Journal of Eastern African Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjea20

Western Sudanese marginalization, coups in Khartoum

and the structural legacies of colonial military divide and
rule, 1924-present

Willow Berridge

To cite this article: Willow Berridge (2023) Western Sudanese marginalization, coups in
Khartoum and the structural legacies of colonial military divide and rule, 1924-present, Journal
of Eastern African Studies, 17:4, 535-556, DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2023.2280933

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2280933

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa

UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group

Published online: 13 Nov 2023.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2923

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjea20
JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES
2023, VOL. 17, NO. 4, 535–556
https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2280933

Western Sudanese marginalization, coups in Khartoum and

the structural legacies of colonial military divide and rule,
1924-present
Willow Berridge
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper discusses the long-term history underpinning the Received 12 July 2023
tension between the “national” army and provincial “militias” that Accepted 30 October 2023
led to the outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023. Sudan’s
KEYWORDS
British colonizers created the distinction between what would Colonialism; Coups; Military;
later become a professional military in the northern region of the Militias; Ethnicity;
country, and what were deemed as “tribal”, irregular and Marginalization; Sudan
ethnically defined forces elsewhere. The aspiring revolutionaries
of the post-independence era hoped they could use the military
as a short-cut to social change and modernization that would
sweep away the neo-tribal system of “Native Administration”
imposed by the British, but by aligning themselves to an
unreformed colonial army and economic system, found that they
forced violent reactions in marginalized regions. The reactions
included Western Sudanese involvement in attempts to change
the regime in Khartoum by force in 1971, 1975, 1976, and 2008,
which this paper documents. These crises exposed the broader
tensions within Sudanese nationalism, based as it was on the
ideal of synergy between military and people. The paper draws
on a wide range of Arabic and English sources, including
newspapers and archival content.

On 12 April 2019, a posse of securocrats plucked Abd al-Fattah Burhan from the realm of
relative political obscurity to serve as the head of the Transitional Military Council that
they had established to replace – or, according to its critics, reproduce – the regime of
Umar al-Bashir, toppled following a four-month civilian uprising. Burhan’s role was cau-
tiously accepted by the civilian opposition leaders because of his perceived lack of ties to
the Islamic Movement, which had dominated the governance of the country after facil-
itating al-Bashir’s coup in 1989. In practise, the most powerful security actor to back the
political transition was Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka “Himeidti”, the commander of
the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a semi-formal branch of the Sudanese army that was
as much a private militia and commercial enterprise as a professional military unit.1

CONTACT Willow Berridge [email protected] School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Arm-
strong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle NE1 7RU, UK @WBerri85
This article was originally published with an error, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see
Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2024.2343546)
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which
this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
536 W. BERRIDGE

On account of his control over Darfur’s booming gold economy, Himeidti was now the
single most influential armed actor in the country, prompting comparisons to the Khalifa
Abdullahi, the last individual from Western Sudan to rule in Khartoum (1885–1899).2
Yet, Himeidti chose to serve only as Burhan’s deputy on the Transitional Military
Council. Burhan, as a long-term professional soldier, was a more acceptable figure to
Khartoum elites, Sudan’s new regional allies and Western governments. When the
uneasy alliance between the two broke down in April 2023, the backers of the Sudan
Armed Forces (SAF) relied on its reputation as a ‘professional outfit’ to call for regional
and international forces to take sides against the RSF in the ensuing conflict.3
The tendency of Western governments to assume that formal militaries, as ‘cohesive,
non-ethnic and Westernized structures’ are the most effective governing institutions in
African post-colonies ignores the extent to which ‘intra-military tensions’ are ‘extensions
of existing societal divisions’.4 The structural divisions within the Sudanese military and
broader security order, through which separate roles are allocated to riverains (awlad al-
bahr) and Western Sudanese (awlad al-gharb), date back to its formation during the
Condominium period. As with the police,5 there was a distinction between military
forces at the centre who acted as guardians of urban, riverain ‘citizens’, and ‘tribal’
militia forces who governed colonial and post-colonial ‘subjects’ in Western Sudan.6
In 1964 and 1985, the military announced it was bowing to the popular will following
uprisings led by civil political forces. The principal divisions within the military leader-
ship were the same as those within Khartoum political society – there were Ba’athists,
communists, Islamists, and representatives of the existing nationalist parties backed by
the Khatmiyya and Ansar religious orders. However in 1976 and particularly 1975, mili-
tary officers and NCOs from Western Sudan attempted to intervene in Khartoum poli-
tics, staging coup attempts in the capital that they hoped would remedy the imbalance of
power between Western Sudan and the riverain centre. The violent repression of these
movements by Jafa’ar Nimeiri’s military regime, in addition to the characterization of
the 1976 fighters as non-Sudanese mercenaries, highlighted the security elite’s interest
in preserving the structural hierarchies within the Sudanese military, which still
remain significant today. With the failure of those movements and the outbreak of the
Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005) and Darfur Rebellion (2003-present), the dis-
tinction between the ethnically and regionally defined forces of the periphery and the
professional and “national” military of Khartoum re-entrenched itself.7
To date, much of the study of military conflict in Sudan has been focused on the Sudan
Armed Forces’ campaigns in the now seceded South.8 Nevertheless, over the last couple
of decades a scholars have begun to recognize that Sudan has been witnessing multiple
civil wars, and that many regions in the country, North and South, faced social, cultural
and economic marginalization.9 Yet the Western rebels often had a more intimate
relationship with Khartoum, which defined their resistance against the various post-inde-
pendence regimes. Southern rebel groups rarely advanced beyond their region; dissidents
in Western Sudan have often sought to seize power in Khartoum, with a view to installing
new regimes and changing the structure of governance in the country. Like the Southern
rebels, however, much of their alienation stemmed from their marginalization within a
military order that reflected broader societal hierarchies.
This article, drawing on a wide range of Arabic and English sources including newspa-
pers, memoirs and archives, will show how the logic of colonial military divide and rule
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 537

introduced a major division between West and centre to Sudan’s security order. In the
post-independence era, the core military units at the centre became the vanguard of the
“modern forces” and thus national modernity, whereas the regions that were on the per-
ipheries of the military structure were not integrated into the nation in the same way.
The article will particularly focus on three attempted coups in 1971, 1975 and 1976. In
1976, the attempt was linked to broader nationalist opposition politics; in 1975, the move-
ment had a more explicit Western regionalist character; in 1971, the motives remain
ambiguous, as will be discussed below. Nevertheless, in each case the prominent partici-
pation in those events of Westerners within and without the military represented a chal-
lenge the governing logic of the security order. The history of military coups in Sudan
has too often been told as the story of power struggles between ideological factions at
the centre, overlooking the role of Westerners and Western regionalists in the coup
attempts of the 1970s.10 The article’s revision of the history of the 1971 coup in particular
will attempt to address this oversight. The piece will then show how after the failure of the
1976 movement, the rise of militias reproduced the logic of colonial divide and rule, before
Himeidti in his own destructive fashion upended the dynamic once more.

Colonial military divide and rule: dismantling the Mahdiyya, then the
Egyptian army
The Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956) structured both its military and admin-
istrative order in line with classic colonial divide and rule tactics, seeking to prevent the
emergence of a territory-wide nationalist movement built around political, social and
religious commonalities. First the British sought to dismantle the Mahdist regime
which had ruled Sudan between 1885 and 1898, then turned on their nominal Egyptian
co-rulers, making the decision in 1924 to dismantle the Egyptian army which they had
used to reconquer Sudan in 1899. Ethnicity and martial race ideology became the govern-
ing logic of the new military system. It was also built around regional divides, so that the
core remained largely dominated by officers from the riverain centre with close ties to
Egypt, whereas in the South, as well as key areas of Mahdist strength in the West, a
more “tribal” military system operated – with consequences for the post-independence
nation.
The dismantling of the Mahdiyya remains a particularly salient historical reference
point during the current crisis in Sudan. Since Himeidti became a major power-broker
in Khartoum in the wake of the fall of al-Bashir in 2019 and particularly after his
forces wrought devastation on Khartoum during his attempted seizure of that city
after April 2023, he has often been analogized to Abdullahi ibn Taisha, the Khalifa (suc-
cessor) to the Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, the founder of the 1885–1898 Mahdist state
that had temporarily defeated both Egyptian and British colonialism in Sudan.11 The
Khalifa was born in Western Sudan, to a family with heritage in the region around
Wadai and Bornu in contemporary Chad. His rule is frequently remembered as the
one time a Western Sudanese ruled in Khartoum in the last 120 years. In practice, up
until the 1950s he had been the only Sudanese to rule in Khartoum, since Muhammad
Ahmad died shortly after seizing the city from the Turco-Egyptian regime (Turkiyya)
in 1885, and after his defeat at Omdurman in 1898 the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium
governed Sudan until independence in 1956.
538 W. BERRIDGE

