Abstract
Modern Sudan (North and South) has not enjoyed lasting peace. Sudan’s civil wars have been perceived to be primarily caused by its ethnic and tribal groups. This study uses a qualitative approach to analyze secondary data on the disputants and the causes of their conflicts. It demystifies the concepts of ethnicity and tribalism in order to examine why the conflicts appear to be unending in Sudan’s two republics. The findings reveal that the conflicts are not rooted in the identities of Sudan’s people. Their conflicts are about political autonomy, the distribution of the wealth derived from their scarce resources, issues of governance, and disputes over political boundaries.
Introduction
As the International Commission of Inquiry (2005) reports, greater Sudan (before the secession of South Sudan) was a federal republic, which was divided into 26 sub-national states with a population amounting to about 40 million people. Most of the population (68%) was rural. According to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals Report (2015) the percentage of the rural population is greater in the South, where 98 percent of the people live in rural areas. Paglia (2008) has argued that when Sudan gained its independence in 1956, it was clear from the onset that peace could not last if an agreement between the North and South was not reached. The conflict that erupted in 2002 culminated in the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on January 9, 2005 which gave rise to a period of six-year autonomy for the South, an even share of oil revenues between North and South, as well as the integration of the rebels into the regular army. Unfortunately, the leader of the South, John Garang, who had negotiated the CPA and desired to give unity a second chance, was killed in a helicopter crash six months after the agreement was signed. For many, he was construed as the last major Southern leader who truly believed that unity was possible and desirable for both countries. As such, some questions beg answers. For one and many, why did this attempt fail? Could it be that, negotiators only managed to convince the two sides to sign agreements which they did not respect? Could it be that the international community did not exert sufficient pressure to ensure that the agreement would be implemented? Key questions indeed, but what remains critical is the unresolved issues concerning the future and not the past. According to Johnson (1998), Sudan would remain an unstable state with cycles of ruthless civil wars.
According to Jok (2012), the political forces in Sudan have failed to construct a comfortable narrative for its diverse ethnic and religious groups. Instead, Jok argues that they have established discriminatory and racial institutions, which have produced civil violence in Sudan fundamentally based on a conflict of identities, racism, and discrimination. El-Affendi (1990) concludes that the prominent hostility of Muslims in the North to Christianity and the counterforce of resistance from Christian South has led to the present wars in the country. Jok (2001, p. 5) contends Sudan is a country “where old habit persists.” He believes this is because in the past, professional slavers from the Muslim Arab area in the North sneaked into the territories of the South and Nuba Mountains, where they kidnapped indigenous Africans for trafficking them in the North and beyond. Deng (1993) observes that the successive governments in Sudan have been led by Muslims who identify themselves as Arabs. As such, they pursued an ideology of Arabization and Islamization of public institutions in order to establish national identity. Al-Rahim (1973), a Sudanese scholar, described Sudan as a very unique country in Africa which embraces contradictory racial identities that represent it as Arab–Africa with Islamic African traditions.
According to Miles and Brown (2004), a discriminating power builds institutions on the principle of exclusion of the opposing distinctive culture. In view of this observation, the imposed adoption of Islamic and Arabic culture in national institutions, therefore, represents the exclusion of the presence of the African Christians, the African Muslims, and the African animists in Sudan. The observation by two scholars with respect to this phenomenon is critical. First, An-Na’im (1993) argues that the imposition of Sharia law above other religions and cultures in the national constitution as a main source of legislation, which places the non-Muslims in an inferior status in the country. Hassan (2007) observes that in Sudan, there is an African Islam in Darfur, which is unique and different from the classical Islam of Muslim Arabs in the far North and center of present Sudan. This favors Islamic Arab culture over other religions and cultures in Sudan. That model clearly constitutes the dynamics of racism and discrimination, although indeed the Sudanese believe that they are different culturally, ethnically, and religiously.
Anderson (1991) defines nation as an imagined political community that imagines itself inherently limited and sovereign. For Anderson (ibid., p. 6) it is imagined, because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow country members or do not hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” This theory is quite relevant in explaining the diversity of ethnic and cultural groups in Sudan. Jok (2012, p. 27) notes that, this theory;
helps us to understand or expound that the populations living in the current territory of Sudan are of different ethnicities, cultures, religions, traditions and customs, yet they still live in the territory, where they imagine themselves as one people sharing the territorial nation state, Sudan.
