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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 67-3-302
TITLE:             The Sudan and the Soviet Union
BY:                lg
DATE:              1971-7-27
COUNTRY:           Soviet Union
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  Foreign Affairs

--- Begin ---

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1084
NON-RULING CPS:
Sudan
USSR: Foreign
affairs
27 July 1971

THE SUDAN AND THE SOVIET UNION

Summary: One of the important facets of
the political upheaval last week In the
Sudan is that of Soviet influence and
interest in the country. This report
reviews Soviet-Sudanese relations during
the two years that Numeiry has been in
power, concluding that Moscow has pursued
state interests to the detriment of the
Sudanese Communist Party's interests.
Possible courses of action for the future
concerning the Soviet Union's position on
the Sudan are also discussed.

The arrest of the Secretary General of the Sudanese
Communist Party, Khaliq Mahjub, and of the (Communist)
Minister of Southern Affairs Joseph Garang has put a final (and
probably fatal) end to the Party's hopes for a future in the
short-lived Marxist-oriented government of Majors Nur and Ata.
The fate of Africa's strongest communist party appears sealed,
if Maj. General Numeiry's re-instated government conclusively
carries out its intentions to "annihilate" the communist
"traitors" involved in the ill-fated Nur/Ata coup. From the

[page 2]

international communist standpoint, however, the situation
is hardly as clear-cut. The drama in the Sudan has, namely,
become the latest case in point of the Soviet Union's
approach to conflicts of state vs. party interests. As
elsewhere in the Middle East, the Soviets assigned primary
precedence to their state influence in the Sudan during
the Numeiry government's first two pre-coup years in
office, and there is yet to be any indication that last
week's developments will change this policy. The basic
issue of international communist solidarity has borne
little relevance to the USSR's attitude toward Numeiry's
Revolutionary Command Council.

Pre-Coup Soviet-Sudanese Relations

Even before the "May Revolution" (1969) which first
brought General Numeiry to power, the Soviet Union had been
pursuing its state interests in the Sudan. Following the
June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, an arms agreement was reached
between the two countries, putting the Sudan substantially
into Soviet debt and opening the door to Soviet advisors,
etc. in the country. By late 1968, the rumbles of
discontent over the Russians' handling of the deal had been
heard in the Sudanese press, but 1969's New Year's message
from Nikolai Podgorny "expressed confidence that the
relations of friendship between the Soviet Union and the Sudan
would be strengthened and develop in the future. . . [1]
It is worth noting that the Communist Party of the Sudan
was already under heavy fire from the government at this
time and that the Soviet Union had even taken the unusual
step of criticizing the Sudan for conducting a "noisy
anticommunist campaign." [2]

Nonetheless 1969 saw an improvement in state relations
between the two countries. The general political situation
in the Middle East was characterized increasingly
by "Sovietization" of the Arab sphere, and in May 1969 a
military coup brought a new government to power in the
Sudan, pledged to "turning socialist slogans into reality"
in the "Sudanese fashion." The president of the new
Revolutionary Command Council was General Numeiry.
Within six months he was in Moscow on a state visit,
discussing international problems with Kosygin "in an
atmosphere of friendship and mutual understanding," as
TASS described it. [3] The day before Numeiry's arrival,
the Soviet news agency had characterized the "May Revolution"
as an event "which resulted in the establishment in the
country of a new progressive regime which has widespread
support among the popular masses." A plan for broad
scientific, economic, defense and cultural cooperation was
signed during Numeiry's visit, and the Soviets accepted an
invitation to visit the Sudan.

[page 3]

At the same time, however, a campaign against the
Sudanese communists was being mounted in the domestic
press, and in late October a cabinet re-shuffle had
resulted in the dismissal of several communist ministers
from the government. More significantly, the views of
the majority of the Communist Party and the government
were beginning to diverge clearly on the question of what
role political parties were to play in the country's future.
One of the Numeiry government's first acts in office had
been to proscribe all political parties in the country
(with the long-term goal of a Socialist Union to replace
them all), and although the Communist Party was rewarded
for its support of the government by mild treatment at the
outset, the honeymoon was not to last for long. By April
1970, the rift was sealed by the government's deportation
to Egypt of SCP Secretary General Mahjub, an act which
the SCP CC called "hostile to the Communist Party,"
"destroy[ing] the basis of alliance, coordination and
cooperation among the revolutionary groups." The month before,
Sudan's defense minister had been in Moscow thanking the
Soviet Union "for the assistance that the Sudan receives
in the development of its armed forces," [4] the same
armed forces which presumably played a role in scuttling
Secretary General Mahjub out of the country.

Re-couping the Losses for Arab Unity

Relations between the SCP and the government continued
to deteriorate [6], drawing little public attention from
the Soviets, who continued their policy of supporting the
Numeiry government. Last week's coup and counter-coup,
however, finally made the conflict of Soviet power
politics and Marxist-Leninist ideology apparent to all.

The Numeiry government's stepped up drive against the
country's communists had been exacerbated by a push for
the formation of a national Socialist Union, modeled on
the Egyptian organization. The Sudan's membership in the
proposed four-nation Arab Federation, designed to contribute
to the tenuous goal of Arab unity, was dependent in part on
the formation of just such a party, and it, in turn, on
the abolition of the SCP. While some members of the Communist
Party were apparently willing to go along with this idea,
the majority around Secretary General Mahjub was not.