The Mahdist State is regarded by many Sudanese as providing the basis for the con-
temporary Sudanese nation. It is significant for the fact that it constituted an alliance
between the riverain mercantile elites of Northern Sudan, from where the Mahdi
himself also hailed, and the various communities of Western Sudan particularly includ-
ing the nomadic cattle herding Baggara communities among whom the Khalifa had
grown up.12 During the Mahdist period these would be referred to as the “awlad al-
bahr” and ‘awlad al-gharb’. However, in spite of the fact that this alliance was crucial
to the defeat of the Turkiyya in 1885, the Khalifa’s reign was marked by severe political
tension between the two communities. Even before his role in the Mahdiyya, the Khalifa
had experienced the hostility from some of the awlad al-bahr, many of whom looked
down on his use of the Arabic dialect spoken in Western Sudan.13 After taking power
he marched his Baggara supporters from Western Sudan to Khartoum to firm up his
authority at the centre. The relatives of the Mahdi (Ashraf) backed a plot to replace
him in 1886, and then revolted unsuccessfully in 1891.14 It is on account of these
events that many in riverain Sudan remember the Khalifa’s rule with extra disfavour.15
After the Anglo-Egyptian reconquest of 1899, the Khalifa was slain and the Mahdists
were pushed to the fringes of Sudan. The dominant security institution was the Egyptian
Army, which was officered by British and Egyptians but recruited from many of the same
communities in Sudan that supported the original Turco-Egyptian conquest in 1820. In
the early years of the Condominium, the Egyptian Army was central to the colonial gov-
ernment’s efforts to crush any resurgence of Mahdism. However, as the nationalist move-
ment in Egypt began to challenge Britain’s presence in that country, as well as in Sudan,
the British dominated Sudan Political Service became increasingly distrustful of the very
army that had enabled the reconquest. In 1924, the 11th Sudanese Battalion of the Egyp-
tian Army, whose officers had ties to the pro-Egyptian White Flag League, mutinied.16
British officials reacted by disbanding the Egyptian Army, forcing the Egyptian units
to return to Cairo and reorganizing the Sudanese units as the Sudan Defence Force.
The Sudan Defence Force was organized along regional lines, with the Sudanese batta-
lions of the Egyptian army being disbanded and the forces distributed in five ‘military areas’:
Northern, Western, Eastern, Southern and Central.17 The aim here was dismantle the com-
ponent parts of the Egyptian Army and stop the new army acting as a vehicle for the spread
of Egyptian, and Islamic, influence throughout Sudan.18 The key concern was to prevent the
emergence of officers like the leader of the 1924 nationalist White Flag movement such as
Ali Abd al-Latif, of joint Nuba and Southern heritage – who the state regarded as ‘detriba-
lized negro Sudanese’ – and to use the military to reinforce the logic of tribal identity.19
Whereas “black” or “Sudani” troops would be recruited in the Nuba Mountains and
South, elsewhere troops would be recruited from Arabic speaking populations.20
The threat posed by resurgent Egyptian nationalism encouraged the British to play
pro-Egyptians and neo-Mahdists off against each other. This allowed a partial rehabilita-
tion of the Ansar under the Mahdi’s grandson Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi.21
However, the post-1924 indirect rule policies sought just as much to prevent the nation-
wide re-emergence of the Mahdiyya ‘by attacking the very basis of its transethnic mobil-
ization’.22 The Nuba Mountains, where Muhammad Ahmad had first announced himself
as the Mahdi at Jabal Qadir in 1881,23 had already been deemed a closed district and was
now to be ruled in accordance with the principles of local culture in the name of ‘Nuba
Policy’.24 This policy also had an impact on the army, as a Nuba Mounted Company
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 539

based at Shendi in the North was replaced and the government forbade the posting of
Nuba soldiers outside of their areas.25
The British at one point made it a policy to avoid recruiting for the Sudan Defence
Force from Mahdist groups,26 but apparently at times did so in spite of themselves.
For instance, Orlebar notes that the men of the Camel Corps at Bara ‘came mainly
from the Gawama tribes in central Kordofan’ who had ‘formed the flower of the Khalifa’s
army’.27 Notably, however, the Corps, like those in other regions, was organized through
‘independent, irregular companies’, not living in barracks and hence not developing a
corporate military identity.28
In the Northern military area, which included Khartoum and thus major training
institutions such as the military school, the majority of the recruits were Arab-identifying
Shaiqiyya.29 Newbold wrote ‘The Shaigia, who make good soldiers and are adventurous,
may well have Turkish blood from Bosnian and Albanian mercenaries of Sultan Selim I
(1517). Later they fought well against the Turkish invaders (1821) and later still for the
Turks against the Dervishes, and now in the Sudan Defence Force’.30 The narrative about
the Turkish descent of the Shaiqiyya, which has now been dismissed as historically accu-
rate,31 appears rooted in the colonial fantasy that African communities with origins sup-
posedly outside the continent were best suited to rule their peers.32
Much has been written about the role of colonial “martial race” ideology in ethnicizing
military identities;33 in Sudan, “Arab” Northern riverain Sudanese, nomadic “Arab”
Westerners and non-Arab Westerners were constructed by the colonizers as “martial”,
but in different contexts, so that the power differential within the military maintained
itself. Both “Arabs” and “Blacks” were defined as separate – however, “Arabs” were
understood to be part of a broader “race”, whereas the “black” Sudanese were seen as
a belonging to “tribal” communities.34 This created a hierarchy, whereby “Arabs” were
seen as the guardians of a core, Arab-Islamic Sudan, and “blacks” associated with the
“tribal” peripheries of the territory. Yet in the colonial view there were also hierarchies
of Arabness. Let us observe, for instance, comments in the 1940s by a British military
officer on recruiting for the Mounted Infantry Company among the Arab-identifying
Baggara of Southern Darfur: ‘the pure Arabs have become a good deal adulterated
with slave blood from South of the Bahr el-Arab … I think that Browne altogether
over-estimated the Baggara as a soldier’.35 The same author went on to observe that
‘The best of the N.C.O.’s will nearly always be Taaisha [an Arab identifying group]
and the hard-slogging Nafar one of the Magdumate tribes’, which were themselves
described as ‘for the most part black’.
The regionalization and tribalization of the Sudanese military also worked to mitigate
against social and ethnic mobility within the army. Following the closure of the Khar-
toum Military School in 1925, the Sudan Defence Force ceased to promote from the
ranks.36 In the following decades, the colonial state then racialized the distinction
between the officer corps and the rank and file. In the Nuba mountains, Northern
officers were recruited to staff the local territorial companies.37 When the military
school re-opened in 1948, candidates were required to have graduated from one of the
country’s secondary schools,38 which at that time were located in or near the core
cities of the urban North.
If there was one set of events in the late colonial era that anticipated the post-indepen-
dence security ruptures between armed Western Sudanese civilians and the Northern-
540 W. BERRIDGE

dominated “regular forces”, it would be the Neguib Riots of 1 March 1954, referred to by
Sudanese as the “March events” (ahadith Maris). The context was the arrival in Khar-
toum of the Egyptian President Muhammad Neguib, who had been invited by the
pro-Egyptian National Unionist Party (NUP) to attend the opening session of the Suda-
nese parliament.39 At this time the NUP was still actively contemplating union with
Egypt following the imminent departure of the British, and the pro-independence
Umma Party, backed by Sayyid Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, summoned its Ansar followers
from the rural areas – particularly including Western Sudan – to protest against Neguib’s
presence. They clashed with a semi-militarized police force that had a similar structure to
the army, insofar as it had its most official presence in major urban centres and the force
there was in practise led mostly by Northern Shaiqi officers many of whom had ties to the
NUP.40 The police were temporarily overwhelmed, and both the British Commandant
and a Sudanese superintendent were killed before the Ansar were driven back.41 The
events generated considerable hostility against Western Sudanese both within the gov-
ernment and the media. The subsequent criminal trial charged the Umma Party leader
Abd al-Rahman Nugdalla with whipping up a mob of ‘fanatical, unsophisticated and
excited Westerners … ’.42 Meanwhile, al-Ra’i al-‘Aam compared the shouts of the
Ansar to those of ‘Red Indians’.43 The party’s newspaper al-Umma (8 March 1954)
accused the government of using the powers granted to it by the subsequently declared
state of emergency to target Westerners on an ethnic basis, including by abducting them
from public transport. This pattern of violent clashes between the Umma Party’s armed
supporters and the national security forces, followed by targeted discrimination against
Westerners, would repeat itself in the post-independence era.

