A Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Did you know that Sudan's capital city, Khartoum, is twinned with 12 different cities, including Wuhan in the People's Republic of China, Ankara in Turkey, and St. Petersburg in Russia?


Unfortunately, that's one of the few, non-violent bits of information I was able to unearth about Sudan, a deeply divided country in a corner of the world facing many challenges.

The secretary bird, a national symbol.

The Republic of Sudan is sometimes called North Sudan, distinguishing it from the Republic of South Sudan, which formally seceded on July 9, 2011, after decades of bloody civil war. Even as it gained its independence from the British Empire and sovereignty claims by Egypt in 1956, fighting erupted between the two regions and the First Sudanese Civil War (or Anyanya rebellion) lasted till a peace agreement was reached in 1972.


But tensions soon resumed between the Muslim desert lands to the north and the animist and Christian rain-forested regions to the south. And just a decade later, the Second Sudanese Civil War broke out in 1983 and lasted till the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in 2005, but not before causing one of the highest civilian death tolls of any conflict since WWII.


Sudan's current head of state, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, took control of the country in a bloodless coup in 1989 and declared himself president in 1993, instituting national Islamic law. In 2004, shortly before the CPA was signed, military troops and government-supported militia raided Darfur, a western Sudan state, in response to criticism by rebels there, who claimed the Muslim government was neglecting the black African ethnic groups that live there. 


As estimated nearly 3 million people were displaced during the conflict in Darfur, with atrocities committed against another reported half million people. The International Criminal Court officially charged President al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in 2010, but so far he remains free and in power. Several attempts at peace agreements have been attempted since 2006, the latest being the Darfur Peace, or Doha, Agreement in 2011. A new perspective of autonomy and peace for these two nations appears to be holding, and the transition is under way.


But despite being born into a war-torn country, many Southern Sudanese youth are turning to sports instead of guns. Thanks in part to the popularity of NBA stars like Manute Bol and Luol Deng, basketball leagues and tournaments are sprouting up around the country and many young players are being recruited by American colleges. If peace holds, we may even see South Sudanese competitors in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.


Sources:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sudan
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/02/19/sports/SPTSSUDAN0219.html
http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan