“At a time when Hollywood stars are leading the world in observing ‘Darfur Day’ to show solidarity with civilians in the war-torn regions, the history of the Islamist movement in Sudan and its domination after the June 1989 military coup is revised again. This history has circulated around a single figure: the Sudanese intellectual and internationally known Hassan al-Turabi. While there are several biography-type works about Turabi, notably Abd al-Wahab al-Affendi’s Turabi’s Revolution: Islam and State Power in Sudan, this is not a biography of Hassan al-Turabi. Moreover, the issue of Sudan’s devastating civil war with the South is excluded from the core of discussion (another volume by the same authors, Requiem for the Sudan, examines the theme).
“Sudan in Turmoil: Hassan al-Turabi and the Islamist State is an update of the original 2003 volume with a new title and an additional chapter. In it the authors offer a multi-faceted scholarly analysis of Sudan’s domestic and foreign policies during Turabi’s decade-long era in power. It ranks as one of the best, most up-to-date, and comprehensive, studies on the subject. Millard Burr and the late Robert Collins have vast first-hand knowledge, stemming from different fields of engagement, academic disciplines and from direct personal involvement. Collins was an internationally acclaimed expert on Sudan, Africa, and the Nile River, while Burr is a former State Department official who served in Sudan as an aid logistics director. They generate a remarkable description of the functioning and principal characteristics of Turabi’s National Islamic Front regime — the seventh to govern Sudan since independence in 1956, yet the first of a militantly Islamist nature.
“Sudan in Turmoil illuminates less-known aspects of Sudan under Turabi; some topics read as if they were part of a novel. The ties between Turabi and Osama bin Laden, the Sudan-Iran friendship, Sudanese oil and China, Sudan and Carlos the Jackal, the plot to assassinate Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, are part of the same puzzle and continue to influence (in one way or another) the political, economic and ideological position of Sudan in the world.
“Burr and Collins have admirably used a wide range of source to write a convincing study of a multi-layered, complex conflict, driven by leadership, tribal differences, race and religion, geopolitical players and international actors. Its sources are English- and French-language publications, including news wires and reports from diplomatic and human rights sources, as well as Arabic-language ephemera.
“In this updated edition, the chapter entitled ‘The Mursid Forsaken’ brings the story of Darfur as told from the perspective of Turabi’s involvement in the region. It briefly describes Turabi’s attempts to form an alliance with the disaffected minorities located in the periphery of the Sudanese state. As a result of these political manoeuvres and while Turabi started revealing secrets of the past, Turabi’s London-based biographer al-Affendi clearly believes that ‘he should retire from political life if he is to have any chances of playing any indirect role in the future’.”
— Ioannis Mantzikos, Journal of Modern African Studies
“Burr and Collins have vast first-hand knowledge, stemming from different fields of engagement and academic disciplines and likewise from direct personal involvement. (Collins is an internationally acclaimed expert on Sudan, Africa, and the Nile River; Burr is a former State Department official who served in Sudan as an aid logistics director.) They generate a remarkable description of the functioning and principle characteristics of Turabi’s National Islamic Front regime — the seventh to govern Sudan since independence in 1956, yet the first of a militantly Islamist nature …
“Some topics [in this book] read as if they were part of a thriller. Especially noteworthy among them are the firm ideological, political, and economic ties between Turabi and Osama bin Laden, the Sudan-Iran friendship, Sudanese oil and China, Sudan and Carlos the Jackal, the plot to assassinate Egypt’s president Husni Mubarak, and what the authors refer to as the Iran-Iraq-Sudan axis and Bosnia. Sometimes these connections seem unreal, but this well-documented study and vivid portrait of Khartoum’s political life remind us that this was the real Sudan under the ‘Islamic Project’ of Turabi.”
— Middle East Quarterly
“The title of this book could apply to the last fifty-six years of Sudan’s history. The book is a reissue in the United States of a book published in the Netherlands in 2003 under the title Revolutionary Sudan: Hasan al-Turabi and the Islamist State, 1989–2000. This new edition includes a new final chapter entitled ‘The Murshid Forsaken,’ and an afterword by one of Robert Collins’s doctoral students, Ohio State University historian Ahmad A. Sikainga. A prominent American historian of Sudan, Robert Collins died in 2008.
“In that the book itself has an intriguing history, it is interesting to read it in the context of all that has transpired in Sudan since its first publication. The authors provide a meticulously detailed account of Hasan al-Turabi’s decades-old project to turn Sudan into an Islamist state; those details help to explain subsequent events in Sudan and in the wider Middle East as well, and provide strong evidence for claims of Turabi’s Svengali-like influence over the region. With a bibliography that is only two pages long, the book is primarily based on news reports from a wide variety of sources and personal communications to the well-connected authors. This is not an academic study in the sense of theoretically based arguments tested against evidence in the field, or even a biography of Turabi. It is an excellent timeline of Turabi’s influence over the 1989 coup in Khartoum that brought Omer Hassan el-Bashir to power, and the many ways in which Turabi consolidated his power, and lost it, by entangling Sudan in regional and Muslim world alliances. As the authors state, it is the story of how Turabi’s charisma helped to ‘transform a secular state into an Islamic theocracy by a military coup d’état’ (p. 87).
“In that most of the material in the book is from published news sources, and in that the book was originally published in 2003, it is not new information that is the appeal of the work. Rather, it is a useful review in concise prose — that shows no favor for the regime in Khartoum — of the remarkable network of allies and alliances that Turabi established while in and out of prison. The use of exclamation points, like on p. 164 in describing budding Sudan-Iran ties, reveals a bit of the bias and the Africa Confidential style of the book.
“The authors, though, know the region very well and leave us with intriguing questions like, if Turabi’s in-law Osama bin Laden was buying guest houses in Peshawar in the 1990s, why were we surprised to find him in one nearby in Abbottabad in 2011? At the same time, in that it is more of a chronology than an analysis, we do not get a detailed sense of the character of the main actors here, like Turabi.
“This is a useful reference book, in effect, concluded with a brief and excellent chapter by Professor Ahmad Sikainga, written after the death of his mentor, Robert Collins, which describes events through the end of 2009. It fi lls out the picture of Sudan’s very messy politics by demonstrating how this nation, referred to by Trimingham in the 1940s as the “Islamic fringe,” became a key player in the Muslim world under Turabi’s crafty guidance.”
— Islamic Africa