According to Lee (2004), Malaysia is a country composed of ethnic Chinese, Indians, and indigenous Malays. Lee argues that Malaysian politicians take this diversity as a base for constructing the country’s national institutions. The customs and traditions of these different ethnic groups are the sources for the integration of the nation, therefore, there should be strength in this diversity and not fragility.
In order to have an overview of the Sudanese ethnic scenario, there is a need to identify the main ethnic groups. For the purpose of this study, the Encyclopedia of the Orient’s classification has been used, which shows nine major ethnic groups. In Table 1, each is subdivided in smaller ethnic groups. This table presents these groupings and their percentage of Sudan’s total population.
Sudanese ethnic identities have been constructed as a result of their historical backgrounds and cultural habits. It may appear at first glance that most of the conflict in Sudan can be regarded as ethnic in nature. But is ethnicity the root cause for conflict? According to Paglia (2008, p 15), “The answer is no, because ethnic groups are not conflictive per se.” Phillips (2004), the Director of Minority Rights Group International, wrote in 1995 that “attempts to portray the conflict in North–South or Arab–African terms disguise the complexities of a war fought by multiethnic groups where religious differences colour struggles over access to land or political power.” Judging by the relative peacefulness that was obtained in previous centuries, ethnic diversity does not appear to have constituted a major problem in Sudan’s multiethnic past.
Main Sudanese Ethnic Groups
In fact, ethnic diversity appears to have become a cause of conflict only as a consequence of external exigencies. The literature on the causes of conflict shows that factors like economic and political competition, marginalization, and inequality, tend to have a negative impact on ethnic diversity. Thus, Deng (2000, p. 367) argues:
Ethnic identities in themselves are not conflictual, just as individuals are not inherently in conflict merely because of their different identities and characteristics. Rather, it is unmanaged or mismanaged competition for power, wealth, or status broadly defined that provides the basis for conflict.”
And Nagata cited in Fenton (2003) views ethnicity as dependent on changing social circumstances and external forces. Therefore, the level of consciousness and political organization of an ethnic group is less the product of its internal social and cultural factors than it is the product of external political and economic circumstances. This may offer an explanation as to why ethnic identities may be socially quiet for long periods of time but burst into action when there is a critical change in the surrounding circumstances (ibid.). In fact, it would appear that it is the exploitation of ethnicity by key actors that reinforces the idea of diversity to the extent that it becomes a source of conflict—be they political or religious elites. For that matter, Fenton (ibid., p. 111) speaks of state-sponsored ethnicity arguing that, “Once the state takes a hand in using ethnic categories to allocate resources, it both creates or confirms ethnic categories and makes ethnicity a politically instrumental principle.” This view is echoed by Lake and Donald (1996), who argue that ethnic conflict is not caused directly by inter-group differences but by collective fears of the future in which political entrepreneurs polarize the society. Other researchers argue that ethnicity does not cause conflict. For instance, Young (2002, p. 538) affirms,
Cultural pluralism alone is not the prime determinant. In a culturally plural society, however, once armed conflict is interwoven with politics, identity is virtually certain to become part of the larger patterns of confrontation, even though the ways in which communal determinants operate are very diverse.
In the same vein, Mueller (2000) concludes that the wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda did not necessarily derive from the ethnic peculiarities of those regions. He argues that ethnicity proved essentially to be just the characteristic around which the perpetrators and the politicians who recruited and encouraged them happened to array themselves. As such, ethnicity was more of an ordering device or principle, and not a crucial motivating force.
Theoretical Framework
Defining what is a tribe and an ethnic group helps to reveal why tribalism and ethnicity are not the root causes for conflict and also to establish the role of different identities in Africa’s civil wars. The following theoretical framework defines what ethnicity and tribalism are and redefines their role in the emergence of the conflict. First, we need to define the key concepts. As Appiah (1999, p. 703) states, “Tribe is thought of as a group of people who are descended from common ancestors and ruled by a hereditary ‘chief’, who share a single culture (including, in particular, language, and religion), and who live in a well-defined geographical region.” But Paglia (2008) argues that the concept of tribe in modern usage is wrong. It belongs to nineteenth century colonialism and does not refer to a concrete homogeneous identity. Today’s African identities are not necessarily based on common ancestors and well-defined geographical regions. For Paglia, tribalism is a concept that belongs to the nineteenth century, but it is still used to describe some African societies. Anthropologists of that colonial period believed that all African peoples lived in tribes and that tribes represented a primitive stage of human social development. Further, Paglia argues that, it has often been stressed that the term tribe has discriminatory connotations underlining the primitiveness of a group in relation to the advancement of another group. This European colonial nineteenth century concept of tribe oversimplified the pluralist nature of African identities, whereby a person was not only identified with a tribe but with other social forms of organization as well. These other bases for collective identities included the village community, clans, and lineages.
