Sudan Army - History
The warrior tradition has played an important part in the history of Sudanese society, and military involvement in government has continued in modern Sudan. Although Sudan inherited a parliamentary government structure from the British, the Sudanese people were accustomed to a British colonial administration that was inherently military in nature. British officers held high administrative positions in both the provincial and central governments. At independence Sudan faced difficult problems that few believed could be solved by untested parliamentary rule in a country fragmented by competing ethnic, religious, and regional interests. It seemed natural to turn to a national institution like the army that could address these problems through a system of centralized enforcement and control.
The military force that eventually became the Sudanese army was established in 1898, when six battalions of black soldiers from southern Sudan were recruited to serve with Britain's General Herbert Kitchener in his campaign to retake Sudan. In the succeeding thirty years, no fewer than 170 military expeditions were sent to establish order, halt intertribal warfare, and restrain occasional messianic leaders, mostly in Darfur in the west.
During the period of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium (1899- 1955), participation of southerners in northern units of the Sudanese armed forces was all but eliminated. The British had developed a policy of administrative separation of the Muslimdominated northern Sudan and the mostly non-Muslim south, where the separate Equatoria Corps commanded by British officers was maintained. Sudanese troops in the north were commanded largely by Egyptian and British commissioned officers until an anti-British mutiny in 1924, apparently incited by Egyptian officers, caused Egyptian troops and units to be sent home. In 1925 local forces were designated the Sudan Defence Force (SDF), and the Sudanese assumed an increasing share of responsibility for its command.
After 1900 the British sought to develop an indigenous officer class among educated Sudanese, mostly from influential northern families. Consequently, the SDF came to be viewed as a national organization rather than as an instrument of foreign control. The prestige of the 20,000-man SDF was enhanced by its outstanding performance in World War II against numerically superior Italian forces that operated from Ethiopia. In the decade between the end of World War II and Sudan's independence, the SDF did not grow significantly in size, but Sudanese assumed increasingly important posts as British officers were reassigned or retired. Sudanese officer candidates were screened and selected, but Sudanization of the armed forces in practice meant their arabization. The underdeveloped education system in the south produced few qualified candidates, and most lacked fluency in Arabic, the lingua franca of the armed services. The British had hoped to use the recruitment of southerners into the army after World War II to spur their integration into Sudanese national life.
When the British attempted to forge an indigenous officer class before World War II, most Sudanese officers came from upper and middle-class urban families that enjoyed inherited wealth and prestige. After that time, greater numbers were drawn from the emerging class of merchants and civil servants inhabiting urban areas where formal elementary and secondary education was more easily obtainable. Officer cadets, who had to possess a fourth-year secondary school certificate, were chosen on the basis of performance in a series of written and oral competitive examinations. A requirement that cadets possess a good knowledge of Arabic had long eliminated many southerners educated in English who otherwise might have qualified. It was estimated that only 5 to 10 percent of all Sudanese officer cadets in 1981 were southerners.
On the eve of independence, in 1955 the SDF's Equatoria Corps--made up almost entirely of southern enlisted men but increasingly commanded by northerners as the British withdrew-- mutinied because of resentment over northern control of national politics and institutions. Northern troops were sent to quell the rebellion, and the Equatoria Corps was disbanded after most of its men went into hiding and began what became a seventeen-year struggle to achieve autonomy for the south.
At independence in 1956, Sudan's 5,000-man army was regarded as a highly trained, competent, and apolitical force, but its character changed in succeeding years. To deal with the southern insurgency, the army expanded steadily to 12,000 personnel in 1959 and it leveled off at about 50,000 in 1972. After independence, the military--particularly the educated officer corps--lost much of its former apolitical attitude; soldiers associated themselves with parties and movements across the political spectrum.
The quality of incoming officers, extremely high during the preindependence period, was thought to have been lowered by the increased size of the army -- particularly during the 1968-72 surge in personnel strength. The Sudanese Communist Party, which had become entrenched in the universities and trade unions during the 1960s, contributed to the emergence of a generation of officers that was predominantly anti-Western. Many officers received their initial training from Soviet advisers. After the revolt against Nimeiri in 1971, in which some communist officers were implicated, retribution fell on many of the officers with leftist leanings. The officer corps became increasingly conservative at a time when Nimeiri himself was stressing nationalism for Sudan. The military faction that deposed Nimeiri in 1985 was not distinguished by any particular political orientation, although as individuals its members maintained links with all the important social, religious, and ethnic groups.
In spite of the linkage of the Bashir junta to the NIF and Nimeiri's earlier Islamization program, it was generally believed that among career officers no more than 5 percent were dedicated to Muslim activism. Most officers were modern in outlook, of middle-class and urban backgrounds, and inclined to be nonsectarian.
In the armed forces as a whole, the political and ethnic makeup was influenced by historical factors. From the time of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, many nomadic peoples of northeastern Sudan had served in the military, as had members of the Khatmiyyah politico-religious sect. By the 1980s, however, Sudanese from the northeast and the Nile Valley were estimated to constitute no more than 20 percent of the military, although they continued to be well represented in the officer corps. Many officers had ties to the Khatmiyyah group and to the Mirghani family and were supporters of the Democratic Unionist Party. Under the Bashir government, northerners continued to dominate the senior leadership, although numerous sensitive positions were held by officers with origins in the south. A general who was a Dinka led one of the brigades active in the fighting against the Dinka-led SPLA.
In the early 1980s, it was estimated that members of the Ansar politico-religious group and other Sudanese from Darfur and Kurdufan provinces accounted for approximately 60 percent of the army's enlisted manpower. The Ansar and other western Sudanese might have been even more numerous in the uniformed services had not recruitment restrictions been imposed during the Nimeiri regime, when these groups were perceived to be among the major sources of opposition to the national leadership.
The presence in the armed forces of non-Muslim black southerners has been a source of contention in Sudan since the condominium period. Until after World War II, southerners were recruited for service only in the Equatoria Corps and rarely served alongside northern Sudanese. Recruitment was suspended after the 1955 mutiny in the south, and when it was resumed the following year, southern volunteers were required to serve in the north under northern officers. The rebellion in the south discouraged southerners from joining the armed forces until the 1972 settlement.
As part of the Addis Ababa accords ending the civil war, 6,000 of the former Anya Nya (named after a tribal poison) guerrillas were to be integrated gradually into the national army's Southern Command to serve with 6,000 northerners. By including southern officers in the top echelon of the Southern Command, the two forces appeared to have meshed successfully. In 1982 it was estimated that southerners outnumbered northerners 7,000 to 5,000 in the Southern Command, but there were relatively few southerners stationed in the north, and none held important positions. Nimeiri's decision the following year to transfer southern troops to the north because of his doubts over their loyalty to the central government was resisted by the southerners and was one of a number of factors that triggered the renewal of the civil war.
By the time of the coup in 1989, over fifty percent of most Army units were staffed by soldiers and NCOs from the South. Most had little commitment or dedication to the government - they joined for the sugar and other rations given to soldiers, as well as the salary. Although they often acquitted themselves well in battle, generally surrendering only when their food and ammunition were depleted, they had little stomach for offensive operations. As with more obvious mercenaries, their loyalty was a function of their pay and allowances. Officers in the South were known for their corruption which not only earned them the enmity of the local population but also further divided them from their troops. Northern, Arab officers were reportedly less than comfortable with their subordinates and this feeling of unease increased as the officer corps become more and more politicized.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
