Word: nimeiri
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Washington watches nervously as Nimeiri battles a rebellion...
Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiri, 54, launched the new era by ceremoniously pouring a can of beer into the Nile. Five million dollars' worth of liquor followed, as thousands watched from the riverbank, chanting, "Wise decision, Gaafar." Thus did Sudan pass under Islamic law this fall. At a stroke, alcohol was banned, and the harsh strictures of the Sharia eliminated the last vestiges of Western-style criminal justice. Thenceforth Muslim adulterers would be stoned, murderers beheaded and boozers flogged (40 lashes for Muslims, 30 for disorderly non-Muslims). The most graphic evidence of the change to date came two weeks...
...return to Islamic purity was a two-edged sword for Nimeiri. It won him widespread popularity among Sudan's Arab Muslim majority, but it pushed his divided, impoverished nation of 22 million a step closer to civil war. Sudan's largely black, non-Muslim minorities, who inhabit the southern part of the country, had already been seething with resentment over what they regarded as persistent discrimination by the Arab-dominated central government. Encouraged by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi and by the Marxist government of neighboring Ethiopia, pockets of armed rebellion have erupted in a number of southern regions...
...Reagan Administration has a strategic stake in Sudan's wellbeing. Under Nimeiri, the country has strengthened its ties with Egypt, America's major Arab ally in the Middle East. Sudan shields Egypt's southern flank from attack and safeguards the upper reaches of Egypt's economic mainstay, the Nile River. In recent years, Sudan has also served as a buffer against the designs of Libya's Gaddafi, whom Nimeiri derides as having "two personalities, both of them evil." Finally, Sudan's key location might make it an ideal staging area for U.S. forces...
...Western help. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been deeply concerned about Libyan intervention in Chad, fearing that one of Gaddafi's longer-term aims is to destabilize the Sudan, Egypt's southern neighbor and ally. Gaddafi has sponsored at least two attempts to topple Sudanese President Gafaar Nimeiri. Last February the U.S. responded to suspicious Libyan air force movements near the Sudanese border by deploying AWACS planes to Egypt and the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the Egyptian coast. Relations between Gaddafi and Nimeiri are so bad that each has called for the death of the other...