 |
Travel to Sudan — Unbiased reviews and
great deals from TripAdvisorSudan
| Republic of the Sudan National
name: Jamhuryat as-Sudan President:
Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir (1989)
Current government officials
Land area: 917,374 sq mi (2,376,001 sq
km); total area: 967,493 sq mi (2,505,810 sq km) Population (2007 est.): 42,292,929 (growth
rate: 2.5%); birth rate: 33.9/1000; infant mortality rate: 59.6/1000;
life expectancy: 59.3; density per sq mi: 46
Capital (2003 est.):
Khartoum, 5,717,300 (metro. area), 1,397,900
(city proper) Largest cities:
Omdurman, 2,103,900; Port Sudan, 450,400 Monetary unit: Dinar
Languages:
Arabic (official), Nubian, Ta Bedawie, diverse
dialects of Nilotic, Nilo-Hamitic, Sudanic languages, English
Ethnicity/race:
black 52%, Arab 39%, Beja 6%, foreigners 2%,
other 1%
Religions:
Islam (Sunni) 70% (in north), indigenous 25%,
Christian 5% (mostly in south and Khartoum) Literacy rate: 61% (2003 est.) Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2007 est.):
$80.71 billion; per capita $2,200. Real growth rate: 10.5%.
Inflation: 8%. Unemployment: 18.7% (2002 est.).
Arable land: 7%. Agriculture: cotton, groundnuts
(peanuts), sorghum, millet, wheat, gum arabic, sugarcane, cassava
(tapioca), mangos, papaya, bananas, sweet potatoes, sesame; sheep,
livestock. Labor force: 11 million (1996 est.); agriculture
80%, industry and commerce 7%, government 13% (1998 est.).
Industries: oil, cotton ginning, textiles, cement, edible oils,
sugar, soap distilling, shoes, petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals,
armaments, automobile/light truck assembly. Natural resources:
petroleum; small reserves of iron ore, copper, chromium ore, zinc,
tungsten, mica, silver, gold, hydropower. Exports: $6.989
billion f.o.b. (2005 est.): oil and petroleum products; cotton,
sesame, livestock, groundnuts, gum arabic, sugar. Imports:
$5.028 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.): foodstuffs, manufactured goods,
refinery and transport equipment, medicines and chemicals, textiles,
wheat. Major trading partners: China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, UAE,
Egypt, India, Germany, Australia (2004). Communications: Telephones: main lines in
use: 400,000 (2000); mobile cellular: 20,000 (2000). Radio
broadcast stations: AM 12, FM 1, shortwave 1 (1998).
Radios: 7.55 million (1997). Television broadcast stations:
3 (1997). Televisions: 2.38 million (1997). Internet
Service Providers (ISPs): 2 (2002). Internet users: 56,000
(2002). Transportation: Railways:
total: 5,978 km (2002). Highways: total: 11,900 km; paved:
4,320 km; unpaved: 7,580 km (1999 est.). Waterways: 5,310 km
navigable. Ports and harbors: Juba, Khartoum, Kusti, Malakal,
Nimule, Port Sudan, Sawakin. Airports: 63 (2002). International disputes:the north-south civil
war has drawn Sudan's neighbors into the fighting, sheltering
refugees, and infiltration by rebel groups—Kenya and Uganda have
acted as mediators; Sudan accuses Eritrea of supporting Sudanese rebel
groups; efforts to demarcate the porous boundary with Ethiopia have
been delayed by fighting in Sudan; Kenya's administrative boundary
still extends into the Sudan, creating the “Ilemi
triangle”; Egypt and Sudan retain claims to administer the
triangular areas that extend north and south of the 1899 Treaty
boundary along the 22nd Parallel, but have withdrawn their military
presence; Egypt is economically developing the “Hala'ib
triangle.”
Major sources and definitions
|
|
Geography
Sudan, in northeast Africa, is the largest country on the continent,
measuring about one-fourth the size of the United States. Its neighbors
are Chad and the Central African Republic on the west, Egypt and Libya on
the north, Ethiopia and Eritrea on the east, and Kenya, Uganda, and
Democratic Republic of the Congo on the south. The Red Sea washes about
500 mi of the eastern coast. It is traversed from north to south by the
Nile, all of whose great tributaries are partly or entirely within its
borders.
