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Sudan is the largest country in Africa and located just south of Egypt. Since its independence from Britian in 1956, Sudan is in and out of civil wars. Although the wars last the longest among the history, it has been largely ignored.
There has been two civil wars in Sudan. The first began soon after independence in 1957 when the southerners who had been administered seperately from the northerners during the British period and who had been the vicitims of slave raids from the Arab north tried to gain independence from the Arabizing government. 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 landlesssness 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 democartic regime in 1989. (Extracted from here)
To understand more on the causes of the wars, following materials can be referred,
Report by Paul H. Liben or Analysis from CADAIS (Center for the Advancement of Democratic Awareness in Sudan)
Result of these wars are:
Around 0.5~1 million were killed in the war 1955~1972; around 0.5~2 million were killed in the war 1983~now; more than 4.5 million were displaced
More detailed information of Sudan is available from following,
Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress
Sudan Net (including latest news)
From Sudan to Africa
To understand the current situation of Africa, it is important to know that Africa was ruled by colonial masters. Click here for the history of colonial Africa and map of Colonial Africa is included. Also, the following maps are extracted from "The Historical Atlas of The World" publishing by "SinoMaps Press"
First of all, the colonial borders imposed by Europeans split natural geographic boundaries, divide similar language/culture groups or put different language/culture together, led to some of the current conflicts. Click this article to see more.
Other than the borders, there may be other effects of this colonial history. These are studied in a generalized topic as Postcolonial Studies. Information is available from following,
Postscript
I prepared above website on Jan 2003, after one year back from my short visit in Sudan and still focus on the affairs of Africa. Recently, I saw a fantastic film Hotel Rwanda from 29th HKIFF and was moved to tears. This film is based on the true story of the Hutus hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who risked his life, used his connection, intelligence to save more than 1000 Tutsis by protecting them in the hotel during Rwandan Genocide. While the World closed its eyes, let the Genocide going on and million Tutsis was butchered in 100 days. The story itself is very shocking but I also noticed from the film that the Belgian arbitrarily classified the Hutus and Tutsis, introduced ethnic identity card and picked the Tutsis as the rulers while there is next to no generic difference between these two ethnic groups, so the Hutus officials needed to check the identity card before they knew who were Tutsis. I don't mean that all the current problems of Africa are caused by these colonical history and First World Nations, but we should listen, respect, understand the culture, history of the others such that we would act in the right time and way. It is pity to say that the developed countries do not learn from this and repeat such intervention in recent years.