Wave of arrests in Khartoum

Sources report that tens of youth activists associated with the groups Girifna and Sharara have been arrested by the security authorities over the past two days in what seems to be a preemptive crackdown ahead of 30 January, the date of the relatively coordinated wave of demonstrations organised by the same youth groups last year in the capital and other major towns of (North) Sudan. 

The Intibaha Spring

Some ten days ago the Deputy Chairman of the National Congress Party (NCP), Nafie Ali Nafie, received a memorandum reportedly signed by one thousand members of the Islamic Movement, the semi-clandestine ancestor organisation of the ruling party. The document which became known as the ‘corrective memorandum’ summarized what its author(s) perceived as the commendable successes of the regime and its stark failures, and proposed a reform agenda to address its deficiencies. The 1999 fracture of the Islamic Movement into two fratricidal camps, the opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP) led by the veteran chief of the Movement, Hassan al-Turabi, and the governing NCP headed by President Bashir was identified as the most significant setback of the Islamic experiment in Sudan. To this the document added rampant corruption, political inconsistency as evidenced by the swing from a “totalitarian one-party system” to the current tolerance of opposition parties, “errors” committed by the government in Darfur, and the regime’s security obsessions.

Had the Islamic Movement not seized power in its 1989 coup, said the author(s), the country would have either fallen into the hands of Baath Party elements or Egyptian agents in the army, who were all jockeying to topple Sadiq al-Mahdi’s government. Guided by its innovative reading of Islamic scriptures (ijtihad) the Movement took the right decision at the right time, said the document, and thus obstructed the Western plot to install the rule of a Christian minority led by John Garang and his rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) over the country’s Muslim majority. This scenario, it went on, would have entailed the “ethnic cleansing” of Sudan’s Arabs, a repeat, it said, of the 1964 tragedy in Zanzibar and long before that the expulsion of the Arabs from Andalusia. The Movement faced up to this challenge, said the authors, defeated the rebels on the battlefront, and eventually managed to attain peace through a tortuous and exhausting negotiation process that culminated in a self-determination vote and the breakaway of South Sudan. This conclusion, stated the document, might be criticized by some as another of the Islamic Movement’s failures although it should count in its favour politically and intellectually. 

Publicly, the NCP’s leading figures welcomed the memorandum as an instance of awareness in the ranks of their party remarking that all the issues it discussed were already addressed in the party’s national convention held in December last year. However, neither President Bashir, the Chairman of the NCP, nor Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, his deputy and the Emir of the Islamic Movement, to whom the memorandum was directly addressed, made any public comments in its regard. The critical nature of the document compounded by the conspicuous silence of the two men at the top prompted observers in the Khartoum press to compare it to the famous ‘memorandum of the ten’ that signalled the 1999 conflict between President Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi. The NCP bigwigs dismissed the comparison and rubbished projections of an imminent split in the party as unjustified exaggerations. Qutbi al-Mahdi, the chairman of the party’s political sector, argued that the memorandum’s signatories had acted in good faith by preserving their anonymity. 

Qutbi, I presume, is right, but only in a false sense. The ‘corrective memorandum’ does not compare to the ‘memorandum of the ten’, and is unlikely to be the foreplay of a power struggle as fierce as the 1999 divorce between Turabi and Bashir. Its author(s) did not challenge the authority of the party’s leadership and their demands were largely a re-run of the NCP’s official line. The document detailed a set of reforms that the NCP, being the ruling party, should implement with the objective of rooting out corruption and achieving “comprehensive social and political justice”. These included the establishment of a judicial anti-corruption body, promotion of the regime’s political transformation towards an elections-based order that respects the free will of the citizenry, promulgation of a permanent constitution for the country, and guarantee of the independence of the judiciary. Regarding the NCP’s organisational well-being the document demanded that the ruling party sever its organic links to the state structures and develop binding rules to govern the office terms of its leaders. Apart from the reform rhetoric above the document made a few recommendations that deserve attention: continuation of the regime’s project to “Islamize” the state and society, “fearless enforcement of sharia without hesitation”, and coordination with the Islamic forces in the country to combat secularism and moral subversion. 

