The Persecuted Church in the Sudan
By Michael Kuju Paul
(Page 1 of 3)
The Sudan, Africa's largest country with a
population of some 27 million and a land area of approximately 2.5 million
square kilometers, is in its 21st year of civil war. This war, the second since
independence in 1956, has pitted the largely arabized and Muslim North against
the South inhabited by African nationalities who espouse Christianity or
traditional African religions. In addition to the size of the country, it is
also the most diversified country in Africa, ethnically, culturally,
linguistically, and geographically.
Ethnically, there are two main physical
types in Sudan - the so called brown and black races. The former have
originated from Arabia, they may have been forced to leave the Arabian
Peninsula at different times, owing primarily to climatical changes, as
periodical droughts forced the population to immigrate. The blacks on
the other hand belonged to an ancient race that was once more widely
dispersed than it is today, in tropical Africa and other parts of the
world such as southern Arabia, India, and Australia. But these two
groups which have their origin in antiquity are not accurate today, many
of the so-called Arabs are Negroid in appearance and some of the
so-called blacks have non Negroid features.
War has been the enduring feature of the
life in the Sudan. For the last 45 years, this huge African country has
been experiencing a bloody and devastating civil war between its
Northern and Southern parts. It is estimated that this brutal conflict
has so far claimed over two million lives of African Southern Sudanese,
displacing over four million internally, and sent about two millions as
refugees into the neighboring countries of East and Central Africa as
well as to the Western World. This war has totally crippled and
destroyed the national economy and whatever infrastructure had existed
in the Southern Sudan.
When reading press reports about what is
happening in the Sudan, the prevailing impression is likely to be for a
war between the Southern Sudan and Northern Sudan, between Africans of
the South and the Arabs of the North, between Christians of Southern
Sudan and Muslims of Northern Sudan, etc. these are indeed the issues
that exacerbated the suspicion and even the hostilities that have given
rise to the situation over the years. But they do not tell the whole
story, for basically the problem is historical in origin and political
in nature. Before the current border was imposed on the many ethnic
groups inhabiting the Sudan, the Arab tribes of the North predicted the
north-south relationship on the slave industry. The enslaver-to-slave
relationship had endured through centuries of civilization and
education. To this day, the Northern Sudanese still refer to Southern
Sudanese in general as slaves. The Southerners on the other hand have
never forgiven the Arabs for their past actions, especially the fact
that Arabs persist in carrying out slave raids even today.
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