The limited popular welcome (only between about 100 and 150,000) for the return to Khartoum on November 23 of Sudan's former prime minister Sadiq al Mahdi after four years in exile doesn't look like the beginning of a Palestinian-type Intifada uprising. It looks more like the population's extreme lassitude with the regime of head of state Omar Hassan Al Bechir, with National Democratic Alliance (NDA) opposition movement and even with the Oumma party that Sadiq heads. Umma is still split into several rival factions: that led by its chief, that of the al Mahdi family that is trying to replace him with one of his uncles or consists, and another consisting of his supporters in western Sudan (Darfur, Kordofan) led by Adam Musa Madibo which opposes all compromise with the regime in Khartoum, one of reformers led by Abd er Rahman Nugdallah and Bakri Adil which wants to make Umma over into a modern party that completely escapes the clutches of the Ansars brotherhood headed hereditarily by the al Mahdi family since the 1880s. So while his nephew Mubarak al Fadil al Mahdi leans firmly towards an agreement with the regime and establishment of an anti-NDA front with Riak Machar, Sadiq al Mahdi is smoothing down ruffled feathers in his party in order to avoid it exploding. 
NDA components ar not much better off. Sudan Alliance Forces (SAF) are victims of a split between the civilian management in Cairo and the military management under general Abd el Azziz Khalid in Asmara; Sudan Federal Party (SFP) headed by Ahmed Diraige and Sharif Harir is hanging on with much difficulty in its Darfur base because of growing tribal troubles fanned by the Sudanese government which is trying to undermine the rebels; and the head of the Nuba branch of Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), major Yussif Kuwa, is suffering from advanced cancer which suggests his disappearance soon and then a probable fight by his deputy commanders to succeed him. Despite the bloody success of SPLA's brief occupation of Kassala on November 8, it is not only SPLA which is also threatened by hidden internal dissent due to the unbridled authoritarianism of colonel John Garang.
In this field of political ruins, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the traditional old party of Arab bourgeoisie, is standing the firmest. Led by a job-share of Mohamed Osman al Mirghani, who at the helm of NDA symbolizes exterior resistance, and by ex-foreign minister Sid Ahmed al Hussein, who illustrates the stubborness of a domestic opposition which nothing has been able to conquer, the DUP survives more or less. Though NDA continues to dream of a popular uprising similar to those which brought down the regimes of marshal Abbud in 1964 and general Jaafar Mohamed al Nimeiri in 1985, the population in fact would prefer some sort of 'knight in shining armour' who could repeat Nimeiri's salutary coup d'etat in 1969 to overthrow the current fundamental Islamist regime with any bloodletting.
This opposition weakness facilitates maintaining in power a fundamental Islamist regime which is itself very weaskened by internal dissent. Mutammar al Watani (the national congress, formerly called NIF) broke into two parts last year, on one side the original organization which officially at least obeys the Sudanese president, and on the other, a Shabiyi (popular) branch headed by Hassan al Turabi, who stills controls many branches of the civil service. Al Bechir is contested even inside his movement, both by the hard fundamentalist nucleus which follows Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and by a liberal wing headed by Ghazi Salah ad Din Attabani. But he can manage to stay somewhat precariously thanks to the army's backing and is trying to regain control of institutions by having his supporters 'elected' to Parliament since last month, a process in which few electors take part, and by seeking his own enthronement during the presidential election on December 11 which will be boycotted by both the opposition and Hassan al Turabi's Shabiyi faction.