empire. And all of this is actually run by the British. It's really, really strange.
Thomas: Yeah, I mean, the Condominium Agreement gave Sudan a separate political status from Egypt to some extent. And yet officially it was ruled jointly by the Khedive in Cairo and the British government.
And for example, across the Sudan, Egyptian and British flags flew jointly in all government buildings. You'd see the Egyptian Flag and the Union Jack flying together.
But even that was a fiction because hiding behind Egypt's claims to the Sudan was Britain ruling pretty much uncontested.
I mean, what are we supposed to make of this Aimen? Is this just deceit? I mean, can you see any positive reason why Britain would've governed so deceptively in that way, hiding behind Egypt, hiding behind the Ottomans?
Aimen: Well, at the end of the day, what is it that you want? You want results or you really want to show who's boss. If it's all about ego, then yeah, you want to establish your own authority there by brimstone and fire if necessary.
However, in this case, the question is what does it matter if we are ruling behind the scenes, as long as we have Egyptian and Sudanese puppets that we show around as if basically they are the real masters.
At the end of the day, we want results. We want life to continue. We want gold, and oil and everything else to keep flowing without any disruption, without giving any appearance of exploitation.
Thomas: The reality of the arrangement there, the Condominium Agreement where Britain really controlled the show in Sudan, was worrying to the Egyptians. They had no power to stop it, frankly.
But they didn't like it at all because of the Nile. They did not like the fact that their lifeblood, the Nile, which flows northward through the Sudan, was being controlled by the British directly.
And in fact, as you know, Aimen, as you've often said on Conflicted, this is still like an existential anxiety for the Egyptians to maintain control of the Nile upstream as much as they can.
Aimen: Well, the Nile, Thomas, has always been Egypt's blessings and curse because it's a blessing in terms of the gifts that Nile give. But the problem is the Nile has always been controlled by someone else.
And add to this the fact that Sudan itself is not stable and they will … we will come to it now in talking about North and South Sudan. And the fact that there is Ethiopia also there, all of this will mean what?
It'll mean that there will always be some somewhere having power over Egypt because of the both White and Blue Nile flowing into Sudan. And from there meeting at the convergence of the Khartoum to go into Egypt. Therefore, it's a vulnerability.
Thomas: And as you say, there was inherent instability built into Sudan. The British govern North and South Sudan as distinct entities. This was also worrying to the Egyptians because they felt that for, again, reasons of water security, the South needed to be controlled, especially given that there were other colonial players in the neighbourhood, and who knows what designs they might have had on that very fertile part of Africa.
And so, Egypt had a policy of trying to manage rising Sudanese nationalism in such a way that would keep it in some sense, united with Egypt, keep Sudan united in some sense, even if only federally.
And as we'll see, this played a huge role as nationalism rose in Sudan. Nationalism was established there. Already in a way, the Mahdist state was to some extent a Sudanese national state.
And after the Mahdi was defeated, and the British took over, the memory of that unity remained and following the First World War, especially, revolutionary nationalism in Egypt influenced Sudan.
So, we've talked about this a lot on Conflicted. In 1922, the kingdom of Egypt was formally proclaimed and officially made independent of UK rule. But at that time, in 1922, the UK made it clear that the Sudan was going to still be governed entirely by Britain.
Aimen: It was very weird shape country, it felt like as if it was Chile on steroids.
Thomas: Long, long fat sort of banana, a banana shape or something.
Aimen: Exactly.
Thomas: Now in the Sudan, Britain was pretty confident that it had the support of the Sudanese notables, that its control of Sudan was secure. But something had happened in the three decades or so in the meantime.
And Britain didn't realise that those Egyptians who had made up the lower ranks of the Sudanese civil service, they had very good relations with the new Sudanese middle class that had been educated at the schools that Britain had been setting up.
This was part of Britain's development drive. They did set up modern educational institutions. And so, a new generation of Sudanese were rising. And so, the explosion, or at least the development in Egypt of nationalism, of modern nationalism, secular nationalism, if you like, was helping to stimulate a new Sudanese nationalism.
Aimen: So, remember Thomas that we're talking about the 20s here, just a generation after the end of the Mahdist state and the influence, the Mahdist state was still there, so there was that pan Arabism, pan Islamism still there, especially with the collapse of the Ottoman caliphate, the Arab revolt that was taking place in Hejaz, not far away.
And I think with the establishment of a kingdom in Egypt in 1922, the birth of the White Flag League came about in order to provide that counterweight to that movement, which called for a Sudanese state.
The White Flag League called for unity with Egypt and to give allegiance to King Fuad I, who was proclaimed king of Egypt. And I think it was, again, part of their idea of Islamic unity, more than just only Arab unity.
But of course, don't forget, Sudan was also divided all the way to the South because of the way the British ran the South. Because the South is what? Is not Muslim and is not Arab whatsoever. It is inhabited by indigenous African tribes. And they are mostly Christians.
Thomas: Yeah, they are becoming Christian because one of the key policies of the British in South Sudan was to give a lot of administrative control, especially over education, to Christian missionaries. Christian missionaries explicitly helped govern South Sudan for the empire.
Aimen: Yeah, exactly. That's why the British always loved the missionary position. So, basically …
Thomas: Isn’t it, lay back and dream of England, I think they say. Goodness gracious, Aimen, you're getting salty in your middle age. The Aimen I met 15 years ago never would've said something as salacious as that.
Yeah. So, moving on. So, we have these two strains of nationalism rising in Sudan. One wants to remain close to Egypt, and one that wants total independence, and therefore is for the time being remaining close to Britain, feeling that Britain would support their ambitions for an independent Sudan better.
Now, meanwhile, things in Egypt remain very unstable as Egyptian nationalists there try to get rid of the British even more. And this spills over into Sudan in 1924 when the British governor general of Sudan is assassinated. And he was also the supreme military commander of the combined Egyptian and Sudanese armed forces.
