Sudan: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Modern Sudan is situated on the site of the ancient civilisation of Nubia, which predates pharaonic Egypt. For centuries, sovereignty was shuttled back and forth between the Egyptians, indigenous empires such as Kush, and a succession of independent Christian kingdoms. After the 14th century AD, the Mamelukes (Turkish rulers in Egypt) breached the formidable Nubian defences and established the dominance of Islam. By the 16th century the kingdom of Funj had become a powerful Muslim state and Sennar, 200km (124mi) south of present-day Khartoum, was one of the major trading centre of Islamic Africa.

In 1821 the viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, conquered northern Sudan and opened the south to the slave trade, with catastrophic results. Within a few decades British interests were also directed towards Sudan, aiming to control the Nile, contain French expansion from the west and draw the south into a British-East African federation. The European intrusion, and in particular the Christian missionary zeal that accompanied it, was resented by many Muslim Sudanese.

The revolution came in 1881, when one Mohammed Ahmed proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi - the person who, according to Muslim tradition, would rid the world of evil. Four years later he rid Khartoum of General Gordon, the British-appointed governor, and the Mahdists ruled Sudan until 1898, when they were massacred outside Omdurman by Lord Kitchener and his Anglo-Egyptian army. The British then imposed the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement, effectively making Sudan a British colony.

Modern History

Sudan achieved independence in 1956, but the south, disappointed by the rejection of its demands for autonomy, revolted and the country sank into a bitter civil war that lasted 16 years. In a forerunner of things to come, General Ibrahim Abboud summarily dismissed the winners of the first post-independence elections. Ever since, war in the south, flirtations with democracy and military coups have been regular features of the Sudanese political landscape.

In 1969 Colonel Jaafar Nimeiri assumed power and succeeded in holding it for 16 years, surviving several coup attempts and making numerous twists and turns in policy to outflank opponents and keep aid donors happy. Most importantly, by signing the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement to grant the southern provinces a measure of autonomy, he quelled the civil war for more than a decade.

In 1983, pressure from Islamic parties led Nimeiri to scrap the autonomy accord and imposed sharia , or Islamic law, over the whole country. The effect on the non-Muslim southern population was entirely predictable, and hostilities recommenced almost immediately. Army commander John Garang deserted to form the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A) which quickly took control of much of the south.

Nimeiri was deposed in 1985 and replaced first by Sadiq al-Mahdi, who had previously held the office from 1965 to 1969. In July 1989 power was seized by the current president, Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. However, Hassan al-Turabi, the fundamentalist leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF), was widely seen as the man holding the real power. The government's brand of belligerent fundamentalism, border disputes with half its neighbours and possible complicity in a 1995 assassination attempt on Egypt's president initially cost Sudan all its regional friends. In August 1998 US missiles slammed into a Khartoum pharmaceuticals factory erroneously linked to Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi chemical weapons programme; relations between the American and Sudanese governments have been strained ever since, with sanctions almost constantly in force.

The year 1999 was something of a watershed in Sudanese politics: in December, just when the country's domestic and international situation seemed to be improving, President al-Bashir dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution and imposed a three-month state of emergency, all as part of an internal power struggle with Al-Turabi.

The subsequent elections in December 2000 were boycotted by opposition parties, giving al-Bashir an easy win, and in 2001 Al-Turabi and several members of his party were arrested after signing an agreement with the SPLM/A. In the meantime, countless rounds of southern peace talks in Kenya had failed, the government was accused of forcibly depopulating potential oilfields, and the death toll from the fighting and the resulting humanitarian disaster reached almost two million.

From the end of 2001 Sudan's general situation seemed to be on the mend. The economy was stabilised, several ceasefire agreements were signed in the south and demarcation discussions on the various troublesome borders were continuing.

Recent History

In July 2002 a ceasefire was signed between warring parties, which lead to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in early 2005, proposing a referendum on independence for the south in 2008 and a power-sharing government in Khartoum between Bashir and the SPLM. The ink was barely dry when John Garang was killed in a freak helicopter crash in the south. His successor, Salva Kiir, became vice-president of Sudan and president of South Sudan; but he has proved a less effective operator in holding Khartoum's implementation of the peace deal to account.

In parallel to events in the south, an uprising in Darfur caused the army to move in in early 2004 and prompted a flood of refugees into Chad. The UN reported soon afterwards that government-sponsored local Arab militias or janjaweed were systematically murdering African villagers, with air support from the Sudanese army.

A deal signed in May 2004 ended the 20-year-old war in the south, but was overshadowed by developments in Darfur: by September, the conflict was described as a genocide by the USA. African Union peacekeepers sent to Darfur have barely been able to monitor events, let alone enforce any peace. The crisis, with over a million refugees and tens of thousands dead, continues to limp pathetically on, with little hope of immediate resolution.

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