The National Islamic Front (NIF; ; transliterated: al-Jabhah al-Islamiyah al-Qawmiyah) was an Islamist political organization founded in 1976

The NIF emerged from Muslim student groups that first began organizing in the universities during the 1940s, and its main support base has remained the college educated. It demonstrated itself to be both politically adept and ruthless in its use of violence, in particular in the internal conflicts of the Second Sudanese Civil War and the War in Darfur, as well in the provisioning of proxy forces such as the Lord's Resistance Army, the West Nile Bank Front and the Uganda National Rescue Front II against Uganda.

In the late 1990s, the National Islamic Front changed its name to National Congress Party, and the "gross human rights violations" of the regime's early years gave way to "more subtle methods of social control such as restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, opinion, religion, association, and movement." and subsequently founded the rival Popular Congress Party which has remained in opposition.

History

Formation and early history

Created in the 1960s as an Islamist student group, it was known as the Islamic Charter Front (ICF). From 1964 to 1969, it was headed by Hassan al-Turabi after the overthrow of the government of President Ibrahim Abboud. During this period, the ICF supported women's right to vote and ran women candidates. In 1969, the government was overthrown by General Gaafar Nimeiry in a coup d'état, after which the members of the Islamic Charter Front were placed under house arrest or fled the country. Although strongly opposed to Communism, the NIF copied their organization. The National Islamic Front itself was founded following the failure of the anti-Numayri coup, led by the Ansar in July 1976.

Sources of strength

Turabi's group served as "intermediaries" between Sudan and Saudi Arabia, whose port Jeddah was almost directly across the Red Sea only about 200 miles from Port Sudan and capable of hosting Saudi immigrant workers. Following the Arab Oil Embargo, Saudi Arabia had serious financial resources which it could invest in Sudan to discourage communist influence.

In the fall of 1977, the Faisal Islamic Bank opened a branch in Sudan—60% of its start up capital was Saudi. By the mid-1980s the bank was second biggest in Sudan in terms of money held on deposit. Also founded in the late 1970s was the Al Baraka Bank. Both provided rewards for whose affiliated with Hassan al-Turabi's Islamist National Islamic Front—employment and wealth for young militant college graduates and easy credit for devout Muslim investors and businessmen. It also benefited from Nimeiry's falling out with his former communist allies. The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) was the largest communist party in the Arab world Although Nimeiry called his regime socialist to the end he turned on the SCP as a threat to his power and likely as an impediment in gaining aid from the United States.

With al-Nimeiry regime

In 1983, al-Tarabi used his position as Attorney General to push for the strict application of Sharia. "Within eighteen months, more than fifty suspected thieves had their hands chopped off. A Coptic Christian was hanged for possessing foreign currency; poor women were flogged for selling local beer." Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, an Islamic intellectual who had reinterpreted Islamic law in a more liberal direction and opposed the new Sharia laws was hanged in January 1985. Jamaat-e-Islami also favored top-down Islamism and Zia also staged a coup against an elected government. Explanations for why the military allied itself with the NIF include its infiltration by the NIF, and the "ideological justification" the NIF gave the war as a jihad against the animists and Christians of the south, while the Pakistan military had just lost a war and Omar al-Bashir was continuing a war, both wars ended in the loss by secession of a large area of their country (Bangladesh and South Sudan), and in international criticism for millions of civilians killed and human rights abused.

Governance

Like the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, and unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria, the NIF was interested in spreading Islam from above rather than preaching to the masses. It strove to eliminate the power of the traditional Sufi brotherhood based parties (the Democratic Unionist Party and the Umma Party) and replace them with itself. Under the NIF government, education was overhauled to focus on the glory of Arab and Islamic culture, and memorizing the Quran. Religious police in the capital insured that women were veiled, especially in government offices and universities. Repression of the "secular middle class" was "savage" and unprecedented for Sudan where "political customs" were relatively relaxed. "Purges and executions were carried out in the upper ranks" of the army, and civil and military officials were subjected to Islamist "reeducation". Opponents were forced into exile to prevent them from organizing an alternative to the regime.

The NIF intensified the war against the south which was declared a jihad. That attack, on February 26, 1993, occurred on the 2nd anniversary of the retreat of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, thus ending the 1991 Gulf War.

Beginning in 1991, they also harbored Osama bin Laden for several years after the Saudis revoked his citizenship. It is suspected they hoped he could aid them through his wealth and construction company. However, eventually the NIF government deemed him too great a liability and banished him.

Bin Laden had been exiled to Sudan because he had publicly spoken out against the Saudi government for basing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in order to oppose Iraq's takeover of Kuwait. So although bin Laden and the NIF appeared to be on opposite sides of sympathy for or against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, they both found differing reasons for their greater and common concern, the presence and involvement of the United States in that region's conflict.

The abuses against southerners (some of whom were Christians) had aroused the activism of Christian groups in Europe and the US.

Electoral history

National Assembly elections

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

!Election

!Leader

!Votes

!%

!Seats

!+/–

!Position

!Result

|-

|1986

|Hassan al-Turabi

|726,021

|18.51%

|

|New

|3rd

|

|}

See also

  • National Congress Party
  • Sudan People's Liberation Movement
  • Sudanese Socialist Union

References

  • National Islamic Front at SudanUpdate.org
  • Profile: Sudan's Islamist leader, BBC, 14 October 2003