So, this was one way in which the old arrangement was being maintained. Britain wanted to get rid of that. They wanted to decouple Egypt from Sudan completely. And so, they ordered all Egyptian troops and officers to withdraw from Sudan.
And interestingly, immediately after the Egyptians left, the Sudanese units left behind mutiny in Khartoum, and it caused a tremendous crisis. The British had to lay siege to their barracks, and they were ultimately decimated by artillery fire with difficulty.
And it was a sign that Sudanese nationalism, Sudanese independence, was really growing, especially within the military.
Aimen: This is Thomas, a textbook British imperial design, first destroy the old military units and then rearrange them. This is similar to what happened during the Sepoy boys rebellion in 1857 in India which established the Indian-
Thomas: The mutiny.
Aimen: Exactly, the mutiny, the Sepoy mutiny, which established after that the British Raj in India and reorganised the British Indian troops to become a formidable force there in India. It's the same thing here. They destroyed the old.
Thomas: That's a great parallel. It's the same.
Aimen: Yeah, yeah. They destroyed the old. Out with the old, in with the new that's it, they established the Sudan Defence Force, the SDF, which is still to this day, what the current Sudanese army is called, al Difa'a al Shaabi. And my God, basically, what a thing the British left behind.
Thomas: Well as we will see the Sudan Defence Force and what it became has not always been a force of stability for Sudan.
So, in the end, Egypt and Britain made up. They had an arrangement over Nile waters. And British rule over the Sudan continued, but beneath the surface, Sudanese nationalism was growing.
Now, Aimen, this is where we put a pin in the history and introduce who was really the main character of today's episode. If there is a main character, and that is someone that I know you admire immensely, a great mind, a great spirit, a wonderful Islamic scholar and thinker, Hassan al-Turabi.
Aimen: Yes, yes, yes.
Thomas: I can't even say it without laughing. Hassan al-Turabi.
Aimen: Yeah. You can't say it with a straight face, man. Hassan al-Turabi, what do I have to say about Hassan al-Turabi? He will be with us for the rest of this entire episode. My God, basically, this man is going to leave his mark in Sudan, on modern Sudan quite clearly and quite visibly.
Thomas: Hassan al-Turabi was born on the 1st of February 1932 in Kassala. This is a town in far eastern Sudan on the border of what was then Ethiopia, but is in fact now Eritrea.
And that part of Africa had for many decades been fought over by Ottomans, Italians, Ethiopians, and the Mahdists of Sudan, and of course the British. So, that area was unstable, and it was sort of heavily implicated in the harsh reality of modern imperialism and state building.
And this may have had an impact on Hassan al-Turabi's thinking. Now, Aimen, his father I've read was a Sufi Sheikh. Now can you tell us what kind of Sufism his family practised? Because I couldn't find that information.
Aimen: So, Hassan al-Turabi comes from a long-established religious family that date back to the 17th century. And the kingdom of Sennar and the Funj, if you remember we talked about it before.
And they are mostly eclectic family that didn't stick to one particular Sufi sect, according to his biographer, Hassan al-Turabi himself was talking about his family being sometime followers of the Tijani tariqah or the Al Harkiya, or Al Qadiriyya.
So, they are not exactly fixed Sufis for one particular strand or another, but they are mostly mystic Sufis. And in terms of religious persuasion, there were more Shafi’i Sunni. So, that's how we can define them.
Thomas: And in this way, he wasn't unlike most Sudanese Muslims. I mean, Islam and Sudan was popular. It was traditionally affiliated with Sufism. It wasn't really what we now think of as fundamentalist Salafi Islam.
And the young Hassan al-Turabi received a very classic standard Islamic education for his time in his class. And in fact, reading about him, Aimen, I was reminded of Sayyid Qutb.
Hassan al-Turabi's background strikes me as a bit like Sayyid Qutb’s, growing up in a smallish town in a more or less hinterland, far from the centre, a traditional family, a traditional Sufi environment, lots of mysticism, clearly very clever. Do you think there is a parallel there, Aimen, between Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Turabi?
Aimen: Yes. There are parallels. Both were interested heavily in religion and theology from a young age. Both were bright and avid readers since a young age. Both of them felt that not only just their towns were too small for them, but also their own countries.
They felt the need to reach out and to connect not only with other like-minded Arabs, but also other like-minded Muslims.
Thomas: And of course, both of their journeys landed them inside the Muslim Brotherhood. As we will see, Hassan al-Turabi's childhood was marked by increasing nationalist ferment in the Sudan, increasing calls for independence when he was a young boy back in Khartoum, far from where he was growing up.
But no doubt he knew about this to some extent. There was a lot of new Sudanese civil society, political agitation going on, clashes with the UK Colonial Administration. One body that was founded in the 30s, in the late 30s was called the Graduates General Congress.
Basically, a political action committee comprised of the native civil servants, which was able to get the concession from the colonial power of overseeing the expansion of the school system in Sudan, which was key because for some reason, Aimen, with more education always comes more calls for independence.
The British, by being quite good at giving education to their subject peoples, were always laying the foundations for their own overthrow down the line.
Aimen: Of course, Thomas with education comes agitation. And people think those young cretins, they think they know more than we do. They think they know everything. And as a result, they think that they can change the world, when in fact, even they don't change their underwear and socks as often as they should do
Thomas: Oh, right. So, more education in Sudan means more nationalists in Sudan. The Second World War breaks out, shifts things even more. Egyptian nationalists and Sudanese nationalists begin to talk, begin to conspire. The UK government know this. They need to control it in some way because they need Sudan's help in fighting, especially the Italians in Ethiopia.
So, it's all very familiar territory for listeners of Conflicted. And remember, the nationalists were still split in two, between those who advocated union with Egypt in some form, and those who advocated Sudanese national self-determination.
And because this is Sudan and because it's a part of the Muslim world, there was definitely a religious aspect to both of these nationalisms.
Aimen: In particular, there was one Sufi dynasty known as al Khatmiyya, but because al Khatmiyya in fact itself was a Sufi tariqa and also a dynasty established by Uthman al-Mirghani 200 years earlier.
So, Ismail al-Azhari along with al Khatmiyya, they wanted a Sudanese independence as part of Egypt, part of the kingdom of Egypt, which is a bit confusing because it was all under the idea of Arab, pan nationalism.
But there is one teeny tiny problem. The royal family of Egypt was from Albania, so I don't know how it was, it was little confusing.
Thomas: It's a very confusing time. So, yes, those Sudanese who advocated independence while remaining united with Egypt were affiliated with the Sufi dynasty, the Khatmiyya movement, the Mirghani family and their political leader, Ismail al-Azhari.
Now their rivals who supported pure independence and for that reason, wanted to remain a bit closer to Britain, were none other than the Mahdists, because dear listener, the ghost of the Mahdi haunted the entire movement towards national independence.
In the 20th century, memories of the Mahdi state factored into growing ideas of what a Sudanese nation was, and the Mahdi's own son, Abd al-Rahman, and eventually his grandsons as well, would be key political players in modern and independent Sudan.
What's ironic about this is that having been vanquished by the British, the family of the Mahdi, Abd al-Rahman and his sons were now very, very close allies of the British. There's a great story that I love.
After the First World War, Abd al-Rahman al Mahdi, the son of the Mahdi, goes to London to congratulate King George V on Britain's victory, and gives him his father, the Mahdi’s sword in exchange for which he received a knighthood.
So, you see that 25 years after their clash with the Mahdi, Britain had utterly rehabilitated. The family had incorporated it into its imperial structure. And for that reason, Abd al-Rahman al Mahdi and those allied with him supported Sudan to remain under British rule as a way of preparing for eventual full independence.
And a political party emerged out of this form of nationalism known as the Umma Party.
Aimen: I mean, actually if you look at the relationship, the tense relationship between al Mahdi and al Khatmiyya, violent clashes will erupt between them because it wasn't just only religious differences anymore. It was sharp, deep political divide between the two sides.
Thomas: The Second World War came to an end, Britain of course, won that war, or America won the war for it with other Soviet Union's help. And Hassan al-Turabi, now aged 14, is watching as the energy towards independence increases.
So, the British are forced once again to open up negotiations with Egypt towards revising the settlement there, answering to Egypt's calls for full proper independence.
And Sudanese nationalists in the Sudanese part of the kingdom of Egypt expect to be consulted too. But then what follows is a classic British kind of fudge, Aimen.
Because the Sudanese national movement was divided in two in this way, one half supporting union with Egypt, one half not supporting it, the UK government, in order to appease the Sudanese, tried to balance both sides. They tried to kind of make both sides of this intractable divide happy with the results that you'd expect. They pissed off everyone.
Aimen: Well, remember that basically the British were, I think world champions at the time at pissing off everyone. They partitioned India and Pakistan; they partitioned Palestine and Israel. And of course, they were going to cause so much mayhem in Egypt too.
Thomas: Yeah. And in Sudan. But again, we have to give the British their due. They knew the writing was on the wall. They knew they were going to have to leave Sudan sooner rather than later.
So, they did go and create new governing institutions inside Sudan with an idea to Sudanese independence. So, they laid the foundations, the political institutional foundations for a new independent Sudanese nation state.
Importantly, one that included South Sudan, because there had also been this question, would South Sudan be separate from Northern Sudan? But no, South Sudan was going to be included in this new independent Sudan.
Aimen: Which was in itself a big mistake. Where partition wasn't called for in Pakistan and India, the British failed to partition where partition was actually called for in Sudan.
Thomas: The one place they should have partitioned, they didn't partition. And as you'll hear, dear listener, millions of lives would be lost as a result.
Now, Aimen, in the 40s, while all of this is happening politically, your old friend, the modern Islamists arrive in Khartoum in the 1940s. Muslim university student groups (it's always university student, Aimen), they begin to organise politically. And in 1946, who arrives in the Sudan and before long has 50 branches across the country?
Aimen: The Muslim Brotherhood.
Thomas: Your favourite people, Aimen. As you know, dear listeners, Aimen loves the Muslim Brotherhood. We've talked about them a lot.
Aimen: No, no, no. I love them so much. I call them the Muslim Botherhood.
Thomas: Lord, have mercy. As it often happened, when the Muslim Brotherhood arrived somewhere, initially the British tried to outlaw it. They were forced underground for a very brief period.
But in 1949, it openly opens a branch at Gordon College, which would eventually become the University of Khartoum. And in that very same year, 1949, Hassan al-Turabi enrols in the college to study law. And almost immediately, Aimen, joins the Muslim Brotherhood.
Aimen: It was destiny, it was a match made in Omdurman. Just like that, Thomas, like with all those revolutionary ideas, there are always copycats and rival ideas. And many people don't understand that also, during the same time when we had the Muslim Brotherhood rising, there was also another idea rising from Jordan and the Palestinian territories.
It used to be called the Islamic Liberation Movement, or Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain, known later as Liberation Party established by Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani. And it made all the way to Sudan, and it became a rival for the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan.
And so, there was always this infighting between followers of the Muslim Brotherhood with the followers of the Islamic Liberation Party, or the Islam Collaboration Movement later known.
However, in the end, who prevailed? Of course, the one with the more money, more support, and more organisation. Of course, it was the Muslim Brotherhood.
Thomas: Yeah. For those first few years of Hassan al-Turabi's membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, while he was studying law at the University of Khartoum, the Muslim Brotherhood was fighting with the Islamic Liberation Movement over which direction Islamism in Sudan would take.
Weirdly, and this is quite unusual, Aimen. I mean, in 1954, in the end, the two sides kind of made up. I mean, the brotherhood definitely won the debate. But they eventually merged and founded what's called, and I love the name of this, they founded the Islamic Socialist Party.
