Examining Enterprise Capacity - SSDDRC

Northerners and southerners
perceived the armed conflict
differently. National
governments in northern
Sudan, both civilian and
military, did not address the
armed conflict with a sense
of urgency. Rather, they
considered it a ‘southern
problem’ (Deng 1995).
Ahmed Sikainga, for
example, observes that
northern politicians have
always viewed the south as
“an afterthought, an
appendage and a
marginalized section of the
society” (Sikainga 1993: 81).
Successive democratically
elected governments – the
Umma Party (UP) and its
sectarian twin, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – have consistently avoided addressing the root
causes of the conflict, instead attributing the armed conflict to external factors such as colonialism,
imperialism, communism, Christianity and Zionism (Ali and Mathews 1999: 196). Since 1989, the
northern Islamic military government in Sudan has been claiming that “crusades targeting their
religious orientation have contributed to the war in the south” (ibid). Each of these governments
failed to attribute the root causes of the armed conflict to deeply constructed forms of oppression
and inequality. Historically, the conflict in Sudan has been defined by scholars and historians such as
Francis Deng as a ‘war of visions’ between Muslims and Christians, north and south, and Arabs and
Africans (Deng 1995). While some scholars (Kebbede 1999) broadly endorse Deng’s pragmatic
culturalist vision, they view the unequal distribution of resources as central to the understanding of
the armed conflict (Suliman 1999: 95).
Remnants of the long-running civil war, Juba, April 2006.
The perception that the conflict was due to one static root cause is problematic. Armed conflicts are
not static; they change over time. In Sudan, the overlapping nature of the armed conflict has been
demonstrated by many factors. First, it was a direct result of the lack of socio-economic development
in Southern Sudan. Second, it was the legacy of bitter colonial and post-colonial memories of human
enslavement, predominately carried out by northerners. Third, the conflict was attributed to a series
of untrustworthy acts, un-kept promises and dishonored peace agreements between southerners
and northerners. Since 1983, the discovery and production of oil has added a new dimension to an
already volatile situation, literally fuelling the war.
3 One could trace it back further, of course, to the slavery that took place from the early part of the 19 th century during the
Turco-Egyptian imperial period of modern Sudanese history (1820-1884).
5