political conFlictS and Migration in the Mena StateS 173
ported by Egypt/President Nasser). This led to heavy f ighting between
northern and southern Yemenis in 1994, which ended when the northern
Yemenis eventually won by taking Aden on 7 July 1994, forcing a peace
treaty and the union of the two states;- the long and, in part, militant attempts by the people of Balochistan in
Western Pakistan to obtain more autonomy or even independence; and - the civil war in Southern Sudan (1956-1972, 1983-2005) between the Arab-
Islamic central power from Northern Sudan and the Black-African ethnic
groups, primarily followers of natural religions or Christians, who desired
a secular state to protect their rights.
The Sudan conf lict ended formally in January 2005 with the Comprehensive
Peace Agreement. Six years later, in January 2011, the referendum for self-
determination which was stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agree-
ment was held, and resulted in the declaration of independence of Southern
Sudan in July 2011. The conf lict between North and South Sudan was violent
and costly, with some 1.5 to 2 million dead and a vast number of displaced
persons. The reasons behind this conf lict lie in numerous interconnecting
levels of conf lict and causes (Daly & Sikainga 1993; Kok 1996).
There were three main components that precipitated the conf lict because
of Sudan’s particular geopolitical position as a link between the Arab world
in the North and Black Africa in the South, and ecologically between the dry
Sahel zone in the North and the wetter South: a religious component (Islam
vs African natural religions and Christianity),^19 an ethnic-racial component
(Arab vs non-Arab populations such as the Dinka, the Nuba or the Fur),
and an ecological-economic component – nomadism vs sedentary farmers
(Suliman 1997). It was the accumulation and interconnection of these levels
of conf lict that have made this struggle so resistant to mediation for over
40 years. The separation of Northern and Southern Sudan in 2011 did not
eliminate the military confrontation between the two states, as in fact both
sides are f ighting for control of the oil f ields in the border region which is
not yet demarcated internationally (United States Institute of Peace and
Concordis International 2010).
The second group concerns the majority of the current domestic conf licts
in the MENA countries, which are of two particular types: religiously moti-
19 The political role of Islamism in Sudan since the mid-1960s or the assumption of power
by the Islamists and their ‘Islamic Salvation Revolution’ under the leadership of Umar Hasan
al-Bashir and Hasan al-Turabi on 30 June 1989 only served to exacerbate the conf lict and pushed
the f ight for a new state and social concept into the limelight.