from wikipedia:
Sudan (officially the Republic of the Sudan) is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest country in Africa and in the Arab World, and tenth largest in the world by area. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, Kenya and Uganda to the southeast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west and Libya to the northwest. The world’s longest river, the Nile, bisects the country from south to north.
The people of Sudan have a long history extending from antiquity, which is intertwined with the history of Egypt, with which it was united politically over several periods. Sudan’s modern history has been plagued by civil wars stemming from ethnic,religious, and economic conflict between the Northern Sudanese (with Arab and Nubian roots), and the Christian and animist Nilotes of Southern Sudan.
Quick Facts:
The capital of Sudan is Khartoum.
The official languages are Arabic and English.
Vernacular languages are Dinka and Nuer.
The current President is Omar al-Bashir.
Estimated population (2009) is 42.3 million.
Estimated GDP (2008) is $87.9 billion.
The currency is the Sudanese pound (SDG).
Sudan gained independence from the United Kingdom on January 1, 1956.
First Sudanese Civil War: 1955-1972
In 1955, the year before independence, a civil war began between Northern and Southern Sudan. The southerners, anticipating independence, feared the new nation would be dominated by the north.
Historically, the north of Sudan had closer ties with Egypt and was predominantly Arab and Muslim while the south was predominantly a mixture of Christianity and Animism. These divisions had been further emphasized by the British policy of ruling the north and south under separate administrations. From 1924, it was illegal for people living north of the 10th parallel to go further south and for people south of the 8th parallel to go further north. The law was ostensibly enacted to prevent the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases that had ravaged British troops, as well as to facilitate spreading Christianity among the predominantly Animist population while stopping the Arabic and Islamic influence from advancing south. The result was increased isolation between the already distinct north and south and arguably laid the seeds of conflict in the years to come.
The resulting conflict, known as the First Sudanese Civil War, lasted from 1955 to 1972. The 1955 war began when Southern army officers mutinied and then formed the Anya-Nya guerilla movement. A few years later the first Sudanese military regime took power under Major-General Abboud. Military regimes continued into 1969 when General Gaafar Nimeiry led a successful coup. In 1972, a cessation of the north-south conflict was agreed upon under the terms of the Addis Ababa Agreement, following talks which were sponsored by the World Council of Churches. This led to a ten-year hiatus in the national conflict.
Second Sudanese Civil War: 1983-2005
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In 1983, the civil war was reignited following President Gaafar Nimeiry‘s decision to circumvent the Addis Ababa Agreement. President Gaafar Nimeiry attempted to create a federated Sudan including states in southern Sudan, which violated the Addis Ababa Agreement that had granted the south considerable autonomy. He appointed a committee to undertake “a substantial review of the Addis Ababa Agreement, especially in the areas of security arrangements, border trade, language, culture and religion”. Mansour Khalid a former foreign minister wrote, “Nimeiri had never been genuinely committed to the principles of the Addis Ababa Agreement”. In September 1983, the civil war was reignited when President Gaafar Nimeiry‘s culminated the 1977 revisions by imposing new Islamic laws on all of Sudan, including the non-Muslim south. When asked about revisions he stated “The Addis Ababa agreement is myself and Joseph Lagu and we want it that way… I am 300 percent the constitution. I do not know of any plebiscite because I am mandated by the people as the President”. Southern troops rebelled against the northern political offensive, and launched attacks in June 1983. In 1995, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter negotiated the longest ceasefire in the history of the war to allow humanitarian aid to enter Southern Sudan which had been inaccessible owing to violence. This ceasefire, which lasted almost six months, has since been called the “Guinea Worm Ceasefire.” Since 1983, a combination of civil war and famine has taken the lives of nearly 2 million people in Sudan.
In 1989, a bloodless coup brought control of Khartoum into the hands of Omar al-Bashir, the current president, and the National Islamic Front headed by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi. The new government was of Islamic orientation and later it formed the Popular Defence Forces (al Difaa al Shaabi) and began to use religious propaganda to recruit people, as the regular army was demoralised and under pressure from the SPLA rebels. The Sudanese army advanced successfully in the south reaching the southern borders with neighbouring Kenya and Uganda. The campaign started in 1989 and ended in 1994. During the fight the situation worsened in the tribal south causing casualties among the Christian and animist minority. In 1991 the SPLA was split when Riek Machar withdrew and formed his own faction. Riek Mashar signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government and became vice president of Sudan. His troops took part in the fight against the SPLA during the 1989–1994 campaign. After the Sudanese army took control of the entire south with the help of Riek Mashar, the situation improved.
