On\u00a0July 9, 2011,\u00a0South Sudan\u00a0became an independent State, six months after the January referendum in which the south\u00a0Sudan population voted overwhelmingly for independence. However,\u00a0Sudan\u00a0is not really structured to be divided in two. There are no natural dividing lines, neither physical nor social. During much of the English colonial period, southern\u00a0Sudan\u00a0was administered from\u00a0Uganda\u00a0as road communications were easier than from\u00a0Khartoum, the capital in the north of the country. In fact, \u2018administered\u2019 is too strong a term. South Sudan\u00a0had no real crops for export or minerals to mine, and so there was very little administration. In place of any government development activities, the Colonial Office encouraged Christian missionaries, mostly Church of England and Roman Catholic to set up schools and clinics.\u00a0Thus south\u00a0Sudan\u00a0was \u2018Christianized\u2019 in that the educated had gone to church schools and been treated in Christian clinics. However, most people continued also to practice traditional rituals as these were considered as part of tribal life and not as the rituals of a particular religion.\u00a0Thus when considering Sudan, the often-used terms of \u2018Muslim\u2019, \u2018Christian\u2019, and \u2018Animist\u2019 cover a more complex reality.<\/p>\n
Complexity is a term which is true for all Sudanese life \u2014 political, economic, and geographic. The failure to deal creatively with complexity has led to fighting for nearly all of its history as an independent State since 1956. On the eve of\u00a0Independence, with the makeup of a new national army being the spark which set the fire, civil war broke out, basically on a North-South basis. There have been two phases to the Sudan Civil War. The first phase (1954-1972) had ended with negotiations facilitated by the All-African Conference of Churches with back up help from the World Council of Churches in\u00a0Geneva.<\/p>\n
The 1972-1982 decade was one of relative peace, but it was not used to heal the divisions or to work out forms of government, administration, and legal systems that would be acceptable to all segments of Sudanese society. International attention on\u00a0Sudan\u00a0had diminished once the 1972 peace agreement was signed. The warning signals that all was not well were ignored internationally. Thus in 1982, southern soldiers who had been integrated into the national army revolted, and the second phase of the civil war continued from 1983 until the end of 2004.<\/p>\n
As a North-South peace agreement was nearly set, groups in Darfur, western Sudan, who had not been part of the North-South conflict decided that violence was the only way to get attention and to get a \u2018piece of the pie\u2019 of the natural resources, especially the oil revenue. They hoped for a short war after which they would be invited to participate in the North-South negotiations. In practice, the\u00a0Darfur conflict has not been short \u2014 starting in 2003 and continuing still today, and the\u00a0Darfur\u00a0factions have not been invited to the North-South negotiations.<\/p>\n
Darfur\u00a0(the home of the Fur) was always marginal to the politics of modern\u00a0Sudan. In the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0century,\u00a0Darfur, about the size of France, was an independent Sultanate loosely related to the\u00a0Ottoman Empire. It was on a major trade route from West Africa to Egypt and so populations from what is now northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Chad joined the older ethnic groups of the area: the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and the Birgit. Nomads from Libya also moved south into Darfur. As the population density was low, a style of life with mutual interaction between pastoral herdsmen and settled agriculturalists with some livestock developed. Increasingly, however, there was ever-greater competition for water and forage made scarce by environmental degradation and the spread of the desert.<\/p>\n France\u00a0and\u00a0England\u00a0left\u00a0Darfur\u00a0as a buffer zone between the French colonial holdings \u2014 what is now\u00a0Chad\u00a0\u2014 and the Anglo-Egyptian controlled\u00a0Sudan. French-English rivalry in\u00a0West Africa\u00a0had nearly led earlier to a war \u2014 the Fashoda crisis of 1898. Thus a desert buffer was of more use than its low agricultural and livestock production would provide to either European colonial power. It was only in 1916 during the First World War when French-English colonial rivalry in\u00a0Africa\u00a0paled in front of the common German enemy that the English annexed\u00a0Darfur\u00a0to the\u00a0Sudan\u00a0without asking anyone in\u00a0Darfur\u00a0or the\u00a0Sudan\u00a0if such a \u2018marriage\u2019 was desirable.