Despite several new steps towards peace: a new government of national unity in Khartoum, still remains a dream. Fighting has again broken out between the Sudanese army and the former southern rebels, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The violence breaks a deal between Sudan’s Arab north and black African south signed nearly two years ago which was considered the triumph of Africa doing what it should be doing with the support of the international community.
Sudan’s population is one of the most diverse on the African continent. There are two distinct major cultures–“Arab” and black African--with hundreds of ethnic and tribal subdivisions and language groups, which make effective collaboration among them a major political challenge.
In July 2002, the Government of Sudan and the SPLM/A reached a historic agreement on the role of state and religion and the right of southern Sudan to self-determination, the agreement, known as the Machakos Protocol.
It cannot be denied that Sudan’s on-going civil war and inter-ethnic conflict will again see a revival of black chattel slavery, where southern women and children were abducted as slaves by government-armed Arab militia forces.
We can only conclude that Sudan is a place of extraordinary suffering and continuing human rights violations, even though some forward progress can be recorded, and the oil operations in which some oil companies are involved add more suffering.
Via: BBC