So, this was the Muslim Brotherhood political organisation in Sudan for a while. The Islamic Socialist Party, that doesn't often go together. Islamism and socialism.
Aimen: Yeah. Actually, which is a very Qutbist idea to begin with. If you notice, Sayyid Qutb dabbled with the idea of socialism and incorporating socialism into Islamic ideals at the very beginning of his authorship of many articles. And then later he departed from this idea.
Thomas: So, Islamist politics Sudan is up and running. Hassan al-Turabi is already in their midst. And in 1952, he graduates from university with a bachelor's degree in law. The very same year, dear listener, as I'm sure you know very well by now, that a group of officers in Cairo overthrew the Fat Fucker Farouk.
Aimen: Yes.
Thomas: Poor Fat Fucker. Poor King Farouk, we're always so mean about him.
Aimen: Well, I don't know why you're so mean about him. Yeah, he was gluttonous. Yes, he was a little bit ineffective. Yes, he was not exactly like you're interested in being a king, but apart from that, he was a good man.
Thomas: Well, I don’t know about that. I do know that the new government in Cairo, the one that replaced King Farouk, supported an independent Sudan. And the following year, in January 1953, the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement was signed. And one of its many clauses was to Grant Sudan self-government.
So, later that year in December, elections in Sudan to a new parliament were held. And the anti-British party advocating some continued union with Egypt prevailed, the Khatmiyy oriented party that was being led by Ismail al-Azhari prevailed in those elections. And Azhari became the first prime minister of Sudan.
It's a great scene at the opening of this parliament the next year in 1954, it was attended, this state opening of parliament was attended by the new president of Egypt, Naguib. And, Aimen, a certain colonel by the name of Nasser, he was there too.
Aimen: Well, as ever, wherever Nasser goes, chaos goes. Although it wasn't his fault, I must trust this-
Thomas: For once.
Aimen: For once, yeah. I mean, riots broke out because of the full independence movement, basically instigated lots of riots because they were not happy with this half independent, half-hearted measure.
And they started these riots, which actually caused significant chaos in Khartoum. There were so many fatalities, and the opening of parliament was eventually postponed.
Thomas: Yes. Parliament did open not too long after that, but the opening was postponed. A state of emergency was called. And so, though things did get back on track, eventually the riot had showed the strength of the pro-independence feeling. That is to say independence from Egypt.
And that sense certainly was growing in Sudan. And after Nasser takes over Egypt in 1954, in a coup of his own, and begins that notorious period of repression of both communists and the Muslim Brotherhood, both of which groups were very popular in Sudan, amongst the newly educated Sudanese, including Hassan al-Turabi, who was in the Muslim Brotherhood, and who had intended the first Muslim Brotherhood congress in Khartoum that very year.
So, when Nasser turns against communists and the Muslim Brotherhood, the cause of full independence for Sudan really gained steam. The Sudanese thought, “Well, now that Nasser's in control and he's cracking down against both our favourite political movements. We don't want anything to do with Egypt.”
It's interesting to wonder, Aimen, how things would've worked out for Sudan if Egypt and Sudan had remained united in some federal state and were still united to this day. If there was a vast fat banana shaped republic called Egyptian Sudan or Egypt Sudan on the map of Africa, I wonder how things would be different.
Aimen: I think if the monarchy survived, then maybe Sudan, and I mean by that the north, not the south, as well as Egypt, would have survived in a royal union, because it is in the interest of both of them to be one United Kingdom, given the interdependence on each other in terms of both trade, education, infrastructure.
But most importantly, the Nile and the agriculture between the two sides. The two sides would have prospered significantly if they just remain united as a kingdom. We can call it a federal kingdom, but a kingdom, nonetheless.
Thomas: We could call it a United Kingdom, if you like. One does wonder. As it happens as all of this political foment in Khartoum was going on, in 1955, the first Sudanese civil war, as it's called breaks out.
This civil war, dear listener, will continue for 17 years. It's fought between Khartoum in the north and the south of Sudan, which having been ruled by British officials for decades, the southerners in Sudan, they didn't appreciate that these rulers that they knew and who spoke their language, with whom they were often Christian, had suddenly been replaced by Arabic speaking Muslims from the North, who they felt had a certain entitlement to rule over them.
It wasn't a happy marriage at all. Civil war broke out. The prime minister in Khartoum, Azhari took advantage of the outbreak of the civil war in the south to demand immediate British withdrawal from the whole country.
And Britain was absolutely in no state to say no. So, it agreed. And on the 1st of January 1956, Sudan north and south together, despite the civil war, becomes an independent country, the Republic of Sudan.
We're not going to talk that much about the South in this episode, dear listener. But Aimen, in that first civil war that lasted 17 years, a million people died, a million people died.
We speak quite breezily in these Conflicted episodes about history, but sometimes we just need to be brought down to earth. The conflict that resulted in Sudan during the independence process resulted in a million deaths. It's sort of unimaginable.
Aimen: Considering the proportion of the population, that was really high, maybe 5% of the population.
And again, what the British should have done is just they should have partitioned Sudan at that moment, because the south bear no resemblance to the north. The South is indigenous African tribes more closely ethnically to their Central African Republican, Ugandan, and North Congo brethren than to the north Sudanese tribes.
The reality is that the south is extremely different ethnically, linguistically and religiously from the rest of Sudan. It would have been kinder for everyone that should the partition happen in 1955, not in 2011, millions would have been spared because it wasn't only just one 17 years’ war at the beginning, there were many other wars. This was the first civil war.
Thomas: And if you think back to that quote that I opened the episode with and the sort of sense of British self-congratulatory regard about — and the British, they have this sense of … they had a sense certainly that they were very enlightened colonialists, that they knew the regions that they governed.
And yet in every place that they left, they just left behind misery. They did everything wrong. It's quite remarkable.