In fact, a tribe referred to the gathering of clans and subclans, with a clan generally being a family tree of common male or female descendants (Davies, 1995). A village community in Africa was composed of different clans or lineages. Appiah (1999) argues that while tribes might have shared many of their daily life activities with their village neighbors, they had political loyalties to rulers elsewhere, especially in the precolonial African states and empires. They also had connections to people in other villages and towns through trade and secret societies. Thus, a tribe was not a homogeneous identity, neither was it the only political unit found in Africa. Sultanates, Kingdoms and Empires which grouped a lot of diverse groups of people also existed throughout North and sub-Saharan Africa.
Therefore, today’s usage of the word tribe does not correspond to what African identities were in the past. In the colonial era, urbanization led to migrations as did civil wars, thereby mixing people with former tribal identities. Appiah contends that the identities of villages became less important with the increase of urbanization in Africa. Some social organizations were targeted for destruction in the colonial epoch for their involvement in rituals and religious beliefs that were perceived to be inconsistent with Christianity or European norms. In that context, the significance of geographical location and common ancestry inherent in the definition of tribe was diminished.
Appiah (ibid., p. 703) clarifies that today when one refers to tribe, the emphasis is not on the history of a specific group, rather, he says it is an “ethnonym.” Ethnic names, or ethnonyms, are the “products of the interaction between the ideas of European colonial officials and anthropologists, on the one hand, and pre-existing ways of classifying people in Africa’s many precolonial societies, on the other” (ibid., p. 703). Wiley (1981) laments that the misnaming of African ethnicity as tribalism has long bedeviled United States’ foreign policy in Africa. According to him, this has led to miscalculations and errors of judgement. When people respond to a political entity as just a tribal reality, they risk misjudging its strength, its potential organization or the breadth of its appeal. This was clearly the case in labelling as tribal groups the three political liberation movements of Angola.
Johnson (2003) contends that the usage of the term tribe in Sudan is merely retained for its political connotation. It politically combines smaller affiliated groupings with recognized consensus among Sudanese groups of their belonging to certain tribes. Johnson (1998) recognizes that the term tribe is a very general concept whose definition varies from people to people. For example, the Nuer group of Sudan defines tribe, as a unit having common descent, and where this affiliation is stronger in cases of defense, whereas the Dinka of Sudan believe that belonging to the same tribe means having a relationship to a common lineage of spiritual leaders (ibid). Therefore, like other scholars, Johnson emphasizes that tribes are not rigid categories, but simply an ethnonym. Indeed, what is commonly called tribe is in essence a reference to certain ethnic groups. According to Paglia (2008) ethnicity has been the basis of very heated debates over its meaning and definition. But it appears that there is a general consensus that an ethnic group is characterized by common descent and culture.
A distinction between ethnic groups and nations must be made clear from the outset. While both nations and ethnic groups are based on the same concepts of common culture and descent, a nation is different from an ethnic group. Smith (1997) argues that nationalism indeed extends the scope of an ethnic community from purely cultural and social ties to the economic and political spheres and from predominantly private to public affairs. In any case, the main difference between a nation and an ethnic group lies in the fact that the first is a broader term which generally includes the idea of ethnic identity. It is for this reason that Smith views national identities as having an ethnic core, which provides for distinctive features like a common mythology, symbolism, and culture. But, as anthropologist Hylland (1993) points out, nationalism is distinguished by its relationship to the state. Therefore, a nationalist believes that political boundaries should be congruent with cultural boundaries. On the other hand, many ethnic groups do not have command over a state. Also, nationalist groups tend to seek independence, while ethnic groups seek greater participation and/or recognition within the state.
