‘Nests of criminals’: policing in the peri-urban regions of Northern Sudan, 1964–1989

This article focuses on the strategies adopted by the Sudanese police in dealing with migration from Sudan's rural peripheries to the central urban riverain areas of Sudan, in particular Khartoum. It contends that police policy in these regions demonstrated the limited governmental ambitions of the Sudanese state and its inability, or unwillingness, to individuate its population. It thus shifts the focus of analysis away from debates which emphasise the role of country size and ethnic diversity in limiting the social and political integration between the marginalised rural areas and the urban cores of Sudan, towards understanding this divide as an active product of government policy. Rather than attempting to regulate these rural migrants as part of an overall social body, police strategies in these peri-urban areas have in effect served to re-inforce the divide between the centres and peripheries of Sudanese society. They have often treated the outskirts of Khartoum as if they represent a national border, and control the burgeoning shanty-towns using collective and arbitrary methods such as ‘dragnet’ operations and mass demolition of shanty housing. However, the article also attempts to problematise the notion of a strict centre-periphery dichotomy by arguing that the police were never fully successful in imposing this divide, as was seen in their increasing reliance on recruiting migrants from the rural peripheries.