Since 1956, Sudan has witnessed six coups and 10 failed coup attempts. It doesn't quite beat Syria for the record of most coups, I don't think, but it's up there. So, not a happy birth into the world, the Republic of Sudan.
And as we'll see in the second half of this episode, dear listener, Sudan will continue to be a place of great political chaos, turmoil, and foment for the next several decades. We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. When we left, the newly independent Republic of Sudan was already in Civil war, a war that would rage for 17 years, but that was just one dimension of the instability, which rocked the country following independence.
In 1958, so that's two years after independence, the first military coup in modern Sudanese history is carried out. And the parliamentary republic founded two years earlier, becomes a military dictatorship in all but name.
It was a weird government, really, a military rule in alliance with both officers allied with the Mahdi and that movement and officers allied with the Khatmiyya movement, those two Sufi oriented aristocratic power centres that we discussed in the first half.
So, the military government that was set up in 1958 tried to triangulate between those two competing sources of power. But in 1964, so only six years later, fed up with this new military regime, a broad alliance carries out what's known as the October Revolution, and civilian government is restored.
Meanwhile, and I want to shift focus away from the broader political scene back to our main character, Hassan al-Turabi. He has embarked on an academic career. So, he graduated from university in Khartoum in 1952, and then went to London, in fact, Aimen. And he got a master's degree in law from King's College.
Aimen: Okay, I won't hold this against King's College, although I have so many gripes with them, but okay, whatever.
Thomas: From King's College, he went to Paris. He got a doctorate from the Sorbonne, but his ambitions remained always focused on his homeland. And as a newly minted PhD, he returns to Sudan in 1965, soon after the October Revolution, determined to participate in the new, if quite unstable multi-party, parliamentary politics.
Aimen: As in the tradition of becoming not only just someone irritating, but someone doubly irritating, apart from being the dean of the law school, which means basically he was responsible for graduating lawyers in the University of Khartoum. He became the head of the Islamic Charter Movement, which is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan.
So, he was graduating both lawyers and Islamists. You couldn't have put two worst combinations together.
Thomas: The Islamic Charter front was founded just a year earlier during the unrest that had led to the October Revolution. And like so many Islamist movements that were nascent in the 60s and 70s, it openly opposes leftism, which it sees as its big enemy, including communism.
And those were the prevailing political trends in Sudan at the time. And in fact, al-Turabi, when he was the secretary general of the Islamic Charter front, he strongly lobbied the new government after the revolution to ban the Communist Party of Sudan in 1965. And he almost succeeded.
So, just a year after returning home, he's already playing a very important role in Sudanese politics. And when a national committee to establish a constitution was founded by the revolutionary government, Turabi and the ICF lobbied hard to make it an Islamic constitution,
Aimen: Turabi succeeded where many other Islamist movements, especially the Muslim Brotherhood branches around the Muslim world, failed. And that is in influencing the government to steer away from left-wing politics and embrace more and more, a Islamist mode of governance and lawmaking.
Why is that? Well, because really the civil war, because the division between the north and the south, so there was a more pride in Arabic and Islamic identity in the North because of the South separatist movement that is based on Native African and Christian aspirations.
So, they want to be separate. So, okay, if these Christians want to be separate because they want to be Christians, okay, we are going to be Arab, we're going to be Muslims.
So, he appealed to that sense of Islamic solidarity that was gripping the north of Sudan at that time. And also, the fact of the matter is that he was charismatic. He was one of the very few people in the country who had a PhD from the West. He was very well educated, and he sounded like a reasonable man.
He wasn't shouting, screaming, yelling. He was sounding like a papa figure. In fact, we always, when we were young in Saudi Arabia. We used to say, “Hassan al-Turabi.” And people around me asking, “Who's Hassan al-Turabi?”
“You know the politician in Sudan who looks like Papa Smurf?” “Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one.”
Thomas: Papa Smurf. Well, I'm glad you brought up Turabi's personality, Aimen. Because as you say, he was unique. He was a unique Islamist voice in the 20th century.
He became something of a spiritual guide to a young generation of Sudanese students who had religious leanings. And from what I've read and from the videos I've seen, it seems like he had a good sense of humour. Not something you can say of a lot of Islamist demagogues.
He was charismatic indeed and charming. He seemed actually quite likeable. He was also an intellectual snob. He really distrusted the uneducated and therefore despised democracy.
Of course, like many Islamists, he was happy to use democracy to suit his aims, but he believed that only Sharia scholars were civilised enough to govern.
This also sets him apart a bit from Islamism at that time, the Muslim Brotherhood has always conveyed a much more rather plebeian sensibility, a more democratic sensibility in the sense of appealing to the average man of wearing ordinary, lower middle-class, if you like, business suits. Not being particularly aristocratic in their demeanour
But Turabi was different. He did have a kind of elitism about him, didn't he?
Aimen: He was the ultra-elitist, he was the ultra-elitist not just in terms of class, but in terms of intellect. So, he really divided Sudanese based on their class financially speaking and land owning, and the descendants of Sufi families and all of that.
But also at the same time, he really divided them based on intellect, are you smart or are you donkey? That's how he used to talk about it. And by the way, his sense of humour extended to satire. He was the ultimate satirist in Sudan. And that is saying something
Thomas: He may have been a satirist, but he was also an uncompromising political strategist. He was focused on turning his students away from the traditional Sufi inflected Islam of Sudan, and towards his brand of Salafism, Muslim Brotherhood influenced, but also uniquely Turabi influenced Salafism.
And he made sure that these students who he convinced to see the world the way he saw it slowly spread throughout the state bureaucracy. I mean, it's tempting to think that Turabi's personality or his persona, that elitist, pseudo aristocratic persona that he conveyed was strategic in a country like Sudan, which was very stratified in a traditional sense.