According to Premdas (2001), as opposed to nationalist movements, ethnic groups do not generally seek self-determination. They tend to operate within the parameters of a given state, although on occasion ethnic assertion can evolve into a nationalist movement. Fenton (2003, p. 23) contends that an ethnic group “refers to descent and culture communities with three specific additions: 1. that the group is a kind of sub-set within a nation-state, 2. that the point of reference of difference is typically culture rather than physical appearance, 3. often that the group referred to is ‘other’ to some majority who are presumed to be ‘ethnic’.” This resonates with Pettigrew (1974, p. 180) who asserts that “following Max Weber’s classic definition, an ethnic group is a human collectivity based on an assumption of common origin, real or imagined.”
Paglia (2008) asserts that ethnicity in Sudan and in the Darfur region is not easily recognizable due to the entrenchment and intertwining of the original African and Arab groups. While the conflicts in Sudan have usually been defined as tribal or ethnic, the North–South divide has usually been defined as a conflict between the predominantly Arab, Muslim North and the African and Christian South. The Darfur conflict has been viewed as a conflict between Arab and African tribes. At first sight, and from the surface, it is apparent that the North–South divide involves a prevalently ethnic Arab and Muslim North versus an African, non-Muslim South. Viewed from the same lens, the Darfur crisis involves the Arab tribal militias, the Janjaweed, and the African tribes of the Masalit, Zaghawa, and Fur.
But fundamental questions must be asked. Are there really any pure Africans and pure Arabs? What defines ethnicity in the Sudan? To what extent does ethnicity count in Sudan’s conflicts? Is ethnicity the ultimate cause for conflict? Can the Sudanese North–South conflict really be described as a two-bloc civil war between Arab Muslims and African Christians/animists? In what sense can the Darfur crisis be termed a tribal conflict? In light of the theoretical framework presented above, it is advisable if not rational to search for the answers to these questions and the root causes of these conflicts in the dimensions highlighted below.
The Root Causes of the Current Conflict In Sudan
The conflicts that afflicts the two Sudans today can be classified into various types: There is the North–South conflict over oil, which is stimulated by the North’s resentment over the secession of the South, which led to the loss of both substantial territory and oil revenue. This left the North in a diminished position in which it finds itself today. Even though the North officially accepted the secession, as Ottaway and El-Sadany (2012, p. 6) put it, “it does not take a visitor to the country long to discover that in practice most people have not internalised the new reality and feel deeply resentful.” The South, for its part, is annoyed by the North’s refusal to allow a referendum in the contested border region of Abyei to take place. This could have determined whether the region should belong to the North or South, as well as the implementation of other provisions for the border areas. Also, the South is aggrieved by the general disregard which the North has historically directed toward it. Shared anger also manifests itself most clearly in the disagreement about the transit fees that the landlocked South has to pay to the North to enable shipping its oil through a pipeline that runs to the northern Port Sudan terminal. In this row, both sides appear to be prepared to undermine themselves economically just to score points against each other. According to Ottaway and El-Sadany (ibid.), by April 2012, no oil was being shipped. This meant the South got no revenue from sales and that the North got no transit fees.
The second root cause of conflicts that quickly escalated into violence involves dispute over the control of the territories along the border linking the North and South. This conflict may have been well summed up in a conversation that involved Hassan Turabi, one of the oldest Islamist politicians in Sudan and President Bashir’s ally-turned-enemy, who said: “The New North has a New South” (Ottaway & El-Sadany 2012, p. 6). From the post-secession era, the Khartoum government in the North has been fighting uprisings around its periphery. These are areas in South Kordofan, Blue Nile, and Abyei. It fought in the same areas against the Southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) before the South became independent. Conflict in these areas is created by the presence of various armed rebel groups. These conflicts are quite different from the economic rivalry between the two states that have been focused on pipelines and resource allocation. Probably, an agreement between Juba and Khartoum would not settle the conflicts along the border area because the local populations have been mobilized, liberation movements have been formed, and the capitals’ control is questionable at best (ibid.). This is exacerbated by the fact that the conflict in the border areas are seemingly getting worse than before the CPA was signed in 2005 by the SPLM/A and the Government of Sudan, since they are coupled with widespread fighting and a more fragmented leadership.
The January 2011 referendum, which overwhelmingly approved the secession of the South, did not address all of the important territorial issues. For example, the unclear and undemarcated border tracts; regions that were clearly recognized as part of the North, but expected to be given some form of special status under the provisions of the CPA because of their ties to the South, and the question of whether Abyei should stay within the North or become a part of the South; and the status of South Kordofan as well as the Blue Nile States. In both North and South these territorial problems involve complex issues of nationalism that are held up by deep-seated local grievances and competition for grazing land and water among the local tribes. These unresolved issues relating to the border areas prompted the outbreak of violence soon after the split into two states. Skirmishes began as isolated incidents north of the border, with the hostilities between movements supposedly rooted in the contested areas and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
As noted by Ottaway and El-Sadany (ibid.), by April 2012, the SAF was carrying out bombing raids across the border while the SPLA had crossed North to occupy the town of Heglig. The mediation attempts after the split have involved the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel, Ethiopia, China, and other international powers. What has dominated the negotiations has been the status of Abyei and the removal of troops from the border regions, but these efforts have not yielded very much.
The third root cause is the border demarcation in the CPA. The potential for conflict birthed by the uncertainties emanating from the exact demarcation of the North–South border was acknowledged early in the negotiations that led to the CPA. It is no wonder, the CPA incorporated a provision that a North–South Technical Border Commission should complete the demarcation of the boundary in a period of six months after the signing of the agreement. But this did not happen. Although efforts to establish the commission took place repeatedly throughout the CPA period, with increased intensity in the months preceding the referendum, nothing came to fruition. Maybe, the neglect was partly due to the many of the contested border regions which created disputes over land rights, which although vital to the local populations, did not appear so important from the point of view of national politics. But, the recent conflicts in Abyei, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile States indicate the problems do not only stem from poor border demarcation. Ottaway and El-Sadany (ibid., p. 7) conclude that “Even if the North–South Technical Border Commission had been more diligent in carrying out its task, most conflicts would still have arisen.” This is indicative of more latent exigencies that warrant further probing.
The fourth root cause is the conflict between the Juba government and traditional authorities. Conflicts which involve violence have taken place within South Sudan, where the authority of the central government is contested. The inexperienced and powerless government officials have not been able to impose bureaucratic order on the new country. Furthermore, the notion of a political opposition appears to be missing in this new state. Politicians have been breaking from the ruling SPLM, while routinely forming armed militias instead of political parties. In the larger part of the South, tribal authorities still dominate over modern forms of political governance. Ottaway and El-Sadany (ibid., p. 7) contend that:
While this is an understandable response to the Juba government’s inability to maintain a presence, let alone effectively provide administration, in much of the country, it weakens the government even more, creating a vicious cycle that is difficult to interrupt.
Several of the Southern states continue to witness pronounced levels of violence with continued instability. It is evident that much of this violence is due to competition for control of the natural resources such as land, grazing rights, water and even oil. Although these conflicts may be inevitable in a new country with weak governance structures that is still relying on existing social organizations and tribal structures, this does not make these conflicts less destructive. The government in Khartoum adds another political layer to this problem by taking delight in the troubles bedeviling the South as it did before the South’s independence.
The fifth root cause of conflict is that the North is not without internal conflicts while attempting to build a new state on its truncated territory. Although the North is ahead of the South administratively and in terms of physical infrastructure, poor as they are, it also suffers from a worn-out political system. Old men dominate the government, the opposition and the military (ibid.). It is discredited in the eyes of its own people for having lost the South. Both the military authorities and the civilian officials command little respect and loyalty. Ottaway and El-Sadany believe that the Khartoum government has escaped being ousted as a consequence of the secession because the opposition is also discredited. The Arab Spring did not catalyze the obvious discontent on the ground into a new and popular movement. It also did not lead to the rise of a new and more organized opposition. People in the North continue to suffer displacements and instability owing to the conflict in the Darfur region, the subjugation of the Eastern tribes and contending with a rising sense of dissatisfaction as the economic conditions continue to deteriorate.
Sudan, therefore, finds itself mired in a labyrinth of complex problems. The transition from greater Sudan to the Republics of Sudan and South Sudan has clearly not been a panacea to conflict, rather it marks the commencement of multiple and new unanticipated sources of conflict.
Studies by Ottaway and El-Sadany (ibid.) reveal that Sudan started exporting crude oil in 1999 with oil flows reaching a level of 490,000 barrels per day by 2009. This made oil the greatest resource for the unified Sudan country. Economically, oil remains a significant economic driver for both North and South Sudan today. Although dependence on oil has proved to be a serious long-term impediment to both economic development and democratization in most oil rich countries, including Sudan, in the short run, it represents salvation for poor countries. In Sudan, oil is the most immediate source of conflict. According to Ottaway and El-Sadany (ibid.), by January 9, 2011, the time of the referendum, oil accounted for 60 to 70 percent of government revenue in the North and 98 percent in the South. Coupled with the short-lived prosperity brought about by the sudden revenue increase, oil brought serious distortions to the Sudanese economy.
