The Sudan -- Contested National Identities.

• Author: El-Tigani, Mahgoub
• Position: Review

Ann Mosely Lesch, The Sudan -- Contested National Identities, Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indiana, 1998. 336 pp. Paperback, $19.95.

This book presents a detailed account of Sudan's ethno-political cleavages and the striving for national identity with a special focus on the last quarter of the 20th century, the May and June military dictatorships and the transitional and elected governments.

The opening pages provide a short discussion on models of ethnicity with respect to nation building. These models include, [among others] symbolic solidarity, and pluralism. Important references that could have been utilized by the author would have been the work of Francis Deng on Problems of National Identification (University of Khartoum) and Sa'ad AI-Deen Ibrahim (1994) Sects and Ethnic Groups, Minority Concerns in the Arab Homeland, Ibn Khaldun Center, 2nd ed., Cairo.

The model the author seems to have adopted is a pluralist one that requires in the context of Sudanese diversity a consistent process of redefinition, even though realignment remains incomplete and the outcome uncertain. Lesch holds that although the development of a consensus on the nature of the Sudanese nation-state has progressed significantly within the main opposition entity, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the struggle to create a pluralist nation-state remains at an early stage [of development]. Indeed, the "Islamist" vision of the ruling group, the National Islamic Front (NIF) is intensifying even as it is placed under siege. "The contest over national identity remains intense and bitter" (page 218).

The reasons the author gives for the obvious prolongation of the contest over Sudanese national identification are well developed. For example, the "northern mea culpa" was evident in the Umma party's statement in February 1994 on the controversial issue of self-determination, which declared that "selfsearching into the past" led the party to recognize that "modern Sudanese selfconsciousness centered on their Islamic-Arabic identity" (page 217). The author comments positively on the Umma manifesto of February 1994 saying "That rearticulation helped to achieve the Asmara accords and the renewed sense of common purpose within the NDA" (page 217).

The problem that Lesch was not able to predict in her concluding remarks was that by the year 2000 the Umma party reformulated the previous re-articulation as asserted in 1994. The Umma leader Sadiq AI-Mahdi engaged in...