Armies and security services doubtlessly bear primary responsibility for the military coups in Sudan, as they do in the other Arab countries that have been subjected to military coups. They are also primarily responsible for the dictatorial regimes created by these coups.
With that, they had many partners, especially within party and cultural circles. After doing everything they could to undermine the old civilian regimes that had only been established a few years prior, they advocated for the coups, and their military elements took part in them.
When Sudan witnessed its first coup in 1958 (just two years after gaining its independence) under the pretext that “democracy has failed miserably,” these parties, ideas and models were pushing it, strongly and persistently, to hell.
Ibrahim Abboud’s coup, like the Iraqi coup led by Abd al-Karim Qassem and Abd al-Salam Aref that same year, was more than a little influenced by the Egyptian July coup that had succeeded six years earlier.
Indeed, the Egyptian “Free Officers,” through one of their members Salah Salem, who was tasked with managing Sudanese affairs, went the distance in their intervention in Sudan. In their efforts, through which they were hoping to generalize their model and to ensure Sudan’s officers help furthering the interests of Cairo, they benefited greatly from the traditional ties that linked Egypt to the Khatmiyya sect in Sudan.
It is in this context that the Sudanese “Free Officers” were brought together under the leadership of two officers, Mahmoud Haseeb and Yaqoub Kubaida, who were known for their ties to Egypt and their visits to Cairo.
Another relevant fact is that many Sudanese officers had been in Egypt since the “Anglo-Egyptian Sudan” era, and the majority of those who returned to Khartoum joined this Nasserite army group.
However, the Sudanese “Free Officers” who had embraced Nasserism were in a hurry, and they wanted to take power without Abboud as a partner. And so they tried to beat him to it, carrying out a failed coup attempt in 1957. They then almost immediately turned on the new military regime, launching another failed coup attempt in 1959 that was led by the fervent pan Arab Mahmoud Hasib, who was thus imprisoned until 1964.
One of the officers who had taken part in the 1958 coup and had been appointed secretary of the military council by the conspirators, Colonel Hussein Ali Karrar, was dazzled by a visit to Cairo. What impressed him most was “the army’s place in society.” There, he found “a climate suitable for coups, as the people want the army to intervene so that they can enjoy the benefits that the people of Egypt have enjoyed under the rule of the army.”
Another conspiracy was launched by Nasserite officers in 1964, and among those who had been arrested for their role was a Nasserite officer named Jaafar Nimeiri, who had previously been questioned for his role in the 1957 attempt. Because the Nasserites had been on bad terms with the Communists at the time, they only realized the need for an understanding with them after their coup attempts had failed. Thus, they decided to join forces in the next one. Indeed, Nimeiri then launched a successful coup in 1969, less than three months before the Libyan coup led by another Nasserite officer, Mpammar al-Gaddafi.
As for the men behind Sudan’s coup, they were Nasserist officers, Arab Nationalists, and Communists who had formed an army organization five years earlier that joined Free Officers and used to report directly to the Communist Party Secretary-General Abd al-Khaliq Mahjoub.
Thus, Sudan’s second democratic experiment was overthrown, though it rested on an alliance between the Khatmis and the Mahdists, which was manifested in the power-sharing arrangement of Ismail al-Azhari and Sadiq al-Mahdi.
In its first statement, the military regime announced that power was now in the hands of “the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals, and national capitalists who are not affiliated with imperialism.” As for the Communists, whose language the military regime spoke, they called on all the “revolutionary elements” in the army to support the movement and ensure its success. Three Communist officers sat on the Revolutionary Command Council, and four were made ministers.
Nonetheless, the Communists turned against yesterday’s partners in 1971, and so Nimeiri executed their leaders and went from a Nasserite to a Sadatist and from an ally of Moscow to an ally of Washington. Then, in 1983, he announced that the Sharia Islamic law would be applied in Sudan. In turn, the Islamist Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi had become his advisor. The darkest tendencies of the Nimeiri era have been attributed to Turabi’s influence, from the re-inflammation of the war on the South to the thinker Mahmoud Muhammad Taha’s execution in early 1985.
However, after Nimeiri was toppled that year and Sudan began its third democratic phase, it was Islamist officers who launched the coup. Led by Omar al-Bashir, one of Turabi’s students, they took power in 1989.
They left the worst aspects of the Nimeiri regime in place. In fact, power became more centralized, and the role of security apparatuses became more prominent, so much so that Turabi himself was sidelined by his military students in 1999, just as the Baathist officers ruling Syria had done to their guru, Michel Aflaq.
This is how the dagger of military coups became entrenched in Sudan’s body politic, through the efforts of the Nasserists, the Communists, and then the Islamists. As for the battles unfolding between two armies today, their deep roots lie only there.
The fact that all we can do is forget makes what is horrible in this modern history more horrible and the terrible more terrible.
