Sudan

See also South Sudan, with which it was united as one country until 2011, when the south broke away; it was accepted by its northern partner as legitimate, though they are still negotiating the borders, and the substantial oil revenues, and trying to avoid yet another war.

The Moslem radical al-Shabab, based in Somalia and linked with Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Qaida and the ISL in Iraq and Syria, is doing its best to wage one now. One and a half million people died in the wars that led to the south becoming independent; another two million are still living as refugees in the Darfur region. A quarter of a million died in that conflict, and allegations of ethnic cleansing are still the headlines of UN reports, plus the conflicts in the South Kordofan region in the north, and another in the Blue Nile region.

In its ancient history, Sudan was known as Nubia, and in the Bible it is included with Kush. Nubia derives from the Egyptian "nub", meaning gold, because the Egyptians enslaved the Nubians and made them dig out the gold, which was transported to Memphis and Avaris, the Egyptian capitals, for the adornment of the Pharaohs. The first references to YHVH, one of the names of the Biblical god, are found in the temple at Soleb in Nubia, built by the Pharaoh Amenhotep III around 1400 BCE; the pyramids of Nubia are much older than those of Egypt, and should suggest to archaeologists that Nubian culture reflected the African (compare the ruins of Zimbabwe for example) rather more than it did the Phoenician; however it was the Phoenician which engendered the Judeo-Christian as well as the Greco-Roman, which we like, while an earlier African source raises the level of civilisation in that world, contradicting our preference for the African as primitive, heathen, savage and therefore enslaveable. "Manifest destiny" once again. The necessary propaganda of cultural as well as economic and military imperialism; a sequel for Edward Said, if he had lived. Perhaps someone else will write it. I happen to believe that the future of Africa depends on someone doing so.


Marks For: 6

Marks Against: 2


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