The SPLA started as a Marxist movement, with support from the Soviet Union and the Ethiopian Marxist President Mengistu Haile Meriem. In time, however, it sought support in the West by using the northern Sudanese government’s religious propaganda to portray the war as a campaign by the Arab Islamic government to impose Islam and the Arabic language on the Christian south.
The war went on for more than 20 years, including the use of Russian-made combat helicopters and military cargo planes which were used as bombers to devastating effect on villages and tribal rebels alike. “Sudan’s independent history has been dominated by chronic, exceptionally cruel warfare that has starkly divided the country on racial, religious, and regional grounds; displaced an estimated four million people (of a total estimated population of thirty-two million); and killed an estimated two million people.” It damaged Sudan’s economy and led to food shortages, resulting in starvation and malnutrition. The lack of investment during this time, particularly in the south, meant a generation lost access to basic health services, education, and jobs.
Peace talks between the southern rebels and the government made substantial progress in 2003 and early 2004. The peace was consolidated with the official signing by both sides of the Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement 9 January 2005, granting Southern Sudan autonomy for six years, to be followed by a referendum about independence. It created a co-vice president position and allowed the north and south to split oil deposits equally, but also left both the north’s and south’s armies in place. John Garang, the south’s peace agreement appointed co-vice president died in a helicopter crash on August 1, 2005, three weeks after being sworn in. This resulted in riots, but the peace was eventually able to continue.
The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was established under UN Security Council Resolution 1590 of March 24, 2005. Its mandate is to support implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and to perform functions relating to humanitarian assistance, and protection and promotion of human rights.
In October 2007 the former southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew from government in protest over slow implementation of a landmark 2005 peace deal which ended the civil war.
Darfur
photo credit here
Just as the long north-south civil war was reaching a resolution, some clashes occurred in the western region of Darfur in the early 1970s between the pastoral tribes. The rebels accused the central government of neglecting the Darfur region economically, although there is uncertainty regarding the objectives of the rebels and whether they merely seek an improved position for Darfur within Sudan or outright secession. Both the government and the rebels have been accused of atrocities in this war, although most of the blame has fallen on Arab militias known as the Janjawid, which are armed men appointed by the Al Saddiq Al Mahdi administration to stop the longstanding chaotic disputes between Darfur tribes. According to declarations by the United States Government, these militias have been engaging in genocide; the fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, many of them seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad. The government claimed victory over the rebels after capturing a town on the border with Chad in early 1994. However, the fighting resumed in 2003.
On September 9, 2004, the United States Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the Darfur conflict a genocide, claiming it as the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. There have been reports that the Janjawid has been launching raids, bombings, and attacks on villages, killing civilians based on ethnicity, raping women, stealing land, goods, and herds of livestock. So far, over 2.5 million civilians have been displaced and the death toll is variously estimated from 200,000 to 400,000 killed. These figures have remained stagnant since initial UN reports of the conflict hinted at genocide in 2003/2004. Genocide has been considered a criminal offense under international humanitarial law since the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
On May 5, 2006, the Sudanese government and Darfur’s largest rebel group, the SLM (Sudanese Liberation Movement), signed the Darfur Peace Agreement, which aimed at ending the three-year-long conflict. The agreement specified the disarmament of the Janjawid and the disbandment of the rebel forces, and aimed at establishing a temporal government in which the rebels could take part. The agreement, which was brokered by the African Union, however, was not signed by all of the rebel groups. Only one rebel group, the SLA, led by Minni Arko Minnawi, signed the DPA.
Since the agreement was signed, however, there have been reports of widespread violence throughout the region. A new rebel group has emerged called the National Redemption Front, which is made up of the four main rebel groups that refused to sign the May peace agreement. Recently, both the Sudanese government and government-sponsored Muslim militias have launched large offensives against the rebel groups, resulting in more deaths and more displacements. Clashes among the rebel groups have also contributed to the violence. Recent fighting along the Chad border has left hundreds of soldiers and rebel forces dead and nearly a quarter of a million refugees cut off from aid. In addition, villages have been bombed and more civilians have been killed. UNICEF recently reported that around 80 infants die each day in Darfur as a result of malnutrition.
