ABSTRACT
NATURE OF THE FLASHPOINT Sudan has always been something of an enigma, with endemic conflict, unrelenting political and social turmoil, and great human suffering becoming its defining hallmarks. It is a place of profound ethnic, religious, cultural, and political contrasts-where Africa begins to fuse with the Middle East, where Christianity meets Islam, and where popular rule clashes with authoritarianism-pulling in opposing directions. Although a sparsely populated and often inhospitable land endowed with few exploitable resources beyond the waters of the Nile (until the discovery of oil in the south in the late 1970s), it has been fought over for generations. Home to one of Africa's longest running civil wars and numerous other smaller conflicts that have destroyed entire communities, left millions dead, and made refugees out of millions more, local rulers and great powers alike have paid dearly in lives and money in an attempt to control the land and its people. Seemingly on the verge of constant anarchy and complete state collapse, Sudan continues to endure.