The military between the “modern forces” and the marginalized West in
the coup era
Between independence in 1956 and 1984, Sudan experienced two successful military
coups, seven failed attempts and nine further ‘reported’ coup plots, which made it the
third most vulnerable to military intervention among sub-Saharan African states.44
The history of coups and attempted coups in Sudan has often been narrated as the
product of rivalry between competing ideological factions at the urban centre; yet in
Sudan’s most coup-stricken period between 1971 and 1976, Western Sudanese officers
alienated by the marginalization of their region played a central role. The link between
stalled industrialization and military coups in Africa in this period is well established;45
in Sudan, the military crises of the era were a result of the failure of the “modern forces”
that emerged from the 1964 October Revolution to extend their vision of social, econ-
omic and political transformation beyond the riverain centre.
When the military first seized power in 1958, the coup was led by the generation of
officers who had served in the Sudan Defence Force, rather than any radical new gener-
ation.46 Many of the coup leaders were Shaiqiyya.47 In 1964, the military regime was over-
thrown by a popular revolution, which saw the installation of a transitional government
dominated by left-leaning urban radicals, including members of the Sudan Communist
Party (SCP) and champions of Nasserist Arab socialism. The government made plans to
abolish the colonial era Native Administration, and thus bring an end to the neo-tra-
ditional system of rural authority through which the Umma Party governed the cotton
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 541

farmers working on the al-Mahdi family’s estates. It saw itself as a representative of the
“modern forces”, that would sweep the neo-tribal system away. The problem was that
economic modernity was identified with the export orientated agricultural schemes of
the riverain centre – the pastoral economy of the rural areas, almost entirely overlooked
in economic planning in this era,48 was not seen as revolutionary in the same way.49
The Umma Party was able to effectively topple the transitional government in early
1965 by marching its followers from outside of Khartoum in a show of force. The com-
munists saw the Ansar mobilized by the Umma as a captive peasantry, appealing to them
to support the removal of the Native Administration and accept new trade union laws
that would guarantee their rights.50 They did not prevail. The Ansar mobilization effec-
tively forced an end to the first transitional government and brought about a parliamen-
tary regime led by the Umma Party, which soon attempted to ban the SCP on the grounds
of its purported atheism. Clashes between the Umma Party’s supporters and trade union-
ists intensified in Khartoum in late 1965, with the army and police refusing to intervene.
It was at this point that the SCP leader Abd al-Khaliq Mahjub coined the term ‘unf al-
badiya’ (‘violence of the wilderness’) to describe the force Umma party supporters used.51
The conservative turn of the parliamentary regime encouraged many of the radicals in
the military to install what they saw as a more progressive system by force. In 1969, the
Free Officer Coup led by Jafa’ar Nimeiri swept aside the parliamentary system and estab-
lished a Revolutionary Command Council with strong ties to the political left and Arab
Socialists. Umma party members and Muslim Brothers outside Sudan formed the
National Front (al-Jabha al-Wataniyya) to topple what they saw as a communist
regime.52 The regime was never fully communist; the SCP was divided over whether
to back the coup, with select members joining the new regime while the party leadership
under Abd al-Khaliq Mahjub refused to sanction it.53 Mahjub warned the ‘revolutionary
democrats’ attached to the Egyptian model that it was a mistake to think that the military
existed as a neutral force outside of Sudan’s established socio-economic hierarchies, and
suggested a more gradualist approach that would involve aligning with Sadiq al-Mahdi as
one of the more progressive representatives of the neo-traditional sector.54 As it was, al-
Mahdi remained outside the new regime. However, under Muhammad Uthman al-Mir-
ghani, the mainstream of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and affiliated Khatmiyya
sufi order, with their ties to the army and Arab Socialist movement, took a conciliatory
approach to the regime, especially as it grew closer to Egypt.55 Meanwhile, the army was
rebranded the “People’s Armed Forces”, and the government announced that it would be
expanding recruitment among the farmers, workers and ‘toiling classes’- the representa-
tives of the “modern forces” championed in the October period.56
From this point, the many Western Sudanese excluded from the “modern forces”
resisted the new regime in a number of contexts. Sometimes they did so as armed
members of the Umma Party and thus a broader national movement seeking a return
to parliamentary democracy and gradual reform, rather than outright abolition of the
Native Administration. Elsewhere, they did so as representatives of factions within the
armed forces aligned to various Western Sudanese regionalist movements, which often
had close ties to the Umma Party and other factions within the anti-Nimeiri coalition,
but operated independently of them as well.
Following the 1969 coup the Imam al-Hadi al-Mahdi called upon the Ansar to
perform a hijra to the historic Mahdist centre at Aba on the White Nile, just as they
542 W. BERRIDGE

had during the years of his nineteenth century ancestor.57 Aba Island and its surrounds
had historically hosted a number of cotton schemes owned by the al-Mahdi family, which
were worked principally by Ansari pilgrims from Western Sudan.58 However, in the
1968–1969 agricultural season the major agricultural scheme on Aba Island had
ceased operating, leaving many of the residents there facing destitution.59 They were
easily recruited to the National Front’s scheme to topple Nimeiri. Local Shaykhs, led
by a Western Sudanese Ansari who had joined the SCP’s Maoist splinter faction,
marched to Khartoum to request a new sugar scheme, but were rejected due to the
new regime’s absolute refusal to engage with representatives of the Native Adminis-
tration.60 Meanwhile, the Front equipped the destitute farmers with weapons supplied
from across the border in Ethiopia and trained them in their use, developing an army
at Aba Island they planned to march on Khartoum with.61 These events marked the
onset of a pattern whereby the government’s determination to exclude those outside
its definition of the “modern forces” compelled inhabitants of rural Sudan to arm them-
selves against the May Regime and its army.
In response to al-Hadi’s rebellion, the Sudanese air force bombed Aba, inflicting
devastating casualties on the Ansar.62 Al-Hadi was killed trying to escape. Taha, in his
narrative of the devastation caused by the army’s combined aerial and ground assault,
compares the sight of Ansari fighters lying dead on the banks of Aba to the aftermath
of the infamous 1898 battle of Karari during the Anglo-Egyptian Reconquest of
Sudan.63 Nimeiri’s army had emulated its predecessor in demonstrating the devastating
impact of military techno-modernity on those who lay outside the “modern forces”.
Siddiq al-Badi, in his book on the Aba Island events, attempted to list the names of
every fighter slain in the assault. Darfuri groups were most heavily represented, particu-
larly including the Zaghawa, Tama, Fellata, and Rizeigat, as well as those from Kordofan
and White Nile.64 That al-Badi grouped the names by ethnic affiliation is a testament to
the fighters’ rejection of the regime’s policy of dissolving tribal loyalties in the name of
Sudanese nationalism. Over the course of 1970 and 1971, the government would pass
a series of acts abolishing the Native Administration. What this meant in practise for
the populations of the marginalized regions was a system of local councils dominated
by bureaucrats from the riverain centre, and the abolition of customary restraints that
had previously prevented state officials and merchants from the centre seizing their
land.65 In the context of the national vision being hijacked by a narrow elite, sub-national
affiliations, whether regional or ethnic, held an obvious appeal.
It is in this context that we need to revisit the history of Sudan’s most famous failed
coup, the three-day Hashim al-Atta movement of 1971. The coup occurred as leftist
members of Nimeiri’s Revolutionary Command Council, led by al-Atta, attempted to
oust Nimeiri in retribution for his efforts to marginalize the SCP. The putschists
seized control and imprisoned Nimeiri, before a group of NCOs under Corporal
Hamad Iheimir launched a counter-strike that set Nimeiri free and restored him.66
The two most prominent members of this group, Iheimir and Abd al-Rahman
Shambe, were both figures who would later be remembered for their ties to the Nuba
struggle. 67 It was, as Mansour Khalid recalls, ‘a counter-revolt from the bottom’.68
For a while the conventional narrative was that Iheimir and the other NCOs had
‘stormed the palace and released Nimeiri’.69 That they launched a coup against him
four years later in the 1975 movement discussed below was seen as a result of their
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 543

subsequent anger at Nimeiri’s marginalization of the Western Provinces.70 Nimeiri pro-

moted Iheimir to lieutenant after his involvement in the 1971 counter-coup, and was
reportedly devastated by his apparent betrayal four years later.71 Shambe would also
go on to be promoted to lieutenant.72 They were among many NCOs in the armoured
and paratrooper corps brought into the officer class by the Ministry of Defence to
reward their role in 1971, against the opposition of many within the army establishment
who complained the move violated established procedures.73 Although they had not
managed to seize power, their mobilization during this period had ensured that they
were able to traverse the racial divide between the officer corps and the rank and file
and NCOs, to the discomfort of the riverain elites. Bedri recalls that in the aftermath
of the 1971 coup one officer found a member of the “Shawishiyya” (the NCO ranks)
driving around in a car belonging to an officer executed for his participation, whilst
men like Shambe and Iheimir began demanding their own emblems, and refusing to
salute their seniors.74
In recent years, this narrative about the Iheimir group’s participation in 1971 has been
challenged by the SCP – although largely for its own purposes. After regaining power,
Nimeiri’s regime had blamed the communist-affiliated troops for a massacre of fellow
soldiers at the Republican Palace guest house, which occurred as Nimeiri battled to
regain control.75 The SCP subsequently maintained that the massacre was perpetrated
not by troops loyal to Hashim al-Atta, but rather by Iheimir and Shambe’s group.76
SCP accounts, such as Hasan Jizouli’s Unf al-Badiya, base this claim on the account of
a Nimeiri era journalist who covered the trial of the 1975 coup plotters in Atbara, and,
though sworn to secrecy to protect the regime’s anti-SCP narrative at the time, now
maintained Shambe had confessed his group’s responsibility for the massacre, and that
the purpose of the NCOs’ movement was to eliminate both the Nimeiri and al-Atta
groups and seize power themselves.77
Al-Jizouli also bases his claim that the NCOs had sought to seize power for themselves
in 1971 upon an account he maintains was relayed to the communist writer Kamal al-
Jizouli by a member of the group, al-Faki Kanu al-Faki, during their mutual internment
under al-Bashir’s regime in 1992. In this account, the officers who participated in Ihei-
mir’s action were part of a collective of Nuba NCOs across different army units who
had initially supported the Nimeiri coup out of hostility to the parliamentary regime,
but later started planning to remove the May Regime, having been alienated by its
own corruption.78 This narrative chimes roughly with accounts of the “black power”
movements from the time with strong ties to the Nuba Mountains – Philip Abbas
notes that the United Sudanese African Liberation Front had been planning to remove
the parliamentary regime via its military wing and establish a ‘black dominated admin-
istration’ operating a decentralized system, before being pre-empted by the May 1969
movement and failing in two attempts to launch a coup against Nimeiri in that year.79
In the SCP narrative, when al-Atta’s coup occurred, Iheimir’s group mobilized tanks
from the armoured corps in Omdurman not to save Nimeiri, but to take the opportunity
provided by location of the two rivals in the Republican Palace to oust them both.
According to officers in al-Atta’s group, the insurgent NCOs deliberately turned their
tank fire on the guest house, with the intention of destroying the May Regime’s military
elite.80 However they subsequently aborted their takeover plan when Nimeiri escaped
from his detention.81 In the purported al-Faki account, they decided to defer their
544 W. BERRIDGE

