A review of Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy Related Historical background To understand fully today’s popular protests, we need to look all the way back to the Sudan’s colonial past. Post-independence conflicts in Sudan were largely caused by ethnic divisions created by the British colonial administration between 1899 and 1956. “Divide and rule” policies pursued by the British continue to haunt contemporary Sudan, both north and south. During most of the colonial period (1899-1956), Sudan was ruled as two Sudans. The British separated the predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking north from the multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multilingual south. Britian’s “divide-and-rule” policy separated southern Sudanese provinces from the rest of the country and slowed down their economic and social development. The British authorities claimed that the south was not ready to open up to the modern world. At the same time, the British heavily invested in the Arab north, modernizing and liberalizing p...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51