<\/p>\n Darfur\u00a0continued its existence as an environmentally fragile area of\u00a0Sudan. It was marginal in economics but largely self-sufficient.\u00a0Once\u00a0Sudan\u00a0was granted its independence in 1956,\u00a0Darfur\u00a0became politically as well as economically marginal. Darfur\u2019s people have received less education, less health care, less development assistance and fewer government posts than any other region.<\/p>\n In 2000,\u00a0Darfur\u2019s political leadership had met and wrote the\u00a0Black Book\u00a0<\/em>which detailed the region\u2019s systematic under-representation in national government since independence. However, at the level of the central government, the\u00a0Black Book\u00a0<\/em>led to no steps to increase the political and economic position of\u00a0Darfur. This lack of reaction convinced some in\u00a0Darfur\u00a0that only violent action would bring recognition and compromise as the war with the South had done.<\/p>\n An armed insurgency began in 2003 led by the more secular but tribal Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Islamist-leaning Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Since then, there have been splits in the JEM and the\u00a0SLA\u00a0largely along tribal lines. These splits make negotiations with the government of\u00a0Sudan\u00a0all the more difficult. The interests of many people in\u00a0Darfur\u00a0are not represented by either the government or the insurgencies, but it is nearly impossible for other voices to be heard.<\/p>\n In\u00a0Darfur, there is a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission (UNAMID), but there is no peace to keep. Although the peacekeeping force has a mission to protect populations, it is unable to do so. As Mohammed Otham noted in his UN report (A\/HRC\/14\/41) \u201cIn Darfur, notwithstanding the general improvement in the security situation, banditry, criminal activities and intermittent military activities by the parties to the conflict have continued. In some areas, aerial bombardment and troop mobilization by the Sudanese Armed Forces have been reported. In the context of this ongoing violence, United Nations and humanitarian personnel face significant risks to their lives. A significant number of UNAMID and humanitarian staff were deliberately attacked; some were abducted and held in captivity for long periods.\u201d The level of suffering in\u00a0Darfur\u00a0\u2014 people killed and displaced, the agricultural infrastructure destroyed \u2014 has been very high. The reconciliation and reconstruction of\u00a0Darfur\u00a0will be difficult. We must be on the lookout for possibilities to help.<\/p>\n The UN has had Special Representatives in\u00a0Darfur\u00a0responsible for facilitating negotiations, but they have made little progress. Darfur will continue as part of\u00a0North Sudan\u00a0and should be a priority of concern.<\/p>\n As there are no sharp natural or cultural dividing lines between North and\u00a0South Sudan, there will be non-Muslim populations left in the North and Muslim populations in the South. We must hope that there will not be the massive transfer of populations as at the independence of\u00a0India\u00a0and\u00a0Pakistan. There are possibilities of continued conflict in the northern non-Muslim areas such as the\u00a0Blue Nile\u00a0and Southern Kordofan\u00a0provinces. There is also a mixed population on the frontier between North and South in Abyei. It is less the fact that the population is mixed than that the area is oil-rich that has attracted international attention. The UN Security Council in resolution 1990 of\u00a029 June 2011\u00a0decided to establish the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA).<\/p>\n Thus, the United Nations is present as the Fairy Godmother at the birth of\u00a0South Sudan. As in the folk tales, the Fairy Godmother has some presents for the newly born as well as certain conditions and demands. The UN brings few material goods, and peacekeeping forces have been largely unable to bring peace. However, the UN has brought the present of world attention, a willingness to help and high international standards to meet. We will have to watch closely as the newborn grows.<\/p>\n ___________________<\/p>\n Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became an independent State, six months after the January referendum in which the south Sudan population voted overwhelmingly for independence. However, Sudan is not really structured to be divided in two. There are no natural dividing lines, neither physical nor social. During much of the English colonial period, southern Sudan was administered from Uganda as road communications were easier than from Khartoum, the capital in the north of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}