2006 paper completed for a high school World Geography class about the political and ethnic conflicts in the African country of Sudan.

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Sudan
There have been several movements for democracy in Sudan.
Most of them have been recent. Though to fully understand them and
their purpose, one must first truly understand the totalitarian
stranglehold the nation had been under since it originally gained
independence from Great Britain in 1956. Upon receiving
independence, a democracy was set up that lasted for all of two years
until it was dissolved by Army Commander and Chief Ibrahim Abboud
during a coup. Under his control, democracy took a further step
backwards when he dissolved political parties, revoked the people’s
right to assemble, suspended the publishing of all newspapers and
filled every important government post possible with people of North
Sudanese descent. In doing so, President Abbud managed to alienate
the formerly separate area of southern Sudan as well as fan the
already high flames of independence in the region. By 1963 one of
Sudan’s first organized groups of revolutionaries formed as Anya Nya
was created in the name of a better governance for southern Sudan.
After several uprisings in Khartoum, Ibrahim Abboud resigned his post
in 1964.
After the fall of its first dictatorship, Sudan held another general
election in 1965. This resulted in a coalition government headed by

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Muhammad Mahjub of the Ummah party. This government proved
itself to be largely ineffectual due to various divisions in parliament
and was replaced via a coup d’etat in 1969. This coup was led by
Gaffor Mohammed an Nimeiri and dissolved the previous government
in favor of a dictatorship under Nimeiri. It is also around this time that
the southern Sudanese rebels, this time fighting for independence
opposed to government reforms, solidified under the leadership of
Joseph Lagu. Later that year, the Adis Ababa agreement was signed by
Nimeiris and Lagu and granted southern Sudan Autonomy.
After that the country was peaceful to a degree. This all ended in
1983 when independence favoritism arose around an army colonel by
the name of John Garang. He broke his ties with Khartoum and
established his troops in the bush of Southern Sudan, breaking the
Addis Ababa agreement. This was countered by Nimeiri who once
again divided southern Sudan into three different provinces. Nimeiri
was ousted in 1985 by one of his generals, Abdurrahman Siwar. Siwar
himself was overthrown in 1989 by a lieutenant general named Ahmad
Al Bashir who took power in the name of the Islamic National Front, a
formerly outlawed political party. During all of this, war still rages in
southern Sudan. The new regime banned trade unions and all non-
approved political parties as well as imprisoning political dissenters. In
1991 democracy is hindered even further when Islamic Shariah law is

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introduced applying the laws of Islam to everyone. In 1999 Al Bashir
declared a state of emergency due to the situation in southern Sudan
and suspended what little rights the people had as well as dissolving
parliament. Parliament was reinstated in 2001 still under emergency/
martial law.
In 2003 and 2004 great progress is made in peace talks between
North and South Sudan, resulting in the signing of the Naivasha treaty
in January 2005 which granted the South six years of autonomy to be
followed up by a referendum for independence furthering democracy in
the nation. Sadly, during the same time that peace talks were looking
up for North and South Sudan (roughly February 2003), war broke out
in western Sudan in the Darfur region. The war began when local
revolutionary groups, the JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) and
SLA (Sudan Liberation Movement) accused the government of favoring
Arab blacks over non Arabs and began attacking government
installations. The government retaliated by secretly funding and
supporting a series of local Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. All
of the groups involved are currently well known for their war time
atrocities, sacking of local villages for supplies, and generally infringing
on the rights of everyone involved. Internationally the war is also seen
as an act of genocide by the government against non Arab blacks in
Sudan. Though some steps have been recently made towards peace,

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Sudan and Darfur in particular are still largely unstable and remain in
conducive to any democratic attempt at government.
Role of Ethnicity
Sudan has nineteen ethnic groups and 597 subgroups. Some of
these groups include Arabs, Dinka, Nuba, Nuer, Fur, Zande, Shilluk,
Bari, and Nubians. In the south, the people are black Africans who live
their lives like tribes people, worship animist gods, live in mud-walled
huts, mainly farm and gather food as an occupation, and prefer to
wear only jewelry. The people in the north have olive-colored skin with
straight black hair, one-story, mud brick buildings with walled
courtyards, and they clothe themselves completely because of Islam.
The southern part of Sudan has mainly Arabs who for the most part
practice Islam. Arabs spread to this area because of the advantages of
Islam. The Dinka are divided into many subgroups that range from
1,000 to 30,000 people. The groups are political units and prefer a
large grade of self-government. Their language is the main one but
many different dialects are spoken throughout the Nile Basin where
the majority of the Dinka are. The Nuba originate in the Nubian Hills
in the Kordofan region of Sudan. They are separated into a large
number of subgroups or in different tribes. They all do not speak the
same language, but they do speak the languages Midobi and Birked,

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which belonged to the Nubian group of the Nilo-Saharan family. Their
preferred language to speak is Arabic. They mainly live from
agriculture and cattle herding. The Nuer are a group in southern Sudan
that live in the marshes and savannah of the Nile valley. They are in
small groups and self-govern themselves. People that are not originally
a part of the Nuer clans can join their small communities. Polygamy is
still practiced within their groups. The Fur originated in western Sudan.
The Fur culture is consistent with feudal principles. They have rich
landowners, serfs, and craftsmen (craftsmen are not inside of the
feudal ties).
The civil war in Sudan has made it so that many of these people
have to leave their homes. Since independence, Sudan has been
entangled with conflict. This has caused major devastation and
displacement of many of its people. Its national conflict has slowed the
country’s economical and political expansion. This has also made it so
that large groups of people have to be displaced into other places
within the country. For the majority of the time that Sudan has been a
country it has been at war with itself. The Northerners, who had been
controlling the country originally, want to unite Sudan under Arabism
and Islam even though most Northerners are against non-Muslims,
Southerners, and some peoples in the east and west.

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Darfur
Even though the Darfur conflict has been said to be a battle
between the Arabs and black Africans, most of the people in Darfur are
black and Muslim. The main reason for the division in Darfur is among
ethnic groups. These groups are separated into the herders and the
farmers. Different tribes gave themselves names such as “African” or
“Arab” depending on the language of its members and whether their
job is working the soil or herding the livestock. Another factor of the
labeled names is that if there is a certain level of wealth, they would
be called “Arabs.”
Role of Religion
To understand the problems that religion causes in Sudan, you
must first learn about the religions practiced there. Most of the
population, about sixty-five percent, is Sunni Muslim. The Sunni
Muslims mainly live in the northern part of Sudan. The Muslims are
much stricter about religion than the Christians in the South, which
you will read about later. Traditional religions or animism is also very
common in Sudan by the native people. Animism is a religion in which
the followers worship things like plants, animals, and other important
objects in nature such as the sun, moon, or stars. Some of the largest
traditional religion practicing ethnic groups include the Dinka, Nuba,

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Nuer, and Zande, who worship their ancestors. Because many of these
animist groups are nomadic and primitive, they are losing a great deal
of followers due to the growing presence of Christians who live a much
more modern life style in Sudan compared to these traditional groups.
Christianity is the third most practiced religion in Sudan. It is mainly
practiced in the South along with Animism. Christians make up a large
part of the government staff, like Moses Machar, who is Sudan’s
current vice president. More than half of the Christians in Sudan are
Roman Catholic and the rest are Protestant. There is also a small
presence of Baha’i followers in the country, about 2,000 people. These
Baha’i followers play a minor role to no role in the conflicts regarding
religion in northern and southern Sudan. In fact, the conflict in Sudan
is hardly because of religion but because of the struggle for political
authority and also because of economic resources.
What did cause much of the religious tension in Sudan, though,
was the Sharia, an Islamic law book. After the first civil war in Sudan,
the president of that time, President Nimiri, decided to force the Sharia
on the entire country of Sudan. This applied not only to the mainly
Islamic north, but also the Christian and traditional religion followers in
the southern part of Sudan. Because of this, rebellion broke out and an
ongoing religious and ethnic conflict has continued to this day. The
enforcement of the Sharia was an attempt of the North to try to

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reunite the Southern Christians and Animists. This will not be allowed
with the Southern civilians, who want religious freedom, and possibly a
separation from the North. The Southern Christians and indigenous
followers either wanted this separation or a separate political
structure, not influenced by Muslims. With this rebellion of the
Christian and Animist Southerners, problems that include genocide
have occurred as well by groups such as the National Islamic Front.
Though, the problems are mostly not because of differences in
religion. The tension between certain groups of Arabs and indigenous
tribes are really the major factor. The N.I.F. has been responsible for
torturing, raping, and enslaving thousands of Indigenous peoples in
the West and Darfur. Darfur is a huge problem in Sudan, which began
in February of 2003, that is a cause of the N.I.F. and another small
group of Arab tribes called the Janjaweed, who torture and enslave the
non-Arabs (mainly animists, but also some Christians) of Darfur.
Thousands of displaced people who once lived in Darfur have moved to
refugee camps in Chad and Libya. In fact, about 1.8 million Christians
and Animists have been displaced from their homes due to the Darfur
conflict. Even though some problems like Darfur and other small acts
of violence occur, the problem is becoming smaller in Sudan. Sudan’s
1998 constitution says, "Everyone has the right to freedom of
conscience and religion and the right to manifest and disseminate his

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religion or belief in teaching, practice or observance. No one shall be
coerced to profess a faith in which he does not believe or perform
rituals or worship that he does not voluntarily accept." This was
passed in 1998, but the problems have continued to today. If the
government of Sudan were to become more stable and less corrupt,
then these conflicts and the suffering throughout Northern and
Southern Sudan could be resolved.
Role of Political Ideology
Since independence from Great Britain in 1956, Sudan’s national
politics have been dominated by military regimes favoring Islamic-
oriented governments. For the first three years after independence,
there were several political parties with different ideologies. There
were the Ansar-sponsored Ummah Party, parties associated with the
Khatmiyah sect, labor union dominated parties, the Graduates
Congress (organization of college graduates), and leaders of the black
tribes in southern Sudan. During these three years, these parties
were deeply divided on big issues including the following:
Communism, Federalism, union with Egypt, economic and foreign
affairs alliance with the West, fear of the royal plans of the Madhi
family, and political secularization. These divides weakened the
government greatly due to the many parties and many differing

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opinions of the parties. This weakening of the government allowed it
to be easily taken over by a military coup from the army. Political
activity was banned for a short period after this initial coup by Army
Commander Chief Ibrahim Abboud. After Abboud resignation in 1964,
political activity was restored and elections were held. Three major
parties were involved in the election of 1968. They were the
Conservative Ummah Party, Progressive Ummah Party, and the
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) formed from the combination of the
National Unionist Party and the People’s Democratic Party. The
National Unionist party was conservative and favored close relations
with Egypt. There were also some regional groups formed during this
time including the Southern Front and the Sudan African National
Union (SANU) which both advocated independence for the South. The
Southern Front was made up of southern Sudanese living in the North
and the SANU was made up of southern Sudanese exiled to Uganda.
The DUP won but was soon followed by a military coup from Nimeiri
who took control in 1969. Nimeiri wanted to suppress the Communist
party. He developed a constitution that provided for a one-party state
and the new Sudanese Socialist Union (SSU) as the only political
organization. More elections were held in 1986 followed by another
military coup in 1989 by Bashir. Bashir banned all parties except the
National Islamic Front which he was a part of.

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Sudan’s political ideology has had two main ideas associated
with it since the end of World War II. Either or both a British based
parliamentary constitution and Islamic rule have been associated with
every governing body since Sudanese independence. There has never
been a democracy set up in Sudan since its independence. The
government has been ruled by military regimes and dictatorships for
most of the years after independence. These rulers would have a
parliamentary congress of some sort but it would be totally be
dominated by the dictator or his party. Late in the 1960s, a call for
Islamic law was in high demand. Many regimes started incorporating
Islamic law as major part of the government. The National Islamic
Front even started to organize terrorist attacks and attacks on non-
Islamic groups and opposing Southern groups. The government would
deny mandating Islamic law but would sponsor attacks on opposing
groups in Sudan mostly based on their ethnicity and religion coming in
second. The main political idea shaping the government in Sudan
since its independence has been military control/dictatorship and
trying to control the rest of the country’s groups opposing the
government.

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Interpretations and Conclusions
Upon looking at the state of things in Sudan, there are several
conclusions to be drawn about the future/fate of democracy in the
region. From the nation’s history of repressive governments beginning
almost with independence and continuing to now, it is obvious that the
general population is in need of better education, a proven tool against
the installment of dictators. The nation’s recent progress towards a
general state of peace does lend some hope to the region. Though,
the fact that the groups being pacified were fighting each other as well
as the government, and its chosen militias shows an obvious need for
greater cooperation amongst the people despite religious and ethnic
differences. It would also be helpful to the country if the general
standard of living was improved, most viably by the creation of some
incentive for foreign investment. This would also further stabilize the
region by replacing the opposing lifestyles held by the people (i.e.: the
Arab herdsman competing with the African farmers) who are currently
at odds. Though, there would be some public outcry towards this in
the international community as a loss of culture. The gains would
ultimately outweigh the loss by replacing lifestyles with lives that
would otherwise be lost in one of the conflicts almost sure to reoccur
in the country without some form of intervention.

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Sudan has been through constant ethnic and religious rivalry
that has penetrated all of the different countries that share
borderlines. These countries have given shelter to fleeing refugees.
They have also served as operating bases for the movement of the
rebels. This also affects the world because as we (we being all other
countries around the world) watch these happenings; we learn from
their mistakes and make sure that we do not make the same ones.
This affects me because learning more about this subject has made me
feel sympathetic since I live in such a great country where we are not
at war with ourselves. We do not have to arrange certain peoples and
put them in specific areas. Also this makes me want to do something
even though I am just a teenager that would not have any say in what
is going on over there. All I can do is pray for the people of that
country.
One must remember that the problems in Sudan are not so
much a problem of religion, but of ethnicity differences and political
struggles in the government. These ethnic differences have torn the
country apart. The United States too has had its share of race
tensions and problems. Luckily, we have been through the thick of
that fight. The United States also has a very stable government
compared to the constantly switching governments of Sudan. It would
be terrible to live under a constantly changing government each

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controlled by a different military regime or dictator. One minute you
are happy with the government, the next the government has sent
forces to hunt down your ethnic race in a certain area.
The world community should pay attention to the crisis in Sudan
even though it has calmed down in the last year. A government not in
check will become unstable and has many times in Sudan’s history.
Sudan has sponsored terrorist activities in the past and may be doing
so now in the Darfur region. The military groups hired by the
government started a genocide in Darfur in the 90’s and maybe even
before that. There is no excuse for human suffering without reason.