What's the story?

The current crisis in Sudan is occurring primarily in Darfur on the western side of the country, bordering Chad. Darfur is Sudan's largest region and it is here that Arab militias are pillaging, murdering and raping the country's civilians who share the same ethnicities as dissenting forces. These militias are government-backed and therefore it is the Sudanese government that holds much of the responsibility for these heinous crimes. In particular this ethnic cleansing has affeccted the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups by the governmentally armed and supported 'Janjaweed' militia. In total they have caused in excess of 110,000 people to seep into Chad but there are now also thousands of individuals who are left simply trapped in Dafur in fear of the militia. Disease has also ravaged the area, increasing death tolls and bringing further widespread fear. On a more positive note, plans are underway to contruct two new arterial roads in Sudan which will hopefully make aid and trade access easier and offer this ravished land a chance to come back from the brink.

Where?

Although Sudan is the largest country in Africa it is only the seventh most inhabited, as the population is estimated at, 39,148,162 (2004 est.). Surrounded by Egypt, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, the Central African Republic and the Red Sea it has a total area of 2,505,800 square kilometres. Like its diverse terrain Sudan is also divided culturally on ethnic, religious and ideological-grounds.

The historical context

Northern Sudan in ancient times was more commonly known as the kingdom of Nubia, which came under Egyptian rule after 2600 B.C. An Egyptian and Nubian civilization called Kush flourished until A.D. 350. Missionaries converted the region to Christianity in the 6th century, but an influx of Muslim Arabs, who had already conquered Egypt, eventually controlled the area and replaced Christianity with Islam. During the 1500s a people called the Funj conquered much of Sudan, and several other black African groups settled in the south, including the Dinka, Shilluk, Nuer, and Azande. Egyptians again conquered the Sudan in 1874, and after Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, it took over Sudan in 1898, ruling the country in conjunction with Egypt. It was known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1898 and 1955.

Due to the growth of Sudan nationalism in the twentieth century Britain and Egypt granted the country its own government in 1953 and it was declared on January 1st 1956. Since the declaration, it has been ruled by a string of volatile parliamentary governments and military regimes. Major. General Gaafar Mohamed Nimeiri, instituted fundamentalist Islamic law in 1983 in Sudan and it is this that aggravated the schism between the North (Arab), the seat of the government, and the South (black African animists and Christians). This led to an relentless civil war between government forces, intensely influenced by the National Islamic Front (NIF), and the southern rebels, whose dominant faction is the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). It also has been implied that Sudan had been a safe haven for terrorists and this isolated the country the most from the international community. Unsurprisingly therefore the UN imposed sanctions against it in 1995.
Ever since Bashir's military coup in 1989, the de facto ruler of Sudan had been Hassan el-Turabi, a cleric and political leader who is a key figure in the pan-Arabic Islamic fundamentalist resurgence. In 1999, however, Bashir ousted Turabi and placed him under house arrest. (He was freed in Oct. 2003.) Since then Bashir has made overtures to the West, and in Sept. 2001, the UN lifted its five-year-old sanctions.

Recent events

The sentiment of discontent stems back from the economic, political and social domination by southern Sudanese who are neither Arabic nor Muslim. It is these individuals who have rejected the attempts by the present government, based in the capital of Khartourm, to impose the Islamic Sharia law on the country as a whole. Having been split in two by civil war mainly between the Muslim north, and the Animist and Christian in the south (aside from a ten-year period between 1972 and 1982) the future for Sudan looked bright with a cease fire declared in July 2002 between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation (SPLA). This momentous agreement in 2002 was to put a stop to more than 2 million deaths being caused by famine and over 4 million people being relocated. These talks were furthered in Kenya in 2003 and 2004 whereby the government agreed to a power-sharing government for six years, to be followed by a referendum on self-determination for the south. But just it was just as the civil war seemed to be ending that the ethnic cleansing in Darfur broke out against the black Muslims leaving the country again amidst the terror and violence of war.

Some facts

The 'Janjaweed' have been guaranteed that they will never be prosecuted for their crimes as the government have banned all local criminal prosecutions of their actions committed while pursuing the ethnic groups allegedly aligned with the rebels. They have also been well provided especially through their living standards and thus this results in the attraction of joining the militia.

- Peace would be highly advantageous to the people of Sudan as they would benefit not only from the end of the country's persistent violence but also economically. The exportation of the countries rich stocks of cotton, gold and reserves of crude oil would bring much needed capital and employment to the population.

- Sudan's name comes from the Arabic 'bilad al-sudan', or land of the blacks and one of the most striking characteristics of the country is the diversity of its people. The Sudanese are divided among 19 major ethnic groups and about 597 subgroups, speaking more than 100 languages and dialects for example Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Sudanic languages, and English.