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Introduction to the Sudan Conflict

South Sudan is the area below 13th parallel, and comprises Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria and the upper Nile regions, which is about  400,000 square miles. It has a population of more than 10 million people of which the major ethnic groups are the Dinka, Nuer, Shiluk, Zande, Pojulu, Kakuwa, Nyangwara, Bari, Kuku, Latuko, Toposa, Muru, Luo, Maban, and others. The south is bordered by the so called Arab and Muslim north Sudan in the north, Chad, Central Africa Republic in the West, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda in the South and Kenya and Ethiopia in the East. While the north is bordered by Libya and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea in the East.

During the scramble for Africa, French and the Belgians had a vested interest in the south Sudan. In 1892, the French led by Major Marchand occupied Bahr el Ghazal and Western Upper Nile up to Fashoda (Kodok). By 1896 they had established a firm administration in these areas. Unfortunately, the French expedition moving from Djibouti via Ethiopia to the Sobat river failed to link up with Major Marchand's expeditionary force in Fashoda. French colonial interest in South Sudan was aborted by the Anglo-Franco conflict over South Sudan, known as the Fashoda incident in the Upper Nile. Belgium occupied western equatoria up to Mangala and established "Lado Enclave" as part of the Belgian Congo (Zaire) until the death of King Leopold of Belgium in 1910 when the enclave was handed over to Britain.

On the other hand, the Arab and the Muslim north of the Sudan is colonized by the Turks and the Egyptians as early as 1821. However, due to the corruption of the newly established Turko-Egyptian administration in the Northern Sudan, Mohamed Ahmed Sayyed led an uprising in 1881. His followers know him as the Mahdi sent by God to liberate the Sudanese from its oppressors. After the Death of Mahdi in 1819, a joint Anglo-Egyptian expedition force invaded Sudan and defeated the followers of the Mahdi. This result in Sudan becoming virtually a British colony.

In the Northern Sudan, the British tried to avoid another Islamic revolution against the administration by the conservative followers of Mahdi. They abstained from introducing modern or western ideas like separation of religion and state. The northern policy was basically directed toward preserving the status quo. In the Southern Sudan the British applied a very different policy that came to be know as the so "Southern Policy". They, attempted to develop the Southern Sudan independently from the Northern Sudan by opening the area to the missionary organizations that established not only churches but schools and hospitals. The medium of instruction was English, which further separated the South from the Arabic-speaking North.

By the 1930's, the traditional Islamic parties of the northern Sudan began to have access to controlling the local political authority and it was natural for them to lead the agitation for the independence from the British. The inequities  of the economic development, education and infrastructures that flourished under the British government were of great weight and favored the northern Sudanese, thus causing great tensions between the Nuba Mountains and the South on one hand, and Northern Sudan on the other. At the time of independence in 1956, Southern battalions of  the army were ordered by Northern dominated central government leaders to leave their home areas and report for duty in North Sudan. A mutiny broke out in the South Sudan town of Torit know as the "Torit Mutiny". This launched the first phase of the civil war know as Anyannya I, subsequently the first military regime (1958 - 1960's ) pursued a policy of Islimization and Arabization in the South Sudan and expelled foreign missionaries in 1960's.

The Main Issue of the Conflict

In January 1, 1956 the boundary between the North and the South was fixed accept for the Abiei plains which remained in Southern Kordofan at independence.

The present principle parties are those who have ruled the country since the time of independence on one hand, and the people of the south on the other. The rulers and their people are referred to by the southerners as northerners or Mundukurat, mostly Londojin, in Juba Arabic which means Arabs. The heterogeneous ethnic groups in the southern Sudan who are resisting control of the north are often referred to by the northerners as southerners or 'Junubin' and often they are referred to as 'Abid' meaning slaves and  'Kufar' meaning infidels even though infidels do not exist in South Sudan. Most Southerners are either Christians or worshipers of native Gods.