So what then is the correction of the ‘corrective memorandum’? I suppose al-Tayeb Mustafa spelled it out in his address to the Shura (Consultative) Council of his party, the Just Peace Forum (JPF), a few days after his paper, al-Intibaha, published the text of the memorandum. He told the meeting that the country’s troubles would only be resolved if and when the JPF is invited into the government. This, to my knowledge, is the first time that Mustafa loudly voices his power ambitions. Recently, al-Intibaha chided the NCP for accommodating the ‘sectarian’ forces of old Sudan at the expense of the Islamist vanguard. In fact, the ‘reform memorandum’ that al-Intibaha attributed to the mujahideen of the Islamic Movement, i.e. the combatants of the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) who took part in the war against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), reads like an editorial in the paper. Al-Intibaha actually dedicates a daily page to the glory of the mujahideen and their accomplishments. If not authored by al-Intibaha’s folks the document, it can be safely stated, mirrors their fantasies. Mustafa, of course, denied any links to the document but stressed that it did not go far enough. The Islamic Movement, he said, is in need of a “genuine revolution” and not the timid inking of demands. Lately, the JPF has been mobilising support in Sudan’s central states as a separate entity from the NCP. The party chairman, al-Tayeb Mustafa, tours the country to spread his message and receive vows of allegiance. The JPF teamed up with several forces from the Islamist fringe and drafted an ‘Islamic constitution’ for the rump (North) Sudan which they eventually delivered to President Bashir. The NCP notables, Ghazi Salah al-Din, Amin Hassan Omer and Qutbi al-Mahdi all publish frequent musings in al-Intibaha and are habitually celebrated on its pages. Ghazi in particular has lately become a favourite of al-Tayeb Mustafa. The man stands out in the crowd of the NCP nomenklatura by his 2008 attempt to displace Ali Osman Mohamed Taha from the leadership of the Islamic Movement. Although largely dormant and hollowed out the Movement remains a handy tool in the contests of the ruling elite. 

The memorandum in a certain sense defines the limits of the permissible in today’s Sudan. Criticism of the NCP functionaries, even the bitterest, is tolerated if not encouraged in the same fashion that prohibitions cry out for their violation, provided that the ultimate authority of the man at the top is acknowledged. He and his intimate captains, Bakri Hassan Salih and Abd al-Rahim Mohamed Hussein, identify with the domain of sovereignty, the establishing violence of the political order that came into being with the 1989 coup. Even the polished Ghazi would not dare transgress that line. In his recent lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London he argued for the same set of reforms proposed in the ‘corrective memorandum’, i.e. the necessity of a permanent constitution, a wider concept of justice and ‘democratization’, however within the framework defined by the formal requirements of state formation and institutionalisation, bluntly stated submission to the hegemonic order he shares in running. This unqualified distinction between state formation and competition for political power is equally prominent in the debates of Khartoum’s opposition. Shafie Khidir, for instance, developed the theme of a neutral space guaranteed by a democratic constitution and state structures equidistant from the political parties and formations where contestation for power is to take place once the NCP regime is dislodged. The state, however, is never the neutral arbiter it is presumed to be, even less so when it relies on gate-keeping i.e. the control of export-import outlets for its very existence. In concrete terms, what Sudan is being promised is deliverance from the NCP proper to the JPF and allies under the benevolent watch of Bashir and his fellow officers.

Rift Valley Institute (RVI): 2012 Field courses: applications open

The Institute's annual field courses offer an intensive, graduate-level approach to the history, culture and political economy of three subregions: Sudan and South Sudan; the Horn of Africa; and the Great Lakes. The courses consist of a six-day dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars and panel discussions, led by international specialists and scholars and activists from the region. Dates and locations are as follows:

- Sudan and South Sudan Course, Rumbek, S. Sudan, 26 May-1 June

- Horn of Africa Course, near Mombasa, Kenya, 16-22 June

- Great Lakes Course, Bujumbura, Burundi, 7-13 July

Download the prospectus here and/or apply online here. For further information (or to request the application form as a Microsoft Word document), email courses@riftvalley.net. Applications will be considered in order of receipt.

