About Sudan
Jumhuriyat as-Sudan (جمهورية السودان)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Geography
Republic of Sudan is situated in Northern Africa, bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, Kenya and Uganda to the southeast, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest. The capital is Khartoum. It is dominated by the River Nile and its tributaries. With an area of 2,505,810 km², it is the largest country in the continent. The terrain is generally flat plains, though there are mountains in the east and west. The climate is tropical in the south; arid desert conditions in the north, with a rainy season from April to October. Soil erosion and desertification are environmental hazards.
States
Sudan has 26 states or wilayat: Al Jazirah, Al Qadarif, Bahr al Jabal, Blue Nile, East Equatoria, Junqali, Kassala, Khartoum, Lakes, North Bahr al Ghazal, North Darfur, North Kurdufan, Northern, Red Sea, River Nile, Sennar, South Darfur, South Kurdufan, Unity, Upper Nile, Warab, West Bahr al Ghazal, West Darfur, West Equatoria, West Kurdufan, and White Nile.
History
Three Kushite and Meroetic kingdoms called northern Sudan their home in ancient times, this region was also known as the Nubian Kingdom and these civilizations flourished mainly along the Nile River from the first to
the sixth cataracts. These kingdoms were influenced by, and in turn influenced Pharaonic Egypt. In fact, the borders of the ancient Egyptian and Sudanese kingdoms fluxated greatly and what is now the upper third of present day
Northern Sudan was during ancient times indistinguishable from Upper Egypt.
Although Christianity had been introduced into Sudan in the third or fourth centuries, around AD 640, Islam
came to Sudan. A merchant class of Arabs established themselves as economically dominant in feudal Sudan. Important kingdoms in the next
1200 years include Makuria and the Kingdom of Sennar.
In 1820, Sudan came under Egyptian rule when Mehemet Ali, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt sent armies under his son Ismail Pasha and Mahommed Bey to conquer eastern Sudan. Religious leader Muhammad ibn Abdalla, the self-proclaimed Mahdi (Messiah),
attempted to unify the tribes of western and central Sudan in the 1880s. He led a nationalist revolt against Egyptian rule culminating in
the fall of Khartoum in 1885, in which the British General Gordon was killed, the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's poem Fuzzy Wuzzy, a tribe in the region of Port Sudan. The Mahdist
state survived until being overwhelmed by an Anglo-Egyptian force under Lord Kitchener in 1898. Britain ran Sudan as two essentially separate colonies, the south and the north, until 1956.
The year before independence in 1956, Southern Sudanese embarked upon a civil war. During the British rule, laws had been put in place
making it illegal for anyone living above the 10th parallel to go further south and anyone above the 8th parallel further north. The
British law set the country up for this envitable conflict with this law. The law was enacted to prevent the spread of malaria and other
tropic diseases that had ravaged British troops. Furthermore, while the British built roads, schools and set up a government in the
predominately Arab north, the British left the South to Missionaries to "tame the savages" creating a terrible misjustice in the country. This
sparked 17 years of civil war from 1955 to 1972. In 1972, the Addis Ababa Agreement led to a cessation of the north-south civil war and a degree of self-rule. This led to a ten-year hiatus in the civil war.
In September 1983, then President, Gaafar Nimeiry,
created a Federated Sudan which included 3 federal states in Southern Sudan. It was the introduction of Sharia law and the dissolution of the
3 federal states in the South that led to the reinvigoration of the civil war.
Elections were held in April 1965 but Sudan had a series of governments that proved unable either to agree on a permanent constitution or to cope with problems of factionalism,
economic stagnation, and ethnic dissidence. Much of the ethnic conflict is born of the North (Arab, Muslim) versus South (African, Christian
and animistic) and has a strong economic element in that economic development while under British colonial rule was focused in the North.
Dissatisfaction culminated in a second military coup on 25 May 1969. The Muslim coup leader, Col. Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiri, became prime minister, and the new regime abolished parliament and outlawed all political parties. Many years of military conflict between the Sudan government backed northern arab muslim Janjaweed and non-muslim south ensued.
After shortages of fuel and bread, a growing insurgency in the south, drought and famine, in 1984-5 another military coup led by Gen. Suwar al-Dahab restored a civilian government. However the civil war intensified in lethality and the economy continued to deteriorate. In 1989 General Omar el-Bashir became president and chief of state, prime minister and chief of the armed forces.
The ongoing civil war has displaced more than 4 million southerners. Some fled into southern cities, such as Juba; others trekked as far north as Khartoum and even into Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, and other neighboring countries. These people were unable to grow food or earn money to feed themselves, and malnutrition and starvation
became widespread. The lack of investment in the south resulted as well in what international humanitarian organizations call a "lost
generation" who lack educational opportunities, access to basic health care services, and little prospects for productive employment in the
small and weak economies of the south or the north.