And especially given its Sufi leanings, Sudanese Islam that is, because Sufism is very hierarchical, in its understanding in a kind of old school platonic way, very deferential to people who are above you in the hierarchy, in the chain of transmission upwards.
And so, Hassan al-Turabi may have tried to walk that walk in order to convince Sudanese to embrace his brand of Islamism. And that is sometimes the way Islamists work. They pretend to be traditionalist, though they are basically modernists in an Islamist way.
Islamism is a modernising movement. And within that movement, broadly speaking, globally speaking, Turabi became a major political player. He manoeuvred within the worldwide brotherhood movement for independence for the national branches.
There was always tension within the Muslim Brotherhood, between its kind of global ambitions, or at least its Muslim worldwide ambitions. And the national branches that existed theoretically to further those global ambitions, but often acted as organised power players in their own right.
And Turabi, his focus was very much on Sudan. He convinced the worldwide brotherhood movement to tip more in the direction of the national branches. And having achieved that within Sudan, his new Islamist ideology did succeed in stealing the spotlight from those rivals amongst the Mahdist and the Khatmiyya, those Sufi orders that had previously really been the figureheads of Muslim ish politics in the country.
And so, there you have Turabi playing very adroitly politics in this new multi-party democratic Sudan in the late 60s. And that was going to hit a speed bump of sorts in 1969, that very key year in Middle Eastern history.
Aimen: Yeah, 1969, because it was the year in which Gaddafi came to power in Libya. And at the same time, it was just two years after the largest Arab defeat in the Israeli Arab wars. You remember, the six days war in 1967, and then there was the Attrition War between Egypt and Israel, which was still lasting until 1969.
And of course, like, I mean, Sudan wasn't immune to the nationalism that was gripping the Arab world, including in Egypt and Libya. And so, there we have, just like in 1952 the Egyptians led a coup against King Farouk, and they called themselves the free officers.
So, 1969, just 17 years later, we have in Sudan, the free officers of Sudan mounting a coup and appointing a military leader, Gaafar Nimeiry as president of Sudan.
Thomas: It's funny that the free officers of Sudan who carried out the coup in 1969, and it was a proper coup, they set up the Revolutionary Command Council under their leader, general an-Nimeiry.
It's funny though, they were inspired by Nasser, clearly inspired by Nasser. They called themselves the free officers just as his movement had. But Nasser had been already discredited by 1969 because of the defeat of the Arabs in 1967.
You think maybe that the coup in Sudan would mirror or be inspired by Gaddafi's coup that same year, but it actually preceded Gaddafi's coup in Libya by three months.
Aimen: Yes. But they were actually talking, the three offices of Sudan with Gaddafi about this grand stupid idea of unifying Egypt, Libya, and Sudan to become this massive mega empire. Which of course never materialised.
Thomas: It never materialised, but it did move forward, that subtle and slow transition of Arab nationalism away from nationalism properly, so-called and towards something more like new leftism.
There were lots of openly communist officers in Sudan's new military government. This was a break with the Nasserist status quo. It would also mean that the coup and what followed it in Sudan was incredibly unstable.
There would be coups and counter coups throughout the 70s. And to add to the general sense of incoherence, the new regime, which as I say was a little bit Nasserist, a little bit Gaddafist, a little bit communist, it adopted a quasi-Islamic constitution creating a kind of curate’s egg wherein formally Islamic law and custom were the main sources of legislation.
But personal matters of non-Muslims were governed by their own personal laws, which was both vague and particularly weird. In most modern Muslim countries, it's the personal laws that continued to be governed by Sharia. Whereas in Sudan, though, Sharia was meant to be the sort of animating legal spirit of the country. The personal laws were left to the individual. A very strange state of affairs.
Aimen: Gaafar Nimeiry ruled for 16 years. And you can say that these 16 years resembled exactly Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, because just like Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen dancing on the heads of snakes, trying to please everyone while at the same time scheming against everyone, allying with one faction against another, hitting one faction by another. And trying to divide and rule.
But of course, I mean, how can you have a coalition that has Christians, Muslims, Sharia supporters, Sharia opponents, Marxists, communists, nationalists. I mean, this is a schizophrenic government.
Thomas: I mean, Aimen, it sounds like a democratic party conference in America.
Aimen: Absolutely, absolutely. So, goodness, you have AOC with the Christian right all in the same hall. But listen, it's very strange. He brought the war with the Christians in the south to an end, through toleration of Christianity, only to demolish that tolerance years later.
He amended the relations with Ethiopia only to destroy it. He was a friend with Egypt only to stab them in the back. I mean, he was against Israel, and he was pro Arafat. In fact, he's the reason why Arafat escaped from Jordan. You know the famous story; you know what happened in Jordan?
Thomas: You're talking about Black September, 1970. All dear listeners will know that we talked about Black September in season four, but what role did general Nimeiry of Sudan play in Black September?
Aimen: Yeah. You see, when King Hussein was closing in on Arafat, as you know, Arafat basically was the leader of the Palestinians who rebelled against King Hussein. So, when they were about to be really routed, and yes, Arafat is about to be caught, Gaafar Nimeiry flew all the way to Amman in Jordan, and he said to King Hussein, “Let me go and mediate with Arafat.”
So, he took his entourage with him. And when they left, basically he said, “Well, okay, I talked to Arafat, hopefully within 48 hours he will surrender. In the meantime, just can we have a ceasefire? And I can guarantee you Arafat will behave himself basically, once he makes the ceasefire.”
What is not known is that Arafat was hidden in the car wearing woman clothes inside Gaafar Nimeiry's car. So, Gaafar Nimeiry took him all the way to his aircraft and flew him all the way to Sudan.
Thomas: Gaafar Nimeiry smuggled Yasser Arafat out of Jordan, dressed as a woman, right under the nose of King Hussein.
Aimen: Exactly. Into Sudan.
Thomas: Unbelievable. Middle Eastern politics, there's no game on earth like it, Aimen.
