Seventeen Years
of Crisis in Sudan
Civil war has persisted
in Sudan virtually non-stop since 1983. The conflict has contributed to
the deaths of an estimated 2 million or more people and has left more
than 4 million people uprooted. Most of the violence and population displacement
have occurred in the southern half of the country, home to an estimated
5 million to 7 million people.
Approximately 465,000 Sudanese are refugees or asylum seekers in other
countries: some 200,000 in Uganda, about 70,000 in Ethiopia, an estimated
70,000 in Congo-Kinshasa, at least 55,000 in Kenya, 35,000 in Central
African Republic, about 20,000 in Chad, some 12,000 in Egypt, and nearly
2,000 new Sudanese asylum applicants in Europe.
An estimated 4 million Sudanese remain internally displaced—the largest
internally displaced population in the world. A huge population of Sudanese
exiles live in Egypt and elsewhere, many of whom consider themselves to
be refugees although host governments often do not give them official
refugee status.
Sudan's long conflict is fueled by racial, cultural, religious, and political
differences between the country's northern and southern populations. The
northern population is largely Arab Muslims. The southern population is
overwhelmingly black Christians or adherents to local traditional religions.
Major internal divisions within the north and the south have also aggravated
the violence.
The main southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA),
and its political arm, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM),
have officially sought political autonomy within a united Sudan. Some
southerners have advocated secession from Sudan and establishment of an
independent country in the south. The SPLA has joined with northern political
groups opposed to the Sudanese government to form the National Democratic
Alliance (NDA), which has launched military attacks in eastern Sudan in
recent years.
Sudan's current governmental leaders staged a coup to gain power in 1989.
Controlled by the hardline National Islamic Front (NIF), the government
has armed militia groups that attack military and civilian targets in
the south. Several rebel factions defected to the government during the
1990s, and several pro-government factions defected to the rebels, adding
to the volatile military situation.
Combatants on all sides have targeted and exploited civilian populations.
The Sudanese government has launched regular air strikes against civilian
and humanitarian targets and has blocked humanitarian relief deliveries
to numerous locations. A combination of drought, violence, and aid blockages
by Sudanese authorities triggered a famine in southern Sudan's Bahr el-Ghazal
Province in 1998 that killed tens of thousands of people. Rebel factions
have manipulated aid programs to gain food for their troops and have conscripted
new soldiers from camps housing refugees and displaced people.
Since 1999, Sudanese government forces and their allies have controlled
several key towns in southern Sudan, while the SPLA operates widely in
rural areas of the south and controls a growing number of secondary towns
and villages. [confirm] Some of the worst violence has occurred near extensive
oil fields in the Upper Nile Province of the south, where the government
opened a lucrative oil pipeline to the north and engaged in what many
analysts described as a "scorched earth" policy against residents.
Violence in Upper Nile Province intensified when pro-government factions
based there clashed against each other in 1999.
More than 100,000 Sudanese became newly uprooted by violence during 2000,
including 30,000 new Sudanese refugees who fled to neighboring countries.
Of these, several thousand new Sudanese refugees fled to Kenya, most of
whom lived in the Kakuma camps at year's end.
