Maoism in Sudan
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) was the largest such party in any predominantly Arab country. It largely controlled the Federation of Sudanese Workers Unions,[882] and was an important factor in national politics. In 1956 it adopted a program stressing “peaceful transition.”[883]
In pursuance of this program, the Sudanese Communist Party engaged for a number of years in a kind of “popular front” politics, together with other political groups and elements of the armed forces. In 1964, it played a significant role in the overthrow of the government of Ibrahim Abboud.[884]
Five years later, the Sudanese Communists had an important part in a coup that brought to power the “Nasserite” regime of General Gafaar Muhammed el-Nimeiry, whose cabinet included three army officers who were generally believed to belong to the Communist Party. In November 1970, the general dismissed the three Communist cabinet members, and ordered removal of thirty other officers belonging to the SCP from their commands.[885]
On July 19, 1971, Nimeiry was overthrown by a coup led by three pro-Communist army officers. However, three days later he was reestablished in power, and carried out a violent purge of Communists and of leaders of organizations controlled by them. Even before the coup, Nimeiry had outlawed the national trade union group and other organizations controlled by the party.[886] Among the people executed by the Nimeiry regime in 1971 were Communist Party Secretary-General Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub (or Mojib) and Al-Shafieh Ahmed el-Sheikh, head of the trade union movement.[887] After this drastic purge, the Communist Party was reduced to at best secondary importance in Sudanese politics.
The Maoists in Sudan had opposed the “peaceful transition” policies of the Sudanese Communist Party (which remained very loyal to Moscow). In August 1964 those opposing this policy were expelled from the party. In the following year they organized the Revolutionary Communist Party of Sudan (RCPS), under the leadership of Ahmad Muhammad Jair.
In 1968, the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs noted, “The RCPS charges that the ‘modern revisionist Mahjub clique’ has embarked upon the road of collaboration with semifeudalist elements and agents of foreign monopoly capital and with U.S. neo-colonialism.’ It claimed that during the Abboud regime the SCP participated in the bourgeois opposition coalition ‘under the pretext of working from the inside to expose it’. The SCP, according to the RCPS, openly opposed the October 1964 uprising and joined it only when it realized that the strike was inevitable. With reference to the SCP successes in the 1965 election, the splinter party notes that the SCP won seats only in the graduate constituency where they won the votes of students studying abroad, most of whom are still in the USSR and other East European countries.”[888]
In 1969, Lewis H. Gann noted concerning the RCPS, “Its influence for the moment remains very limited.” However, he also said that although the Sudanese Communist Party was “strongly pro-Soviet… there is also a pro-Chinese faction known as the ‘Revolutionary Leadership Faction’.”[889]
The Revolutionary Communist Party of the Sudan was strongly pro-Chinese. It was reported that the party’s leader, Ahmad Muhammad Jair, visited Peking in 1967-1968. Also, the party was represented at the 6th Congress of the Albanian Trade Unions in April 1967 by Sadiq al-Digna, who claimed there that the RCPS was “building the working class to prepare itself for the seizure of power by revolutionary means and rejecting the parliamentary road.”[890]
At the time of the temporary overthrow and restoration of General Nimeiry in 1971, the Chinese supported him. It was reported that “the Sudanese-Chinese Friendship Society in China had organized demonstrations in support of General Nimeiry, while the latter had been in the custody of rebel army officers July 19—22.”[891]
Subsequently, Hsinhua was said to have reported “that the Sudanese armed forces have crushed a military coup by a ‘putschist clique’ and that the Sudanese government with Nimeiry at its head is again in control.” Nimeiry sent Mao Tse-tung a message “expressing confidence that ‘the excellent relations between the governments of our two countries will continue to strengthen thanks to mutual understanding and cooperation.’”[892]
Nimeiry was also said to have thanked Mao and Chou En-lai “because of China’s refusal to join in the widespread condemnation of the Sudanese witch-hunt against the left instituted by the Nimeiry regime.”[893] In 1981, the East German Communists noted the continued existence of a “pro-Maoist” group, the Revolutionary Group of the Sudanese Communist Party.[894]
Syrian Maoism
Maoism had little attraction within the ranks of the Syrian Communist Party, an organization that in the early 1950s had had enough influence to elect one member of the country’s parliament.[895] In 1966, the Yearbook on International Communist Affairs reported, “there is only scant evidence of pro-Chinese communist activities in Syria, although Damascus is reported to be the center for such activities in the Middle East. On the other hand, the Peking Review has reported various individual statements favorable to Chinese communist positions, such as Khalid al Juni’s praise of Mao Tse-tung’s thesis that “imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers’… and Jaudat Bikabi’s favorable comments on the Chinese ‘cultural revolution’… Bikabi is dean of the Faculty of Education of Damascus University. Two representatives of the Syrian trade unions… visited China in May.”[896]
Edith Wyden reported in 1970, “In 1965 a small clique of Chinese Syrian communists banded together in a loosely organized ‘Arab Worker and Peasants Party.’ In February 1968 some members of this group attempted to form a successful pro-Chinese party to be called the ‘ Arab Communist Marxist-Leninist Party in the Syrian Nation.’ Its ideology was outlined in mimeographed circulars which accused the Soviet Union of ‘treason,’ praised Mao Tse-tung, demanded a ‘People’s war’ against Israel to ‘free the Arab homelands,’ and labelled Syria a ‘fascist police state.’ In October 1968, the Syrian authorities took action against the group and reportedly arrested some 40 of them in various parts of the country.”[897]
In 1970 this party was reported as putting out a “clandestinely published news sheet.”[898] A year later it was noted that excerpts from the Maoists’ underground paper “are sometimes carried in obscure Beirut publications.”[899] However, we have no further information concerning the fate of the Syrian Maoists’ party.
Maoism in Thailand
Thailand is the one country of Southeast Asia that was never colonized by European powers. Although border areas claimed by Thailand were taken over by the British in Malaya and the French in Indochina, most of Thailand remained an independent kingdom. However, during World War II, Thailand was occupied by the Japanese. That event gave rise to the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), which originated “largely as an ‘anti-Japanese party.’” It was forced underground after the war.[900] In 1952, the Communist Party of Thailand was reported as holding its Second National Conference. In the discussion of the report of Secretary-General Prasong Vong-Vivat, “delegates severely criticized the shortcomings in the work of the Party, and especially stressed the vital need for struggle against Left and Right deviations which hamper the building of a united front of all the democratic forces in the country.”[901]
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Lewis H. Gann, in
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“Sudan Kicks CP Ministers Out of Cabinet,”
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Jon Rothschild, “Counterrevolution in Sudan,”
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Edith Wyden, in
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Clark Neher, in