Foundation and growth The
Sudanese Movement for National Liberation (also known by its Arabic acronym
HASTU) was founded in 1946, through the merger of two Sudanese communist groups– the
Omdurman group belonging to
Henri Curiel's
Egyptian Movement for National Liberation and a group in
Khartoum which had been organized by Herbert Storey, a British soldier and member of the
Communist Party of Great Britain. During the 1940s and 1950s the party became popular amongst students, and it helped establish the Students' Congress in 1949. The party originally worked largely through different front organisations such as the
Anti-Imperialist Front, through which it contested the
1953 parliamentary election. At the third conference of the Sudanese Movement for National Liberation, held in February 1956, the party changed its name to the Sudanese Communist Party. A hundred party members attended the conference, which elected a 31-member
central committee. The party joined other groups in opposition to the military government of
Ibrahim Abboud, and played a key role in toppling the government in the
October 1964 Revolution, joining the subsequent transitional government. The party contested two elections in the 1960s and came into conflict with the
Umma Party and
National Unionist Party-led government. Nevertheless, the party went on to win 8 seats in the
1965 election, with Ahmad Sulayman being elected from a territorial constituency, and
Abdel Khaliq Mahjub being elected as an independent. Another member of the party,
Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, was the first woman elected to the Sudanese parliament. The
Sino-Soviet split caused a split within the party which lasted from late 1964 to early 1965. Pro-Chinese members were either expelled or chose to leave voluntarily to form the
Sudanese Communist Party– Revolutionary Leadership. From 1965 to 1967, a number of parties attempted to outlaw the SCP from partaking in parliamentary elections. Some members advocated the establishment of an ideologically broader Socialist Party of the Sudan, which lasted from 1967 to 1969. Other members advocated operating underground.
Nimeiry government and 1971 coup The military
overthrew the Sudanese government on 25 May 1969 in a
coup d'état led by
Gaafar Nimeiry. The SCP gained influence in the new administration, and SCP policies, such as those pertaining to regional autonomy for the south, were adopted by the Nimeiry government.
Joseph Garang, an SCP member, was made the Government Minister of Southern Affairs. The SCP was supportive of negotiations which led to the
Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. On 19 July 1971, a group of army officers led by Major
Hashem al-Atta launched a coup d'état against the Nimeiry government. However, Nimeiry loyalists retook the capital
Khartoum three days later, freed Nimeiry, and restored his government. As many of the conspirators were members of the SCP, Nimeiry blamed the party for the coup and executed several of its leaders, including Mahjub and Garang. The failed coup had its roots in historical ideological differences within the party, between the pro-Soviet faction and the nationalist faction. The nationalists, such as Ahmad Sulayman and
Farouk Abu Issa, wished to cooperate with the Nimeiry government. The pro-Soviet faction, led by Mahjub, was less supportive and opposed the 1969 coup by Nimeiry.
Post-Nimeiry On 6 April 1985,
Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab launched a coup d'état and overthrew Nimeiry. In this new climate the SCP, now led by
Muhammad Ibrahim Nugud, resumed its former above-ground activities and took part in the
1986 election, winning 3 seats, and returning
Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim to the National Assembly. Following the
1989 Sudanese coup d'état, however, the SCP was again repressed, with the party being banned and its leaders being arrested.
Recent developments In a 2007 interview, then general secretary of the SCP
Muhammad Ibrahim Nugud claimed that the party enjoyed support from a wide section of Sudanese society, including "workers, farmers, students, women's groups, minority groups, in the
Nuba Mountains, in the
south, and in
Darfur". Human rights activist Suleman Hamid El Haj was most recently the assistant secretary and spokesman for the party. After the independence of South Sudan in 2011, the southern branch of the party split to form the
Communist Party of South Sudan. In 2008, the SCP and the
South African Communist Party jointly launched the African Left Network to facilitate greater cooperation amongst
African communist parties. Nugud died in
London, the United Kingdom, on 22 March 2012. By then he had served as the party's general secretary for over four decades. He was succeeded by
Muhammad Mukhtar al-Khatib. The party participated in the
2018–2019 Sudanese protests and demonstrated against the measures enacted by the
Transitional Military Council in the aftermath of the
2019 coup d'état. In May 2022, the
Sudanese Armed Forces arrested several prominent party members, including al-Khatib. With the outbreak of the
Sudanese civil war (2023–present) in April 2023, the SCP called for an immediate ceasefire. The
Rapid Support Forces subsequently raided and occupied the SCP's headquarters in Khartoum on 25 May 2023. Operating under a
Marxist framework, the SCP analyzed the conflict not as a mere military anomaly, but as a violent collision between two factions of a "parasitic and comprador capitalist class" mobilizing to secure state resources for predatory elites and foreign powers. In 2025, the party issued strong institutional condemnations against the warring factions' attempts to establish parallel governments. The SCP rejected both the Sudanese Armed Forces' administration in
Port Sudan and the RSF's political maneuvers in
Nairobi, arguing that dual governments would permanently fracture Sudan's sovereignty. Maintaining a strict anti-war stance, the party joined the civilian anti-war coalition "Somoud" (Steadfastness) and participated in diplomatic transition efforts led by the
African Union in late 2025. == Ideology ==