The people in Darfur are predominantly Black Africans of Muslim belief. While the Janjawid militia is made up of Arabized Black African (Black Arabs); the majority of Arab groups in Darfur remain uninvolved in the conflict. Darfurians—Arab and non-Arab alike—profoundly distrust a government in Khartoum that has brought them nothing but trouble.
The International Criminal Court has indicted State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun and alleged Muslim Janjawid militia leader Ali Mohammed Ali, also known as Ali Kosheib, in relation to the atrocities in the region. Ahmed Haroun belongs to the Bargou tribe, one of the non-Arab tribes of Darfur, and is alleged to have incited attacks on specific non-Arab ethnic groups. Ali Kosheib is a former soldier and a leader of the popular defense forces, and is alleged to be one of the key leaders responsible for attacks on villages in west Darfur.
The International Criminal Court‘s chief prosecutor on Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, announced on July 14, 2008, ten criminal charges against President Bashir, accusing him of sponsoring war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC’s prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir “masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part” three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. The ICC’s prosecutor for Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is expected within months to ask a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for Bashir.
Despite his international arrest warrant, Omar al-Bashir is a candidate in the upcoming 2010 Sudanese presidential election, the first democratic election with multiple political parties participating in nine years.
Chad-Sudan conflict
The Chad-Sudan conflict officially started on December 23, 2005, when the government of Chad declared a state of war with Sudan and called for the citizens of Chad to mobilize themselves against the “common enemy”—the United Front for Democratic Change, a coalition of rebel factions dedicated to overthrowing Chadian President Idriss Déby (and who the Chadians believe are backed by the Sudanese government), and Sudanese janjawid, who have been raiding refugee camps and certain tribes in eastern Chad. Déby accuses Sudanese President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashirof trying to “destabilize our country, to drive our people into misery, to create disorder and export the war from Darfur to Chad.”
The incident prompting the declaration of war was an attack on the Chadian town of Adré near the Sudanese border that led to the deaths of either one hundred rebels (as most news sources reported) or three hundred rebels. The Sudanese government was blamed for the attack, which was the second in the region in three days,but Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Jamal Mohammed Ibrahim denied any Sudanese involvement, “We are not for any escalation with Chad. We technically deny involvement in Chadian internal affairs.” The Battle of Adré led to the declaration of war by Chad and the alleged deployment of the Chadian air force into Sudanese airspace, which the Chadian government denies.
The leaders of Sudan and Chad signed an agreement in Saudi Arabia on May 3, 2007 to stop fighting from the Darfur conflict along their countries’ 1,000-kilometre (600 mi) border.
Foreign Relations
Sudan has had a troubled relationship with many of its neighbours and much of the international community owing to what is viewed as its aggressively Islamic stance. For much of the 1990s, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia formed an ad-hoc alliance called the “Front Line States” with support from the United States to check the influence of the National Islamic Front government. The Sudanese Government supported anti-Uganda rebel groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army. Beginning from the mid-1990s Sudan gradually began to moderate its positions as a result of increased US pressure following the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and the new development of oil fields previously in rebel hands. Sudan also has a territorial dispute with Egypt over the Hala’ib Triangle. Since 2003, the foreign relations of Sudan have centered on the support for ending the Second Sudanese Civil War and condemnation of government support for militias in the Darfur conflict.
The United States has listed Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1993. U.S. firms have been barred from doing business in Sudan since 1997. In 1998, the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was destroyed by a US cruise missile strike because of its alleged production of chemical weapons and links to al-Qaeda.
Sudan has extensive economic relations with China. China gets 1/10 of its oil from Sudan, and according to a former Sudanese government minister, China is Sudan’s largest supplier of arms.
Economy 
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Despite being the 17th fastest growing economy in the world with new economic policies and infrastructure investments, Sudan still faces formidable economic problems, as it must rise from a very low level of per capita output. Since 1997, Sudan has been implementing the macroeconomic reforms recommended by the IMF. In 1999, Sudan began exporting crude oil and in the last quarter of 1999, recorded its first trade surplus. Increased oil production (the current production is about 520,000 barrels per day (83,000 m³/d)) revived light industry, and expanded export processing zones helped sustain GDP growth at 6.1% in 2003. These gains, along with improvements to monetary policy, have stabilized the exchange rate. Currently oil is Sudan’s main export, and the production is increasing dramatically. With rising oil revenues the Sudanese economy is booming, with a growth rate of about 9% in 2007. Sustained growth was expected the next year due to not only increasing oil production, but also to the boost of hydroelectricity (annual electricity yield of 5.5 TWh) provided by the Merowe Dam.
