Sudan: Land of Conflicts

- by Wes Kawato

It seems that one never hears good news coming from Sudan. Almost everything is about the tragedies churned by the Sudanese government or some rebel group.

There are several different conflicts in that vast African country. We tend to think that it is Muslim against Christians and Animists, but there are other layers as well. There are ethnic tensions between the local African peoples of the south and the powerful Arabs of the north who want to Arabize the entire nation. In this case, part of Arabization is Islamization.

There are important economic conflicts. As happens almost everywhere in the world, nomadic livestock herders have conflicts with settled farmers. The two groups compete for land and water. Such conflicts exist between Muslim groups. Sudan's government would like to find new oil deposits in places where the African tribes now live. They have been known to wipe out entire African villages and/or enslave the people to get at oil deposits or fertile land.

Despite the fact that Sudan has 136 unreached people groups according to the Joshua Project, the Church has deep roots in this land. Let us turn to Sudan's spiritual history.

The Early Egyptian Church Reaches Sudan
While the Church at Antioch was supporting Paul's efforts to spread the gospel to Turkey and Greece, other Apostles were winning converts in Egypt. They founded the Church at Alexandria. This isn't recorded in the Bible, but we know this is a fact from the writing of early Church historians. During the first century A.D. the Church at Alexandria tried to re-contact the new believers in Ethiopia after they had heard about how Phillip had led the Ethiopian eunuch to Christ.

The roads leading from Egypt to Ethiopia passed through what is now called Sudan. It wasn't long before the Church at Alexandria began sending missionaries to the people groups living in Sudan. Churches were planted in northern Sudan and they fell under the spiritual care of the Coptic Church in Egypt and Ethiopia.

These churches lasted 600 years until the Arab Muslim invasions that began after A.D. 632. For several centuries the small Christian kingdoms of northern Sudan avoided conquest by paying tribute to the new Arab Muslim rulers of Egypt. But that only delayed the inevitable. By A.D. 1000 these kingdoms were conquered by Arab Muslim armies and their people were forced to convert to Islam.

Enter the British in the 19th Century
The gospel would not return to Sudan until the late 19th century. Once again events in Egypt would open the door in an oblique way. In 1869 Egypt built the Suez Canal, with help from French engineers and British loans. Then Egypt defaulted on the loans and British armies invaded that country to force repayment. The Sultan of Egypt became a puppet ruler. In those days Egypt controlled what is now northern Sudan and claimed southern Sudan. The British take over of Egypt opened the door for Christian missionaries to spread the gospel to Sudan. Groups such as the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) built mission stations all along the Nile River.

The introduction of Christianity caused a violent reaction in Egypt and Sudan. In 1884 a Muslim "prophet" named Ahmed Mahdi gathered a large army and tried to overthrow the Sultan of Egypt. The coup failed because of British military aid, but Mahdi's followers seized control of northern Sudan and declared it independent of Egypt. Mahdi dreamed of creating an Islamic state that would control all of North Africa. He began a military build-up that threatened Egypt and scared the British into action.

Britain sent an army to protect her client state in Egypt. General Charles Gordon was in command of that army and was given the task of crushing the Mahdi Rebellion. Gordon was a devout Christian and understood what was at stake. The Mahdi rebels had taken control of Khartoum, which they made their capital. Khartoum sat on the Nile River. Within his realm, Mahdi had forbidden the use of the Nile to Christian missionary agencies. Without the use of the Nile the mission stations in southern Sudan couldn't be kept in supply and would have to be shut down. The ability of thousands of people to hear the gospel was at stake.

In 1884 Gordon won the First Battle of Khartoum and liberated that city from Mahdi's control. Then the rebels laid siege to Khartoum, trapping Gordon's army inside. Gordon could have accepted an offer by Mahdi to march his army out of Khartoum and return to Egypt, but he realized that the Christians who had fled to that city would be massacred if he accepted that offer. Gordon rejected Mahdi's offer, knowing the British would send another army to reinforce him. While Gordon waited for the arrival of those reinforcements, the rebels launched one attack after another. Gordon beat back each attack, inflicting heavy losses while also losing many of his own men each time.

The second British army arrived at Khartoum several days after Gordon's army had been destroyed and the Christians of Khartoum had been massacred. But Gordon's skilled defense had bled the Mahdi Rebels dry. In the Second Battle of Khartoum the British crushed the rebels and killed Mahdi, which caused the collapse of the rebellion.

Between 1884 and 1956 Britain maintained control of Sudan through a divide and conquer strategy. The British encouraged fighting between the Arab tribes of northern Sudan and the African tribes of southern Sudan. Religious differences aggravated the conflict. Northern Sudan was mostly Muslim. Southern Sudan tended to be Christian and Animistic. This regional conflict continued after Britain granted independence to Sudan in 1956.

Ongoing Conflict Since Independence
After independence the democratic government of Sudan tried to buy peace by granting southern Sudan local autonomy, and for a while that strategy kept the violence to a minimum. All steps towards peace were undone in 1989 by the coup that brought Omar Al-Bashir to power. Prior to 1989 Al-Bashir had been an army general and a devout Muslim. During the early years of his dictatorship he learned about Osama Bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network. Al-Bashir soon grew to admire Bin Laden and dreamed of creating an Islamic regime similar to what existed at that time in Afghanistan. Shortly after taking power he rescinded the treaty that gave southern Sudan local autonomy. He saw this as the first step toward imposing Islamic law on Sudan's southern provinces. Al-Bashir's insensitive policies restarted the civil war in southern Sudan. That war drained Sudan's army, forcing Al-Bashir to sign a cease fire agreement with the rebels in 2004. That agreement also calls for a 2009 referendum on the granting of independence to the southern provinces.

Both sides committed atrocities during this civil war. Entire villages were wiped out by the army and by the rebels. The army also enslaved non-Muslim civilians they captured. Sudan is one of the few countries where slavery is still legal.

Another reason why Al-Bashir ended the fighting in southern Sudan was that there were growing problems in the Darfur Provinces, located in west-central Sudan. Nomadic tribesmen, whose ancestors were expelled from Sudan in the 18th century, returned to Darfur and were asked to leave by the African farmers who now lived in Darfur. Leaving was not an option for the nomads. There was a severe drought in neighboring Chad and Libya, where the nomads had been living. The nomads attacked the African farmers, hoping to gain water and pasture lands for their camel and cattle herds. Such conflicts become more pronounced during times when there wasn't enough rain for farming or herding.

The government of Sudan sided with the nomads, because they were of Arab origin, like Al-Bashir and his top advisers. Sudan provided arms for the janjaweed, the private armies of the nomadic herders. (See picture) The janjaweed committed murder and rape on a large scale. Thousands of African farmers fled to refugee camps in Chad and the Central African Republic. The conflict in Darfur appears similar to the one that recently ended in southern Sudan, but it isn't. In Darfur both sides are Muslim. The conflict in Darfur lacks a religious component, but there is an ethnic one. According to an August 12th, 2007 article in the "Los Angeles Times," Arabic peoples from nearby Chad are settling in this land. It appears that the Al-Bashir regime hopes to Arabize Sudan.

Our prayers can make a difference in Sudan
Ask God for peace and justice in Darfur and in the southern provinces. Pray that every people group in Sudan will soon have a complete Bible in their local language. There are many translation projects going on right now. Ask God to end slavery in Sudan. Pray also for the spiritual growth of the Christians in southern Sudan. Between 1970 and 2000 the number of Christians in those southern provinces jumped from five percent to 70 percent. Pray that these believers will be salt and light in this war-ravaged land.