Rethinking the civil war in Sudan

Abstract

A troubled country, the largest in a troubled continent, the Sudan surely tells one of the most tragic stories of war. The war is presented in the West as a religiously inspired persecution of Christian tribesmen in the south by the Islamic Fundamentalist government. The real story, however, is one of continued opposition and periodic fighting since shortly before independence in 1956 (and in other forms before then), and one in which a great variety of actors have a role. The purpose of this article is to argue that the war in Sudan has much less to do with religious intolerance and involves many other factors: regional and global politics and basic issues of food and water.