MER Article Political Islam Under Attack in Sudan Through binoculars I can see clouds of reddish-brown dust billowing behind a Toyota pickup racing across the burnt savannah. A Dashka .50-caliber machine gun is mounted on its back. Crouched around me are a dozen guerrillas armed with AK-47s, hand grenades and light machine guns. The mood is casual, but Dan Connell • 9 min read
MER Article War, Development and Identity Politics in Sudan Sudan’s colonial history of Turco-Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian rule paved the way for highly unstable and divisive relations throughout the country. Since independence, civil war between governments based in Khartoum and rebel movements operating in the south has raged for three of the last four deca Lisa Hajjar • 9 min read
MER Article The Islamist State and Sudanese Women The Islamist government in Sudan recently celebrated the third anniversary of the military coup that brought it to power by building a huge public park south of the Khartoum airport, featuring hundreds of hurriedly transplanted trees, bushes and flowers. The impressive determination and efficiency t Ellen Gruenbaum • 9 min read
MER Article Democracy and Liberation Movements: The Case of the SPLA The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) has been fighting a succession of Khartoum governments since 1983. Though its stated goal is to build a unified “new Sudan,” it is widely perceived as representing the interests of the south, where most of its fighting is done and which it now almost entirel Gill Lusk • 5 min read
MER Article An Interview with Francis Deng Francis Deng is a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School. He served as Sudan’s ambassador to Canada from 1980-1983, to the United States from 1974-1976 and to Scandanavian countries from 1972-1974. He Khalid Mustafa Medani • 9 min read
MER Article Where Famine Is Functional Images of African famine once again scan Western television screens, prompting a renewed search for causes and solutions. In this worried atmosphere it is easy to overlook that international relief operations have now become a widespread and accepted response to this unfolding crisis. While Sudan an Mark Duffield • 13 min read
MER Article The National Islamic Front and the Politics of Education In a country like Sudan, those with access to education become the object of intense competition on the part of political parties of all stripes, especially those with no traditional base of support. Secondary schools and especially universities become the hunting ground -- and sometimes the killing Ali Abdalla Abbas • 12 min read
MER Article "The Regime Has Simply Barricaded Itself in Khartoum" Bona Malwal was elected to the Sudanese parliament in 1968. He was minister for culture and information from 1972 to 1978 and minister of finance and economic planning for the south from 1980 to 1981. His English-language newspaper, the Sudan Times, was banned when the current regime seized power in Joe Stork • 9 min read
MER Article Funding Fundamentalism While Islamic fundamentalism has become a major political force in the Arab world in recent years, particularly in the countries of the Maghrib, it is in Sudan where the Islamist movement has realized its greatest ambition: controlling the levers of state power and setting itself up as a model for s Abbashar Jamal • 12 min read
MER Article Sudan's Deepening Crisis Conditions that prevail in Sudan today -- environmental degradation, drought and famine, civil war, repression, and sharp deterioration in economic and living conditions for the majority of the population -- reflect a long process of bad leadership in the country since independence in January 1956. A succession of sectarian governments, Benaiah Yongo-Bure • 15 min read
MER Article Sudan: Politics and Society Sudan is a vast country, the largest in Africa and as large as the United States east of the Mississippi river. Its 25 million people are divided among 19 major ethnic groups and 597 subgroups. [1] Arabic is the official language, the mother tongue of the majority of Sudanese; English Martha Wenger • 12 min read
MER Article From the Editors Iraq and Kuwait, on the eastern frontier of the Arab world, represent one face of the region’s future. Sudan, on the southern frontier, represents another. Unlike the regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Sabahs, the Khartoum junta led by Omar al-Bashir has experienced neither constraint nor favor from The Editors • 2 min read
