Word: nimeiri
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Only hours earlier, Khartoum (pop. 1.4 million) had been a ghost town. Doctors, lawyers, engineers were on strike. The airport and most stores were closed. President Gaafar Nimeiri, the wily strongman who had weathered a succession of coup attempts during an almost 16-year reign, was outside the country. Now, with Nimeiri stranded in Egypt on his way back from a visit to Washington, the people exulted at his overthrow by Suwar al Dahab and the Sudanese military. Some brandished the old yellow, green and blue-striped flag that had been replaced the year Nimeiri came to power; others ripped...
...least, was the intention. Last week, however, as the initial euphoria subsided and a new military council installed by Suwar al Dahab began to assert its power, a tangle of uncertainties remained. They were centered on Suwar al Dahab, the council's head and a once trusted aide whom Nimeiri had appointed Supreme Commander of the armed forces just two weeks before his departure for Washington. Had the new leader organized the bloodless coup in defiance of his former chief or to protect the military leadership against a takeover bid by younger, perhaps more radical officers? Would...
...foreign policy terms, the situation was no less ambiguous. Suwar al Dahab, 51, lost no time in pledging that he would maintain Nimeiri's pro-Western stance. That would allow strategically important Sudan, which is regarded by the U.S. as an important staging area for possible military operations in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, to continue receiving its allotted U.S. aid of about $260 million this year, more than any other African country except Egypt. At the same time, however, Suwar al Dahab promised to try to improve relations with two meddlesome neighbors, Libya and Ethiopia...
...foremost question in Sudan last week was whether Suwar al Dahab's 15- member military council, composed of senior officers, would make good on the chant raised during the heady moments of the takeover: "The people and the army are one." Through much of the Nimeiri era, opposition political parties, professional groups and unions were forced underground. Last week they all bubbled to the surface again, banding together in a group that they christened the Alliance of Forces for National Salvation, distributing tracts and stating their determina- tion to reclaim their rights. To pacify them, the council ordered the arrest...
...suggesting that he was ready for talks. By the time he did, however, Garang, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Iowa State University, had already made public his suspicions of the new government. "The people's revolution has been stolen," he declared in a radio broadcast. "This is Nimeiri's regime. No matter what clothes the hyena puts on, it remains a hyena...