A Great Description of Sudan

Anyone who is interested in South Sudan should read Emma’s War by Deborah Scroggins. On page 79, there is a great description that I want to share with you.

What has happened cannot be made to not to have happened, and often in Sudan I have felt that what has happened cannot be made to stop happening. The British-Sudanese writer Jamal al-Mahjouib once said that to understand the Sudan, you need a layered map like one of those cellophane diagrams of the human body that used to be in encyclopedias. As you peeled away the top piece of cellophane labeled “Sudan”, you would find a succession of maps lying underneath. A map of languages, for example, and under that a map of ethnic groups, and under that a map of ancient kingdoms, until, as Mahjoub wrote, “it becomes clear the country is not really a country at all, but many. A composite of layers, like a genetic fingerprint of memories that were once fluid, but have since crystallized out from the crucible of possibility, encouraged by the catalyst of the European colonial adventure.”

I have often thought that you need a similar kind of layered map to understand Sudan’s civil war. A surface map of political conflict, for example – the northern government versus the southern rebels; and under that a layer of religious conflict-Muslim versus Christian and pagan; and under that a map of all the sectarian divisions within those categories; and under that a layer of ethnic divisions – Arab and Arabized versus Nilotic and Equatorian – all of them containing a multitude of clan and tribal subdivisions; and under that a layer of linguistic conflicts; and under that a layer of economic divisions- the more developed north with fewer natural resources versus the poorer south with its rich mineral and fossil fuel deposits; and under that a layer of colonial divisions; and under that a layer of racial divisions related to slavery. And so on and so on until it would become clear that the war, like the country was not one but many; a violent ecosystem capable of generating endless new things to fight about without ever shedding any of the old ones.