action to the next opportunity, which came about in 1975 (see below).82 However partial
the SCP narrative on the NCO’s actions seems, it does seem likely that they had ambi-
tions that went beyond simply restoring Nimeiri. What is perhaps most significant
about the SCP accounts, however, is that they remember Iheimir’s NCOs as ‘rightist mili-
tary elements’,83 in line with the contemporary philosophy of the Khartoum political left
that viewed regionally based movements as fundamentally reactionary – failing to recog-
nize how so many in the regions had been alienated by the centralizing tendencies of the
“modern forces”.
Events subsequent to the 1971 coup furthered the alienation of Western officers and
NCOs. After Nimeiri signed a peace deal with the rebel Anyanya in 1972, Southern Sudan
became an independent region, but the West remained marginalized. The 1975 coup
attempt resulted from a coming together of interests between the Western Sudanese
regionalists within and without the army and the banned parties. The factions of the
“modern forces” that had backed Nimeiri’s coup had their strongest constituency at
the riverain centre, whereas the various “reactionary” forces ousted by Nimeiri’s coup,
particularly the Umma Party, had fared well in the Western Sudan. In the 1973
Sha’aban uprising, student protesters were led by Abbas Barsham, a Nuba Umma
party activist who had been denied a government job by Nimeiri’s Sudan Socialist
Union.84 Whilst the objectives of the Khartoum-based parties such as the Umma and
the various regionalist organizations of the West were far from fully complementary, per-
sonnel did overlap. In 1975, Barsham acted as the lynchpin between the dissident Wes-
terners in the military, the al-Jabha al-Wataniyya (National Front) and the al-Jabha al-
Qawmiyya (also “National Front”), a coalition of various regionalist groups.85 In spite of
Barsham’s membership of the Umma Party, however, he operated with a degree of inde-
pendence, and senior members of the Umma would attempt to disavow the coup attempt
following the subsequent trial.86
Barsham and the Jabha al-Qawmiyya approached Hassan Hussein, a young army
colonel, to lead the coup. The 1971 NCOs, including Shambe and Iheimir, were a key
part of his movement. The coup attempt itself took place on 5 September 1975, and
was put down by the regime within 24 hours, although not before giving it a considerable
scare, capturing the radio station before Nimeiri’s vice-president, Abu’l-Gasim Muham-
mad Ibrahim, led a movement to recapture it.87
Like Iheimir’s movement in 1971, the left-wing media in Sudan tends to remember the
1975 coup attempt as a conservative one. A piece in Hurriyat in 2012 referred to it as the
‘Islamic coup’, noting that its draft post-coup plan of action involved banning alcohol and
appointing Hasan al-Turabi to the government.88 Meanwhile, the leading Islamist daily al-
Intibaha ran a series of articles the same year commemorating the roles of Islamists in the
coup – whilst acknowledging that the Islamic Movement was not the principal driver.
Rather, in the words of Abd al-Rahman Idris, a judge and senior Islamist in the National
Front, the overall perspective of the movement was that ‘the West is marginalized’, but ‘we
entered to influence its direction’. 89 Indeed, the 1975 movement was more self-consciously
“Western” than most the others discussed here. What is notable was that the Jabha al-Qaw-
miyya was a genuinely pan-Western movement – it incorporated the Union of the Misser-
iyya, Hawamza and Rizeigat People, the Darfur Renaissance Front, and Nuba Mountains
Union.90 Various nominees for the post-coup prime minister included senior Western
politicians such as the judge Abd al Majid Imam and Ali al-Haj of the Darfur Renaissance
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 545

Front and Islamic Movement, before the plotters settled on Idris.91 The Christian Nuba
leader Philip Abbas Ghabosh was also nominated for a ministerial position.92 The connec-
tions between Islamists and Western regionalists show why the 1975 events have not been
easily integrated into the history of regional rebellions in Western Sudan, given the recent
focus on leftists fighting the 1989–2019 Islamist regime – in this era the Sudan Communist
Party had only a limited influence in the West, and rebellions influenced by the Sudan
People’s Liberation Army’s ‘New Sudan’ vision would not arrive in the Nuba Mountains
until 1986 and Darfur until 1991.93
Zain al-Abdin Muhammad Abd al-Qadir, one of Nimeiri’s most senior lieutenants,
maintained that whilst Iheimir had served a ‘national purpose’ in 1971, he had served
a ‘tribal goal’ in 1975.94 The distinction between the “tribal” movement of Western
officers and “national” movement of Northern officers evokes an implicit distinction
between one region as “tribal” and the other as “national”. Abd al-Qadir also described
the 1975 movement as ‘pure racism’,95 but the Nuba members of the coup movement
were subjected to severe racism in retaliation for their participation. Abu’l-Gasim
Muhammad Ibrahim reportedly tortured Abbas Barsham, whilst mocking him for his
belief that a Nuba could rule Sudan.96 Meanwhile, the May Regime’s media repeatedly
circulated the narrative that the attempted coup was ‘racist’.97 Al-Badi argues that the
resentment this caused was a major factor motivating Western Sudanese to participate
in the next military movement that sought to topple Nimeiri on 2 July 1976.98
The July 1976 coup attempt was notable for being the first conducted by armed Suda-
nese civilians, outside the framework of the armed forces. It was also notable for the fact
that these civilians were trained and armed outside of Sudan: having initially fled to
Ethiopia, the remainder of al-Hadi’s forces crossed secretly to Libya after the downfall
of Haile Selassie in 1974, picking up Ansaris from Kordofan and Darfur on the way.99
It was organized by the National Front (al-Jabha al-Wataniyya) of Sadiq al-Mahdi and
Hussein al-Hindi, rather than the National Front of 1975 – the translation of both al-
Qawmiyya and al-Wataniyya into English as “national” should not lead to confusion
between the two movements. The coup leader was a soldier, Muhammad Nur Sa’ad,
who heralded from the Musabba’at, a prominent Western Sudanese lineage.100 There
were, according to different accounts, between 1,000 and 2,000 fighters, who either infil-
trated themselves into Sudan in preparation or cut rapidly across the desert from Libya’s
Kufra Oasis in advance of the zero hour.101 Most of the fighters were Ansar, but there was
also a small contingent from the Islamic Movement.102
The move across the desert caught Nimeiri’s security forces off guard, and the rebels
quickly captured the radio station, advancing on the airport and military headquarters
building.103 The coup’s eventual failure was due to a mixture of bad luck, limited
resources and poor planning. The vehicles used to traverse the desert were also poorly
maintained and the fighters arrived starving and exhausted from the journey.104 Most
of them had limited knowledge of the capital.105 The army uniforms with which the
National Front had planned to equip them had failed to arrive on time, and as such
the fighters wore civilian clothing, making them easier for the security forces to identify
and arrest.106 Finally, the unit that captured the radio station lacked the technical
capacity to get the radio working.107
These last two failings in particular would enable the regime to launch a propaganda
counter-strike. It broadcast the narrative that the coup attempted had been conducted by
546 W. BERRIDGE