Peace talks between the southern rebels and the government made substantial progress in 2003 and early 2004, although skirmishes in
parts of the south were reportedly continuing. The peace was consolidated with the official signing by both sides of the Naivasha
treaty on 9 January 2005, pursuant to which the south will be granted autonomy for six years, to be followed by a referendum on independence. It is hoped that the treaty will finally mark the end of a decades-long war that has claimed millions of lives. Now there is peace between the north and the south. Intertribal war still exists in the western region of Darfur.
Foreign relations
Sudan has had a troubled relationship with many of its neighbors and much of the international community due to what is viewed as its aggressively Islamic stance. For much of the 1990s, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia formed an ad-hoc alliance called the "Front Line States" with support from the United States to check the influence of the National Islamic Front government. During this period, Sudan supported anti-Uganda rebel groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army in retaliation for Ugandan support of the Sudan People's Liberation Army.
Beginning from the mid-1990s Sudan gradually began to moderate its positions as a result of increased US pressure following the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and the new development of oil fields previously in rebel hands. Sudan also has a territorial dispute with Egypt over the Hala'ib Triangle. Since 2003, the foreign relations of Sudan have centered on the support for ending the Second Sudanese Civil War and condemnation of government support for militias in the Darfur conflict.
Autonomy, Separation, Conflicts
Southern Sudan is an autonomous region intermediate between the states and the national government.
Darfur is a region of three western states affected by the current Darfur conflict. There is also an insurgency in the east led by the Eastern Front.
Economy
Sudan has turned around a struggling economy with sound economic policies and infrastructure investments, but it still faces formidable economic problems, starting from its low level of per capita output. From 1997 to date, Sudan has been implementing IMF macroeconomic reforms. In 1999, Sudan began exporting crude oil and in the last quarter of 1999 recorded its first trade surplus, which, along with
monetary policy, has stabilized the exchange rate. Increased oil production, revived light industry, and expanded export processing
zones helped sustain GDP growth at 6.1% in 2003.
Agriculture production remains Sudan's most important sector, employing 80% of the work force and contributing 39% of GDP, but most
farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic instability - including the long-standing civil war between the Muslim north and the
Christian/animist south, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices - ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the
poverty line for years.
Demographics
In Sudan’s 1993 census, the population was calculated at 26 million. No comprehensive census has been carried out since that time due to the continuation of the civil war. Current estimates from the CIA factbook as of 2004 estimate the population to be about 39 million. The population of metropolitan Khartoum
(including Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum North) is growing rapidly and ranges from 6-7 million, including around 2 million displaced
persons from the southern war zone as well as western and eastern drought-affected areas.
Sudan has two distinct major cultures--Arabicized Black Africans (but also some non-black Egyptian Arabs) and non-Arab Black
Africans--with hundreds of ethnic and tribal divisions and language groups, which makes effective collaboration among them a major problem.
The northern states cover most of the Sudan and include most of the urban centers. Most of the 22 million Sudanese who live in this region
are Arabic-speaking Muslims, though the majority also use a traditional non-Arabic mother tongue--e.g., Nubian, Beja, Fur, Nuban, Ingessana,
etc. Among these are several distinct tribal groups: the Kababish of northern Kordofan, a camel-raising people; the Ga’alin (الجعلين),
Rubatab (الرباطاب), Manasir (المناصير) and Shaiqiyah (الشايقيّة) of settled tribes along the rivers; the seminomadic Baggara of Kurdufan and Darfur; the Hamitic Beja in the Red Sea area and Nubians of the northern Nile areas, some of
whom have been resettled on the Atbara River; and the Negroid Nuba of southern Kurdufan and Fur in the western reaches of the country.
The southern region has a population of around 6 million and a predominantly rural, subsistence economy. This region has been negatively affected by war for all but 10 years since independence in 1956, resulting in serious neglect, lack of infrastructure development, and major destruction and displacement. More than 2 million people have died, and more than 4 million are internally displaced or have become refugees as a result of the civil war and war-related impacts. Here the Sudanese practice mainly indigenous traditional beliefs, although Christian missionaries have converted some. The south also contains many tribal groups and many more languages are used than in the north. The Dinka--whose population is estimated at more than 1 million--is the largest of the many black African tribes of the Sudan. Along with the Shilluk and the Nuer, they are among the Nilotic tribes. The Azande,
Bor, and Jo Luo are “Sudanic” tribes in the west, and the Acholi and Lotuhu live in the extreme south, extending into Uganda.
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