What is Sudan – Il Post

In Sudan and especially in the capital area Khartoum over 200 have already died in the fighting that for some days has been opposing the regular army and a paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Force (RSF), led respectively by Abdel Fattah al Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, president and vice president of the government junta. The ongoing clashes are the latest crisis of a country that since its independence in 1956 has experienced two long civil wars (which ended with the independence of South Sudan in 2011), numerous military coups and some very bloody local and ethnic conflicts .

War, violence and armed conflicts have conditioned the development of Sudan: the country is very poor, has experienced repeated humanitarian crises and is subject to periods of great drought and famine, as well as progressive desertification. Among other things, it is one of the main departure points for migratory flows from sub-Saharan Africa to Libya and then embark on the Mediterranean.

Sudan is the third largest country on the African continent, after Algeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo: geographically located south of Egypt, with the north-eastern coast on the Red Sea as the only outlet to the sea, it has large portions of desert territory. It has about 48 million inhabitants, which they can count on gross per capita income less than 1,000 euros a year (in Italy it is around 36,000 euros): it is one of the 20 poorest countries in the world, although its economy has had significant growth rates since 2000 and above all in the years immediately preceding the independence of the regions of the south, around 2010. The official languages ​​are Arabic and English (introduced in 2005), but over 70 different languages ​​and far more dialects are spoken in the country.

The region that today corresponds to Sudan has practically always been inhabited: the first evidence of human activity dates back to the eighth millennium BC, then since the Pharaonic period its history has been mostly linked to that of Egypt, with which it in common the Nile river: near the capital Khartoum, the White Nile and the Blue Nile flow into the river that flows northwards to flow into the Mediterranean.

Its population is a very large Muslim majority and a large part of Arab ethnicity, but the presence of minorities whose rights have not always been respected has given rise to internal conflicts, such as that of the western region of Darfur, where from 2003 to 2006 fought a bloody civil war which according to the UN caused 300,000 deaths and left 2.5 million people homeless.

In a nutshell, the violence in Darfur began in February 2003, when some local armed rebel groups rose up against the Sudanese government, accusing it of discrimination and lack of protection against them. To fight the rebels, the government intervened by hiring the Janjawid, a group of Arab militiamen of Baggara ethnicity (therefore ethnically distant from the inhabitants of Darfur). During the conflict, the Janjawid fought against non-Baggar guerrilla groups, attacking numerous villages and killing or torturing tens of thousands of people, being guilty of various war crimes and, according to many interpretations, of genocide. The conflict escalated in particular in 2006, and in the following years various humanitarian associations and non-governmental organizations intervened.

The Rapid Support Force (RSF) paramilitary group fighting for power in Sudan today is a direct descendant of the Janjawidand general Dagalo during the war was one of the leaders of the militiamen active in Darfur.

Despite a peace deal signed in 2020, violence in Darfur resumed on a smaller scale from the following year, but the region is not the only one where local or territorial disputes are open. the region ofHala’ib Triangle it is disputed between Sudan and Egypt, while the areas of Abeyi, South Kordofan and the Blue Nile are still a source of tension between Sudan and South Sudan.

The separation of South Sudan
Sudan and South Sudan were part of the British-Egyptian protectorate from 1899 until independence: the governor was appointed by Egypt but had to be approved by the United Kingdom. During the Second World War some areas of the country were also subject to incursions by the Italian army from the neighboring Ethiopian colony.

The new independent state born in 1956 – which brought together both Sudan and South Sudan – was immediately managed by military regimes that organized the state on Islamic principles and also economically favored the northern regions with an Arab majority. For this reason, the southern regions corresponding to present-day South Sudan, inhabited by ethnic groups from Equatorial and sub-Saharan Africa, and with a Christian majority (with animist minorities), immediately claimed the will to establish themselves as an independent state.

A first civil war began in 1955, ended in 1972 and led to the creation of a region with greater autonomy. It didn’t work, the conflict resumed in 1983 and lasted until 2005: the first Sudanese civil war caused 500,000 deaths, the second more than two million, also due to the effects of hunger and the spread of diseases caused by the conflict. After strong pressure from the international community, in 2011 a referendum approved with over 98 percent of the votes officially created the state of South Sudan, recognized by the international community.

The separation has complicated the management of the main economic resource of the two countries, oil: 75 percent of the wells and crude oil resources are in South Sudan, while the refineries and plants to make oil exportable are in the north. It was necessary to renegotiate the profit sharing system and the agreements for the use, by South Sudan, of the oil pipelines that cross the North and which have remained under the control of Khartoum. The agreements were favored by China’s intervention: the exploitation of oil resources is mostly managed by Chinese companies. China is also Sudan’s largest trading partner.

If South Sudan has long been considered a “failed state” incapable of giving itself a democratic government, Sudan too has lived much of its history governed by authoritarian regimes. The democratic parentheses were short and shaky, numerous military coups: those of 1958, 1969, 1985, 1989, 2019 and 2021 succeeded. For thirty years, from 1989 to 2019, Sudan was governed by Colonel Omar al Bashir, author of a military coup with which he outlawed parties, introduced Islamic sharia into the country and concentrated legislative and executive powers on him, with the office of president. During his regime, Sudan was also included by the United States in the list of “sponsor of terrorism” countries, that is, those countries which according to the American government finance, support or protect terrorist groups.

Bashir’s fall in 2019 was caused by protests that began over a large increase in the prices of basic necessities: after attempts at a violent repression, the president was deposed by the army and accused of corruption.

After a brief democratic period, in October 2021 the two generals Abdel Fattah al Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, joined forces to overthrow the civilian government with a coup and establish a military dictatorship. Since then the country has been governed by a military junta called the Sovereign Council, of which Burhan is the head and Dagalus the second in command. In December 2022, under international pressure, the two generals had agreed to begin a democratic transition, but since Saturday the political clashes have turned into fighting, especially in the capital, between Burhan’s regular army of Sudan and the powerful Rapid Support Forces military group (RSF) of Dagalo.