‘foreign mercenaries’.108 This, combined with the fact that the fighters were wearing civi-
lian clothing, served to rapidly delegitimize the coup in the minds of both the public and
the regular army. Demonstrators came onto the street chanting ‘one army, one
people’,109 rehashing the slogans from the early May Regime about the unification of
army and people.110 Meanwhile, Khalid notes that ‘[t]he conspirators failed because
they challenged and antagonized the Army … .[n]o Army would have accepted humilia-
tion by a gang of armed civilians.’111 This in itself contributed to some of the extreme
violence meted out to the participants in the aftermath of the coup, reportedly including
the fighters being tortured and even buried alive.112
The “foreign mercenaries” narrative had underlying racial undertones, exploiting the
fact that many of the fighters heralded from areas of Darfur where there was considerable
social and ethnic intermixture with neighbouring states.113 The regime even repurposed
stock footage of 1967 Biafra Conflict in Nigeria in its efforts to demonstrate that the par-
ticipants in the attempted coup were not genuinely Sudanese.114 Subsequent accounts by
Nimeiri’s henchmen have kept the “mercenaries” narrative going. Abd al-Qadir main-
tained that the fighters heralded from Gabon, Chad and Nigeria and that their accents
gave away that they were not Sudanese.115 Nimeiri era security agents Hashim Abu
Rannat and Muhammad Abd al-Aziz acknowledge that the majority of them were Kor-
dofanians and Darfuris from the Shabab al-Ansar (Ansar Youth), but argue that the pres-
ence of ‘mercenaries’ was evidenced, among other things, by the fact that a number of the
captured fighters spoke Arabic imperfectly.116 This shows how deeply the “foreign mer-
cenaries” narrative was grounded in an exclusivist nationalism tied to the Arabic
language. In the wake of the 1976 movement, the government tightened the enforcement
of its system of national identity cards throughout Khartoum, using this system to
enforce “kashas” or “sweeps” of districts heavily populated by Darfuris, and force
those not deemed “Sudanese” out of the capital.117 The regime’s security order was vio-
lently demarcating the limits of Sudanese nationalism.

The rise of militia politics

After the 1976 movement, there would be no further attempt to take Khartoum via
Western Sudan for a generation – subsequent regimes made bargains with regionalist
leaders, and played divide and rule by mobilizing Western Sudanese communities into
militias. These militias kept many Western Sudanese outside the army, and thus
implicitly the nation. For a long period the power dynamic between these militias and
the elites in Khartoum was an uneven one, reflecting the broader divisions between
centre and margins within Sudanese political society. However, the rise of Himeidti
between 2019 and 2023 would transform the relationship spectacularly.
In 1977, Nimeiri and the National Front engaged in a process of National Reconcilia-
tion, which saw the Umma Party and the Muslim Brothers incorporated into the ruling
Sudan Socialist Union. However, the remaining fighters in the Libyan training camps
were immediately demobilized, rather than being incorporated into the military as had
happened with the Southern rebels in 1972.118 Sadiq al-Mahdi would soon leave
Nimeiri’s government, and mobilized his followers to take to the streets against it as it
fell to the civilian uprising of April 1985.119 Some of the National Front fighters,
having been relocated to substandard agricultural schemes post-1977, were remobilized
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 547

under al-Sadiq’s parliamentary regime (1986–1989) to join the murahiliin militias that
would fight in the war against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Southern Kordo-
fan.120 Meanwhile, the process of militia-ization in Southern Kordofan continued to be
driven by government land policies that were beginning to make historic Baggara pas-
toral economies increasingly untenable.121
The process began in the 1985 transitional period and was orchestrated by the man
who would subsequently become Sadiq al-Mahdi’s right hand man and eventual political
successor, the Misseriyya general and Transitional Military Council (1985–1986)
member Fadlallah Burma Nasir.122 Although the principal purpose of the mobilization
was to fight the war in Kordofan against the SPLA, the Umma Party was also hoping
to establish the murahiliin as a counterweight to the regular military, which it saw as
still being dominated by pro-Egyptian, Khatmiyya affiliated officers from the Northern
region.123
Before Sadiq al-Mahdi fell in 1989, he was planning to formally organize and legally
empower his militias as “Popular Defence Forces (PDF)”, in response to pressure from
the armed forces to shut them down.124 However in 1989, the National Islamic Front
took power via a military coup, and seized the Umma Party’s militia networks in
Western Sudan for itself. The PDF expanded considerably, incorporating numerous
fighters from throughout Western Sudan and elsewhere. Although the 1989 coup was
certainly not done in the name of Western Sudanese regionalism, some Western Suda-
nese regionalists came into power on its back.125 However, when Western Sudanese
pushed within the National Assembly for greater regional devolution, the more conser-
vative and ethnocentric Islamists opposed this move, leading to a major split as al-Turabi
was forced out the government. Many of the Western Sudanese Islamists went into the
new party he formed, the Popular Congress Party, which itself had ties to the Justice and
Equality Movement (JEM) formed by the Zaghawa PDF leader Khalil Ibrahim around the
turn of the century.126 The core philosophy of the JEM sought to challenge the domina-
tion of the government and economic sector in Sudan by a narrow riverain elite.127 Come
2003, JEM was one of the principal rebel protagonists in the Darfur conflict.
As militia fighters and rebels, JEM members had remained outside of the core national
security institutions – but like those who fought in 1976, they would attempt to establish
a more prominent role for themselves by force. In 2008, JEM attacked Khartoum, repro-
ducing the raid across the desert that the National Front attempted. 1,000 fighters riding
around 130 vehicles arrived in Omdurman on 10 May 2008.128 They attempted to move
towards the radio station and cross the river to attack the Republican Palace, but were
repulsed by the security services.129 What followed was an attempt by the government
and its affiliated media to characterize the JEM insurgents as ‘Chadian mercenaries’,
repeating the language used in 1976.130
While it is true that Chad had been increasing its support to JEM in early 2008 and it
appeared to have used Chadian-supplied weapons and vehicles in the assault on Omdur-
man, it is not known whether Chad officially backed the raid or JEM acted on its own.131
The problem with the narrative about ‘Chadian mercenaries’ was that, as Tubiana puts it,
for the Zaghawa communities from which JEM drew its fighters, ‘the border is just a line
on the map’.132 Depicting the forces as collectively “Chadian”, however, enabled the
Sudanese government to locate them outside the Sudanese body politic and justify the
ethnically motivated violence that followed. The government claimed that JEM fighters
548 W. BERRIDGE

had infiltrated Khartoum in civilian clothes so as to justify racially based arrests of

Darfuri and particularly Zaghawa citizens.133 As was the case in 1954, Darfuris were
seized from public transport apparently purely on the basis of their physical
appearance.134
Although they discomforted the ruling elites, the various coups of the 1970s, like the
2008 movement, were crushed in relatively quick time. They thus stand in stark contra-
distinction to today’s events, whereby Himeidti’s forces in Khartoum have proved extre-
mely hard for the existing “regular forces” to shift. Yet to understand the current dynamic
in Khartoum, to which the transitional project to create a national military has been so
central, it is important to locate today’s events within the lengthy history of Sudan’s frag-
mented security order and the proliferation of sub-national militias.
The politics that gave rise to the emergence of the militia politics in Sadiq al-Mahdi’s
era also provides the background for the current disaster in Khartoum. It was Sadiq’s
Libyan backers who armed the first Janjawiid groups in Northern Darfur that fought
in the Fur-Arab war of 1987–1989.135 After 1989, al-Bashir’s government considerably
increased the political power of the camel herding Arab groups in Northern Darfur,
and then armed them against the Masalit when fighting broke out between the two com-
munities in 1999.136 As conflict broke out throughout Darfur in 2003, these groups
became the core of the Janjawiid militias that served as the government’s principal
counter-insurgency arm in the province. Amidst the leaders of the Janjawiid was
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the nephew of Juma Dagalo, Umda of the Awlad Mansur
clan of the camel-herding Mahariyya Arabs.137 In the aftermath of Himeidti’s recent
power-grab in Khartoum, one Sudanese commentator argued his family had no historic
presence in Sudan, having fled from Chad in 1997.138 In practice, Himeidti’s clan have
been moving between Chad and Sudan for centuries.139 While it is true that when the
government established the Janjawiid militias it did recruit Arabs from Chad and
other West African countries, the extent has been exaggerated.140
In 2007, Himeidti established himself as a major player by triangulating between
Khartoum and the rebels, eventually rejoining the government forces when al-Bashir
brought more money to the table.141 The government reinvented Himeidti’s Janjawiid
troops as the Rapid Support Forces, deploying them throughout Khartoum and using
them to crush civilian protests in 2013.142 Himeidti’s forces then expanded considerably
due to the income they received from the Saudi and Emirati governments who employed
them to fight against Houthi Islamist militants in Yemen.143 When al-Bashir fell to a civi-
lian uprising in 2019, Himeidti was in a position to act as kingmaker. In the subsequent
transitional Sovereignty Council he took the position of deputy to Abd al-Fattah Burhan,
one of the soldiers who had initially helped to arm his militia during the outbreak of the
Darfur conflict.144
In 2019, Sadiq al-Mahdi publicly invited Himeidti and his forces to join the Umma
Party – now the National Umma Party.145 There was a precedent for this in the decision
of Fadlallah Burma Nasir to join the party immediately after having served on the 1985–
1986 Transitional Military Council.146 However, Sadiq’s initiative prompted a furious
response from al-Saiha, a legacy NCP-era publication, which asked why he was inviting
Himeidti and the RSF to join his party, but not the police, general intelligence service,
army and their respective leaders. It accused al-Sadiq of attempting to treat Himeidti
as a ‘Dervish’ owned by the al-Mahdi family, and, recalling the revolt of the Ashraf
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 549