New positions at the Rift Valley Institute London office - apply by 29 February

The Institute welcomes applications for two newly-created posts. The first is a Finance and Administrative Officer, to work with the RVI Programme Director on book-keeping and accounts, grant administration and office management. The second is a Publications and Public Relations Manager: a writer/editor/administrator who will work with the Executive Director to develop the RVI's publishing programme, manage digital content, and advance the Institute's public profile. The successful candidates will join the RVI's core team in London. For details write to institute@riftvalley.net. Applications close 29 February

The imam, the sheikh, and the secular

Last week witnessed an exhibitionist exchange of accusations between the National Umma Party (NUP) chief and Ansar imam, Sadiq al-Mahdi, and his brother in law Hassan al-Turabi, the sheikh of the Popular Congress Party (PCP), fellows in the “wobbly” opposition alliance, the National Consensus Forces (NCF). The feud began with Sadiq al-Mahdi’s dismissal of the NCF as a “wobbly” structure hopelessly detached from the beat of the streets. The NCF, said al-Mahdi, had exhausted its credibility by repeatedly claiming that a popular revolt against President Bashir’s regime was around the corner. Instead, he suggested, the opposition should uphold the ‘national agenda’ and seek constructive engagement with the ruling National Congress Party (NCP).  The ‘national agenda’ is the title Sadiq gave to a set of reform proposals he had presented to the NCP as a condition for the NUP’s participation in the government.

Apparently, Sadiq al-Mahdi overestimated his price, and was eventually outflanked by his historical rival Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani and his Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the NCP’s new partner in the cabinet. According to Sadiq’s cousin and competitor in the leadership of the NUP, Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi, the coalition talks between the NCP and the NUP collapsed at the latter’s insistence that the NCP overhaul the security apparatus and armed forces to accommodate the incomers. Mubarak claimed that the NCP had offered the NUP as much as half the cabinet positions, and even agreed to introduce a prime minister office to suit Sadiq al-Mahdi, but vehemently rejected the propositions of the NUP pertaining to the military and the security bodies. It is obviously hard to verify Mubarak’s account of the NUP-NCP flirt. Whatever the details of the exchange, Sadiq’s party emerged out of the affair firing in all directions. Sadiq’s eldest son and heir apparent, Abd al-Rahman, became President Bashir’s advisor, his daughter, Mariam, continued to agitate for urgent regime change, and the Imam himself muddled in between. He dissociated himself from the opposition and ridiculed its pretentious zeal, but could not force his party to accept the NCP’s offers. Reportedly however he agreed with President Bashir to lead a constructive opposition.

The next twist came with the arrest of the Hassan al-Turabi’s deputy in mid-December. Ibrahim al-Sanosi was apprehended by the security authorities in Khartoum airport upon his return from a trip to Juba and Kampala, both refuge venues for the leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in North Sudan (SPLM-N) and their allies. The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) claimed that al-Sanosi was on a mission to orchestrate a grand plot targeting the overthrow of the regime. As evidence the security agency presented a document allegedly found among al-Sanosi’s belongings. In a speech marking the anniversary of Sudan’s independence Sadiq mocked the PCP’s enthusiasm for ‘democracy’ as measured against the responsibility of the National Islamic Front (NIF) for the 1989 putsch that put an end to his four years reign as prime minister. They invited us to take part in a coup plot, said Sadiq al-Mahdi, prompting Hassan al-Turabi to hold a press conference the next day. Sadiq al-Mahdi is a “liar”, said Turabi, repeating the slight thrice. The sheikh accused Sadiq of collaborating with the NISS in the clamp down on his party. In association with al-Sanosi’s arrest the security authorities had once again shut down the PCP’s mouthpiece, Rai al-Shaab, and seized its assets. Turabi more or less challenged the NISS to arrest him, an invitation that the NCP explicitly declined, saying that the old sheikh wanted to theatrically install himself a hero of anti-government resistance. Sadiq al-Mahdi’s office issued a statement of clarification saying that the imam was not referring to a recent event but to a message carried to him by the NIF figure Suleiman Ahmed Suleiman shortly before the June 1989 coup.

