General: Sudan

The Country that brings you some of the oldest Archeology around, also brings to you an experience of Hell on Earth.

Sudan is the largest African and Arab country by area. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Ethiopia to the east, Kenya and Uganda to the southeast, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest. It is the tenth largest country in the world by area.

Its very location makes it prime real estate for war and genocide.

Archaeological evidence shows that the area in the north of Sudan was inhabited at least 60,000 years ago. A settled culture appeared in the area around 8000 BCE, living in fortified mud-brick villages, not a lot has changed.

The area was known to the Egyptians as Kush and had strong cultural and religious ties to Egypt.

In the 1890s, the British sought to re-establish their control over Sudan, once more officially in the name of the Egyptian Khedive, but in actuality treating the country as British imperial territory.

By the early 1890s, British, French, and Belgian claims had converged at the Nile headwaters.

Britain feared that the other imperial powers would take advantage of Sudan\'s instability to acquire territory previously annexed to Egypt. Apart from these political considerations, Britain wanted to establish control over the Nile to safeguard a planned irrigation dam at Aswan.

Even when the British ended their occupation of Egypt in 1936 , Sudan remained under British occupation.

The Egyptian Revolution of 1952 finally heralded the beginning of the march towards Sudanese independence. Having abolished the monarchy in 1953, Egypt\'s new leaders believed the only way to end British domination in Sudan was for Egypt to officially abandon its sovereignty over Sudan.

Since Britain\'s own claim to sovereignty in Sudan theoretically depended upon Egyptian sovereignty, the revolutionaries calculated that this tactic would leave Britain with no option but to withdraw.

So, why is this place now rated as hell on earth by me, well, all I can say is, Dafur.

Many have heard of it, but may not know what it is, or where it is, or even what it means, but they will know that it aint good!

The Darfur conflict is a crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The current lines of conflict are seen to be ethnic and tribal, rather than religious.

One side of the armed conflict is composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited mostly from the Arab Baggara tribes of the northern Rizeigat, camel-herding nomads.

The other side comprises a variety of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the land-tilling Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided money and assistance to the militia and has participated in joint attacks targeting the tribes from which the rebels draw support. The conflict began in February of 2003 .

There are many casualty estimates, most concurring on a range within the hundreds of thousands. The United Nations estimates that the conflict has left as many as 450,000 dead from violence and disease.

As many as 2.5 million are thought to have been displaced as of October 2006, thats like the entire population of Houston in the USA!

The Sudanese government has suppressed information by jailing and killing witnesses and tampered with evidence such as mass graves to eliminate their forensic values.

In addition, by obstructing and arresting journalists, the Sudanese government has been able to obscure much of what has gone on. The mass media once described the conflict as both \"ethnic cleansing\" and \"genocide,\" and now do so without hesitation.

After fighting worsened in July and August 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved a Resolution which called for a new 17000 troop UN peacekeeping force to supplant or supplement a poorly funded, ill-equipped 7000 troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force.

Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The next day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region.

The conflict taking place in Darfur has many interwoven causes. The major dilemma in Darfur is the extreme shortage of food, forcing the communitry to cannibalize their own kind. While rooted in structural inequality between the center of the country around the Nile and the \'peripheral\' areas such as Darfur, tensions were exacerbated in the last two decades of the twentieth century by a combination of environmental calamity, fast population growth, desertification, political opportunism and regional politics.

So in a tin can, this isnt really a place for a family picnic.

The people are on the whole quite strange, and violence is everywhere. With wiered religeous festivals in which trances are all part of the game, and the occasional sacrifice to honour the God, this is a place where having UN stamped on the side of your vehicle, and a 50 cal Machine gun on the roof really helps.

Hotels are everywhere, and will cost about 40 pence a night, if you want a bit of luxury, then the Hilton in Khartoum is worth a visit. Khartoum is the capital of Sudan, and is laced with decadance and luxury, steeped in a rich and flowing history, and truth be told, is like being on another world.

In itself, it is worth a visit, especially for those wanting to do a bit of Mummy hunting.

The government has bent over backwards to make this a safe haven for tourism, and has ploughed loads of cash into development, and so long as your part of a group tour, its reasonably safe!