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Explanation
There have been two civil wars in Sudan. The first began soon
after independence in 1957 when the southerners who had been
administered separately from the northerners during the British
period and who had been the victims of slave raids from the Arab
north tried to gain independence from the Arabizing government.
The southerners formed the Anyanya (scorpions) movement. Southern
guerrilla groups were fighting against the imposition of Islamic
law on the mainly non-Muslim inhabitants of the south. This war
ended in agreement with former President Nimeiri in 1972. The
southerners were given formal autonomy to run their own affairs.
The war began again in 1983 partly as result of attempts to
move the northern boundary to incorporate the new oil fields
at Bentiu. Another cause was the attempted introduction of Islamic
Sharia law into areas where most were non-Muslim (Christian and
Traditional religion). Some have argued that there is also an
element of Class War in that some of the northerners, suffering
from landlessness from the monopolization of land by a small
group of merchants, have joined the war against the government.
Southerners formed a Sudan People's Liberation Movement and Army
(SPLA).
They started by attacking the oil installations, state mechanized
farms and the Jonglei canal which they regarded as northern enterprises
intended to reduce southern land to control by the northern elite.
The war escalated when an extreme Islamic government seized power
from a moderate democratic regime in 1989. The war is one of
the more brutal activities in the world at present. Large numbers
of southern refugees have fled their lands. Some are being used
as slaves. Many have died on the trek. The South is no longer
united and there are several southern factions fighting each
other.
Some have argued that the war is a result of ecological troubles
in the north where reductions in rain in the Sahel area have
caused the drying up of the non-irrigated agriculture. This has
been accompanied by inappropriate Western mechanized farming
practices. Hence the northerners are trying to colonize the wetter
South.
The war has also spilled over into Uganda
where the Sudan government is believed to have assisted the Lords
Resistance Army.
There is considerable famine in the war zone and the breakdown
of all modern services.
A complication is that the southerners have split into two
groups which are fighting each other. These may be based on the
two main linguistic groups: Dinka and Shilluk.
An agreement in January 2004 may have brought the war to an
end with a southern political autonomy.
In December 2007 there are worries that the war in the South
may break out again.
Darfur
However, another war has broken out (2003-) in the Darfur province,
the southwestern part of the country bordering on Chad and the
Central African Republic. The cause is not clear but this
article suggests it is due to climate change. It may also
be the latest of the oil wars.
The northern (Arabic speaking) forces seem to be trying to remove
the African people from their land, possibly because the government
thinks there is oil there. In June 2005 oil contracts were signed
for the area, suggesting that this hypothesis is correct. This
war may be the first to be attributable to the arrival of Peak
Oil production - when there will be increased competition between
the main oil consuming countries for increasingly scarce supplies.
The war has already spread into Chad and Central African Republic.
The government seems to be backed by China, which hopes to
gain access to the oil in Darfur, and cares little about the
human rights of the people living there.
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