Turabi’s party chose to disclose the clandestine document that the NISS claimed to have seized with al-Sanosi, a three pages projection written in all likelihood by Turabi himself. After the standard opposition depiction of the country’s crisis the author suggested three possible future scenarios, reconciliation between the NCP and its opponents, a putsch, or a popular revolt against the regime. The first was judged as improbable considering the NCP’s adamant attachment to power, and the second dismissed as unappealing. Regarding the third option, the document warned of an extended confrontation between the regime and its opponents which might well result in widespread civil war and accelerate the country’s fragmentation. To counter this risk and secure a favourable outcome the author advised a speedy well organized ‘revolution’ under the control of the established political parties with the guarantee of a streamlined transition to parliamentary rule, a chocolate laxative, I assume.

The last scene in this self-parody took place two days ago. The two elderly gentlemen responded to a reconciliation mediation led by Hala Abd al-Haleem, a younger Khartoum politician who presides over the miniscule New Democratic Forces Movement (Haqq). After a lengthy meeting in the premises of Haqq the two leaders came out all smiles. Standing between the two Hala declared that the sheikh and the imam had agreed to rest their disputes and cooperate towards toppling the regime. She stated further that Turabi had agreed to the restructuring of the opposition alliance, the NCF, along the lines suggested by Sadiq al-Mahdi. Knowing Sadiq’s infatuation with titles and honours, the press in Khartoum speculated that the imam might be interested in chairing the revamped opposition umbrella, a position currently occupied by the party-less Farouq Abu Issa.  

Hala heads one of two wings of a party that is itself the outcome of the fracture of an organisation founded by al-Khatim Adlan in the 1990s. The late Adlan was a prominent ex-communist who turned his back to the Sudanese Communist Party upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. His departure text, ‘Time for change’, which draws heavily from Alvin Toffler’s bestsellers, became the bible of a new generation of politically ambitious intellectuals in Khartoum and the Sudanese diaspora. As soon as it was established however Adlan’s movement split into two, one led by himself in exile and another inside the country under the tutelage of his contemporary and competitor, al-Haj Warrag. At the time, Adlan advocated for armed insurgency against the regime while Warrag called for peaceful resistance. Adlan passed away and Warrag reversed his position, but that is another story.

Recently, what remained of Adlan’s movement divided yet again in the wake of a drawn-out and highly publicized confrontation between its chairwoman, Hala Abd al-Haleem, and her mentor and erstwhile sponsor, al-Bagir al-Afeef. The two wrestled over the control of a cultural centre established by al-Afeef to honour the intellectual heritage of al-Khatim Adlan. Hala accused Afeef of embezzling funds and he simply hailed insults at her. I suggest that Turabi take it from here. He is by all means well-endowed to lead a mediation bid between the two for the general purpose of toppling the regime. 

Khalil Ibrahim: the chief of the marginalised

In the first hours of Sunday 25 December the spokesman of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), al-Sawarmi Khaled Saad, told the media that a company of the army had killed Khalil Ibrahim (b. 1958), the Chairman of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), and his entourage, in Wad Banda at the north-western edge of North Kordofan. On 22 December the JEM claimed to have reached al-Nuhud, a major town in the region, en route to Khartoum. The SAF dismissed the rebels’ statement but affirmed that JEM fighters had launched a series of attacks on Um Qozain, Qoz Abyad and Armal between North Kordofan and North Darfur.

The SAF spokesman referred to Khalil as the ‘rebel’, but he was an in-house rebel so to speak, a son of the Islamic Movement and the regime it established in 1989. He joined the Movement as a secondary school pupil and matured in its ranks as a medical student in al-Gezira University, where he graduated in 1984.

It is an irony of fate that it was Khalil Ibrahim himself, in the company of Darfur’s governor at the time, al-Tayeb Ibrahim Mohamed Khair (Sikha), who hunted down Dawood Yahia Bolad in 1992. Like Khalil, Bolad was a Darfurian who found a political home in the Islamic Movement. From the chairmanship of the Khartoum University Students’ Union (KUSU), the training post of the Movement’s career politicians, Bolad was named the National Islamic Front (NIF) political supervisor over Darfur and its candidate for the Nyala national constituency in the 1986 elections. The NIF did not perform as well as it assumed it would in Darfur. The Islamists won all the four Darfur graduates’ constituencies but claimed only two out of thirty nine geographical constituencies in the region. Bolad did not make it to the parliament in Khartoum.

