In 1991 Sudan was a member of several international organizations including the United Nations and its specialized agencies, the League of Arab States, and the Organization of African Unity.

The policies of the RCC-NS, however, alienated all the European countries that traditionally had provided economic and humanitarian assistance to Sudan. Britain suspended several million dollars of grants and loans for development projects in January 1991 after the government released from prison five Palestinians who had been convicted of the 1988 terrorist murder of five Britons at a Khartoum hotel. Subsequently, London broke diplomatic relations as well. The twelve-member European Community issued a statement in February 1991 expressing its collective "shock and dismay" at Khartoum's failure to cooperate with nations and international organizations trying to assist Sudanese victims of drought and civil strife. The RCC-NS tried to counterbalance these deteriorating relations with expanded ties to such countries as China, Iran, Nigeria, and Pakistan. None of these countries, however, had the resources to replace the significant and needed aid that had dried up in the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, and North America.

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Several excellent studies exist of Sudan's politics since independence in 1956 and up to the overthrow of the Nimeiri regime in 1985. There is a paucity, however, of published sources for the more recent years. The best overviews of pre-1985 political history are Peter Bechtold's Politics in the Sudan since Independence, Tim Niblock's Class and Power in Sudan, and Peter Woodward's Sudan, 1898-1989: The Unstable State. An excellent analysis of the movement to establish the sharia as the basis for Sudan's law is Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban's Islamic Law and Society in the Sudan. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)

Data as of June 1991