The National Islamic Front (NIF; Arabic: الجبهة الإسلامية القومية; transliterated: al-Jabhah al-Islamiyah al-Qawmiyah) was an Islamist political organization founded in 1976[1] and led by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi that influenced the Sudanese government starting in 1979, and dominated it from 1989 to the late 1990s.
[2] The NIF emerged from Muslim student groups that first began organizing in the universities during the 1940s, and its main support base has remained the college educated.
In 1969, the government was overthrown by General Gaafar Nimeiry in a coup d'état, after which the members of the Islamic Charter Front were placed under house arrest or fled the country.
Following the Arab Oil Embargo, Saudi Arabia had serious financial resources which it could invest in Sudan to discourage communist influence.
Both provided rewards for whose affiliated with Hassan al-Turabi's Islamist National Islamic Front—employment and wealth for young militant college graduates and easy credit for devout Muslim investors and businessmen.
[13] Although Nimeiry called his regime socialist to the end he turned on the SCP as a threat to his power and likely as an impediment in gaining aid from the United States.
This official condemnation of the group proved temporary though as President Nimeiry had lost support of the Sudanese people and the military and was consequently overthrown.
In 1989, the southern rebels, Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed an agreement with the democratic government that included provisions for a cease-fire, the freezing of the Sharia (which the non-Muslim south opposed), the lifting of the state of emergency, and the abolition of all foreign political and military pacts and proposed a constitutional conference to decide Sudan's political future.
On June 30 1989 this government was overthrown by Colonel (later General) Omar al-Bashir who was committed to imposing Sharia law and to seeking a military victory over the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
[14] [18] Alleged human rights abuses by the NIF regime included war crimes, ethnic cleansing, a revival of slavery, torture of opponents, and an unprecedented number of refugees fleeing into Uganda, Kenya, Eritrea, Egypt, Europe and North America.
[20] "Purges and executions were carried out in the upper ranks" of the army, and civil and military officials were subjected to Islamist "reeducation".
Turabi also gave asylum and assistance to non-Sudanese jihadi, including Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda members.
Although critical of Saddam Hussein, al-Turabi held an anti-American Islamist conference during Operation Desert Storm, toward the end of supporting the Iraqi people in their war.
During terrorism expert Steven Emerson's 1998 testimony before the United States Senate, he implicated the Sudanese National Islamic Front as partly responsible for the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
So although bin Laden and the NIF appeared to be on opposite sides of sympathy for or against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, they both found differing reasons for their greater and common concern, the presence and involvement of the United States in that region's conflict.
In December 1999, Bashir stripped al-Turabi of his posts, dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution and declared a state of national emergency.
Further, al-Turabi was imprisoned (temporarily) in 2004 and the regime allowed the Christian John Garang to be Vice President in a peace deal.