• U.S.

THE SUDAN: Repeat Performance

4 minute read
TIME

That popular Eastern melodrama. Here Come the Generals, which has played so successfully during recent weeks in Pakistan, Burma, Thailand and Iraq, opened to thunderous applause last week in Khartoum, capital of the Sudan.

There were scarcely any changes in the script: the curtain rose on a sleeping city, a soft wind stirred the camel-foot trees along the Nile. At midnight armored cars, Bren gun carriers, lorries packed with troops rolled out from the suburban barracks and into Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North. One unit occupied the radio station; another took over the telephone exchange. Troops in pompon hats and khaki shorts were dropped off in front of the houses of prominent politicians. At 5 a.m. the officeholders were rudely awakened, handed letters firing them from their jobs.

Identical Words. The radio had come on the air, blaring martial music. Then at dawn the announcer read a communique signed by Lieut. General Ibrahim Abboud, chief of staff of the 10,000-man Sudanese army. He was taking over the 1,000,000 square miles of the Sudan, said Abboud, to end governmental corruption and chaos and to restore peace and order. Declaring martial law, Abboud shut down all newspapers, banned all political parties and public assemblies or demonstrations. Using almost the identical words of General Ne Win and General Ayub Khan when they seized power in Burma and Pakistan, General Abboud insisted: “I am not a politician. I have been busy with military matters and haven’t studied these things.”

But someone had clearly been doing political homework. Most of the evidence pointed to ousted Premier Abdullah Khalil. Strongly anti-Nasser, Khalil had been having difficulties. Bedeviled by rising prices, by an economic boycott on the part of Egypt and a growing surplus of

Sudanese cotton, faced with dissidents in his own Cabinet, Khalil could see governmental control slipping to his pro-Nasser rival, Ismail el Azhari, who recently predicted for Khalil “the fate of Nuri as-Said,” the murdered Premier of Iraq. The fate of Nuri is also what provoked Abboud to prepare his plot. He got set for his coup while Ismail was conferring in Cairo with Nasser. Khalil could depend on the army, since he personally conducted a purge in 1956. when every officer was “scrutinized for his political views.” More important. Abboud’s second-in-command. Major General Ahmed Abdel Wahab, is a close friend and relative of Khalil.

Short, stocky Ibrahim Abboud, 58, is known to his fellow officers as a fatherly type. Born on the Red Sea coast, a member of the Hadendowa tribe that furnished the Fuzzy-Wuzzies immortalized by Rudyard Kipling for breaking a British square, Abboud became an army lieutenant in 1921, served with the British in Eritrea and North Africa during World War II, emerged as a colonel commanding a camel corps, and was finally named chief of staff by Premier Khalil.

“Contrived Tensions.” Generals Abboud and Wahab held a press conference in Abboud’s spacious office where a plaque bears a verse from the Koran: “If you are supported by God no one will defeat you.” Gesticulating with his glasses, Abboud told newsmen that they could again start publishing—all, that is, except political party newspapers—provided they watched their step. What about a new constitution? “Not yet, not yet,” said Abboud curtly.

Would he continue to accept aid from the U.S. and arms shipments from Britain? “We will accept whatever does not affect the sovereignty and independence of the country.” As for relations with Egypt, strained by Nasserite infiltration into the Sudan and continuing quarrels about a fair division of the Nile waters, Abboud would say only that he would make every effort to “eliminate artificially contrived tensions.”

Cairo itself seemed to have difficulty making up its mind about Abboud’s coup. At first, Cairo radio spewed its suspicions of an “American plot,” but then abruptly veered around to a hopeful expectancy that Abboud may be more pliable than his predecessor, Khalil. By week’s end General Abboud had named a twelve-man Cabinet (seven officers, five civilians) and a proclamation against profiteering had rolled back the costs of sugar, fruit and rent. Abboud was solidly supported by the two leaders of the Sudan’s most important Moslem sects, and his 10 million countrymen seemed to take the new order in stride.

In one refreshing essential, the script for Abboud’s coup was different from most others in the Middle East: there would be no arrests or trials of deposed political leaders. Said Abboud: “I am through with the past. I am starting again. Anything that is past, let it go.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com