Bolad’s break with the NIF came a year later in the context of ethnic polarisation in Darfur between the Fur and the Arabs prodded by the escalation of the Chadian-Libyan conflict. With the approval of Sadiq al-Mahdi’s government Libya and its Chadian allies used Darfur as a conduit to Chadian territories in their campaign against the regime of Hissen Habré. The Libyans suffered a series of embarrassing defeats during the so called Toyota war of 1987, culminating in the successful Chadian raid on the Libyan Maaten al-Sarra airbase in September of the same year. Ghaddafi did the expected and sponsored a proxy force from the Beni Halba and Rizeigat Abbala of Darfur to counter his Chadian enemies.  The Chadian regime, on the other hand, sought the service of the Zaghawa Bedayat to harass Libya’s protégés. Considering US-French support for Habré and presumed Soviet support for Ghaddafi, Darfur, wrecked by waves of drought and desertification, became the scene of a late Cold War encounter. Both the Umma Party and the NIF were deeply indebted to Ghaddafi and in no position to resist his demands. Eventually Darfur’s politics spilled over to Khartoum in the form of two rival organisations, the Libyan-sponsored ‘Arab Gathering’ established in 1987 with the approval if not open support of the Umma Party and the NIF, and the ‘National Council for the Salvation of Darfur’ founded in 1988 by Fur intellectuals in the capital with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party. Two of the NIF’s Darfur MPs, Farouq Mohamed Adam and Abd al-Jabbar Abd al-Karim, defected to the DUP in protest against the NIF’s acquiescence to Libya’s devices in the region; Bolad was their third. He appeared in Khartoum immediately after the NIF takeover in 1989 carrying a book draft which could have well been the intellectual precursor of JEM’s famed Black Book. According to Turabi’s top aide al-Mahbub Abd al-Salam, Bolad was aggressively rebuffed by the NIF leaders prompting him to leave the country and seek contacts with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). Bolad returned to Darfur a rebel leader on behalf of the SPLA/M. Al-Tayeb Sikha, the governor of Greater Darfur, and Khalil Ibrahim, his minister, caught up with Bolad in Jebel Marra, executed the man and annihilated his cell of operatives.

To his disappointment Khalil never made it to a national post. He held state ministerial posts in Darfur, the Blue Nile, and an advisor position in the Juba government of Bahr al-Jabal after a distinguished record of combat in the paramilitary Popular Defence Forces (PDF) against the rebel SPLA/M. Khalil resigned the Bahr al-Jabal job in August 1998 and after a short attempt at NGO activity flew off to Maastricht in pursuit of a MSc in Public Health. When the Islamic Movement fractured into two Khalil Ibrahim sided with Hassan al-Turabi against President Bashir and Ali Osman Mohamed Taha. He announced the formation of the JEM in 2001 from his Maastricht base.

The trajectory of the chief of the marginalised, Dr Khalil, and his Movement mirrors closely the ups and downs of Khartoum’s stormy relationship with Deby’s Chad and Ghaddafi’s Libya. The Sudanese intelligence sponsored an attack of the Chadian rebel United Front for Democratic Change on Ndjamena in 2006, and Chad and Libya cooperated to support JEM’s attempt on Khartoum in May 2008. The dice turned against Khalil when President’s Bashir and Deby reached a deal of co-existence in 2010. Deby refused to allow Khalil into Chad, and turned him to Libya’s Gaddafi who kept him under effective house arrest and denied him access to the media. Ghaddafi’s regime collapsed under the blows of the NATO- supported National Transitional Council. Libya’s to be rulers accused the JEM and its leader Khalil Ibrahim of acting as Ghaddafi’s mercenaries, and announced their readiness to hand him over to the Khartoum regime once they capture him. Khalil escaped back into Darfur from his Libyan exile in September this year. He stated at the time that the JEM was keen to mend its relationship with Chad’s Deby. He never managed to I presume. Commenting on the news the political secretary of the National Congress Party (NCP) Qutbi al-Mahdi described Khalil’s return to Darfur as “suicidal”.

Last November the JEM teamed up with the SPLM in North Sudan to form the Sudan Revolutionary Front with the declared aim of bringing down the Khartoum regime by force of arms. The JEM attack on North Kordofan in the past few days was essentially the first operation of significance under the new umbrella. Short of arms and men Khalil Ibrahim defied Chairman Mao’s famous dictum by venturing into an area where support for his cause was by all means marginal in an attempt to generate the proverbial fish and water of an insurgency at one stroke.

