Sudan

Civil Wars

The Sudanese civil wars were caused by the attempts of the Muslim-dominated north to control the southern part of the country, where most of the Christian and animist minorities live. As was the case in other former colonies, these divisions were encouraged by colonial rulers. The British had decided to govern the state by creating two separate administrations: one for the north and one for the south, so that suspicion between the two factions increased. Yet, the colonizers also wanted to limit the contacts between the two groups. Thus, in the mid-1920s, they made it illegal for people living north of the 10th parallel to go farther south, and for people south of the 8th parallel to go farther north. The law was officially justified as a preventive measure against the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases. However, the most important political reason behind the decision was to create two separate networks: without contacts with the Arab population of the north, the animist population would be more easily converted to Christianity. Far from being a simple, administrative device, the separation aimed at stopping the Arabic and Islamic influence from advancing south. The result was increased alienation between the already mutually suspicious north and south. The establishment of entirely different social and religious networks was the primary seed of the civil conflict that erupted in the second half of the 20th century.

The first civil war began in 1955 with the mutiny of southern army officers and the establishment of the Anya-Nya guerrilla. This first conflict ended in 1972 with the Addis Ababa Agreement, which gave the south considerable autnomy. However, in June 1983, a second civil war broke out when President Gaafar Nimeiry tried to circumvent the Addis Ababa Agreement and create a federated Sudan that would include the south. Southern Sudanese reacted with the formation of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and President Nimeiry repealed the Addis Ababa Agreement. The situation worsened with the president's decision to enforce the Islamic law (sharia) on all of Sudan, plunging the country into a deeper conflict. As the war spiraled into unprecedented levels of violence, which made it difficult to establish international humanitarian aid networks, northern leadership became increasingly linked to fundamentalist Muslim groups and transformed Sudan into an Islamic totalitarian regime, which led the United States to designate the country as a sponsor of terrorism. Although the two factions signed the Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, which again conceded a certain degree of autonomy to the south, mutual suspicions and accusations still characterize the relationships between the two geopolitical entities.

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