The country suffered the so-called Dutch disease without retribution, because agriculture, which had been the backbone of the country’s economy before the discovery of oil, was neglected after the discovery of oil. The country became more dependent on food imports with the increase of oil exports. The study by Keng (2011) reveals that between 2000 and 2008, the average annual growth rate of the agriculture sector in Sudan was 3.6 percent as compared to the 10.8 percent rate of the previous decade. The decline in agricultural production led to significant food crises in both the North and the South. In the South, land is abundant and mostly fertile, but agriculture remains underdeveloped. Keng (ibid.) reports that 75 percent of Sudan’s oil is produced below the old colonial line that divided North and South, which became the border between the two countries after the split. This has made the situation potentially volatile because the largest part of the oil fields is located close to that dividing line. This creates the possibility that either side will make a grab for the oil fields of the other side that do not officially belong to them. This happened in April 2012 when the South’s army crossed into the North and seized the Heglig oil fields before retreating.
The problem is compounded by the fact that oil has to be exported through Port Sudan in the North. It is the country’s only pipeline terminal. The South’s alternative of trucking oil southward to the Kenyan coast is impractical. Also, a new pipeline to that destination is prohibitively expensive and there is no hope to do so soon. The sharing of oil revenue had been regulated by the CPA prior to the secession of South Sudan. As reported by Ottaway and El-Sadany (2012), 2 percent of the revenue went directly to the producing states in both North and the South. The remainder was split proportionately between Juba and Khartoum. This formula did not satisfy the South and after it gained independence, and predictably, it stopped sharing its oil revenue with the North. According to Ottaway and El-Sadany, the resultant significant loss of revenue for the North as estimated by the International Monetary Fund amounted to a whopping USD 7.77 billion from July 2011 up to the end of 2015, about USD 1.7 billion per year. Government revenue was estimated at about USD 9.26 billion in 2011. This loss of oil revenue was a shattering blow to the northerners.
Conclusion
African conflicts, and specifically the Sudanese civil conflicts and the Darfur crisis, have been portrayed by the media and politicians as ethnic or tribal. These conflicts have been attributed to assumed ancient ethnic or tribal hatred among the diverse groups. But in this article, the assumption that ethnicity and tribalism are the root causes of African civil conflicts is contested and considered both presumptuous and misleading. Such perceptions and constructs have unfortunately also led to numerous failures by the international community to work out an enduring peace in this part of the postcolonial world.
With respect to tribalism, it has been highlighted that it is a concept adopted in the nineteenth century by the European colonial powers to refer to a primitive stage of social development. In fact, tribalism is an ethnonym, a classification, which incorporates the precolonial classification of African groups into the supremacist and imperialist ideology of the nineteenth century colonialists. The usage of the term tribe in postcolonial Sudan has been retained for referring to certain political associations. Ethnicity is a social construct for differentiating one group from others. It has been argued that in Sudan ethnicity does not explain conflict. It has been exploited by political actors who for economic and political purposes misrepresent Sudan’s conflicts as largely being ethnic in origin.
An attempt has been made in this article to trace the root causes of its conflict to the structural deficiencies inherited by Sudan from its colonial heritage. Colonialism subverted the geopolitical foundation of the postcolonial Sudanese state by creating its artificial borders. It created ethnically homogeneous elites in a multicultural African society and set in motion new forms of identity such as pan-Africanism and pan-Arabism. These conditions have been perpetuated in postcolonial Sudan. The civil wars in Sudan, both the first and second, including the Darfur crisis, stem primarily from uneven economic distribution and regional marginalization and not from ethnic hatred. Arabs and Africans, ethnicity and tribalism are merely concepts. The root cause of conflict in Sudan is not ethnicity or tribalism. The seeds of its conflicts have been sown by decades of marginalization, disproportionate power sharing, inequity in resource allocation, and the political incitement of so-called tribal and ethnic animosities, all of which are inherently political and economic in nature. The inability to identify the root causes of the many conflicts in Sudan has created severe consequences. It has led to ill-informed conflict intervention strategies and unresolved conflicts which will last for years.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.