Now that the recalcitrant Khalil is dead the Khartoum government might well agree to open the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur for renegotiation with the headless JEM. For those interested in the formalities of peace arrangments the situation seems opportune for a ‘comprehensive’ Darfur agreement. The JEM might not survive Khalil's death as a unified organisation, but its estimated 35,000 armed combatants will surely not dissolve into the sands of Darfur. 

Bashir’s new cabinet: the blame of promiscuity

President Bashir’s new ministers took the oath of office on Saturday, thirty one cabinet and thirty five state ministers in number. The sixty six ladies and gentleman paraded in front of the cameras in their best outfits to be told by the President that they should better avoid petty squabbles and focus on getting work done. To describe the cabinet as new is evidently an exaggeration. All of President Bashir’s old guard preserved their portfolios, Bakri Hassan Salih for presidential affairs, Abd al-Rahim Mohamed Hussein for defence, Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid for the interior, Ali Karti for foreign affairs, and Osama Abdalla for electricity and dams. Awad al-Jaz, who vacated the ministry of oil during the interim period of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was reinstated in his den so to speak, and Kamal Abd al-Latif took over the mining portfolio. The newcomers of Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) were granted the ministries of cabinet affairs, commerce, and youth and sports, while the breakaway faction of the party led by the newly appointed presidential assistant Jalal Yusif al-Digeir, a long term ally of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), was rewarded with the ministry of international cooperation, al-Digeir’s former abode, as well as the environment and forests, and human resources portfolios.

President Bashir made a few interesting choices though; he picked Mohamed Abd al-Karim al-Had, a leading figure of the obsessively zealous Wahhabi sect Ansar al-Sunna as minister of telecommunications and information technology sparking fears that the internet service in the country might be soon shrouded with a tight hijab. Sanaa Hamad kept her position as state minister for information but lost her title as the youngest in the team. Bashir named the thirty one year old Azza Omer Awad al-Karim as state minister of telecommunications. How the Wahhabi minister will deal with the young attractive woman to his side and retain his religious credibility is a matter of speculation. The President did not miss to dispense four state minister posts to a complacent faction of the SPLM in North Sudan that declared its opposition to the armed insurrection led by Abd al-Aziz al-Hilu in South Kordofan and Malik Agar in the Blue Nile.

Khartoum’s established opposition proved no more inventive in its disapproval than President Bashir’s recycled cabinet. Kamal Omer, from the Popular Congress Party (PCP), said Bashir was not willing to give up real power, and the Communist Party’s Sideeg Yusif reiterated the proposal of an all parties’ conference. Much more original criticism of the new government however came from the ranks of the NCP itself, or rather its Islamist core. Al-Intibaha’s columnist Saad Ahmed Saad mourned the Islamic Movement’s project as it were, which he claimed, has been long diluted by the NCP’s promiscuity. Notably Saad identified 1997 as the date of the Movement’s “tragic” deviation. In that year, the regime, with the Movement still intact, tabled the controversial Political Alliance (Tawali) Act allowing for political association within an Islamic frame of reference. The Tawali law, like the 1998 constitution, was attributed to Hassan al-Turabi, the veteran leader of the Movement, and at the time the speaker of the national assembly.  

According to Saad, the Islamists’ share in the new cabinet does not exceed twenty per cent, and Islam’s share in the government is a meagre five per cent. The regime, he declared, failed in developing an Islamic model for the state, and eventually turned to its historical rivals, the sectarian parties, for political back-up. Following Saad, one could speak of the really existing Islamic state in contradistinction to a phantasm of a state ever deferred. If the new cabinet is too narrow to satisfy the established opposition it is too wide to ensure the Islamists of the actuality of their unquenchable desire. The reality of power in Khartoum, however, is a function of the ability and readiness of President Bashir and his captains to mete out the prizes of the state to an array of quarrelsome constituencies and peripheral power-brokers, who by and large do not share the fantasy of Saad and others. The Islamic Movement proper, although dominant, has been long reduced to merely one of these constituencies, and its cadres to faithful administrators rather than decision-makers. If the regime has failed to realize the Islamic project then that is the reality of the Islamic project, a discourse of power.