Aimen: Absolutely. So, Gaafar Nimeiry was just a man for all seasons, but of course that did not endear him to many Islamists who saw this salad of ideologies, basically competing with each other.
Turabi just decided, you know what? Islam cannot coexist as a form of government with Marxism or with nationalism. Choose one. And so, I think it is there when really Turabi started that scheming, the typical Muslim brotherhood scheming, behind the scenes, influencing officers within the military in order to rebel against Nimeiry and against his rule, which was seen as illegitimate by Turabi.
Thomas: Yeah. As you say, the Nimeiry regime was essentially unsatisfying Turabi, who had already formulated in his mind a way forward for Sudan, a properly Islamist way forward.
And so, initially, Turabi and the ICF, the Islamic Charter Front joined with other anti-regime parties to form the National Front. But as you said, Aimen, Turabi soon proved himself to be an expert maneuverer within the political scene.
Because in 1977, when the National Front is reconciled with President Nimeiry's regime, as part of the ever-shifting political game there, Turabi grabbed this opportunity to make the Islamist movement in Sudan more politically strategic.
And renaming his movement, the Islamic Movement, he allied with the Nimeiry regime, most interestingly here, winning for his movement, economic concessions, which increased the movement's finances, and also one authorization from the government to increase recruitment.
As you say, Aimen, he began a targeted campaign to infiltrate the armed forces. Cells of Islamist military officers for established across the country, an exciting turn of affairs, obviously one that would have a big consequence down the line.
This means that Turabi's men Turabi's movement was well positioned to take advantage of the second Sudanese civil war, which broke out in June of 1983.
Now, this civil war will continue until 2005. The first one lasted 17 years, the second one lasted 22 years. And it was really the re-ignition of the first civil war that civil war had never really been settled properly.
We don't want to go into the details of the civil war here. We will talk about it in the next episode. Suffice to say, more than a million people died. It was extremely bloody, extremely brutal.
But for our purposes, what's important to point out is that immediately it had a big impact on Sudanese politics because in September of 1983, so three months later, president Gaafar an-Nimeiry passed what are known as the September Laws.
Aimen: Well, the second civil war breaks out in early 1983, and in June 1983 Nimeiry’s interference in judicial system, judicial laws, and his sacking of so many judges, which he called them the imbeciles and lack manners.
Thomas: Ill-mannered imbeciles. I think that's what a lot of people in America often call the Supreme Court, but-
Aimen: Exactly. So, he started what he called the judicial revolution, and that decisive justice, that's what he called his new measures. And he enacted 13 new laws, including the Hudud laws, which is the penal code in Islam.
Thomas: I mean, it must be admitted. This is the most notorious dimension of the Sharia law in the West. This is what people think of when they think of Sharia. They think Sharia is basically the Hudud punishments. If you steal your hands chopped off, et cetera. Yeah.
Aimen: And of course, there many other disputed things like stoning for people who committed adultery, the laws that he enacted, the 13 laws are known in Sudan as the September Laws, because they believe that this is the beginning of the Islamization and the Sharia enforcement, which exacerbated the civil war in the South.
The South is saying “Excuse me, we are majority Christian area, so either you give a separate law and autonomy here or well F off.” And it's exactly what happened.
Thomas: Yeah, I mean, not only did the September Laws exacerbate tensions with the South and regularly get in the way of any sort of peace agreement with the rebels there.
By April 1985, the whole situation in Sudan had broken down and the civic uprising occurred, which the Sudanese called an Intifada resulting in the downfall of President an-Nimeiry.
Intifada pushed him out of power, and multi-party democracy returned. So, it hadn't been, there had been no multiparty democracy properly so-called incident since 1969, and on paper, multiparty democracy returned. But the so-called Transitional Military Council, and maybe the clue there is in the name, it's a military council. It kept the army as the dominant force.
Aimen: Although Thomas, we have to be fair to the field marshal of the Sudanese army, Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab, which by the way, his surname Swar al-Dahab means the gold bracelet, which is endearing to be honest.
Even though he established the dominance of the Sudanese army, he was not a power-hungry military dictator. In fact, the opposite. He was a God-fearing man, honest, decent.
He led the coup in order to save Sudan from the increasingly erratic and irrational rule of Nimeiry. And as a president of Sudan, as a military president, he stayed only for 13 months in his position as the president, because he promised that it'll be transitional.
And he did step down voluntarily without any coercion, without anyone forcing him. He himself stepped down in order to dedicate the rest of his life. Guess what? For charitable, philanthropic, intellectual, and missionary work.
And there is actually, in Africa, there is an award established in his name, just like the Nobel Prize, there is a prize established in his name for people in Africa who leave power and transfer it voluntarily without having to stick to power, like super glue. So, he set a good precedent, and he deserve respect, in my opinion.
Thomas: Yes. A rare example of a military coup in the name of democracy actually resulting in democracy, because eventually elections were held. And none other than the great grandson of the Mahdi became prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi.
He became the prime minister. But more importantly for our story, Hassan al-Turabi's party, now known as the National Islamic Front, wins 51 seats and becomes the official opposition.
Aimen: I must say, Thomas, that the 80s were so kind to Turabi. Turabi really was lucky because first there was this transition into democracy in 1986 when field marshal and then later President Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab stepped down voluntarily, as we said.
And then Al Sadiq al-Mahdi became the prime minister. Turabi’s movement, became the second largest party in Parliament and became the official opposition. Great. But that wasn't enough.
Al Turabi was lucky because it was the 80s. First, it was the age of what? There was Islamic Revolution, Iran, there is the Afghan Jihad, which will play an important role later in the story of Sudan. It'll play an important role, and that's why.
So, there was the Afghan jihad against communism, against godless Soviets. And there was this fervour in which basically al-Turabi was using, he was hosting some of the leaders of the Jihad, like Abdullah Azzam, which we talked about before in the Afghan Jihad.