In essence, the disagreements between the North and the South is over the very existence and survival of the southern peoples, their national identities, their cultures, their languages and religions, their material resources and related matters. If the southern Sudanese identities are suppressed and assimilation is accomplished, it is easier for the northern Sudanese rules to continue to control and manage the political, economic and military power in the country as it has been able to do so since political independence in the 1956. But suppression and assimilation of the southern peoples means for ever assigning them to the task of hewers of wood, drawers of water, ditch diggers, tulba and muna labor, beggars, shoe polishers, thieves, floor scrubbers, kumsaries ( bus conductors ), low rank military men, hard and manual laborers to name a few as is now evident in the streets of the national capital and other parts cities of Sudan. Judged form the long political conflict of over 40 years the southerner find this roles unacceptable. This disagreement is now express in various ways: in civil war, with the consequences in displacement of huge populations  from their homes, in loss of lives, in physical insecurity of individual and groups, in the deprivation of people, of their fundamental rights, in the retardation of socio-economic infrastructure and progress. The list of expressing the conflict and consequences is long and inexhaustible .historical perspective of the conflicts.

The conflict has an important historical dimension that constitutes concern for the people of the southern Sudan. Until the conquest of Mohamed Ali Pasha from 1821( for the North Sudan), to about 1869 (for the South Sudan), Sudan did not exist as one political entity. Up to that point in time, the Northern Sudan was divided into two loosely knit separate entities: the riverine areas of the central, the northern and eastern Sudan and Kordofan, as one entity, under the Funj Kingdom; Darfur as another, under a separate ruler. Both entities were eventually united by religion , language , commerce and the Turko-Egyptian conquest and administration.

The nomadic and trading Arab immigrants of the Egyptian , Eastern Desert, notably the Jaaliyin Group of the tribes and others emigrated to Sudan and the 17th century started a civilization process in the Northern Sudan. It was a process which initially involved cultural and religious assimilation, sometimes forced and at times spontaneous, of the indigenous peoples, into an Arab and Islamic mould. Islam , the Arabic language and cultures were introduced to replace the indigenous languages and related cultures. It is hard today to trace the original inhabitants of the riverine areas and the Gezira. They underwent precise and complete assimilation both in their language , cultures and religion.

Then take the South Sudan, up to the middle of the 19th century, the South Sudan, in its geographical expression and complex, did not share a political entity with the Northern Sudan. The Sudd, The Nile System, the forest and the hostile climate effectively shield off the South from the Arab invasion and Islamic and Arab assimilation. There was also another important dimension to the protection of the south from this invasion. The Nilotic tribes; the Shiluk then dominated the White Nile with its canoe; the Nuer and the Dinka were a match to the Baggara Arabs in the North and the west when their weapons available to both sides were spears and clubs. This happy human balanced life was destroyed by the introduction of the boat building industry by the Egyptians. With the new technology of the sailing boat and also the acquisition of the modern fire-arm, the Arabs and other invaders over-powered the Shiluk; with the modern firearms in the hands of the invaders ( the Europeans and Arabs ) they took care of the Nuer, the Dinka, the Bari and others. With the sailing boat and the rifle, Mohamed Ali's government representatives penetrated the Sudd and reached Kondokoro and beyond and dramatically exposed the southern peoples along the Nile and beyond to the dangers with which they have been wrestling for the last 154 years.

The discovery and penetration of the south has been seen as offering an opportunity for the extension of the ancient Arab-Islamic frontier to continue a forced civilizing process characterized by the Islamic and Arabic assimilation in the Southern Sudan and beyond. This process has intensified in the recent years, in ways which are familiar, as for instance, "the civilization project". " the comprehensive propagation of the Islamic faith. and religion by force and through the Islamic Dawa, the educational system, the public controlled mass media and the government controlled humanitarian work, plus general government protection.

Some people may ask questions such as, what has been the response of the South Sudanese to this process of forced Islamic and Arab assimilation? The peoples of the South could either succumb to that process and get assimilated , or alternatively they could resist the assimilation by drawing the lines beyond which  invader was not allowed to proceed. It is the later which the South has chosen. The use of religion and Arab national and cultural identify to control economic, military and political power, is clearly established and is no longer open to speculation and doubt. As is hostility and resistance to those policies. This is the core nature of the North and South conflict.

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