National Reconciliation
01 November 1984
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Occasional Papers Series
THE POLITICS OF NATIONAL RECONCILIATION IN THE SUDAN:
THE NUMAYRI REGIME AND THE NATIONAL FRONT OPPOSITION
Mohamed Beshir Hamid
November 1984
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Georgetown University Washington D.C. 20057
Download the full paper PDF [24 pages]
“I don’t see much sense in that.” said Rabbit.
“No,” said Pooh humbly, “there isn’t.
But there was going to be when I began it.
It’s just that something happened to it on the way.”
A.A. Milne. The House at Pooh Corner
INTRODUCTION
The Historical and Political Background
Located astride a number of significant cultural and strategic boundaries, the Sudan occupies a key position between the Arab and African worlds. Its modem history can be traced to the Egyptian invasion in 1820, under the nominal sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. The Turco- Egyptian occupation lasted for over sixty years and was ended in 1885 by an Islamic nationalist movement under the leadership of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi. The Mahdist revolution succeeded in the reconstruction of a politically independent and unified Sudan; but the Mahdist state itself was short-lived. Al-Mahdi’s successor, the khalifa ‘Abdullahi, was defeated in 1898 by the combined forces of Britain and Egypt, and the Sudan came to be ruled under the so-called Anglo-Egyptian “condominium.”