He used to come to Khartoum, and he was the guest of al-Turabi to collect money, to recruit fighters, and to talk about the miracle of Jihad that is happening there in Afghanistan, recruiting people converting new disciples of Jihad and Islamism.
But after this, the 80s were so kind to Turabi, because there was a 1987, the first Palestinian Intifada, and with the first Palestinian Intifada and the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Israel-Palestine territories, we have the Hamas.
And so, where will they be based initially? Khartoum. Where will they collect funds and have conferences? Khartoum. Hosted by who? Turabi. So, he is using the Afghan Jihad, the Palestinian intifada, Hamas, Abdullah Azzam and later Osama bin Laden, later Al-Qaeda, all of this in order to whip up the frenzy of Islamism all over Sudan.
Thomas: Yes, as you say Aimen, in opposition to Turabi was very savvy. He was able to channel not only disgruntlement with the government as any opposition leader would, but as you say, increasing Islamist disgruntlement or Muslim disgruntlement being whipped up by events like the Afghanistan jihad, by events like the Intifada in Palestine.
He was able to channel this disgruntlement and move more and more pious Sudanese Muslims to back the Islamic movement that he led. And all of this in the context of the ongoing brutal civil war against non-Muslims in the south, leading more and more to Hassan al-Turabi becoming the spokesman really for the Arab Islamic identity of Sudan, giving him great power.
And this power, Turabi would wield very adroitly in November 1988 and onwards, when during peace negotiations with the south, strong moves to repeal the September Laws were made in order to move forward with negotiations with the rebels in the south, which obviously Turabi and the National Islamic Front opposed.
Aimen: In order for the negotiations with the Southern Christians factions to progress, one particular demand was there, is to get rid of the September Laws, specifically the penal code of Sharia.
And there was a wide cross section of the Sudanese civil society, and then the politicians who wanted to get rid of them in order to progress these peace negotiations with the south.
Turabi, no, no, no, no. He doesn't want it. And we have to understand that of course, Al Sadiq al-Mahdi was persuaded in order to form a new government to kick out the Turabi faction because they were opposing these necessary reforms in order to achieve peace in Sudan.
But guess what? Years and years and years of al-Turabi recruiting and nurturing cells within the Sudanese army meant that at some point he will be able to enact his ultimate game change in Sudan. And that is through the coup of 1989.
Thomas: Yeah. So, the Prime Minister Al Sadiq al-Mahdi, he created a new cabinet which excluded the National Islamic Front as you said. And in April of 1989, the Parliament agrees to his peace plan and decides to end all debate over the September Laws. The September Laws are going to be repealed.
This is where Hassan al-Turabi becomes a politico. The National Islamic Front members storm out of the parliamentary session, and before long their partisans are unleashing violence on the streets of Khartoum, classic street politics.
Now, Sadiq al-Mahdi was a weak leader. He was very cautious, always of two minds, like so many of these Sufi politicians, Aimen. I remember King Idris of Libya as well. He certainly was no match for Turabi.
And in the face of this violence that suddenly broke out by Turabi partisans, he postpones ratifying the legislation which would repeal the September Laws. He postpones it long enough for Turabi to plan his coup alongside who, Aimen? Omar al-Bashir
Aimen: Indeed. Colonel Omar al-Bashir. It is interesting. Why is it that everywhere we have a colonel, this curse triumph? Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh, Colonel Gaddafi, Colonel Bashir, everywhere there is a colonel, man.
Thomas: It's not high enough, you see. The colonel languishes right in the middle where it's a breeding ground for envy and resentment. They get a thirst for coups.
Well, Colonel Omar Al Bashir, and we'll learn more about him in the next episode, he allied with Hassan al-Turabi and the Islamic movement, which by this point had within its ranks, 200 ranking officers in the Sudanese military.
On the 30th of June 1989 they overthrow the government. They call themselves the National Salvation Revolutionary Council. You Arabs, Aimen, honestly, you really come up with the most stirring revolutionary names.
Aimen: Exactly. Salvation. Salvation.
Thomas: This coup would be as momentous for Sudan as the Mahdist takeover had been a hundred years before.
Aimen: Indeed.
Thomas: And it would pave the way to the high-water era of Sudanese, Islamism and geopolitical meddling the 1990s.
Aimen: Yes, Khartoum became the new Peshawar, the new Jalalabad, the new Kabul in the heart of Africa, and in the heart of the Arab world, this is where Al-Qaeda found refuge.
This is where the Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah of Egypt, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Libyan Islamic Fighter Group, and many others found refuge.
This is where the fate of many American soldiers in Somalia will be decided. This is where the planning for the attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in both Kenya and Tanzania will be completed.
You see, Sudan would become part of the nexus of terror. And this is all thanks to al-Turabi.
Thomas: And Khartoum became a focal point in this growing era of shuttle diplomacy across the Arab world involving especially the Saudis, Saudi foreign ministers, Saudi interior ministers going to Khartoum, sending their agents to Khartoum, to negotiate with Turabi and Omar Bashir.
Things like getting Osama bin Laden out of the country. All eyes were on Sudan in the 90s, where, as you say, lots that would follow would be cooked up.
Which brings us to the end of this second part of our four-part series on the history of Sudan. Dear listener, this survey of 20th century Sudan has left a lot out. It was a partial account designed to focus mainly on Hassan al-Turabi, and the road to the coup of 1989, which brought his Islamic movement to power.
And so, in the next episode, we will focus on some of those important things that we left out to move the story forward.
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Expect to learn about a huge number of unimaginable tragedies, millions dead in the south, genocide in Darfur, and ultimately a country on the road to another brutal civil war, one in which it currently finds itself.
And while you wait for that next episode, if you want to hear more Conflicted than sign up to the Conflicted Community. You know the drill by now, you'll get bonus episodes access to our chat room on Discord, ad free listening, and much more to come. You can find out how to do this in our show notes. We'll see you in two weeks.
Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.