Colonialism’s Link to the Creation of South Sudan

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January 27, 2012

Any nation’s history has a continuous influence on its development. For many countries, their development has been affected by colonialism, when the land was governed by another entity. The importance of colonial history was evident in Sudan in January, 2011 when a referendum asked voters of southern Sudan to decide between separating from Sudan and maintaining a unified Sudan. Nearly 99 percent of eligible voters cast their ballot for independence thereby ending the 55 year existence of the largest nation in African (Hanzich, 2011). An extremely diverse country in which governmental decisions have favored the Arab population of the North, Sudan’s existence has been marked by strife. For all but 12 years, Sudan has been torn apart by civil wars. Since the colonial period ended, Sudan’s central government could not use violence, oppression, or peace agreements to minimize colonialism’s impact and establish a sense of unity in the country. Thus, the creation of South Sudan stems from colonization which confined opposing factions within one political boundary and created a history of civil war. The artificial political boundaries established by Sudan’s colonial powers—Egypt and Great Britain—brought together diversity for which Sudan’s central government could not build unity. Building cohesion has been difficult because colonial powers determined a country’s borders “according to colonial territorial holdings not along ethnic communities, and tended to practice the strategy of divide and rule to minimize local challenges against the colonial authority” (Ylonen, 2009, p. 39). In Sudan the British created boundaries that allowed them to have claim on the largest country in Africa. No consideration was given to the diverse cultures present within those boundaries. Instead, the British colonial powers simply assumed that the 19 major ethnic groups containing 597 subgroups could be forced to live together and respect a government in which the majority of ethnic groups had no representation (Walzer, 2009). However, this immense diversity made it difficult to establish a national language, a national ethnicity, or a national identity, particularly when the attempt to do build any nationalism was done at the expense of the minority groups. Sudan’s colonial government aligned itself with people with Arabic ethnicity. This alignment continued in the post –colonial years as Arabs dominated governmental positions and attempted to build Sudan’s national identity by imposing the Arab language and other Arab cultural elements throughout Sudan. While northern Sudan, both during and after colonialism, has been dominated by an Arab heritage, southern Sudan has more of an African heritage. As a result, colonial and post-colonial efforts to establish and maintain an Arab identity throughout Sudan have been resisted by people who believe that the ethnic and tribal identities within Sudan need to be maintained rather than replaced by a belief in Arab supremacy (Sharkey, 2003). Conflicting views generated by the ethnic diversity have contributed to the desire to create the separate nation of South Sudan. The colonial political boundaries also forced together religious diversity including Muslims, animists, and Christians. While Sudan’s population is composed of mostly Muslims, it is important to understand that Islam is the dominant religion only in north Sudan. In south Sudan, Christianity is the dominant religion. Within both religions, the ritualistic practices of indigenous religions are still evident within many of the ethnic groups in Sudan (Walzer, 2009). Despite this reality, Sudan’s central government, following the lead of the colonial government’s establishment of a preferred identity, continued to impose the religious majority’s beliefs throughout the nation. Efforts to use Islam as a basis for defining Sudan’s national identity have created opposition from those with different belief systems. It is this opposition which contributed to years of internal strife before the creation of South Sudan in 2011. Artificial boundaries also created a country with significant geographic diversity which has caused the government to establish policies and practices resulting in economic marginalization. Within Sudan, the north is comprised of deserts and semi-deserts, central Sudan of dry savannah, and south Sudan savannahs, swamplands, and rainforests. The diverse geography meant that the central government had to manage the varied natural resources in a way that enhanced the central government while also providing regional people with benefits from their natural resources. However, following the patterns of the British colonial government, Sudan’s central government exploited the resources from different geographic reasons for the primary benefit of north Sudan (Omeje, 2010). Clear evidence of this exploitation developed when the oil from southern Sudan provided economic advantages to the politically powerful Arab-Muslims with minimal consideration of the economic needs of the regional people. Furthermore, the central government has also attempted to divert the Nile River’s water away from south Sudan and into north Sudan. (Ylonen, 2009). Such exploitation of natural resources imitated colonial practices, disenfranchised local people, and delayed a national identity by creating internal conflict within Sudan’s boundaries. Sudan’s central government had minimal problems with the economic exploitation because, since colonial