Sudan's National Islamic Front, a brief recap

In a study on the Sudanese situation issued by Al-Ahram center for political and strategic studies, analysts said the Sudanese government reached power through coordination between the National Islamic Front (NIF) and military leadership cadres within the Sudanese armed forces. These military cadres succeeded in staging a coup that toppled the multi-party democratic government known as the Third Democracy (April 1986 - June 1989).

It is important to note that the National Islamic Front was one of the political forces participating in the Third Democracy. According to the results of the 1986 parliamentary elections, it represented the third-strongest political force in the country. The NIF also participated in the three governments led by Al-Sadeq Al-Mahdi during this period.

The military leadership dissolved and prohibited traditional parties, a measure which, theoretically, should have applied to the NIF itself, as political party which had emerged during the pre-coup period. But since NIF cadres had staged the military coup, the front was able to survive by directly controlling state institutions, under the pretext that the coup leaders were civilian Muslims.

The NIF, with its status as an absolutist government, was capable of implementing its agenda effectively.

The agenda focused on the immediate application of Islam. So the NIF reformulated Sudan's institutional, social and economic framework in conformity with its precepts, the most prominent of which was the confrontational role Sudan was to assume on the domestic and international scene.

Furthermore, the new government's concept of Jihad was applied in the south, where the NIF's endeavors took on a missionary character that provoked further opposition, rebellion, and strong separatist tendencies in the region.