nal election, where he was the only candidate by law to run for election, al-Bashir transformed Sudan into a single-party state and created the National Congress Party (NCP) with a new parliament and government obtained solely by members of the NCP. During the 1990s, Hassan al-Turabi, then Speaker of the National Assembly, reached out to Islamic fundamentalist groups, as well as allowing them to operate out of Sudan, even personally inviting Osama bin Laden to the country.
The United States subsequently listed Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S bombed Sudan in 1998 and U.S. firms were barred from doing business in Sudan. Further on, al-Turabi's influence and that of his party's "'internationalist' and ideological wing" waned "in favor of the 'nationalist' or more pragmatic leaders who focus on trying to recover from Sudan's disastrous international isolation and economic damage that resulted from ideological adventurism." At the same time Sudan worked to appease the United States and other international critics by expelling members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and encouraging bin Laden to leave. Prior to the 2000 presidential election, al-Turabi introduced a bill to reduce the President's powers, prompting al-Bashir to dissolve parliament and declare a state of emergency. After al-Turabi urged a boycott of the President's re-election campaign and signed an agreement with Sudan People's Liberation Army, Omar al-Bashir suspected they were plotting to overthrow him and the government, thus jailing Hassan al-Turabi that same year. Because of significant cultural, social, political, ethnic and economic changes in short amounts of time, conflicts were evolved in western and eastern provinces of Sudan in addition to an escalating conflict in Southern Sudan. Since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), several violent struggles between the Janjaweed militia and rebel groups such as the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the Sudanese