times, the government virtually eliminated the possibility of political involvement by people from southern Sudan. “By privileging Arabic-speaking, northern riverain Muslims for the most advanced colonial education available, the Sudan’s educational policies produced an ethnically specific national elite” (Sharkey, 2003, p. 9). By providing for the education of Arab-Muslims, the government also provided this elite group with political positions and governmental jobs. As a result, few positions remained for others, specifically those in the South. This intentional effort to minimize participation in politics continued to spur conflict between the people of south Sudan and north Sudan. People in south Sudan appreciated their African heritage and believed they had a right to political involvement despite their distance from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and despite having a different ethnicity and religious beliefs from those in power. Seeing no reason to be forced to accept Arab-Muslims as the superior people who determined national policy, the people in the South rebelled. At the same time, those in power in the North, following the pattern established by the colonial government, believed they had no obligation to share power with people in the South. As a result, civil war has been a significant aspect of Sudanese culture since its 1956 independence. Sudan’s federal government’s desire to hold on to politically divisive colonial policies led to two intense periods of civil war. The first civil war extended from 1955 until the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 attempted to empower the people living in southern Sudan by limiting the authority of the central government, focusing on the development of the South, and offering more tolerance for diverse belief systems. Such policies, if followed, would reduce the conflict between the Arab-Muslims and the non-Arabic, non-Islamic citizens by recognizing the diversity in resources and people in the South and promoting their involvement in the political and economic processes within the country. However, the government’s ability to free itself from years of belief in the superiority of Arab-Muslims limited the follow through on the peace agreement. Within 10 years, Sudan’s leadership not only canceled the peace agreement but also imposed Shari’a law on the entire country. Such decisions ignited the 22 year (1983-2005) conflict, the Second Sudanese Civil War (Hanzich, 2011). Again, the conflict originated from the government’s imposition of a national identity based on ethnicity (Arab) and religion (Islam), the government’s exploitation of natural resources, and government’s limitations placed on political involvement of all citizens. In addition, the governmental involvement now included persecuting non-believers and anyone who protested military tactics against the South. Prior to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending the civil war, the war resulted in 600,000 refugees, four million displaced persons, and two million deaths (Hazich, 2011). One peace agreement does not simply remove the historic precedence which attempted to eliminate diversity and marginalize the people within a large portion of the country. As a result, nearly six years after the peace agreement, the people of south Sudan overwhelmingly supported a referendum to separate from Sudan and create South Sudan. The 2011 creation of South Sudan stemmed from colonial governmental policies which forced extreme diversity into artificial boundaries and years of internal conflict in civil wars. Rather than accepting and developing the ethnic and religious diversity within the country, Sudan’s government wanted to impose a national identity associated with Arabic-Muslims. At the same time, the government took advantage of the geographic diversity by using all natural resources for their own advantage rather than the development of the people living within the area. To express their dissatisfaction with the central government’s policies, which matched those developed during the colonial time period, the people in south Sudan rebelled and battled for their rights. The inability for the two sides to compromise and the unwillingness of the southern Sudanese people to respond favorably to being controlled by the central government in the north facilitated the creation of South Sudan in 2011. When a government cannot unite the diversity within a country, the country may need to compromise its national identity or alter the country’s borders. In this situation, the borders were altered and South Sudan emerged as a new nation.

References
Hanzich, R. (2011, Spring). “Struggles in South Sudan: Five months to resolve 55 years of structural violence.” Harvard International Review, 33(1), 38-41. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Omeje, K. (2010). “Markets or oligopolies of violence? The case of Sudan.” African Security, 3(3), 168-169. doi:10.1080/19392206.2010.503856. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Sharkey, H. J. (2003). Living with colonialism: Nationalism and culture in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. (1st ed). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Walzer, C. (Ed.). (2009). Out of exile: Narratives from the abducted and displaced people of Sudan. San Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s.
Ylonen, A. (2009). “On sources of political violence in Africa: The case of the ‘marginalizing state’ in Sudan.” Politica y Cultura, (32), 37-59. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.