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FOOT STEPS TO FREEDOM
BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTHERN
SUDAN.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa, with Egypt directly above
it and Uganda below it. The Red Sea is what separates Sudan from Saudi
Arabia and the other Arab countries. Most of the Sudanese today have known
nothing but the horrors of war in their country. For twenty-three years
their country has been in a state of non-stop war. It is referred to as a
civil war, meaning the war is within the country itself. But, it is not a
war of African tribes fighting one another. This war is about Arabs,
Islamic anti-Christian politics, and oil.
In 1973, George Bush visited Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan,
and informed Nimeiri, the Arab president of Sudan, that the U.S.
government had found oil in Southern Sudan in the areas of Bentiu, Nasir,
and Malakal. The U.S. government found this oil by using satellite
remote-sensing intelligence. Bush told Nimeiri that he would send Chevron
over to look for oil in the South. He was granted a licence to look for
oil. Bush also signed a secret agreement to explore areas near Darfur
where where uranium deposits had been found and could be refined for use
in nuclear weapons. In 1978, Chevron struck oil in the South near the town
of Bentiu. Chevron dealt with the Arab government, but according to the
Addis Ababa agreement, the Southerners, being the Africans, were supposed
to receive the revenues from minerals or deposits on their land. So,
Nimeiri tried to move the border so that the oil and uranium were to be in
the North rather than the South.
At the same time, the Arabs are a Muslim government who had decided
to force Sharia Law, or Islamic Law upon the whole country~the Arabs and
the Africans. The Africans resisted the imposition of Islamic Law because
of the harsh punishments such as amputations, flogging, and stoning. Also,
non-Muslims may not rule over Muslims which meant the Africans who are
Christian would be forbidden from the highest political offices. Under
Islamic Law, Christians would have fewer civil rights than Muslims and
those of Africa's traditional religions would have no rights at all.
Understandably, the Africans began to resist. They formed a militia
called Anyanya 1 1 and started to fight back in small groups in the South.
In 1983, Colonel John Garang, a Dinka army officer with a PHD from Iowa
State University, was sent to mediate a pay dispute Southern Soldiers had
with their commanders. But, instead he fled with the men across the border
to Ethiopia and urged them to rise up against Nimeiri's Islamic
Government. He developed the SPLA~Sudan People's Liberation Army to fight
not for independance but for a secular, socialist Sudan. So, Nimeiri
imposed a very harsh version of Islamic Law on all of Sudan. The Arabs
were determined to make all of Sudan a Muslim country enforcing extreme
Islamic Law, and they were determined to call the oil their own. They were
also determined to kill off anyone and anything that stood in their way.
The Africans were determined to fight for their human rights as citizens
of a country that they had always inhabited.
So, this is the history that has led to the complete genocide and
destruction of the African people, their livelihoods, all churches and
structures, homes and villages until they were left with nothing.
In January of 2005, the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) was
signed. However, there was not an agreement on how Sudan should now exist.
The Arabs want one country to be still governed by them. The Africans want
to separate and divide the country so that they may govern the South as
their own. When an
agreement could not be reached, the UN decided to give the peace a trial
period until 2011 at which time a Referrendum would take place and the
people would vote for what they want the future of Sudan to be.