Sudan, officially Republic of the Sudan, republic (1995 est.
pop. 30,120,000), 967,494 sq mi (2,505,813 sq km), the largest country in
Africa, bordered by Egypt (N), the Red Sea (NE), Eritrea and Ethiopia (E),
Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S), the Central African
Republic and Chad (W), and Libya (NW). The principal cities are Khartoum (the
capital) and Omdurman. The most notable geographical feature is the Nile R.,
which, with its tributaries, flows through eastern Sudan from south to north.
Rainfall in Sudan diminishes from south to north; thus the southern part of the
country is characterized by swampland and rain forest, the central region by
savanna and grassland, and the north by desert and semidesert. There are
mountains in the northeast, south, center, and west; the highest point is
Kinyetti (10,456 ft/3,187 m), in the southeast. Agriculture, mostly of a
subsistence nature, dominates the economy. Long-staple cotton, the principal
cash crop, is raised in the irrigated Al Gezira region. Other crops include
sesame, sorghum, millet, peanuts, dates, and sugarcane. Cotton, sesame, gum
arabic (much of the world's production), livestock, and peanuts are exported.
The small mining industry extracts chromite, copper and manganese ores, gypsum,
and gold. Industry is largely devoted to the processing of agricultural
products. The population is divided into three main groups: northerners, who are
Muslim and speak Arabic (the official language); westerners, largely Muslim and
originally (20th cent.) from W Africa; and southerners, who follow traditional
beliefs mostly and speak Nilotic languages. There is a Christian minority in the
south.
History Northeast Sudan, called Nubia in ancient times, was
colonized by Egypt about 2000 BC and was ruled by the Cush kingdom from the 8th
cent. BC to the 4th cent AD Most of Nubia was converted to Coptic Christianity
in the 6th cent., but by the 15th cent. Islam prevailed. In 1821 the north was
conquered by Egypt, but a revolt by the nationalist Mahdi in 1881 forced an
Egyptian withdrawal. In the 1890s an Anglo-Egyptian force under Herbert
Kitchener destroyed the theocratic Mahdist state, and in 1899 most of Sudan came
under the joint rule of Egypt and Britain (with Britain exercising actual
control).
Independence was achieved in 1956. In 1955 the animist southerners, fearing
that the new nation would be dominated by the Muslim north, began a civil war
that lasted 17 years. In 1972 Pres. Muhammad Gaafar al-Nimeiry ended the war by
granting the south a measure of autonomy. However, his imposition of Islamic law
on the entire country in 1983 reopened the conflict, and close to 2 million have
died since, many from starvation.
Nimeiry was deposed by a military coup in 1986. A short-lived civilian
government was overthrown in 1989 by Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir; he
officially became president in 1993 and was elected to the post in 1996.
Bashir's government reinstituted Islamic law, banned opposition parties, and
jailed dissidents. Throughout the 1990s the army mounted offensives against the
rebels in S Sudan; several cease-fires were announced to allow the distribution
of food to famine victims, but they did not hold. In recent years Sudan has
supported Muslim fundamentalists internationally.
In 1998 U.S. missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum that was
suspected of manufacturing chemical weapon compounds to be used in terrorist
activities, but international investigators were unable to find evidence to
support the charges.
In late 1999 a power struggle developed between Bashir and the speaker of the
parliament, Hassan al-Turabi. Bashir dissolved parliament and in 2000 also
secured his control of the ruling National Congress party. In Dec. 2000 he was
reelected president, and his party swept the parlimentary elections; the
opposition boycotted the vote. Turabi was put under house arrest in Feb. 2001
after signing an agreement with the rebels calling for peaceful resistance to
Bashir's government.
The government and rebels agreed in July 2002 to a framework for peace that
called for autonomy for the south and a referendum on independence after six
years, and a truce was signed in October. Despite some cease-fire violations,
talks continued in 2003. The Darfur rebels subsequently agreed to form alliance
with the Beja rebels in NE Sudan (around Kasala) if they were not included in
any settlement with the government; the Beja group had expected to be part of
the negotiations with the southern rebels.
Militias allied with the government in Darfur (and the government itself)
were accused of ethnic cleansing, and perhaps as many as 800,000 Sudanese were
displaced by the fighting, with many of them fleeing to Chad. A new cease-fire
was signed in Apr., 2004, but it too did not hold. Also in April, Turabi and
members of his party were again arrested by the government, which accused them
of plotting against it; in September the government asserted that a new coup
plot involving the jailed Turabi had been uncovered.
There was increasing pressure in mid-2004 from the United Nations, United
States, and European Union on Sudan to end the attacks in Darfur, and in July,
2004, Bashir’s government promised the United Nations that it would disarm the
militias. A lack of significant progress in ending the fighting and disarming
the militias led to UN Security Council resolutions against Sudan in July and
September. The latter resolution called for an investigation into whether the
attacks were genocide, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had charged. By
October it was estimated that 1.5 million had been displaced by the conflict in
Darfur. Meanwhile, there were attacks against Sudanese in the south by the
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan rebel group, leading both southern
Sudanese rebels and government-allied militias to mount a drive against the LRA.
********
Copyright (c) 2003 Columbia
University Press. Used by permission of Columbia University Press.
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Dinka of the Sudan By Francis Mading Deng This
ethnography provides a rich, well-balanced view of Dinka life in the Sudan
which now form part of modern Sudan but remain among the least touched by
modernization.
A History of the Sudan From the Coming of Islam to the
Present Day By P. M. Holt, M. W. Daly Describes the making of modern
Sudan over the last 150 years and offers a clear, readable and succinct
introduction to an area that is seldom out of the world's headlines
Inside Sudan Political Islam, Conflict, and
Catastrophe By Donald Petterson Donald Petterson, former
U.S.Ambassador to Sudan, has written an unflinching account of modern
Sudan. It is the thoroughly human story of a man and his family living and
working in Khartoum in the 1990's, the hey-day of Islamic terrorism and
fundamentalist belief.
Me Against My Brother At War in Somalia, Sudan and
Rwanda By Scott Peterson Peterson does a great job of documenting
the trajedies of Africa that simply doesn't seem to interest most
Americans.
The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars By Douglas
Hamilton Johnson The conflict between the northern and southern Sudan
has usually been misunderstood, because the historical roots of the
conflict have been misrepresented...
Short History Of Sudan Mohamed H., Dr. Fadlalla A
summarized necessary reference for everyone who would like to acquire
well-basic knowledge about the largest country Africa
War and Slavery in Sudan The Ethnography of Political
Violence By Jok Madut Jok This wonderful account blends modern day
events with the burden of the past to explain the ongoing genocide in the
Sudan and the issue of race and slavery in the conflict.
War of Visions Conflicts of Identities in the
Sudan By Francis M. Deng Addresses Sudan's racial, cultural, and
religious identity issues in light of the civil war that has raged
intermittently there since independence in 1956, and presents three
approaches to ending the conflict.
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