ABSTRACT
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) dealt with Sudan in a very autocratic fashion, handing down conditionality that exceeded even its own economic models. Sudan's government has been authoritarian for a generation, in that Jaafar al Nimeiri, a colonel at the time of his seizure of power in 1969, instituted military rule and divested the civilian parliament of its authority. An unusual feature of Sudan's IMF relations is the fact that Sudan was almost always expected to conceive and implement an austerity program on its own, prior to receiving funding from the IMF. In the case of Sudan's relationship with the IMF, the principal players were, as usual, the IMF and the Nimeiri government. The Catholic minority and Southern political leadership were outraged, and nearly all of Sudan's moderate Arab and Western allies expressed outrage. Terrorist movements sprang up to complement the more cautious Sudanese People's Liberation Army that had been fighting for Southern independence since the 1960s.