Rich mineral resources are available in Sudan including: petroleum, natural gas, gold, silver, chrome, asbestos, manganese, gypsum, mica, zinc, iron, lead, uranium, copper, kaolin, cobalt, granite, nickel and tin.
Agriculture production remains Sudan’s most important sector, employing 80% of the workforce and contributing 39% of GDP, but most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. Chronic instability—including the long-standing civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian/animist south, adverse weather, and weak world agricultural prices—ensure that much of the population will remain at or below the poverty line for years.
The Merowe Dam, also known as Merowe Multi-Purpose Hydro Project or Hamdab Dam, is a large construction project in northern Sudan, about 350 km north of the capital Khartoum. It is situated on the river Nile, close to the Fourth Cataract where the river divides into multiple smaller branches with large islands in between. Merowe is a city about 40 km downstream from the construction site at Hamdab. The main purpose of the dam will be the generation of electricity. Its dimensions make it the largest contemporary hydro power project in Africa. The construction of the dam was to be finished by mid 2008, supplying more than 90% of the population with electricity. Other gas-powered generating stations are under construction in Khartoum state; these were also due to be completed by 2008.
Despite the American sanctions, the Sudanese economy is the one of the fastest growing in the world according to a New York Times report of October 2006.
Religion
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An estimated 50% of the population adheres to Islam. The remainder of the population follows either animist and indigenous beliefs (5%) or Christianity (45%). Sudan’s largest Christian denominations are the following: the Roman Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, the Presbyterian Church in the Sudan, and the Coptic Orthodox Church. Southern Sudan has one of the fastest growing Christian populations in the whole world, new churches in the South are being built very frequently.
Islam predominates in the North, while traditional indigenous beliefs (animism) and Christianity are prevalent in the South. Some Muslim leaders estimate the Muslim population to be more than 32 million, or above 80 percent of the total population. Almost all Muslims are Sunni, although there are significant distinctions between followers of different Sunni traditions. Two popular divisions, the Ansar and the Khatmia, are associated with the opposition Umma and Democratic Unionist Parties, respectively. There is a small Shi’a community.
Traditionalists are believed to be the second largest religious group in the country, although there are reports that many converted to Christianity or followed a syncretic form of these two religious beliefs.
Christians are generally considered the third largest group. The Roman Catholic Church estimates the number of baptized Catholics at six million, including small Melkite and Maronite communities in the north. Anglicans estimate five million followers in the Episcopal Church of Sudan and the dissident Reformed Episcopal Church. There are very small but long established groups of Orthodox Christians in Khartoum and other northern cities, including Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Christians.
There are also Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox communities in Khartoum and eastern Sudan, largely made up of refugees and migrants. Other Christian groups with smaller followings in the country include the Africa Inland Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Sudan Church of Christ, the Sudan Interior Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Sudan Pentecostal Church, the Sudan Evangelical Presbyterian Church (in the North), the Presbyterian Church of the Sudan (in the South), and the Seventh-day Adventist Church of Sudan.
Foreign missionary groups operate in both North and South, although Christian missionary activity is limited in the North owing to Shari’a, strong social pressure against proselytizing, and existing laws against apostasy.
Many Christians in the North are descended from pre-Islamic era communities or are trading families that immigrated from Egypt or the Near East before independence (1956). Many Muslims in the South are shopkeepers or small business owners who sought economic opportunities during the civil war. Political tensions have created not only a sense of ethnic and religious marginalization among the minority religious group in each region but also a feeling among the majority that the minority groups control a disproportionate share of the wealth.
Religious identity plays a role in the country’s political divisions. Northern Muslims have dominated the country’s political and economic system since independence. The NCP draws much of its support from Islamists, Salafis/Wahhabis, and other conservative Arab Muslims in the North. The Umma Party has traditionally attracted Arab followers of the Ansar Sect of Sufism as well as non-Arab Muslims from Darfur and Kordofan.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) includes both Arab and non-Arab Muslims in the North and East, especially those in the Khatmia Sufi brotherhood, as well as some northern Arabic-speaking Christians. Southern Christians generally support the SPLM or one of the smaller southern parties
Further information and links
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The CIA World Factbook: Sudan
Infoplease: Sudan
BBC Country Profile: Sudan
University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center: Links on Sudan
Blog post: “Trying to Understand Darfur” by John Fenzel
from the New York Times 
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