against the Khalifa in 1891, insisted that the people of Darfur would no longer act as the
servants of the Mahdi.147 The piece was evidently partisan, but held a grain of truth: in
1965, 1986 and (almost) in 1976, the Umma Party had been able to mobilize armed
Western Sudanese to bolster its power in Khartoum and nationally. However, Himeidti
had already used his control over the booming Darfuri gold economy and transnational
mercenary networks to turn the tables on al-Bashir as the 30 year overlord of Sudan’s
militia networks;148 the National Umma Party may have founded the original militia
economy, but it was in no more of a position than al-Bashir to control Himeidti. It
would attempt to, nevertheless.
After Sadiq al-Mahdi’s death from coronavirus in 2020, Fadlallah Burma Nasir
became the National Umma Party’s first leader from Western Sudan, and also one of
the major players in the dominant faction of the Forces of Freedom and Change
(FFC). After the FFC Central Council initially rejected any further negotiations with
the military subsequent to the October 2021 coup against the civilians, Nasir once
more conducted talks with Himeidti and Burhan. In September 2022, he went public
with their discussions. Burhan, he noted, insisted that the army must remain in charge
until the end of the transitional period. Himeidti, however, was willing for the army to
return to the barracks. Himeidti’s position, Nasir insisted, was ‘closer to the aspirations
of the Sudanese people’.149 The National Umma Party subsequently became the major
player in an internationally backed framework agreement, signed in December 2022,
that laid the course for the generals to hand over power to a civilian transitional govern-
ment. Himeidti threw his full public weight behind the agreement, whereas Burhan
signed less enthusiastically and subsequently attempted to drag his feet.150
As the political battles over the implementation of the agreement intensified, many of
the political dynamics from Sudan’s second parliamentary era reproduced themselves.
The National Umma Party had, it appeared, once more attempted to use a militia
from Western Sudan to outmanoeuvre the army. Meanwhile, the DUP – now the
“DUP Original” – the National Umma Party’s chief parliamentary antagonist from
that era, aligned itself with the military in opposing the Framework Agreement as
head of the rival FFC-Democratic Bloc. The military and the FFC-Democratic Bloc
backed an alternative political dialogue in Egypt, where the regime feared that the Frame-
work Agreement would lead to it losing influence to the “Quad” of powers that had sup-
ported it, including Himeidti’s Emirati backers.151 Subsequently, a major standoff
emerged over the process of integrating the RSF into the military as decreed by the
Framework Agreement,152 leading to the outbreak of conflict on 15 April 2023.
In the wake of Himeidti’s devastating assault on the capital, its inhabitants have
damned the RSF as the ‘forces of the wilderness’,153 reprising language similar to that
deployed by Abd al-Khaliq Mahjub in 1965. Evidently the RSF fighters are not ‘the
forces of the wilderness’ – the violence they are wreaking has been enabled by modern
military technology and supported by a modern social media PR campaign. Nor were
they simply proxies of the National Umma Party – in spite of its efforts to court Himeidti,
the party had to announce in May 2023 that one of its own leaders was killed by the RSF
in the fighting.154 Nor were they principled regionalists. There were Darfuri Arab rebels
willing to make a principled alliance with other marginalized Westerners in 2007, but
Himeidti was not one of them.155 The RSF fighters are mercenaries in a way that the
1976 and 2008 fighters were not.
550 W. BERRIDGE

Conclusion
It is a continuity of Sudanese history that movements originating from within Western
Sudan, or using Western Sudanese manpower, have frequently been used to instigate a
change of regime in Khartoum. These movements have had multifarious leaders and
motives, including Islamism, sectarianism, “black” politics and regionalism. Some
could be considered specifically “Western” movements (1975, 2008 and, according to
one narrative, 1971); at other times, national movements led by the Umma Party drew
heavily on support from Western Sudan (1954, 1965, 1970, 1976). Most recently, Khar-
toum has fallen prey to the mercenary empire of General Himeidti and the RSF. Many of
these crises are the long-term product of a structural tension within the military that
dates back to the divide and rule policies of British colonialism. The British feared
neo-Mahdism and pro-Egyptianism equally, and as a consequence established divides
within Sudan’s security and broader socio-legal and economic order that would
prevent either movement fully capturing the Sudanese body politic. The consequence
was that while Northern officers dominated the military after independence, the army,
the other security institutions and the regimes they generated only had a limited social
authority in Western Sudan, where the Mahdiyya had previously held sway.
Whether the movements studied were explicitly “Western” movements or national
movements drawing heavily on Western support, they provoked similar fears and reac-
tions within the dominant security elites. In the era of the October Revolution and early
May Regime, Nasser’s Arab Socialism in Egypt served as the model for Sudan’s “modern
forces”, the army was seen as the vanguard of those forces, and the Umma Party’s various
efforts to capture the Sudanese nation using its followers in Western Sudan were charac-
terized as a return to tribalism. In practise, many of the Umma party’s armed followers,
like those who joined later militias, were among those who the economy of the “modern
forces” had little space for. When Western Sudanese NCOs, structurally marginalized
due to the logic of the colonial neo-tribal system, attempted to seize power, their move-
ments were denounced as racist and ethnocentric. The established elites deemed the
movements originating in Western Sudan to be incapable of a national vision. Like
the colonial security elites,156 they also feared the consequences of social and economic
ties between Darfur, Kordofan and the regions of the Sahel further West. This provided
the context for narratives about the 1976 and 2008 movements’ use of “mercenaries”,
which functioned to exclude many Western Sudanese from the nation altogether.
Himeidti has been able to entrench mercenary politics so effectively in the current era
precisely because previous elites had excluded so many from the key military institutions
that had served as the nucleus of the national project.

Notes
1. Magdi El Gizouli, ‘Himeidti: the New Sudanese Man’, Sudan Tribune, 17 May 2014, https://
sudantribune.com/article49850/.
2. Young et al, Sudan’s Spring.
3. Abdelwahab el-Affendi, ‘There is much danger in the Sudan crisis, but also an opportunity’,
al-Jazeera 17 April 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/4/17/there-is-much-
danger-in-the-sudan-crisis-but-also-an-opportunity.
4. Decalo, ‘African Studies’ 7.
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 551

5. Berridge, In the Shadow.

6. Here I am drawing on Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.
7. De Waal, ‘Counterinsurgency’.
8. See, eg., LeRiche, ‘Sudan, 1972-1983’
9. Johnson, Root Causes, especially Chapter 9.
10. See, eg Alain Gresh
11. See, eg., Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim, ‘Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo: lastu Rizeigi … ana da’am al-
sari’a’, Independent Arabia, 23 April 2023, https://tinyurl.com/bde649ke.
12. Holt, Mahdist State, 43.
13. Ibid, 44.
14. Ibid, Mahdist State, 125-131, 180-184.
15. Berridge et al, Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy.
16. Vezzadini, Lost Nationalism, 93.
17. Muhammad, Sudan Defence Force, 37.
18. Sikainga, Slaves into Workers, 62.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Holt and Daly, History, 93.
22. Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors, 152.
23. Holt, Mahdist State, 48.
24. Salih, ‘British Policy’.
25. Muhammad, Sudan Defence Force, 55.
26. Ibid, 56.
27. Orlebar, Tales, 10.
28. Ibid. See also Muhammad, Sudan Defence Force, 34-35.
29. Muhammad, Sudan Defence Force, 54-55.
30. Newbold and Henderson, Making, 481.
31. Ali, The Shaiqiya, 13.
32. For the Hamitic myth’s influence on colonial ethnic politics in Africa see Reid, A History,
166-167. For its impact in Sudan, Mamdani, Saviors, 78-80.
33. See, e.g., Streets, Martial Races.
34. See Mamdani, Define and Rule, for the distinction between ‘Arabs’ as a race and other
groups as ‘tribes’.
35. 6th Mounted Infantry Company-Nyala. Handing Over Notes Written by Bimbashi
Luxmore, 1946, 720/2/36 Orlebar papers.
36. Keays, ‘History of the Camel Corps’, 117.
37. Kamal Osman Salih, ‘British Colonial Military recruitment’, 186.
38. Muhammad, Sudan Defence Force, 98.
39. Berridge, ‘Guarding’.
40. Berridge, In the Shadow.
41. Berridge, ‘Guarding’.
42. Abdel Rahman Nugdalla + others v Sudan Govt, HC/Maj.Ct/14/1954 AC/CP/181/1954, 8
Aug. 1954, 2.D.1. Fasher (A) 32/1/1, National Record Office, Khartoum, cited in Berridge,
In the Shadow, 238.
43. al-Ra’i al-‘Aam, 2 March 1954, cited in Berridge, In the Shadow, 238.
44. McGowan and Thomas, ‘African military coups d’etat’, 638.
45. Ibid.
46. Berridge, Civil Uprisings, 122.
47. Holt and Daly, A History of Sudan, 119.
48. Daly, Darfur’s Sorrow, 190.
49. See Al-Sawi, ‘Al-Yasar al-Sudani’.
50. Berridge, Civil Uprisings, 163.
51. Jizouli, Unf al-Badiya, 23.
52. Al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 46-49.
552 W. BERRIDGE

