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Janus or Sisyphus? The Southern Problem of the Sudan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Alexis Heraclides
Alexis Heraclides
Affiliation:
Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations, Mediterranean Studies Foundation, Athens.
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Extract

The Sudan, Africa's largest country, not much smaller than Western Europe, is caught up once more in the convulsions of a civil war pitting the Northern against the Southern Sudanese. Inevitably the present conflict is associated with the older civil war which began in the early 1960s and dragged on for ten years, claiming the lives of around one million, and bringing about a famine and devastation little known to the outside world. There are obvious communalities, but the contemporary struggle is hardly a replay of that smouldering little war that had been fought by the Southern Sudanese with the most meagre of means and but a trifle of external aid. I shall deal in some length with what can now be called the first Sudanese civil war, in order to provide the background for an understanding of the real issues at stake today, and to place this second Sudanese civil war in perspective. More generally, the ‘Southern Problem’ provides insights into communal conflicts and their international dimensions, important though overlooked and often unacknowledged problems of today's world.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 213 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

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5 Gray, loc. cit. p. 117.

6 Peter Woodward, ‘Analysing Sudan's Nationalist Movements’, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, Seminar paper AP/80/3, 1980–1981, p. 2.

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2 I wish to thank Peter Kilner for insights into the Sudan's first civil war.

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3 Pirouet, loc. cit. pp. 139–41; O'Ballance, op. cit. pp. 127–8; and Howell, ‘Political Leadership and Organization in the Southern Sudan’, pp. 292–3.

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1 Reported in the Egyptian Gazette (Cairo), 1 July 1968, and the Straits Times (Kuala Lumpur), 19 September 1968.

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1 I am particularly indebted to Leonidas Rokanas for information concerning the latest phase of the conflict. For press reports see, inter alià, the following: New African (London), August 1983, pp. 33–4, May 1984, pp. 59–61, June 1984, pp. 21–3, November 1985, pp. 14–15, September 1986, pp. 18–20 and 27–8, and April 1987, p. 25; Africa Now (London), May 1984, pp. 20–2 and July 1984, pp. 23–4; Africasia (Paris), May 1984, p. 15 June 1985, pp. 43–4, June 1986, pp. 28–9, October 1986, pp. 36–7 and April 1987, p. 27; Middle East Magazine (London), November 1983, pp. 25–6 and October 1986, pp. 10–12; and Le Monde (Paris), 23 August 1984, 22 August 1986, 10 May 1987 and 20 June 1987.

1 Garang, quoted in Lesch, loc. cit. p. 421.

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