The massive repression unleashed by the regime of General Nemeiry against thousends of communists and trade union militants is by any standards an enormous blow to the revolutionary struggle in the whole Arab world. We are in fact witnessing an unprecedented onslaught on the largest C.P. in the region and the cream of the Sudanese working class. The hanging of Abdel Khaick Mahjoub, the General Secretary of the C.P. and Chafei El Sheikh, the leader of the trade union federation, is only the tip of an iceberg of white terror which has by no means come to a halt.
"Unite intomally, or at least sort out your differences and your contradictions, we'll see then..." had been Nasser's consistent advice to Nemeiry, the representative of the Sudanese petty-bourgeoisie, anxious to join the Arab Federation.
Nemeiry's answer was quite unambiguous. On February 11th, he declared: "The Communists have no place in our revolution. They will be crushed and exterminated."* What then had transpired between the Sudanese C.P. and Nemeiry's military government?
THE SUDANESE C.P.'S POPULAR FRONT Since its constitution as an organisation independent of the former Egyptian C.P., the Sudanese Party, in spite of its internal divisions, proved to be the only organised force in Sudan capable of advancing a revolutionary alternative to dictator Abboud's regime. The petty-bourgeoisie therefore sought an alliance with this "vertebral column of the Sudanese left" in order to take power and get rid of the right wing opposition, Holding that "the C.P. was not yet in a position to seize power, and that the revalutionary crisis had not yet ripened", one wing of the C.P. leadership imposed a political line based upon democratic illusions, urged on by Moscow which ceaselessly counselled modera tion: other elements in the leadership became trapped in the policy, and considered that power had already been captured, whereas it had yet to be taken. Consequently, the Sudanese C.P. hesitated for a long time between legalism and revolution. It formed with the officers representatives of the petty bourgeoisiel a national democratic front which, after the euphoria of the first few months, broke up under the weight of its inner contradictions: the interests of its two components were absolutely incompetible, TWO TENDENCIES Since 1966, the Sudanese C.P. has consisted of two tendencles: one right-wing and liquidationist, which sought a compromise with the regime and which looked to the example of the ex-Egyptian C.P. which finally buried itself in Nasser's Arab Socialist Union, and the other semirevolutionary, which rejected all attempts to shackle it for the sake of some sort of anti-imperialist unity insisted on by the Russian bureaucrats, and stubbornly preserved its Stonony But over and above these divergences lay the determination of the Sudanese petty-bourgeoisie to exterminate its erstwhile allv. In fact, insoired and educated by Nasser, the Suranese officers absorbed the ABC of Nasserism = anti-communism, the nervous system of their ideological apparatus; distrust of mass organisations, which escaped their control, appeal to confused national and religious sentiments, liquidation of any and every left-wing formation and _ even a friendly wink for the Kremlin.
This classic Nasserite behaviour confirms with increasing brutality the right-wing turn of the so-called progressive regimes and the end of all illusions about the historical anti-imperialist role of the Arab petty bourgenisie. The Sudanese C.P. being an obstacle to the integration of the country into the Arab Federation, Nemeiry determined to sweep it away, A pale image of his master, he took over his methods, verbal demagogy accompanied by swift blows, But Sudan today is not like the Ement of the the Nasser the
----- pull-quotes -----
perspective of a Popular Front and the collaboration of all anti-imperialist classes, a traditional aspect of Stalinist