Government
Military government.
History
What is now northern Sudan was in ancient times the kingdom of Nubia,
which came under Egyptian rule after 2600 B.C.
An Egyptian and Nubian civilization called Kush flourished until A.D. 350. Missionaries converted the region to
Christianity in the 6th century, but an influx of Muslim Arabs, who had
already conquered Egypt, eventually controlled the area and replaced
Christianity with Islam. During the 1500s a people called the Funj
conquered much of Sudan, and several other black African groups settled in
the south, including the Dinka, Shilluk, Nuer, and Azande. Egyptians again
conquered Sudan in 1874, and after Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, it took
over Sudan in 1898, ruling the country in conjunction with Egypt. It was
known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1898 and 1955.
The 20th century saw the growth of Sudanese nationalism, and in 1953
Egypt and Britain granted Sudan self-government. Independence was
proclaimed on Jan. 1, 1956. Since independence, Sudan has been ruled by a
series of unstable parliamentary governments and military regimes. Under
Maj. Gen. Gaafar Mohamed Nimeiri, Sudan instituted fundamentalist Islamic
law in 1983. This exacerbated the rift between the Arab north, the seat of
the government, and the black African animists and Christians in the
south. Differences in language, religion, ethnicity, and political power
erupted in an unending civil war between government forces, strongly
influenced by the National Islamic Front (NIF) and the southern rebels,
whose most influential faction is the Sudan People's Liberation Army
(SPLA). Human rights violations, religious persecution, and allegations
that Sudan had been a safe haven for terrorists isolated the country from
most of the international community. In 1995, the UN imposed sanctions
against it.
On Aug. 20, 1998, the United States launched cruise missiles that
destroyed a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Khartoum which
allegedly manufactured chemical weapons. The U.S. contended that the
Sudanese factory was financed by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.
Since 1999 international attention has been focused on evidence that
slavery is widespread throughout Sudan. Arab raiders from the north of the
country have enslaved thousands of southerners, who are black. The Dinka
people have been the hardest-hit. Some sources point out that the raids
intensified in the 1980s along with the civil war between north and
south.
Ever since Lt. Gen. Omar Bashir's military coup in 1989, the de facto
ruler of Sudan had been Hassan el-Turabi, a cleric and political leader
who is a major figure in the pan-Arabic Islamic fundamentalist resurgence.
In 1999, however, Bashir ousted Turabi and placed him under house arrest.
(He was freed in Oct. 2003.) Since then Bashir has made overtures to the
West, and in Sept. 2001, the UN lifted its six-year-old sanctions. The
U.S., however, still officially considers Sudan a terrorist state.
A cease-fire was declared between the Sudanese government and the Sudan
People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in July 2002. During peace talks, which
continued through 2003, the government agreed to a power-sharing
government for six years, to be followed by a referendum on
self-determination for the south. Fighting on both sides continued
throughout the peace negotiations. In May 2004, a deal between the
government and the SPLA was signed, ending 20 years of brutal civil war
that resulted in the deaths of 2 million people.
Just as Sudan's civil war seemed to be coming to an end, another war
intensified in the northwestern Darfur region. After the government
quelled a rebellion in Darfur in Jan. 2004, it allowed pro-government
militias called the Janjaweed to carry out massacres against black
villagers and rebel groups in the region. These Arab militias, believed to
have been armed by the government, have killed between 200,000 and 300,000
civilians and displaced more than 1 million. While the war in the south
was fought against black Christians and animists, the Darfur conflict is
being fought against black Muslims. Although the international community
has reacted with alarm to the humanitarian disaster—unmistakably the
world's worst—it has been ineffective in persuading the Sudanese
government to rein in the Janjaweed. Despite the EU and the U.S.
describing the killing as genocide, and despite a UN Security Council
resolution demanding that Sudan stop the Arab militias, the killing
continued throughout 2005.
