Sudan

Sudan is a nation in East Africa, which has the largest land area of any country in Africa. It gained independence from the United Kingdom, and has had near-continuous civil wars and local conflicts since then. The Second Sudanese Civil War, which officially ended with the Power-Sharing Agreement in 2005, included provisions for a referendum, in 2011, in which South Sudan will have the option of whether or not to become an independent nation; the South now issues its own currency and conducts its own foreign policy. There is also an active struggle in the Darfur region in the west of the country, with the most important border being with Chad; elements of one of the rebel groups in Darfur attacked Omdurman, the sister city/suburb of the national capital, Khartoum, in May 2008.

While both the Darfur Conflict and the Civil Wars are complex, they are principally ethnic struggles. North Darfur, which has historically held the most power, predominantly is Arab and Muslim. South Darfur is much more mixed, with Nilotic and other subsaharan ethnicities, and a mixture of Christian, indigenous animist, and Muslim religions. Darfur is populated by several groups, led by the Fur people (Darfur means "land of the Fur"), who are Muslim of subsaharan ancestry, tracing their ancestry to a people in the current area of Nigeria. Before the struggle fragmented into several groups, the conflict was between Baggara Arabs, who are a nomadic people, and farming groups such as the Fur, Daju and Masalit.

One of the factors in the conflict is the increasing significance of oil; Sudan is self-sufficient and beginning to export. Economically viable oilfields were discovered in 1974 by Chevron Oil, who did not pursue their concession due to security concerns. Later, Western firms such as Talisman of Canada, established working fields in the South, centered around Bentiu, but eventually withdrew over shareholder human rights protest. The main oil consortium is the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC), with ownership split among the People's Republic of China, India, and Malaysia; Sudan has a minor share.

Geography

Sudan shares boundaries with:

• Central African Republic 1,165 km
• Chad 1,360 km
• Democratic Republic of the Congo 628 km
• Egypt 1,273 km
• Eritrea 605 km
• Ethiopia 1,606 km
• Kenya 232 km
• Libya 383 km
• Uganda 435 km

The Blue and White Nile rivers join to form the Nile at the Khartoum-Omdurman area. Sudan has significant internal river transport, and Port Sudan is on the Red Sea.