The Sudan Handbook

EPiloGuE: thE nEXt sudan 309

in a global conflict between Islam and the west. Yet one of the positive

features of Sudanese history is a tradition of religious tolerance. Even

at the height of state-sponsored Islamism, with multiple local conflicts

between north and south, conflict on religious grounds has been strik-

ingly absent. The coexistence of two world faiths and a multitude of

indigenous belief systems in Sudan is a valuable heritage.

The North

After 2011 the north will be another country too. In the new north, the

historic challenges to the authority of the central state that have emerged

progressively from the periphery will be reconfigured. The country will

still include at least three marginalized areas: Nubia, the west and the

east. Even without the South this future Sudan will be scarcely less

diverse in terms of culture, economic development and ways of life than

the greater Sudan of old.

With more than twenty years in power the current government in

Khartoum carries a heavy responsibility for the ills of the country, greater

than any other institution in Sudan’s recent history. The Khartoum

government, like the government in Juba, has blamed the burden of

fighting civil wars for the many enduring deficiencies in government

services – for the grim statistics in the areas of physical security, infant

mortality, sexual violence and life expectancy that have put Sudan

near the bottom of the global human development index. The end of

the war in the South and the advent of oil wealth leave them with no

excuse. In 2010 the rule of the NCP gained an endorsement through a

national election, but the election was flawed, and followed by renewed

constraints on political freedoms. The new shape of the northern polity

could be an opportunity to transform the relation between government

and governed, but the government in Khartoum has yet to show that it

can become accountable to its own people.

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors

(www.riftvalley.net).