[page 4]

It was this group -- and apparently Secretary General
Mahjub himself -- which played a leading role in the Nur/Ata
coup at the beginning of last week. Had the coup succeeded,
it would have improved considerably the position of the
SCP in the Sudan and at the same time have threatened the
prospects for culmination of the Arab Federation. The
dilemma for Moscow: to support the local CP in a Leninist,
internationalist spirit, or to support the anticommunist
government which would better contribute to its Middle East
power policy? Aside from one untimely comment in last
week's New Times implying praise for the Nur/Ata government,
the Soviet Union has not taken a stand on the situation in
the Sudan as yet. However, there are fairly definite signs
that Moscow is not necessarily unhappy about the latest
turn of events.

A good indication of the Soviet Union's position on
the pro-Arab-unity Numeiry government was provided indirectly
by Boris Ponomarev, Secretary of the CP of the CPSU, in a
speech delivered to the National Congress of the Arab
Socialist Union in Cairo on July 24. While not mentioning
the Sudanese situation per se, Ponomarev's statements can
-- or indeed must (if the USSR is to avoid flagrant
self-contradiction) -- be taken as a programmatic statement on
the course the Soviets would like to see followed in the
Middle East (presumably including the Sudan). Praising the
"progressive domestic and foreign policy" of the Arab
Socialist Union, Ponomarev claimed that it was indicative
of the struggle "for a socialist transformation of the
Egyptian society," and added:

You may rest assured, dear friends, that along
this road you will always have the understanding
and support of our [Soviet] communist party, of
the entire Soviet people.

Throughout the speech, he referred to the common aims set
by the CPSU and the ASU, and told his audience that

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union has
always attached and is attaching now great
importance to the development and strengthening
of close relations of friendship and fraternal
cooperation with the progressive forces of the
Arab world.

[page 5]

It was left to Anwar Sadat to describe more clearly
what these "progressive forces of the Arab world" had
been up to in the Sudan. In a speech delivered in Cairo
the same day, he spoke of the proposed Arab Federation as
having been "born with teeth" which "in the Sudan were
very sharp indeed." The sharp teeth were, according to
a UPI report from Cairo (July 25), bared when Egypt returned
a 2,000-man Sudanese armed brigade based on the Suez Canal
to the Sudan to help stage the counter-coup bringing Numeiry
back into power. (It apparently was not needed, however.)
The means of transportation were Soviet-made aircraft
commanded by "top Egyptian and Libyan military officers."

It is possible that an incident involving the
Bulgarian Embassy in the Sudan also has some relevance
to Soviet attitudes towards the coup. The semi-official
Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram reported last Saturday that
the Secretary General of the SCP, Mahjub, took refuge
at the Bulgarian mission in Khartoum following his escape
from a Sudanese prison last month. In an unusually prompt
reaction to that disclosure, the Bulgarian news agency
stated that Mahjoub "has not sought and has not received
shelter in the Embassy of the People's Republic of Bulgaria
in Khartoum." While the relative accuracy of this
statement cannot be discussed here, it is striking that the
Soviet Union's staunch Bulgarian allies went to the
trouble of officially denying having provided fraternal
assistance to a fellow communist.

It can presently be assumed that the Soviet Union
will try to avoid being entangled in a public discussion
of the short-lived Nur/Ata government, and continue its
support of Numeiry in the same manner as before the coup
and counter-coup. The persecution of Sudanese Communists
may be stipulated an "internal affair" of the Numeiry
government and as such outside Soviet competence. Or,
the Soviet Union may try to turn the existing split in

[page 6]

the Sudanese CP to its own advantage, identifying the
pro-government Party minority under the leadership of ministers
Ahmen Suleiman and Muavia Ihbrahim (who broke away from
the Mahjub majority in August 1970) as the communist Party. [7]

This tactic has the obvious advantage of providing a
communist party with which the Soviet Union could proclaim
its solidarity; the presence of "minority faction" ministers
in the Numeiry cabinet would "legitimize" support of the
government as well. Just how the USSR would cope with the
main body of the party and its influential Secretary
General Mahjub, now fighting a life and death struggle
for existence, is not clear. But the Soviets have had
experience in dealing with such "indelicate" problems.

One last question must be posed as to the role which
the coup and counter-coup could possibly play among the
international policy makers in the Kremlin. Some Soviet
observers of the international scene may well question the
expense and efficacy of state support to countries which
resist traditional ideological penetration as staunchly
as, for example, the Sudan. Somewhere, there may even
be a lonely ideologist questioning the Leninist nature
of a policy which forces the abandonment of communist
parties in favor of state interests in left-nationalist
Arab governments. Secretary General Mahjub would probably
like very much to talk to that gentleman today.

lg

------------------------------

(1) Radio Moscow in Arabic, 1 January 1969.

(2) In Pravda of 30 October 1967, as reported by UPI of
the same date.

(3) November 6, 1969.

(4) In an SCP statement published on 16 April 1970 in An-Nida,
Beirut.

(5) TASS, 24 March 1970.

(6) See lg, "Sudanese Communist Complexities," CAA Report No.
1083, Radio Free Europe Research, 23 July 1971.

(7) The conservative communist daily of Sweden, Norskensflammen,
in fact commented on the Sudanese situation along these very
lines on Saturday, saying that "we can believe...that
certain adventurers calling themselves communists participated
in a coup d'etat without the support of the masses...."

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