By Magdi El Gazouli

The contradictions ravaging the Sudanese Islamic Movement (SIM) matured in the folds of its 8th General Conference into an antagonism between loyalists and dissidents, an antagonism that the state attempted to resolve by means of a purge.

Media coverage tended to portray the first as 'hardliners' and the second as 'reformers', a mystification compounded by the drama of the foiled coup plot which landed Salah Gosh, Sudan's former spy chief, and Brigadier General Mohamed Ibrahim Abd al-Jalil, the 'emir of the mujahideen' better known to his admirers as 'Wad Ibrahim', and their associates in detention. Instead of reaping the benefits of their political investment in reform rhetoric, meagre as they may appear, the dissident 'Saihoon' of the SIM and National Congress Party (NCP), a pregnant Arabic term that translates in this context roughly into 'God-seeking wanderers', were tempted by the presence of combat-hardened officers and paramilitary 'jihadists' in their midst to try their luck at a putsch, the routine folly of the notoriously self-indulgent and vicissitudinous Sudanese petty bourgeoisie. …

The author is a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute.