The Black Book : Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan The Black Book : Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan , known commonly as the Black Book ( Arabic : الكتاب الأسود " al - kitab al - aswad " ) , is a manuscript detailing a pattern of disproportionate political control by the people of northern Sudan and marginalization of the rest of the country . It was published in two parts , the first in May 2000 and the second on August 2002 . While published anonymously , it was later revealed that the writers had strong ties to the Justice and Equality Movement , a rebel group active in the conflict that later erupted in Darfur to the west . Contents . The first page of " the Black Book " , Part I , states its thesis : " This publication unveils the level of injustice practised by successive governments , secular and theocratic , democratic or autocratic , since the independence of the country in 1956 to this date . " The main argument is that the riverine Arabs near Khartoum have centralized power around themselves , proven by a statistical analysis . The first of the many charts details the populations of the various regions and number of Federal / National - level representatives , as a percentage of the total , since independence . It pointed out that every single president had come from the North . The book goes on to break down these numbers of representation by regime since independence , constitutionally mandated posts , and state governorships , all illustrated through charts . After dealing with the central point about inequality in positions of high office , the " Black Book " goes on to detail similarly disproportionate results in the number of Attorneys General , executive staff in the Ministry of Finance and the National Council for Distribution of Resources , which allocates oil wealth , as well to note the cultural domination of the national media by northerners . Practically every major sector of society is analyzed to show a pattern of northern control . Academic Abdullahi El - Tom , in his critique of the book , states that the latter half is not nearly as well - argued as the heavily statistical beginning , making points that are then not substantiated and sometimes falling into polemical statements . For example , the " Black Book " states that the equipment that was to be used for the Western Highway Project was diverted to the Northern Highway Project , which is both widely rumored and believed , but no evidence is provided to back it up . El - Tom further makes the following observations : it has an implicit view of Sudan as Islamic ; it emphasizes the grievances of Western Sudan ( i . e . Darfur and Kordofan ) over the other marginalized regions ; and it has an unforgiving stance towards all the north , rather than just the three clans identified as controlling the government ( i . e . the Shaigiya , the Jaaliyeen and the Danagla ) . Part II was originally supposed to concentrate on policy recommendations stemming from the analysis in Part I . However , the Sudanese government so strongly attacked the findings of the first part that the writers instead took the opportunity to back up the original publication . Part II thus consists of the listing of every single government official counted in the first part , with their regional and clan affiliation . Distribution and reaction . The " Black Book " had a dramatic introduction . People leaving mosques in Khartoum after Friday evening prayers were greeted by polite young men passing out thick photocopied stapled versions on A4 paper . Such an activity in censored Sudan was unusual ; the fact that the document being passed out was an indictment of the national power structure has been termed " revolutionary " . Scholar Gérard Prunier notes that it said nothing to the average Northern Sudanese that they did not know already . What created a shock were not the contents of the book but simply the fact that an unspoken taboo had been broken and that somebody [ … ] had dared to put into print what everybody knew but did not want to talk about . The fact that the writers identified themselves only as " The Seekers of Truth and Justice " , without a place of publication or copyright notice , only added to the mystery . Over three days , 1600 copies were handed out — 800 in Khartoum , 500 in other parts of Sudan ( except the South ) and 300 abroad . Copies were reportedly left on the desks on President Omar al - Bashir and other senior government officials while they were out for prayers . Government newspapers launched attacks on the publication in front page articles , denouncing the authors as " tribalists " . Security forces attempted to discover the authors , while it was rumored that several junior government staffers had been fired after copies were found on ministers ' desks . Publishing houses were checked and journalists , academics and other known writers were questioned to determine the book ' s origin . However , the book was already out and being photocopied and spread . One estimate put the total number of photocopies secretly made by individuals at 50 , 000 . An owner of a photocopying shop in Khartoum was quoted as saying , " I made no less 100 copies for our customers . We sometimes charged them more due to the risk involved in duplicating illegal documents . " Given the high levels of illiteracy in Sudan , most people heard of the " Black Book " by word of mouth . The document , as controversial as it was , quickly became central to Sudanese political discourse . Political factions campaigning for support in the West found that political discussion revolved around the western highway project , salaries for civil servants , especially teachers , and the " Black Book " . In an attempt to double - check the book ' s central conclusion of national inequity , Alex Cobham of the University of Oxford did a parallel study in 2005 , including an analysis of income generation and expenditure by region to determine if there was a pattern of subsidies between regions . He concluded , There can be no doubt that the current dictatorship has been pernicious for the human development of the regions outside of the North and Khartoum . There can be no question that the data support the claims made in the " Black Book " that the Sudan has been governed to benefit those regions disproportionately at the expense of all others . Authorship and context . In the early 1980s Islamist Hassan al - Turabi had returned from exile , and in 1989 took power in a military coup . Al - Turabi appeared to promise political Islam as a solution ; that with hard work and honesty as part of the Ummah , people could solve the political and social problems afflicting the country . Many Muslims from the disadvantaged regions of West , East and Central Sudan flocked to al - Turabi and his message . However by the mid - 1990s , the Islamist project was collapsing due to entrenched corruption and widespread anger at the waste of lives in the Second Sudanese Civil War with the south . In 1998 , al - Turabi managed to position himself as Speaker of the House under the new National Congress . However , Ali Osman Mohamed Taha , al - Turabi ' s former follower , defected to the side of al - Bashir and , in December 1999 , al - Bashir declared a state of emergency , stripping al - Turabi of his position and power . The book ' s critics , mainly government officials connected to al - Bashir , have consistently claimed that it was made at the direction of al - Turabi . Al - Turabi has denied any connection with either the book or with the JEM . In interviews , writers have stated that they , al - Turabi and the ruling government were all connected through the National Islamic Front , but that al - Turabi had nothing to do with the writing of the " Black Book " . The writers trace their roots to 1993 , when a cell of NIF members , including Khalil Ibrahim , the former Darfur Minister of Education , began meeting in secret in al - Fashir to discuss the possibility of reforming the NIF from within . A second clandestine cell formed in 1994 in Kurdufan , and third in Khartoum in 1997 . Most of the Khartoum cell were university graduates and most were Islamists . The year that the Khartoum cell was formed , the dissidents decided that their first step should be to inform the populace of the structural problems ; a 25 - man committee was set up to gather information and begin writing . Julie Flint and Alex de Waal call the " Black Book " " the obituary of the Islamic revolution " . However , by the time of its publication , the cell members had already decided that internal reform was impossible and that armed resistance was the only course of action . In 2001 , they sent twenty of their leaders to begin openly organizing and , in August 2001 , Khalil Ibrahim announced the existence of the Justice and Equality Movement , a group that would form a minority partner with the secular rebel Sudan Liberation Movement ( SLM ) already active in Darfur . Exactly a year after the announcement , Part II of the " Black Book " was put up on the JEM website . Almost all of the authors joined the JEM or secular resistance movements . As of October 2006 , the JEM continued its armed rebellion in Darfur in a conflict that had displaced hundreds of thousands .