Located astride the headwaters of the Nile River, the Sudan is rich in history but little else. It was the home of the dervishes who defeated and put to death Britain's General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon in 1885, and who were in turn defeated by a punitive expedition under General Herbert Kitchener. Until 1956, the Sudan was nominally ruled by Britain and Egypt. Then it asserted independence and took possession of the largest land area of any African nation. Independence brought a bitter civil conflict, now 13 years old, between the 10 million Arabs of the north and the 4 million blacks of the south, who have been fighting for autonomy.
Since 1964, the Sudan's regime has been dangerously weak but relatively democratic—unlike the militant dictatorships so common in the Arab World. Last week, at the beginning of the season of blazing desert heat, the Sudan's moderate but often corrupt civilian leaders were overthrown in a coup that was brought off with the suddenness of a Khartoum haboob. In the early morning, telephone and cable lines were cut, troop carriers rolled across the White Nile bridge and along Palace Avenue. Tanks took up positions at the front gates of the Republican Palace, built on the site and in the mold of the palace where General Gordon was slain. By morning, a new government was installed, one that conforms more closely to the modern Arab pattern of army-backed leftist regimes, and dedicated to the struggle against Israel.
"We are socialists but not extremists or fanatics," announced new Prime Minister Babikir Awadallah, a London-trained barrister and onetime Chief Justice of the Sudan. But, he added in an introductory meeting with Khartoum's diplomatic corps, "we are Arabs and fanatics as far as the Palestine question is concerned. We advocate nonalignment in foreign policy, but we will stand fast against any country that supports Israel, be it Eastern or Western."
Easy Path to Power. Awadallah's militant pronouncements correspond to the cast of the new regime. The Cabinet is primarily civilian, drawn from the extreme leftist, Pan-Arab intelligentsia; eight of its 24 members belong to the Sudan's Communist Party, the most entrenched in the Arab world. The Cabinet in turn is responsible to a Revolutionary Council of a "Free Officers Front," headed by the man who engineered the coup: Major General (he promoted himself from colonel overnight) Gaafar Mohamed Nimeri, 40, a dour single-minded soldier who received training at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Nimeri had earned his reputation as a daring soldier fighting the black guerrillas to the south. When other senior officers sent junior men on patrol, Nimeri personally led his men in jungle forays.