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Any Hope for Sudan?
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19061 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1991 |
1,930 Words |
| Author
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Hisham Osman Khogali
Hisham Osman Khogali is a lecturer in the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Khartoum. |
Sudan has become synonymous with civil war and famine. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Sudanese have died needless and horrible deaths since the civil war between the northern and the southern regions resumed in 1983. Three main problems remain almost unchanged in Sudan since then: the guerrilla war in the south, economic malaise, and the displacement of millions. Lurking beneath the civil war is rapid migration to Khartoum, a trend that is expected to increase during the coming years--until an internal and international effort is made to end the war and raise rural incomes.
During the 1970s, Sudan was often described as a potential breadbasket of Africa and the Arab world. Now, emergency famine relief in Sudan barely provides the minimal needs of more than one-fourth of the population.
Sudan's internal problems and their external implications should be of serious concern to the international community. For one thing, Sudan is the largest African country and is composed of a multitude ethnic groups. While Islam and the Arabic language are dominant in the north, the bulk of the southern region's people, who had little contact with outsiders until the mid-nineteenth century, are Christians and animist black Africans. Although the north is associated culturally with the Middle East, that is hardly true for southerners.
No effort has been made to carry out a socioeconomic and demographic survey of the whole region. Nonetheless, it is estimated that at least five million people live in the southern region. They are mainly engaged in subsistence agriculture on the edges of the scattered war zones and barely have access to basic goods and essential services. The southern Sudan consists of three main regions: Bahr El-Ghazal, Equatoria, and Upper Nile, which are among the least developed regions in sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that at least one million black Africans are widely scattered in and around the three semiautonomous regional capitals: Wau, Juba, and Malakal. These are capitals in terms of population, although they lack the means of offer such essential public works as social and health services, transport, and education.
Sudan is a former British colony. For 23 years after independence in 1956, its social and economic infrastructure was depleted by two periods of severe civil war between the north and the south. During the period 1955-1972, drought and war prevailed in the western and southern regions but never led to severe problems of displacement, although the most negative effects can be seen in the
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