ABSTRACT
While much attention has been paid to the formation of the new state of South Sudan and to issues pertaining to its state building, this chapter underscores the challenges faced by post-2011 Sudan as a rump states (the remaining part of the old nation state). We argue Sudan faces the similar challenges of ‘separated’ states: redefining economic policies after the loss of strategic territories, exhibiting the knack for ‘imagination’ in relation to constructing a national identity and in consolidating the regime’s legitimacy. This chapter shows how, after the separation of the South, the Sudanese state – under the leadership of Omar al-Bashir and his National Congress Party (1998–2019) – continued to deploy forms of political violence within this variant of the Sudanese Islamist regime. It first examines specific essential traits that characterise Sudan state and nation formation. Then we elaborate how the independence of the South reinforced the position of al-Bashir’s NCP and how it relied on its security apparatus to hold it up. The chapter also presents multiple ways in which political violence was solidified within Sudan after the South’s independence as the regime remained anchored to strategies directed towards its survival, until the 2018 December Revolution.
