The Sudan Handbook

thE intERnational PREsEnCE in sudan 275

grown and processed locally into clothes for a local market. The scheme

brought in more European experts and advisors in a brief whirlwind of

activity, but eventually failed at considerable human and financial cost.

Post-colonial Sudan

Following independence in January and admission to the United Nations

in December 1956, the government of Sudan pursued a policy of formal

non-alignment, under the influence of Nasser’s Egypt. It initially received

little external assistance. The aid it did receive was mostly technical,

limited by domestic political sensitivities over accepting foreign help,

particularly from the United States. State investment in infrastruc-

ture (for instance, railways linking the centre of the country to Darfur

and southern Sudan) accompanied the intensification of the economic

geography established by British rule. Irrigation schemes and rain-fed

agriculture expanded.

During much of the first civil war in southern Sudan there was little

international engagement and even less actual involvement. The conflict

was little-known, closed off to the world’s media till its last stages by a

‘grass curtain’. (This phrase derived from the British policy of shielding

southern Sudan from northern influence; it was later the title of a

newspaper published by southerners and dedicated to southern Sudanese

issues.) The war led to a steady reduction in the number of expatriates

in Sudan; large numbers were expelled in 1963. The doctrine of sover-

eignty and non-interference in Sudan’s internal affairs upheld by the UN

and the Organization for African Unity meant that appeals for interna-

tional intervention and investigations into war atrocities met with little

response. Active concern was largely limited to the missionary Verona

Fathers in Rome, one of the church bodies expelled by the government in

Khartoum, and to assistance from the UN to Sudanese who had crossed

international borders to become refugees in neighbouring countries. The

civil war became more internationalized as a result of changing Cold War

and Middle Eastern politics. Joseph Lagu secured Israeli military support

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors for southern rebel fighters after the 1967 Arab–Israeli war.

(www.riftvalley.net).