Sudan's Security Agencies: Fragmentation, Visibility and Mimicry, 1908–89

Abstract

This article contends that, in the period under study, government security agencies in both colonial and post-colonial Sudan have failed to dominate society. It attributes this failure to the limited resources and limited ambitions of the state, and the fact that its security organs were thus weakly institutionalized. The fact that these failures persisted after independence, in spite of the efforts of post-colonial governments to expand their intelligence agencies, demonstrated the divisions within the state and the extent to which it could be captured by competing political and social groups.