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Sudan
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About Sudan
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, covering an area of approximately one million square miles, almost a quarter of the continental United States. Its landscape is one of the most diverse in Africa, encompassing swamps, mountain ranges, deserts and rainforests as well as the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers where the capital city, Khartoum is located.
Like Chad, its neighbor to the west, Sudan stretches
across the cultural divide of the Arab North and the Black African South. It
shares its borders with eight other countries: Libya in the northwest; Chad,
Central Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the west; Uganda
in the south; and Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea in the southeast and east. Sudan
has an estimated population of 33.6 million people from diverse ethnic backgrounds,
mainly Arab in the north and African in the south, where there are more than
300 tribes. Sudan was a collection of small, independent kingdoms and principalities from the beginning of the Christian era. The area formally known as Nubia (Northeast Sudan) was converted to Christianity in the 6th century and remained so until it was colonized by Muslims in the 15th century and converted to Islam. In 1820 Egypt conquered the region and unified the northern portion of the country. Although Egypt claimed all of what is now present-day Sudan during the 19th century, it was unable to effectively control southern Sudan, which remained an area of separate tribes, vulnerable to frequent attacks by slave raiders. In 1881 a religious leader, Muhammad ibn Abdalla, and his followers, the Ansars, began a religious crusade to unify the tribes in western and central Sudan and forced the Egyptians to withdraw. In 1899 Sudan became a joint sovereignty under both British and Egyptian rule. Although it was supposed to be a joint administration it was effectively Britain that exercised most control, formulating policies and supplying most of the high ranking administrators. With the consent of the British and Egyptian governments, Sudan achieved independence as a parliamentary republic on January 1st, 1956. Since its independence the country has been ruled by a succession of unstable civilian and military governments, leaving it in an almost constant state of civil war, mainly between the Muslim north and the Animist and Christian south, which still continues today making it the longest civil war in history. The origins of the civil war can be found in the underdevelopment of the south during the colonial period and southern Sudanese fear that the new nation would be dominated by the Muslim north. The civil war initially broke out in 1955 when the Arab-led Khartoum government reneged on promises to southerners to create a federal system, leading to a mutiny by southern army officers thereby instigating 17 years of civil war from 1955-1972. In 1972 Pres. Muhammad Gaafar al-Nimeiri ended the war by granting the south a measure of autonomy. However, the ceasefire only managed to hold for 11 years, until 1983 when Nimeiri’s imposition of the extreme Islamic Sharia law on the entire country resulted in the formation of the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement and reopened the conflict. According to the UNHCR, since 1983 an estimated 2 million people have lost their lives as a direct result of the civil war between the government and the SLPA. A further 570,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to neighboring countries, and 3-4 million people have been internally displaced within Sudan, the largest population of internally displaced persons in the world. Millions of civilian lives have been disrupted with widespread starvation and malnutrition and inadequate access to health care and education. Ongoing attempts to negotiate peace between the government and the southern rebels began to make progress in 2003, despite reported fighting in some parts of the south, when both sides agreed that the south would have autonomy for 6 years after which the people would be able to vote in a referendum on independence. In addition to this the government agreed to divide oil revenues equally with the rebels during the 6 year period. Whether or not the government will actually fulfill its promises remains to be seen. Despite the progress of the peace negotiations between the SPLA and the government, a new rebellion erupted in the western province of Darfur in early 2003 leading to what the UN has recently declared to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
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