ABSTRACT
Sudan is the largest African country and is located south of Egypt and has a population of c. 30 million. The cleavages cutting across the country are geographical and ethnic/religious (70% are Muslim, 10% Christian; 52% are African, 39% Arab). North of the capital, Khartoum, lies the Nubian Desert and the overall territory is rather dry; the people living there are largely of Arab descent andMuslim, but there are also Nubians and Bedouins. The southern lands in and around Sudd contain equatorial forests and are rich in petroleum reserves; the people living there are either Christian and, in terms of origin, are closer to the Africans found in neighbouring Kenya and Uganda. In the 19th century Egypt laid claim to Sudan, as did two European colonial powers, the United Kingdom and France. In 1898 Sudan finally became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but was effectively ruled by a British governor. The British prevailed thanks to the determination shown by Gen. Sir Horatio Kitchener, when his expedition confronted a French army led by Maj. Jean-Baptiste Marchand in Fashoda (now Kodok) on 19 September 1898 (when, in his memoirs, Gen. Charles de Gaulle listed the disasters that had afflicted France during his childhood, the first on the list was the Fashoda incident). The British did not make any effort to integrate and unite the diverse ethnic and religious landscape of the country, and in fact the north was administered in Arabic from Khartoum, whereas the south was kept separate and governed in English from Juba. More to the point, the south was subject to missionary activities, trying to convert the people to Christianity. This further aggravated the ethnic and religious tensions across the country. In the 1950s the British compelled the Egyptians to leave Sudan and then, on 1 January 1956, conceded independence to the country. However, the Christian Government that the British had set up was brought down by a coup, which installed Gen. Ibrahim Abboud in the presidency. Abboud expelled the Christian missionaries and politicians and set about unifying the country under Arab rule. A civil war ensued, in which an estimated 400,000 civilians had been killed by the mid-1960s. The Christian movement, Anya Nya, won international support from the West, as well as from Israel and Ethiopia. By 1969 Abboud had been removed from office by Gen. Gaafar Muhammad Nimeri, perhaps the most remarkable and astute leader of modern Sudan. Nimeri developed close relations with Egypt’s
Anwar Sadat and vehemently supported peace between Egypt and Israel. He also opposed Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya, as Qaddafi’s main object was the acquisition of the north-western provinces of Sudan, the northern Darfur, which he wanted to use as a military base of operations against neighbouring Chad. Despite Nimeri’s remarkable efforts to solve the problem of the south, mainly by promulgating constitutional reforms and integrating the Anya Nya army into the regular national army, the rebels regrouped and in 1983, assisted by Ethiopia, formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). In 1985 Nimeri was deposed, but six years later the SPLA suffered a major reverse, when the Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, was overthrown and assistance cut off. The SPLA has, since its foundation, been attempting to articulate a national rather than regional (confined to the south) agenda, but this exacerbated tensions within it, between those wanting independence for the south and those aiming at overthrowing the Khartoum Government and establishing national control. Some accommodation with the southern rebels has now been achieved, but the country is still troubled by conflict. The Sudanese Government remained committed to Shari‘a (Islamic law), refusing to separate religion from the state, thus making peace elusive. It has been alleged that the Government is now supporting groups such as al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas, which are designated as terrorist by the USA. However, George W. Bush (US President since 2001), under pressure from Congress, sought co-operation with the Sudanese Government, which he obtained. In fact, like many other Middle Eastern governments and intelligence services, such as those of Syria, Sudan had been co-operating with the USA before 9/11. Among other things, this co-operation could be seen as a consequence of new discoveries of petroleum in the eastern Upper Nile region in 1999, provoking China’s immense interest in Sudan’s oil. In 2002 production stood at 200,000 barrels a day and commercial estimates put the amount of reserves at a total of several thousand million barrels. International mediation by the USA, the United Kingdom and Norway in 2002 brought about no substantial results in ending the civil war, the most disastrous incidents and mass killings occurring in the region of Darfur. In 2003 the non-Muslim Darfur Liberation Front (DLF) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) mounted some spectacular operations against government interests and forces in Darfur, but in response the Government retaliated by arming the fundamentalist Muslim group of the Janjaweed, which began committing atrocities against non-Arabs. International mediation and other attempts at reaching an agreement between the warring parties have so far failed, with the scale of catastrophe having reportedly taken on genocidal dimensions.
