After a decade of uneasy peace, the historic conflict between the Northern Sudanese, who identify with their Middle Eastern neighbors, and the Southern Sudanese, who are of African heritage, erupted into violent conflict in 1983. This ferocious civil war, with its Arab militias and widespread use of automatic weapons, has devastated the populace. N

After a decade of uneasy peace, the historic conflict between the North and South Sudanese erupted into violent conflict in 1983 This ferocious civil war, witti its Arab militias and widespread use of automatic weapons, has devastated the populace. In additon to the miseries of war, drought and famine took a further toll on an already battered societyalthough this regional calamity remains largely unknown to the outside world, over 1,000,000 people have either perished or been displaced. Furthermore, the Sudanese government seemed little inclined to help its own people Requiem for the Sudan provides a chilling account of the ravages of drought and civil war, graphically recounting how attempts by international agencies and humanitarian organizations to provide food and medical reliefhave been thwarted by bureaucratic infighting, corruption, greed, and ineptitude. Based on a wealth of previously unpublished documents, Requiem for the Sudan clearly illustrates how the failure of conflict resolution, organizational mismanagement, and a government hostile toward its own people had tragic human consequences.

Omar al-Bashir came into power in 1989. Sudan was gripped by famine caused by drought as well as a devastating civil war between the north and south. Its economy was in shambles. Bashir headed a coup to overthrow Sudan’s democratic government, and many hoped it would finally bring order to the country. After the coup, Bashir suspended the constitution and appointed himself head of state, prime minister, defense minister, and commander in chief of the army. It soon became clear that his objective was to turn Sudan into a strict Islamic state, even though most people in South Sudan are not Muslim. He dismissed, imprisoned, and even executed those who disagreed with his measures and continued the war in the south, destroying entire villages and scattering their populations. Then in 2003, a crisis arose in the western area of Darfur. Drought had brought farmers and herders into conflict over the land. Bashir armed pro-Arab militia, who worked with the military to bring the same destruction of villages to Darfur. In 2008 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir for crimes against humanity. In Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan, learn more about this ruthless dictator and how the international spotlight might help bring an end to his repressive rule.

For twenty years, southern Sudan has been the site of a tragic and brutal civil war, pitting the northern-based Arab and Islamic government against rebels in African marginalized areas, especially the south. More than two million people have died and four million have been displaced as a result. In 1999, anew element radically changed the war: Sudanese oil, located in the south, was firs exported by the central government. The human price of this bonanza is immeasurable. The government, using oil revenues and aided by co-opted southerners, rained a scorched earth campaign of mass displacement, bombing, and terror on the agro-pastoral southern civilians living in and near the oil zones. The displaced number in the hundreds of thousands.

This is a collection of twenty essays written over forty years between 1962 and 2004 on the Sudan, southern Sudan and Darfur. Four decades of civil war has cost more than two million dead and another six million refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. Now, after a decade of ambivalent and frustrating negotiations, a peace agreement between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Government of the Sudan has finally been signed on 9 January 2005 leaving in its wake a devastated southern Sudan - its infrastructure completely destroyed, its fragile economy in ruins, and its people exhausted after nearly half a century of fierce fighting. Although these twenty essays include such topics as nation-building, the dynamics of racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious identity, the politics of oil, and the legacy of slavery, most of them are concerned with conflict in the Sudan, its participants, and the reasons why and it began and has continued for so long. These essays are presented here in chronological order, the aggregate becomes a unique history of the Sudan's terrible civil war that cannot be found elsewhere. the independent Sudan are woven into the text of each revealing new insights into the history of these tumultuous decades.

This account of the tragic civil war in Sudan is more than a skillful journalist's firsthand report. Meyer also offers a deeper understanding of the cultural, racial, and religious fault-lines that divide the world at the start of the 21st century.

A History of the Sudan by Martin Daly and PM Holt, sixth edition, has been fully revised and updated and covers the most recent developments that have occurred in Sudan over the last nine years, including the crisis in Darfur. The most notable developments that this text covers includes the decades-long civil war in the South (with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005); the emergence of the Sudan as an oil-producer and exporter, and its resulting higher profile in global economic affairs, notably as a partner of China; the emergence of al-Qaeda, the relations of Sudanese authorities with Osama bin Laden (whose headquarters were in the Sudan in the 1990s), and the Sudanese government's complicated relations with the West. This text is key introductory reading for any student of North Africa.