Transcript
Ithar (0:00)
FOREIGN.
Stephen Barden (0:04)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Migrant Odyssey. Today, my guest is Itha from the Sudan. But before we meet her, I think it's a good idea to provide some historical context for her story. And I'm aware, by the way, that in doing so, I may leave out certain important and even very important events, not deliberately or even oversimplify them. Sudan sits in the northeast corner of Africa, one of the continent's largest countries. It's enormous, almost 2 million square miles bigger than France, Spain, Sweden and Germany combined. About 46 million people live there. It's rich in gold, and yet it's still one of the poorest countries in the world. Before the British colonized it in 1899, supposedly in partnership with Egypt, though in reality, of course, Britain ran the show. It actually wasn't a single entity at all. It was a mosaic of kingdoms, sultanates, regions, each with their own power and history. The British wrestled it together to serve.
Interviewer (1:20)
Their own strategic needs.
Stephen Barden (1:21)
But even then, they ruled the north and south separately. When independence came in 1956, the British favored northern elite insisted that the two be merged. And that decision, that forced union would shape Sudan's story for the next 70 years. Those seven decades have been dominated by four overlapping major struggles. First, the constant power battles among the political and military elites in the north. Second, the south's long fight at first for autonomy and later for independence. Number three, the devastating conflict in the west in Darfur, the and now the latest civil war fought between two rival arms of the military. In the north, the first civil war began even before independence, the Anya nya Rebellion of 1955, when Southern forces demanded more self rule, but not necessarily complete independence. At the time, that lasted 17 years and a million people died in it. After that 1956 independence, the country was led by a weak civilian government from Khartoum, which was toppled after two years in a coup led by General Ibrahim Aboud. He ruled until 1964, when protests erupted after his forces attacked students at the University of Khartoum. For a few years after that, the country experimented with democracy. Experimented is entirely the wrong word. They tried to make democracy work, but political infighting paralyzed it. In 1969, another military officer, Ghaffar Nimeri, seized power, banning all political parties. Meanwhile, Islamic movements were growing in influence, especially the National Islamic Front, led by Hassan Al Turabi, a brilliant and controversial scholar educated in Khartoum, London and the Sorbonne. While the north was wrangling over ideology and power, the south was getting reorganized. They united their various rebel groups under The Southern Sudan Liberation Movement, reportedly with help from Israel. That unity led to the Addis ababa Agreement in 1972, ending the first civil war and granting the South a measure of autonomy. And for a while that seemed to work. But by the early 1980s, the deal began to crumble. In fact, in 1983, Nimeri tore up the agreement, revoked the South's autonomy and imposed Sharia law across the country. That decision ignited the second Sudanese civil war, which would last 22 years, in which around 2 million people died from violence, famine and disease. And 4 million people in South Sudan were displaced at least once. One of those, by the way, was Dendak Malual, my very first guest on Migrant Odyssey. That year, US military aid to Sudan began to rise sharply, another reminder that foreign powers always had a hand in Sudan's affairs. Two years later, Nimeri was overthrown. A brief democratic government followed. But in 89, yet another couple brought Omar Al Bashir to power. Bashir would rule for 30 years.