Group items tagged

natural resources of Sudan, particularly in the South, where there are significant oil fields.

70% of Sudan's export earnings.

Nile river and heavier precipitation in southern Sudan, the south also has greater access to water, and is therefore much more fertile

last ten years.

mostly Dinka people

Bahr al-Ghazal

being used as slaves in the north.

Some 8,000 people are believed to be living in slavery in Sudan, 200 years after Britain banned the Atlantic slave trade and 153 years after it also tried to abolish slavery in Sudan.

Arab militias rode in to her village on horseback, firing their guns. When the adults fled, the children and cattle were rounded up and made to walk north for five days before they were divided between members of the raiding party.

the U.S. refugee Resettlement Program welcomed a new group of refugees that was unique in many respects

many boys left their villages for refugee camps in Ethiopia. Some traveled with friends or relatives, others slipped away on their own at night. Few had any idea of what lay ahead of them, believing that their journey would last only a few days. Continually under threat, they fled for their lives, losing their way in the wilderness. They lost everything en route to soldiers, swindlers, or bandits. Many fell victim to lethal diseases. Others were so weakened by hunger and lack of sleep that they could go no further and sat down by the roadside, prey for lions and other wild animals.

n 1983, civil war broke out between the northern Arabic-speaking government of Sudan and southern tribes seeking autonomy. Since then, nearly two million people have died and five million have been displaced. Among those displaced are at least 20,000 children, mostly boys, between 7 and 17 years of age who were separated from their families.

He was a young boy when Arab raiders ransacked his village, killed the men, and bound Dang and his mother to a camel.

They were then dragged away from their home in southern Sudan to a life of slavery.

"They let me sleep with goats," Dang told CBN News.

Sudan had two distinct major cultures -- Arab and Black African -- with hundreds of ethnic and tribal divisions and language groups, which makes effective collaboration among them a major problem.

The southern region, which eventually achieved independence as South Sudan, has a population of around 6 million and a predominantly rural, subsistence economy. This region had been negatively affected by war for all but 10 years of the independence period (1956), resulting in serious neglect, lack of infrastructure development, and major destruction and displacement. More than 2 million people died, and more than 4 million were internally displaced or become refugees as a result of the civil war and war-related impacts.

Although Egypt claimed all of the present Sudan during most of the 19th century, it was unable to establish effective control over southern Sudan, which remained an area of fragmented tribes subject to frequent attacks by slave raiders.

autonomy

Southern Sudanese

ealized that the central government intended to divide the Southern government, centralize power, and Arabize and Islamize the entire country.