The Sudan and Terrorism Essay

Sudan is a crossroads through which many extremists groups combine or swap men, material and know-how. A coup in 1989 brought to power a group of generals allied to high-minded Islamists of an earlier vintage who, two decades ago, played host to Osama bin Laden. Since then the regime has grown suspicious of unbridled Islamism, though it is not averse to co-opting it, too. The main university in Khartoum, the capital, has been a magnet for radical students. Some have moved on to battlefields to the north and east, following in bin Laden’s footsteps.

In the African countries of Uganda and South Sudan, thousands of men, women and children are being brutally murdered and mutilated in their own villages. Children are being kidnapped by the thousands. Women are being brutally raped. Shockingly, the assailants in these heinous crimes are children, armed under the leadership of a military madman named Joseph Kony. Calling themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army, they are considered one of the most vicious terrorist groups in the world.

In recent times, the media has highlighted the genocide that has been occurring in Darfur, Sudan. Darfur, Sudan is a country roughly the size of the state of Texas (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Genocide is the systematic killing of an entire ethnic group of people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do away with them all (Darfur Scores, n.d.). Beginning around 2003, according to Darfur Scores (n.d.), “the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.”

Many people go to great lengths to survive in life-threatening situations. Some people even take survival to the extreme.Such as, leaving loved ones behind or drinking their own urine. Some people, unfortunately, have to go to these extremes, such as, the lost boys of Sudan. The lost boys of Sudan are a group of approximately 20,000 boys and girls that have fled from rural southern Sudan fled to bordering Ethiopia and Kenya. Most of this travel took place in large groups by foot, and the journeys could be up to thousands of miles on average to the nearest camps. They traveled from a span of two week to two years.

The origin of the war between these two regions goes back to the 1950s when the country, which was previously two separate nations, was made one after World War II by the west. Shortly after this union, Sudan was emancipated from England. 1983 marks the beginning of the violent relations between the North and South Sudan. The initiation of this conflict was brought forth by the Islamic Sudanese of the North, invading with military force the Southern Sudanese Christians . From 1983, it is estimated that at least two million people have been killed in the violent duration of this genocide, most of whom are of the Christian faith and lead non-violent civilian lives. Attention on human trafficking was brought into the international community’s scope with close proximity to the beginning of the violence as two professors from the University of Khartoum shed light on the subject. Ushari Ahmad Mahumud and Suleyman Ali Baldo learned about the genocide and enslavement being practiced on the Dinka people, a tribal group in the southern Sudan, and upon this discovery they dicided to investigate it further. What they found was that raiders from the north were killing the Southern Christian men and kidnapping the women and children to be sold into slavery. The most disturbing part of this discovery was the newfound knowledge that this had been going on for over two years. Professors Mahumud and Baldo

Sudan use to be a territory under British and Egyptian rule in 1946. At this time the North was much larger and economically prosperous than the South. This lead to the North have more influence on what happens in the region.

While still struggling to achieve peace with Sudan since its independence in 2011, South Sudan is now rife with inner-conflict. Rebel forces led by the former Vice-President Riek Machar want to overthrow the South Sudanese government, led by President Salva Kiir.

The term “genocide,” in short, refers to the targeted mass killing and/or torture of one distinct group of people. These groups of people tend to be distinguished by their nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. In the past, the problem of genocide has been prevalent in Armenia, Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, and even the United States throughout history for several different reasons. The most recent occurrence in Darfur, Sudan has so far caused the deaths of over 300,000 men, women, and children and displaced three million people from their homes and villages in the area. Genocide by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has brought much violence and crime to the country and its effects have touched millions of innocent civilian lives. The president intends to ethnically cleanse the area of all non-Arabs by using Sudan’s own military and militia to attack civilian towns and refugee camps. Men and boys are killed and women and girls are

In addition, political aspects have played a role in the roots of the Darfur conflict. The leader, General Omar Hassan Ahmad al- Bashir (who came to power in 1989), is a major source of the problem. Al-

What does Sudan mean to me? Is it more than just a place where you live? To outsiders it may be just a plot of land somewhere in Africa, but the truth is; Sudan is the heart and jewel of Africa, it is the land of my ancestors and the land of diversity and unity.

Sudan has known conflict for most of its existence. The discovery of oil in 1979 served to heighten this conflict as north and south fought over valuable resources. In more recent years human rights violations and genocide have occurred in unsurpassed numbers with the Sudanese governments support. Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state with an issued arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In July 2011 southern Sudanese citizens voted to secede from Sudan and form the Republic of South Sudan in response to years of oppression by the Arab led Islamist government. South Sudan is now the worlds newest country and free to determine its own path

After the gulf wars, a ceasefire was negotiated between the United Nations coalition and Iraq. During the ceasefire, the United Nations became aware that Iraq had started a biological warfare program in the 1980s, as well as a chemical warfare program. Upon further investigation, they found that these programs had not continued after the war. As a result, the United States main focus moving forward was the removal of the Saddam regime, their official foreign policy for years to come focused on this goal. With the suspicions that Saddam Hussein had the abilities to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration going as far as to claim he already had them, the United States and other countries began devising a plan of action. These countries strongly believed that Iraq was a treat to its neighbors and the rest of the world, and that the only solution was to invade Iraq. The United States invading Iraq in 2003 was a turning point in the reason why relationship between Iraq and the United States is the way it is today.

The idea behind the integration of south and northern Sudan was an attempt to end the long term suffering of the Sudan and south Sudan population during the 19th and 20th centuries of being under the colonial rule of the Egypt and Britain and the “post-independence northern regime”, in Sudan. Egypt and Britain agreed upon giving Sudan independence by Arab Muslims in the North, Christians of the Southern Sudan and other minorities to join each other to form one Sudan nation.

Kenya has been the battlefield of tragic terrorist attacks on western interests twice since 1998 – once in 1998 when the US embassy was attacked and a second time in 2002 when a Israeli-owned Paradise hotel was bombed. In 1980, Jewish-owned Norfolk hotel was attacked by the PLO. Every single attack shared a common thread of irony: the majority of the lives lost were Kenyan, even though the ideology behind the attacks suggests that Kenyan and Kenyans were not involved in the political dynamic that precipitated the attacks.

The problem of south Sudan started to be accumulated since the twenties of the last century and developed through the time; it is affected by the entrance of the colonist to Sudan in 1898. The colonial tried to isolate the south from the north since the beginning through, adopting a set of laws which include; passport and license law1922, close district law 1929 and trips' leaders court law 1931.In addition to enforce the English language to be the official language in the south and else more procedures which make south Sudan foreign district from the north.