On Jan. 9, 2005, after three years of negotiations, the peace deal
between the southern rebels, led by John Garang of the SPLA, and the
Khartoum government to end the two-decades-long civil war was signed,
giving roughly half of Sudan’s oil wealth to the south, as well as
nearly complete autonomy and the right to secede after six years. But just
two weeks after Garang was sworn in as first vice president as part of the
power-sharing agreement, he was killed in a helicopter crash during bad
weather. Rioting erupted in Khartoum, killing nearly 100. Garang’s
deputy, Salva Kiir, was quickly sworn in as the new vice president, and
both north and south vowed that the peace agreement would hold.
In 2006, the slaughter in Darfur escalated, and the Khartoum government
remained defiantly indifferent to the international communities' calls to
stop the violence. The 7,000 African Union (AU) peacekeepers deployed to
Darfur proved too small and ill equipped a force to prevent much of it. A
fragile peace deal in May 2006 was signed between the Sudanese government
and the main Darfur rebel group; two smaller rebel groups, however,
refused to sign. The UN reported that there has in fact been a dramatic
upsurge in the violence since the agreement. The Sudanese government
reneged on essential elements of the accord, including the plan to disarm
the militias and allow a UN peacekeeping force into the region to replace
the modest AU force. Khartoum eventually agreed to allow the modest AU
force to remain in the country until the end of 2006, but rejected a
hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force entering the country. In. Jan. 2007, Sudan
and Darfur rebel groups agreed to a 60-day cease-fire, which was intended
to lead to peace talks sponsored by the African Union. Libya hosted peace
talks ni October, but several rebel groups boycotted the proceedings, and
the summit ended shortly after the opening ceremony. In July 2007, the UN
Security Council voted unanimously to deploy as many as 26,000
peacekeepers from the African Union and the United Nations forces to help
end the violence in Darfur. The African Union peacekeeper base in Darfur
was attacked in September. Ten peacekeepers were killed. Days later, the
town was razed, leaving some 7,000 Darfuris homeless.
In Feb. 2007, the International Criminal Court at the Hague named Ahmad
Harun, Sudan's deputy minister for humanitarian affairs, and Ali Kushayb,
also known as Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a militia leader, as suspects in the
murder, rape, and displacement of thousands of civilians in the Darfur
region. In May, the Court issued arrest warrants for Haroun and Ali
Kosheib, a Janjaweed leader, charging them with mass murder, rape, and
other crimes. The Sudanese government refused to hand over them over to
the Court. Kushayb was arrested by Sudanese police in October 2008. He was
not, however, handed over to the ICC.
The Bush administration expanded sanctions on Sudan in May, banning 31
Sudanese companies and four individuals from doing business in the
U.S.
In October 2007, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) quit the
national unity government, leaving the peace agreement signed in 2005 on
the brink of collapse. The SPLA claimed that the governing party, the
National Congress Party, had ignored its concerns over boundary between
the north and south and how to divide the country's oil wealth.
Sudan faced international criticism once again in January 2008, when
Musa Hilal, a Janjaweed leader, was appointed to a top government position
as an adviser to the minister of federal affairs. Human Rights Watch
called Hilal "the poster child for Janjaweed atrocities in Darfur."
Government forces and the janjaweed resumed their attacks in the Darfur
region in February 2008, forcing as many as 45,000 people to flee their
homes. The government claimed it was targeting the Justice and Equality
Movement, a rebel group that has become increasingly powerful and is
believed to be linked to the government of Chad. Civilians in the region,
however, say the attacks have continued after the rebels escape. The
Justice and Equality Movement launched a bold attack in May, coming within
a few miles of Khartoum before being repulsed by government troops. It was
the first time that the conflict in Darfur has threatened to spill over
into Khartoum.
In July 2008, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court, formally charged Bashir with genocide for planning and
executing the decimation of Darfur's three main ethnic tribes: the Fur,
the Masalit, and the Zaghawa. Moreno-Ocampo also said Bashir "purposefully
targeted civilians" and used "rapes, hunger, and fear" to terrorize
civilians. Many observers fear that Bashir will respond to the charges
with further violence.
See also Encyclopedia: Sudan.
U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
Sudan
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
More on Sudan from Infoplease:
|
|
