One of the first things the new government did was to dismiss thousands of government employees and military leaders and replace them with Muslim militants. According to Fatima Ibrahim, fundamentalists from Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Algeria and Egypt were imported because there were not enough Sudanese extremists to do the job. The country's once numerous middle class was systematically hounded into exile, imprisoned or killed. There are now more Sudanese doctors practicing in London than in Sudan. This has been a disaster for Africa' s largest nation, which has had a solid tradition of strong civic institutions - trade unions, women's groups and student organizations.
Armed men kidnap any figure who dares to speak out.
People are murdered or run over by a car and the official explanation is that it was a madman or an accident. Ms Ibrahim fled Sudan in 1989 soon after the fundamentalists took power, though she continues to return, clandestinely, when she can. Her usual route these days is through the non-Arab south, where government control is weakest. It's also in the south that the fundamentalist forces have done their greatest damage. Here government troops have been fighting a brutal war against two contending separatist groups for the past 13 years the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and the Southern Sudanese Independence Movement.