In Sudan, the endless war

Internationally, public opinion is disinterested in this war, perceiving Sudan as a piece of earthly hell victim of yet another tragedy.

Since its proclamation of independence in 1956, the country has experienced seventy years of fragile cohabitation between populations competing for resources and political power. In 1956, war broke out between the north of Sudan, which was predominantly Muslim, and the south, which was predominantly Christian. At the end of a long conflict, the South obtained broad autonomy and organized a referendum for independence. In 2011, the Republic of South Sudan was created.

Time bomb

“Inequalities are at the origin of all Sudanese conflicts,” explains Marc Lavergne, emeritus research director at the CNRS. In Darfur, droughts have impoverished the region and the central government has done nothing. It was a northern elite who closed the doors of power to the South Sudanese. »

Since the 1980s, nomadic Arab populations have clashed with non-Arab farmers over water, pastures and land. Exasperated, Darfur rebel groups took up arms against the government in 2003. But Omar El Bashir put down the rebellion by recruiting militiamen among Arab nomads. The reprisals triggered a famine so severe that images of stunted children still haunt our memories.

Twenty years later, the time bomb explodes. El Bashir’s former allies have regrouped under the banner of the FSR and several NGOs accuse them of carrying out ethnic cleansing. “They consider themselves Arabs and see certain populations as Negroes, inferior,” continues Marc Lavergne. In fact, an Arab elite has long dominated the black populations of the south and west of the country and marginalized or reduced them to slavery.

Today, the situation is so serious that the NGO Human Rights Watch suspects the FSR of committing “genocide”. In Sudan, as long as regional inequalities, ethnic and land tensions persist, the embers of war will never go out.

* The first name has been changed.