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Sudan
Regionalism and Ethnicity
The long war in Sudan had a profound effect not only on ethnic
groups but also on political action and attitudes. With the exception
of a fragile peace established by negotiations between southern
Sudanese insurgents (the Anya Nya) and the Sudan government at
Addis Ababa in 1972, and lasting until the resumption of the conflict
in 1983, southern Sudan has been a battlefield. The conflict has
deeply eroded traditional ethnic patterns in the region, and it
has extended northward, spreading incalculable political and economic
disruption. It has, moreover, caused the dislocation and often
the obliteration of the smaller, less resistant ethnic groups.
The north-south distinction and the hostility between the two
regions were grounded in religious conflict as well as a conflict
between peoples of differing culture and language. The language
and culture of the north were based on Arabic and the Islamic
faith, whereas the south had its own diverse, mostly non-Arabic
languages and cultures. It was with few exceptions non-Muslim,
and its religious character was indigenous (traditional or Christian).
Adequate contemporary data were lacking, but in the early 1990s
possibly no more than 10 percent of southern Sudan's population
was Christian. Nevertheless, given the missions' role in providing
education in the south, most educated persons in the area, including
the political elite, were nominally Christians (or at least had
Christian names). Several African Roman Catholic priests figured
in southern leadership, and the churches played a significant
role in bringing the south's plight to world attention in the
civil war period (see The Southern Problem , ch. 1). Sudan's Muslim
Arab rulers thus considered Christian mission activity to be an
obstacle to the full arabization and Islamization of the south.
Occasionally, the distinction between north and south has been
framed in racial terms. The indigenous peoples of the south are
blacks, whereas those of the north are of Semitic stock. Northern
populations fully arabized in language and culture, such as the
Baqqara, however, could not be distinguished physically from some
of the southern and western groups. Many sedentary Arabs descended
from the pre-Islamic peoples of that area who were black, as were
the Muslim but nonarabized Nubians and the Islamized peoples of
Darfur.
It is not easy to generalize about the importance of physical
attributes in one group's perceptions of another. But physical
appearance often has been taken as an indicator of cultural, religious,
and linguistic status or orientation. Arabs were also likely to
see southerners as members of the population from which they once
took slaves and to use the word for slave, abd, as a
pejorative in referring to southerners.
North-south hostilities predate the colonial era. In the nineteenth
century and earlier, Arabs saw the south as a source of slaves
and considered its peoples inferior by virtue of their paganism
if not their color. Organized slave raiding ended in the late
nineteenth century, but the residue of bitterness remained among
southerners, and the Arab view of southerners as pagans persisted.
During British rule, whatever limited accommodation there may
have been between Arabs and Africans was neither widespread nor
deep enough to counteract a longer history of conflict between
these peoples. At the same time, for their own reasons, the colonial
authorities discouraged integration of the ethnically different
north and south (see Britain's Southern Policy , ch. 1).
Neither Arab attitudes of superiority nor British dominance in
the south led to loss of self-esteem among southerners. A number
of observers have remarked that southern peoples, particularly
Nilotes, such as the Dinka, Nuer, and Shilluk, naturally object
to the assumption by the country's Arab rulers that the southern
peoples ought to be prepared to give up their religious orientation
and values.
Interethnic tensions also have occurred in the north. Disaffection
in Darfur with the Arab-dominated Khartoum government led in the
late 1980s to Darfur becoming a virtually autonomous province.
There has also been a history of regionallybased political movements
in the area. The frustrations of a budding elite among the Fur,
the region's largest ethnic group, and Fur-Arab competition may
account for that disaffection and for Darfur regionalism. After
World War II, many educated Fur made a point of mastering Arabic
in the hope that they could make their way in the Arab-dominated
political, bureaucratic, and economic world; they did not succeed
in their quest. Further, by the late 1960s, as cash crops were
introduced, land and labor were becoming objects of commercial
transactions. As this happened, the Arabs and the Fur competed
for scarce resources and, given their greater prominence and power,
the Arabs were regarded by the Fur as exploiters. The discovery
of oil in the late 1970s (not appreciably exploited by 1991 because
of the civil war leading to the departure of Chevron Overseas
Petroleum Corporation personnel) added another resource and further
potential for conflict. Opposition to the imposition by Nimeiri
of the sharia in 1983, and the later attempts at Islamization
of the country in the late 1980s, as well as the government's
poor handling of the devastating famine of 1990 deeply alienated
the Fur from the national government.
There were other tensions in northern Sudan generated not by
traditional antipathies but by competition for scarce resources.
For example, there was a conflict between the Rufaa al Huj, a
group of Arab pastoralists living in the area between the Blue
Nile and the White Nile, and Fallata (Fulani) herders. The movements
of the Fallata intersected with the seasonal migrations of the
Rufaa al Huj. Here ethnic differences aggravated but did not cause
competition.
The reluctance of southern groups to accept Arab domination did
not imply southern solidarity. The opportunities for power and
wealth in the new politics and bureaucracy in southern Sudan were
limited; some groups felt deprived of their shares by an ethnic
group in power. Moreover, ethnic groups at one time or another
competed for more traditional resources, contributing to a heritage
of hostility toward one another.
In the early 1990s, one of the main sources of ethnic conflict
in the south was the extent to which the Dinka dominated southern
politics and controlled the allocation of rewards, whether of
government posts or of other opportunities. In the 1955-56 census,
the Dinka constituted a little more than 40 percent of the total
population of the three provinces that in 1990 constituted southern
Sudan: Bahr al Ghazal, Aali an Nil, and Al Istiwai. Because no
other group approached their number, if their proportion of the
regional total had not changed appreciably, the Dinka would be
expected to play a large part in the new politics of southern
Sudan. Some of the leading figures in the south, such as Abel
Alier, head of southern Sudan's government until 1981, and SPLA
leader John Garang, were Dinka (although the SPLA made an effort
to shed its Dinka image by cultivating supporters in other groups).
It is not known whether the twenty-five Dinka tribal groups were
equally represented in the alleged Dinka predominance. Some groups,
such as the Nuer, a comparable Nilotic people, and traditional
rivals of the Dinka, had been deprived of leadership opportunities
in colonial times, because they were considered intractable, were
then not numerous, and lived in inaccessible areas (various small
groups in Bahr al Ghazal and northern Aali an Nil provinces).
In contrast, some small groups in Al Istiwai Province had easier
access to education and hence to political participation because
of nearby missions. The first graduating class of the university
in Juba, for example, had many more Azande students from Al Istiwai
Province than from Bahr al Ghazal and Aali an Nil.
Data as of June 1991
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