53. Gresh, ‘Free Officers’.

54. Ibrahim, ‘The 1971 coup’, 103.
55. Berridge, Civil Uprisings, 81.
56. Said, al-Saif wa’l-Tugha, 46.
57. Taha, al-Jaysh al-Sudani, 90.
58. Woodward, ‘Nationalism and Opposition’, 386.
59. al-Badi, Ahdath, 9.
60. Ibid, 24.
61. al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 52.
62. al-Badi, Ahdath.
63. Taha, al-Jaysh al-Sudani, 93.
64. al-Badi, Ahdath, 86-96.
65. Daly, Darfur’s Sorrow, 208-209, 216; Johnson, Root Causes, 130.
66. Khalid, Nimeiri, 143.
67. Shawqi Bedri, ‘Madhbaha bayt al-diyafa’, Sudaniyyat, 30 July 2011, https://www.sudaress.-
com/sudanyiat/1000448. Omer Shurkian, ‘The Nuba: A People’s Struggle for Political Niche
and Equity in Sudan’, Sudan Tribune, 30 March 2008, https://sudantribune.com/
article26617/.
68. Khalid, Nimeiri, 23.
69. Ibid, 143.
70. Ibid.
71. Hibba Mahmoud, ‘Inqilab al-Muqaddam ‘Hassan Hussein’ fi 5 September 1975 haraka
didda Nimeiri lam taktamal’ al-Rakoba, 9 June 2013, https://www.alrakoba.net/news-
action-show-id-114489.htm
72. ‘Attempted Coup -5 September 75’, 16 September 1975, signed by Colonel DA, FCO 93/720,
The National Archives.
73. Said, al-Sayf wa-al-ṭughah, 48.
74. Shawqi Bedri, ‘al-Batal al-Mazlum Muhammad Nur Sa’ad (2)’, al-Rakoba 17 July 2014.
75. Ibrahim, ‘The 1971 coup’, 105.
76. Umayma Abd al-Wahhab, ‘Al-Hizb al-Shiyu’yi: Majzara Qasr al-Diyafa Irtikabaha
Majmoua Hassan Hussein’, 21 July 2010, https://www.sudaress.com/akhirlahza/10852.
77. Jizouli, Unf al-Badiya, 185. A similar claim was also made by the leading SCP figure Yousif
Hussein. See Abd al-Wahhab, ‘Al-Hizb al-Shiyu’yi’.
78. Jizouli, Unf al-Badiya, 186-188.
79. Abbas, ‘Growth of Black Political Consciousness’.
80. al-Surur, Haraka 19 Juliu, 87. Salah Basha, interview with Madani Ali Madani, al-Rakoba 3
August 2017, https://www.sudaress.com/alrakoba/1080692.
81. Jizouli, Unf al-Badiya, 186-188.
82. Ibid, 188-189.
83. Surur, Haraka 19 Juliu..For the latter point, see, eg.,
84. ‘Ala al-Din Zain al-Abdin, ‘al-Shahid Abbas Barsham – ibn Jabal al-Nuba al-Asham’, Suda-
nile 26 February 2014, https://www.sudaress.com/sudanile/64939
85. As quoted in al-Intibaha, ‘Asrar fi’l-siyasa Sudaniyya tunshir li-awwal marra’, 23 September
2012, https://www.sudaress.com/alintibaha/22468. ‘Hiwar istithna’i ma’ Mawlana al-Qadi
Abd al-Rahman Idris’, Intibaha 21 September 2012, https://www.sudaress.com/alintibaha/
22361.
86. al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 81-82. Abd al-Halim al-Tahir interview with Majid
Muhammad Ali, al-Sahafa 8 September 2017, http://alsahafasd.com/10297246.
87. ‘Hiwar istithna’i’, Intibaha.
88. Bakri al-Saeigh, ‘5 September 1975: al-Dhikra al-37 ala al-Inqilab al-Islami’, Hurriyyat 3 Sep-
tember 2012, https://www.sudaress.com/hurriyat/76383.
89. As quoted in al-Intibaha, ‘Asrar fi’l-siyasa Sudaniyya’, Op Cit.
90. Shurkian, ‘The Nuba’. ‘Asrar fi’l-siyasa’, al-Intibaha.
91. al-Intibaha, ‘Asrar fi’l-siyasa’, al-Intibaha Op Cit.
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 553

92. ’ Hibba Mahmoud, ‘Inqilab al-Muqaddam ‘Hassan Hussein’. elSaeigh, ‘5 September 1975’.
93. Johnson, Root Causes, 246, 257.
94. ‘Abd al-Qadir, Mayo, 76.
95. Ibid.
96. Shurkian, ‘The Nuba’.
97. al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 89.
98. Ibid.
99. Taha, al-Jaysh al-Sudani, 102.
100. al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 165.
101. Khalid, Nimeiri, 150.
102. Berridge, al-Turabi, 60.
103. Khalid, Nimeiri.
104. Shawqi Bedri ‘Shahada Zamil al-Batil Muhammad Nur Sa’ad, Sudanile, 25 July 2014, https://
www.sudaress.com/sudanile/70623
105. Bedri, ‘Shahada’.
106. Al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 93.
107. Ibid, 103.
108. Ibid, 96.
109. Ibid.
110. Said, al-Saif wa’l-Tugha, 46.
111. Khalid, Nimeiri, 151.
112. Al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 168. Shurkian. ‘The Nuba’.
113. Al-Badi, al-Jabha al-Wataniyya, 96.
114. Ibid.
115. Abd al-Qadir, Mayo, 77.
116. Abu Rannat and Abd al-Aziz, Asrar, 258, 264.
117. Berridge, ‘Nests of criminals’, 248.
118. De Waal, ‘Some comments’, 149.
119. Berridge, Civil Uprisings, 84.
120. De Waal, ‘Peace and the Security Sector in Sudan, 2002-2011’, 182. De Waal, ‘Some
comments’.
121. Pantuliano, ‘Oil’, 7-23.
122. De Waal, ‘Some comments’, 147.
123. Johnson, Root Causes, 81-82.
124. De Waal, ‘Some comments’, 142, 150.
125. Berridge, al-Turabi, 257, 275.
126. Flint and De Waal, Darfur, 103. Gallab, First Islamist Republic.
127. el-Tom, Imbalance.
128. Human Rights Watch, Crackdown in Khartoum: Mass Arrests, Torture and Disappearances
since the May 10 Attack, https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/06/17/crackdown-khartoum/
mass-arrests-torture-and-disappearances-may-10-attack
129. Human Rights Watch, Crackdown.
130. Sudanese Media Center ‘Bi-quwwa al-difa’a al-Chadi: al-‘adl wa’l-musawa … intahara ala
masharif Omdurman’, 15 May 2008, https://www.sudaress.com/smc/2130.
131. Tubiana, ‘Renouncing’, 21.
132. Jérôme Tubiana, ‘Why Chad isn’t Darfur and Darfur isn’t Rwanda’, London Review of Books,
17 December 2009, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v31/n24/jerome-tubiana/why-chad-
isn-t-darfur-and-darfur-isn-t-rwanda.
133. Human Rights Watch, Crackdown.
134. Ibid.
135. Harir, ‘“Arab belt”’, 167-173.
136. Flint and De Waal, Darfur, 56-63.
137. Ibid, 260.
554 W. BERRIDGE

138. Khalil Muhammad Suleiman, ‘Khartoum Maqbara al-Janjawiid’, al-Rakoba 22 April 2023,
https://tinyurl.com/5n7pynvj.
139. Berridge et al, Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy, 63.
140. Flint and De Waal, Darfur, 66.
141. Ibid, 260.
142. Berridge et al, Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy, 66.
143. Ibid, 76-77.
144. For the historic relationship between Burhan and Himeidti, see al-Sharq al-Awsat, ‘al-
Burhan wa Himeidti … nihaya ‘anifa li-Sadaqa qadima’, 16 April 2023, https://tinyurl.-
com/ynjzresh.
145. Sadiq al-Mahdi, ‘Nurahhib bi-Indimam al-da’am al-sari’a li-hizb al-Umma’, Nilein, 24
December 2019, https://www.sudaress.com/alnilin/13103237.
146. Lesch, Sudan, 219.
147. al-Saiha, ‘Al-Fariq Awwal Himeidti laysa Darwishan li-Aal al-Mahdi!’, 28 December 2019,
https://www.sudaress.com/assayha/23936.
148. Berridge et al, Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy, esp. Chapter 2.
149. Kush News, ‘Ala Khalfayya tasriihat rais hizb al-umma al-qawmi … hal intafa’a al-siraj bayna
generalat al-hizb wa’l-mukawwin al-askari?’, 19 September 2022, https://www.sudaress.-
com/kushnews/341529.
150. Dabanga, ‘Signing of Sudan’s final agreement postponed over SAF-RSF differences’, 4 April
2023, https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/signing-of-the-final-agreement-
postponed-over-saf-rsf-differences.
151. The ‘Quad’ comprises Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the
United States. al-Sudani, ‘Warasha al-Qahira … hal najahat Misr fi taqdim hulul li’l-Suda-
niyyin?’, 11 February 2023, https://www.sudaress.com/alsudani/1167183.
152. Dabanga, ‘Signing of Sudan’s final agreement’, Op. Cit.
153. Azza Mustafa Babikir, ‘The Fall of Khartoum’, May 2023, https://www.cmi.no/publications/
8790-the-fall-of-khartoum.
154. al-Quds al-Arabi, ‘Al-Sudan … Ishtibakat wa muqtil qiyadi fi hizb al-Umma … wa
mabaouth Burhan yajri mubahathat fi Qatar’, 29 May 2023, https://tinyurl.com/y88tun8b.
155. Flint and De Waal, Darfur, 261-262.
156. Fisher, ‘British Responses’, 350-351.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two reviewers, as well as those whose contributed feedback following my
presentation at the Northeast Africa Forum, for comments and advice that helped me to refine and
improve this piece.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Bibliography
Abbas, Philip. “Growth of Black Political Consciousness in Northern Sudan.” Africa Today 3
(1973): 29–43.
Abd al-Qadir, Zein al-Abdin Muhammad Ahmad. Mayo: Sanawat al-Khasb Wa’l Jafaf. Khartoum:
Markaz Muhammad Umar Bashir li’l-Dirasat al-Sudaniyya, 2011.
al-Badi, Siddiq. Ahdath Jazira Aba wa Wad Nubawi. 2nd ed. Khartoum: Maktaba al-Dar al-Baida
Umdurman, 2016.
 JOURNAL OF EASTERN AFRICAN STUDIES 555

al-Badi, Siddiq. al-Jabha al-Wataniyya: Asrar wa Khafaya. Khartoum: Maktaba Dar al-Baida li’l-
Nushr wa’l-Tawzia, 2009.
Ali, Haydar Ibrahim. The Shaiqiya: Cultural and Social Change of a Northern Riverain People.
Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1979.
al-Sawi, Abd al-Aziz Hussein. “Al-Yasar al-Sudani wa Oktober: Istikmal al-Muhimma bi-Istikmal
al-Muraaja’a al-Nuqdiyya Li’l-Dhat.” In Khamsun ‘Aaman Ala Thawrat Uktubir al-Sudaniyya,
1964–2014: Nuhud al-Sudan al-Bakir’, edited by H.A. Ibrahim, 217–234. Khartoum: Markaz al-
Dirasat al-Sudaniyya, 2015.
al-Surur, Abd al-Azim Awad. Al-Tahdir. Al-Tanfidh. Al-Hazima. Khartoum: Dar al-Izza li’l-Nushr
wa’l-tawzia, 1971. 2015.
Berridge, W. J., et al. Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People’s
Revolution. London: Hurst, 2022.
Berridge, W. J. Hasan al-Turabi: Islamist Politics and Democracy in Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017.
Berridge, W. J. “Nests of Criminals’: Policing in the Peri-Urban Regions of Northern Sudan, 1964-
1989.” The Journal of North African Studies 17 (2012): 239–255.
Berridge, W. J. “Guarding the Guards": The Failure of the Colonial State to Govern Police Violence
in Sudan, ca.1922-1956.’.” Northeast African Studies 12, no. 2 (2012): 1–28.
Berridge, W. J. “In the Shadow of the Regime: The Contradictions of Policing in Sudan, c. 1924-
1989.” PhD diss., Durham University, 2011.
Berridge, W. J. Civil Uprisings in Modern Sudan: The ‘Khartoum Springs’ of 1964 and 1985.
London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Daly, M. W. Darfur’s Sorrow: A History of Destruction and Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
De Waal, Alex. “Counterinsurgency on the Cheap.” Review of African Political Economy 102
(2004): 716–725.
De Waal, Alex. “Some Comments on Militias in the Contemporary Sudan.” In Civil War in Sudan,
edited by M.W. Daly and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, 142–156. New York: British Academic Press,
2003.
Decalo, Samuel. “African Studies and Military Coups in Africa.” Journal of Contemporary African
Studies 5, no. 1/2 (1986): 3–25.
el-Tom, Abdullahi Osman. The Imbalance of Power and Wealth in Sudan: Darfur, JEM and the
Khalil Ibrahim Story. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2011.
Fisher, John. “British Responses to Mahdist and Other Unrest in North and West Africa, 1919-
1930.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 52, no. 3 (2006): 347–361.
Flint, Julie, and Alex De Waal. Darfur: A New History of a Long War. London: Zed Books, 2008.
Gallab, Abdullahi A. The First Islamist Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in
Sudan. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
Gresh, Alain. “The Free Officers and the Comrades: The Sudanese Communist Party and Nimeiri
Face to Face, 1969-1971.” South Atlantic Quarterly 109 (2010): 4–16.
Harir, Sharif, and Terje Tvedt. Short Cut to Decay: The Case of Sudan. Stockholm: Nordiska
Afrikainsinstitutet, 1994.
Harir, Sharif. ““Arab Belt” Versus “African Belt”: Ethno-Political Conflict in Darfur and the
Regional and Cultural Factors.” In Short Cut to Decay: The Case of Sudan, edited by Sharif
Harir and Terje Tvedt, 144–185. Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainsinstitutet, 1994.
Holt, P. M., and M. W. Daly. A History of Sudan from the Coming of Islam Till the Present Day.
Sixth edition. London: Routledge, 2014.
Holt, P. M. The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.
Ibrahim, Abdullahi Ali. “The 1971 Coup in Sudan and the Radical War of Liberal Democracy in
Africa.” Comparative Studies of South Africa, Asia and the Middle East 16 (1996): 98–114.
Jizouli, Hasan. Unf al-Badiya: Waqa’iyyat al-Ayyam al-Akhira fi Haya Abd al-Khaliq Mahjub.
Khartoum: Manshurat Madarik, 2006.
Johnson, Douglas. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars: Old Wars and New Wars. Woodbridge:
James Currey, 2016.
556 W. BERRIDGE

Keays, G. A. V. “History of the Camel Corps.” in Sudan Notes and Records 22 (1939): 103–123.
Khalid, Mansur. Nimeiri and the Revolution of Dis-May. London: KPI, 1985.
LeRiche, Matthew. “Sudan, 1972-1983.” In New Armies from Old: Merging Competing Military
Forces After Civil Wars, edited by Roy E. Licklider, 31–48. Washington: Georgetown
University Press, 2014.
Lesch, Ann Mosley. Sudan: Contested National Identities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1998.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late
Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2012.
Mamdani, Mahmood. Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror. London:
Verso, 2009.
McGowan, Pat, and Thomas H. Johnson. “African Military Coups D’État and Underdevelopment:
A Quantitative Historical Analysis.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 22 (1984): 633–666.
Muhammad, Ahmad al-Awwad. Sudan Defence Force: Origin and Role, 1925-1955. Khartoum:
Institute of African and Asian Studies, 198.
Newbold, Douglas, and K. D. D. Henderson. The Making of Modern Sudan: The Life and Letters of
Sir Douglas Newbold. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974.
Orlebar, John. Tales of the Sudan Defence Force. Newport: J Orlebar, 1981.
Pantuliano, Sara. “Oil, Land and Conflict: The Decline of Misseriyya Pastoralism in Sudan.”
Review of African Political Economy 37 (2010): 7–23.
Reid, Richard. A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present. 2nd ed. Malden: Wiley Blackwell,
2012.
Said, Al-Sirr Ahmed. al-Saif Wa’l-Tugha: Al-Quwwat al-Musallaha al-Sudaniyya: Dirasa
Tahliliyya 1971-1995. Cairo: al-Sharika al-‘Aalamiyya li’l-tiba’a wa’l-Nushr, 2001.
Salih, Kamal Osman. “British Colonial Military Recruitment Policy in the Southern Kordofan
Region of Sudan, 1900-1945.” Middle Eastern Studies 41 (2005): 169–192.
Salih, Kamal Osman. “British Policy and the Accentuation of Inter-Ethnic Divisions: The Case of
the Nuba Mountains Region of Sudan, 1920-1940.” African Affairs 89 (1990): 417–436.
Sikainga, Ahmad. Slaves Into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1996.
Streets, Heather. Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture,
1857-1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Taha, Isam al-Din Mirghani. al-Jaysh al-Sudani Wa’l-Siyasa: Dirasa Tahliliyya Li’l-Inqilabat al-
Askariyya wa Muqawama al-Anzima al-Diktaturiyya fi al-Sudan. Cairo: Markaz al-Dirasat
al-Sudaniyya, 2002.
Tubiana, Jérôme. Renouncing the Rebels: Local and Regional Dimensions of Chad-Sudan
Rapprochement. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2011.
Vezzadini, Elena. Lost Nationalism: Revolution, Memory and Anti-Colonial Resistance in Sudan.
Woodbridge: James Curry, 2015.
Woodward, Peter. “Nationalism and Opposition in Sudan.” African Affairs 80 (1981): 379–388.
Young, Alden, et al. Sudan’s Spring: Causes and Consequences, 1–4. Rift Valley Institute Briefing
Paper, 2019.