Sudan, Republic of, republic in north-eastern Africa, the largest nation of the African continent. Sudan is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Ethiopia and Eritrea to the east, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Central African Republic and Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest and on the west by the Central African Republic, Chad, and Libya. Sudan has a total area of 2,505,800 sq km (967,490 sq mi). Khartoum is the capital and largest city.
There is a marked difference between the climate, culture and geography of northern and southern Sudan. The far north consists of the contiguous Libyan and Nubian deserts which extend as far south as the capital, Khartoum, and are barren except for small areas beside the Nile River and a few scattered oases. This gives way to the central steppes which cover the country between 15°N and 10°N, a region of short, coarse grass and bushes, turning to open savannah towards the south, largely flat to the east but rising to two large plateau in the west and south, the Janub Darfur (3088m/10,131ft) and Janub Kordofan (500m/1640ft) respectively. Most of Sudan’s agriculture occurs in these latitudes in a fertile pocket between the Blue and White Niles which meet at Khartoum. South of the steppes is a vast shallow basin traversed by the White Nile and its tributaries, with the Sudd, a 120,000 sq km (46,332 sq miles) marshland, in the center. This gives way to equatorial forest towards the south, rising to jungle-clad mountains on the Ugandan border, the highest being Mount Kinyeti, at 3187m (10,456ft).
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.
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 more than 30,000 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 has 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.
The first and overwhelming impression of Sudan is its physical vastness and ethnic variety, elements that have shaped its regional history from time immemorial. The nation encompasses virtually every geographical feature, from the harsh deserts of the north to the rain forests rising on its southern borders. Like most African countries, Sudan is defined by boundaries that European powers determined at the end of the 19th century. The British colonial administration in Sudan, accomplished in 1899, emphasized indirect rule by tribal shaykhs and chiefs, although tribalism had been considerably weakened as an administrative institution during the Mahdist time .This loosening of loyalties exacerbated problems in governmental structure and administration and in the peoples' identification as Sudanese. To this day, loyalty remains separated among family, clan, ethnic group, and religion, and it is difficult to forge a nation because the immensity of the land permits many of Sudan's ethnic and tribal groups to live comparatively undisturbed by the central government.
The Sudanese of the south are of African origin. Islam has made only modest inroads among these followers of orthodox religions and of Christianity, which was spread in the twentieth century by European missionaries, and Arabic has not replaced the various languages of the south. The strong regional and cultural differences have inhibited nation building and have caused the civil war in the south that has raged since freedom, except for a time of peace between 1972 and 1983. The distrust between Sudanese of the north and those of the south--whether elite or peasants--has deepened with the long years of hostilities. And the cost of war has drained valuable national resources at the expense of health, education, and welfare in both regions.
More than half Sudan's population was Muslim in the early 1990s. Most Muslims, perhaps 90 percent, lived in the north, where they constituted 75 percent or more of the population. Data on Christians was less reliable; estimates ranged from 4 to 10 percent of the population. At least one-third of the Sudanese were still attached to the indigenous religions of their forebears. Most Christian Sudanese and adherents of local religious systems lived in southern Sudan. Islam had made inroads into the south, but more through the need to know Arabic than a profound belief in the tenets of the Quran. The SPLM, which in 1991 controlled most of southern Sudan, opposed the imposition of the sharia (Islamic law).
The staple diet is fool, a type of bean, and dura, cooked maize or millet, which are eaten with various vegetables. The hotel restaurants in Khartoum and Port Sudan serve international cuisine and there are a few Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants. If invited to a Sudanese home, more exotic food will usually be served. Alcohol is banned by the Islamic Sharia code.Sudan is extremely hot (less so November to March). Sandstorms blow across the Sahara from April to September. In the extreme north, there is little rain but the central region has some rainfall from July to August. The southern region has much higher rainfall, the wet season lasting May to October. Summers are very hot throughout the country, whilst winters are cooler in the north.
National name: Jamhuryat as-Sudan
Country name: Republic of Sudan
Area: 967,493 sq mi (2,505,810 sq km)
Population: 40,187,486
Capital: Khartoum
Languages: official; Arabic, Other; Nubian, Ta Bedawie,diverse dialects of Nilotic,Nilo-Hamitic,Sudanic languages, English
Currency: Sudanese Dinar
Other cities: Omdurman,Port Sudan,
Religion: Muslim in the north; Christian and traditional animist beliefs in the south.
