This is a collection of twenty essays written over forty years between 1962 and 2004 on the Sudan, southern Sudan and Darfur. Four decades of civil war has cost more than two million dead and another six million refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. Now, after a decade of ambivalent and frustrating negotiations, a peace agreement between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Government of the Sudan has finally been signed on 9 January 2005 leaving in its wake a devastated southern Sudan - its infrastructure completely destroyed, its fragile economy in ruins, and its people exhausted after nearly half a century of fierce fighting. Although these twenty essays include such topics as nation-building, the dynamics of racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious identity, the politics of oil, and the legacy of slavery, most of them are concerned with conflict in the Sudan, its participants, and the reasons why and it began and has continued for so long. These essays are presented here in chronological order, the aggregate becomes a unique history of the Sudan's terrible civil war that cannot be found elsewhere. the independent Sudan are woven into the text of each revealing new insights into the history of these tumultuous decades.

Sudan's post-independence history has been dominated by political and civil strife. Most commentators have attributed the country's recurring civil war to either to an age-old racial divide between Arabs and Africans , or to recent colonially constructed inequalities. This book attempts a more complex analysis, briefly examining the historical, political, economic and social factors which have contributed to periodic outbreaks of violence between the state and its peripheries. In tracing historical continuities, it outlines the essential differences between the modern Sudan's first civil war in the 1960s and the current war. It also looks at the series of minor civil wars generated by, and contained within, the major conflict, as well as the regional and international factors - including humanitarian aid - which have exacerbated civil violence. This introduction is aimed at students of North-East Africa, and of conflict and ethnicity. It should be useful for people in aid and international organizations who need a straightforward analytical survey.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: 1,7, University of Tubingen (Institut für Politikwissenschaft), course: Hauptseminar: Analyse der Bürgerkriege, language: English, abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the period of the Addis Ababa Peace (1972-1983) in Sudan and the outbreak of the second Sudanese Civil War between North and South Sudan. This paper assumes that the outbreak of the second civil war took its roots from the struggle between elites to maintain political power and economic enrichment rather than the known ethnocultural or religious differences between the North and the South Sudan.

Since 2003, the ongoing violence and subsequent humanitarian crisis in Darfur has attracted significant international media attention. Here, Noah R. Bassil offers a re-conception of the conflict in Darfur by examining the origins and progression of the conflict through the broader issue of state failure in postcolonial Sudan. By moving away from a 'localised' view of the conflict, Bassil is able to demonstrate the extent to which the breakdown of social relations in Darfur is interconnected with the wider breakdown of Sudanese and post-colonial societies more broadly, offering a definitive study of the nexus between international, national and local forces and providing a coherent framework for understanding the causes of the civil war that erupted in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2003. The Post-Colonial State and Civil War in Sudan offers a thorough examination of the historical development of the Sudanese state, from an analysis of the colonial state structure to the post-colonial state struggles and from the failure of the state-led development project to the impact these had on the Darfur region. It therefore demonstrates how Sudan's political instability, recurrent civil wars and crisis of identity provide an important context for understanding why Darfur became the location of a major rebellion against the government in 2003,and in fact created the very conditions for conflict in Darfur. Looking forward towards peace in post-colonial societies, Bassil urges the abandonment of neo-liberal policies and a return to an international system that is based on building state-capacity and state legitimacy as the most effective mechanisms for rebuilding political and social relations in regions that have suffered crises in the post-colonial state. Rather than examining Darfur as a sui generis conflict, through the analysis here, it becomes evident that in fact, the events in Darfur are far from unusual, but part of the wider contemporary demise of the post-colonial state building project. This book therefore provides a unique examination of the conflict and the wider postcolonial situation, making it an important contribution to the fields of History, International Relations and Peace Studies.

