A Crisis Normalised

11
The period of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956) brought a number of significant changes to
Blue Nile. First, the imposition of the Pax Britannica on the Sudan benefited the “indigenous” communities
of Blue Nile: less threatened from the outside, some were able to expand their cultivation and develop their
livestock. 18 Second, the newly drawn border with Ethiopia gave the area increased strategic importance, and
a border post was set up in Kurmuk in 1910. 19 Ethiopia’s borderlands on the other side of this frontier – the
regions of Benishangul and Gambella – were to play a major role in the history of Sudan’s second civil war.
The current border between South Sudan and Sudan was also shaped during the Condominium. In 1938, it
was decided that the southern territories of Kurmuk District in the northern Blue Nile Province, where the
“primitive pagan tribes” of the Maban, Uduk and Koma lived, should be transferred to the authority of the
southern Upper Nile Province. 20 Christian missionary work, limited at the time to southern non-Muslim
provinces, was therefore allowed into these areas from this point. 21 However, in 1953, three years before
Sudan gained its independence, two sub-districts – that of the Uduk (the territory of Chali al-Fil) and that of
the Koma (Yabus) – were transferred back to the north, into Blue Nile Province, mainly for administrative
convenience. 22 These changes have influenced the area significantly, and continue to do so.
Blue Nile during Sudan’s second civil war
In recent decades, conflict and displacement became an increasingly salient feature of life in southern Blue
Nile. Although Blue Nile was relatively unaffected by the violence of Sudan’s first civil war and the
government's campaign against the newly formed Anya-Nya, 23 the situation changed dramatically during
Sudan’s second civil war, which started in 1983. With SPLA bases in Ethiopia to the east, and Southern Sudan’s
SPLA strongholds to the south, from the mid-1980s Blue Nile became an important theatre in the war. As a
result, people living in Blue Nile became increasingly drawn into the wider Sudanese conflict.
During the first years of the second civil war, the Ethiopian Derg regime supported the SPLA, and allowed it
to establish bases inside Ethiopia across the Sudanese border. SPLA troops therefore arrived in southern Blue
Nile as they crossed the southern areas of the state on their way to and from Ethiopia, and young men,
predominantly among the Uduk and Ingessana, joined the new movement. 24 The SPLA’s original cause, a
18
H. R. J. Davies, “Cultures under Pressure in the Sudan: the Ingessana and the Uduk,” Geo Journal 36(1), (1995), 67.
19
The first post was set up in Jebel Surkum in 1904 but was moved to Kurmuk, which is on the frontier, in 1910. Wendy
James, War and Survival in Sudan’s Frontierlands: Voices from the Blue Nile, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, 11,
20-21 (James, 2007).
20
Douglas H. Johnson, When Boundaries Become Borders: The impact of boundary-making in Southern Sudan's frontier
zones, Rift Valley Institute, 2010, 74-80.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
The first civil war started shortly before the country’s independence in 1956 but escalated only after the formation of
the Anya-Nya movement in 1963. Despite the fact that the violence spread into Upper Nile Province and in some cases
also across the border into Ethiopia, it did not reach Blue Nile. See Øystein H. Rolandsen, “The making of the Anya-Nya
insurgency in the Southern Sudan,” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 5(2) (2011), 211-232.
24
Douglas H. Johnson & Gerard Prunier, The Foundation and Expansion of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, in Civil
War in the Sudan, M.W. Daly & Ahmad Alwad Sikainga (eds.), British Academic Press, London, 1993, 136 (Johnson &
Prunier, 1993).
SEPTEMBER 2016