ABSTRACT
This chapter and the following one focus on the processes that led to the unmaking of Sudan. The focus is on two periods of active state intervention in the economy and society which radically transformed the process of capital accumulation. This is not to deny a certain continuity in the post-colonial policies of the Sudanese state across the civilian-military divide, notably in preserving the lopsided development model, but rather to emphasize that the two authoritarian regimes of Nimeiri (1969-1985) and the NIF-dominated regime (1989-2004) stand out distinctively in the crisis-making process.1 Both regimes, beyond the sheer relative time length (totalling 32 years over the 1969-2004 period), brought about irreversible structural transformations that undermined the relatively ‘stable’ and ‘manageable’, albeit stagnant, post-colonial structures of accumulation and social reproduction with its predictable and manageable flows of population, relatively sustainable mechanism of extraction of surplus and a great deal of stability in the relative efficiency of the state capacity despite regular civilian-military shifts in state control.