As civil wars become forums for international conflicts and ideological rivalries, their containment and resolution is an increasingly important requisite for international peace. This book explores mediation as a means toward resolving such wars. Dr. Assefa argues that the sovereign sensitivities of incumbent governments, the risk of international

A mere two years after achieving independence, South Sudan in 2013 descended into violent civil war, refuting US government claims that the country’s succession was a major foreign policy success and would end endemic conflict. Worse was to follow when the international community declared famine in 2017. In the first book-length study of the South Sudan civil war, John Young draws on his close but critical relationship with the rebel SPLM-IO leadership to reveal the true dynamics of the conflict, and exposes how the South Sudanese state was in crisis long before the outbreak of war. With insider knowledge of the histories and motivations of the rebellion’s chief protagonists, Young argues considerable responsibility for the present state of South Sudan must be laid at the door of the US-led peace process. Linking the role of the international community with the country’s opposition politics, South Sudan’s Civil War is an essential guide to the causes and consequences of the violence that has engulfed one of Africa’s most troubled nations.

On 9 July 2011, South Sudan became an independent state after more than half a century of civil conflict wrought with human rights abuse. Indeed, the post-colonial history of Sudan has been characterised by two Civil Wars spanning almost two decades each: the first from 1955-1972 and the second from 1983-2005. With questions of national and regional identity at the heart of the conflict, the Sudanese Civil Wars have highlighted key questions about the post-colonial epoch. Justin Leach's War and Politics in the Sudan offers a comparative analysis of the First and Second Sudanese Civil Wars, along with the peace treaties which ended them. Most historians have seen the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement as a stepping stone to renewed civil conflict in 1983 rather than as a settlement in its own right. Leach, on the other hand, believes that the size of Sudan precludes the application of traditional theories of conflict resolution. The introduction of natural resources brought a new facet to the already complex Second Sudanese Civil War. Oil, for instance, internationalised the conflict and added yet another prism through which groups in the conflict could view their identity. By tracing the evolving demands of the southern insurgents and the regimes they fought against, Leach outlines the main challenges to the Sudanese nationalist project, including the strength of southern regional identities, the resurgence of political Islam in the north as well as the sheer duration of the conflict. War and Politics in the Sudan thus offers a fresh and timely analysis of a region long beset by civil conflict, interethnic violence and poverty, a region whose historical narrative has recently taken on a new trajectory. Those interested in post-colonial Sudanese history are sure to find Leach's arguments both persuasive and pertinent.

This book provides new sources and information on the first decade of the revolutionary Sudan (1989-2000) and the role played by its principal ideologue, Hasan al-Turabi until his downfall in 2000.

In the 1960s, only 10% of peace agreements included some element of political-military accommodation – namely, military integration. From Burundi to Bosnia to Zimbabwe, that number had increased to over 50% by the 2000s. However, relatively little is understood about this dimension of power-sharing often utilized during war-to-peace transitions. Through an examination of the case of South Sudan between 2006 and 2013, this book explores why countries undergoing transitions from war to peace decide to integrate armed groups into a statutory security framework. This book details how integration contributed to short-term stability in South Sudan, allowing the government to overcome wartime factionalism and consolidate political-military power prior to the referendum on self-determination in 2011. It also examines how the integration process in South Sudan was flawed by its open-ended nature and lack of coordination with efforts to right-size the military and transform the broader defense sector, and how this led the military to fragment during periods of heightened political competition. Furthermore, the book explains why integration ultimately failed in South Sudan, and identifies the wider lessons that could be applied to current or future war-to-peace transitions. This book will be of great interest to students of war and conflict studies, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, African security issues, and International Relations in general, as well as to practitioners.

Civil Wars in Africa, edited by Kelechi A. Kalu and George Klay Kieh, Jr., examines civil conflicts throughout various African countries. They argue that civil wars in Africa are by-products of the contradictions and crises engendered by the post-colonial state-building and nation-building projects in Africa. With few exceptions, the post-colonial states in Africa have failed to build societies that invest in the material well-being of their citizens; protect their political, civil, and other rights; promote accountability, transparency, the rule of law, judicial independence, and the holding of free and fair elections; and promote ethnic pluralism, tolerance, mutual respect, and peaceful co-existence, among others. In addition, the contributors show that the post-colonial states in Africa have been ruled by corrupt and autocratic leaders, who are obsessed with the maintenance of state power as the pathway to ensuring the private accumulation of wealth through sundry illegal means, including bribery, extortion, and theft of public funds. In sum, this volume addresses how the failure of the post-colonial African state to shepherd the process of building democratic societies based on the centrality of human security has led to the erosion of the legitimacy of the state and its custodians. Thus, once the contradictions and crises reached their crescendo, these post-colonial societies than implode into civil wars, even at the micro-level.