After collaborating with the Arab nationalist Sudanese government for years, the Ba'ath Party broke off relations and became an opposition party in 1990—this would have disturbed Iraq if Sudan had not supported it during the 1991 Gulf crisis. In 1990, the party was composed largely of students who had studied in Ba'athist Iraq. The party, which was small in 1990, was influential in certain sectors, was opposed to the National Islamic Front and was staunchly secularist. Members have historically been torn between the Ba'ath and other secular party movements, such as the Sudanese communists. Because of Saddam Hussein's amicable relationship with the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, the body ruling Sudan, the Ba'ath branched was oppressed by the authorities. Later in 1990, 26 Ba'athi military officers were executed in Khartoum after a failed military coup. In 2002, a group led by Mohamad Ali Jadein broke away from the branch and established the independent Sudanese Ba'ath Party, which has no affiliation with neither the pro-Iraq Ba'ath movement nor the pro-Syrian Ba'ath movement. The following year, after the invasion of Iraq 80 Sudanese Ba'athists return to Sudan under the condition that they would stay out of politics.