BILAD AL-SUDAN
Bilad al-Sudan, “Land of the Blacks,” was the designation given to the country by Egyptians. This name apparently caused shame to the Arabic-speaking, often black-skinned groups who threw in their lot with the dominant Egyptians. They invented genealogy that always traced their ancestry back to Saudi Arabia. This kind of racist fake ancestry has remained in vogue among the Sudanese elite determined to assert “Arab” dominance.
CPA=Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in September 2005.
DPA= Darfur Peace Agreement, signed in May 2006
One of the things the CPA did was to split the opposition. Northern and Western opponents of the Bashir regime, however, have continued the fight.
After Osama bin Laden was forced out of Sudan in 1996, the Government of Sudan (GoS) began to “cooperate” with the CIA, sending good information while continuing to support Hamas offices and to give training to their own terrorists. Salah Abdallah Gosh, head of the State Security services, began a double game. Two different US Government agencies have confirmed that Sudan is training former janjaweed to be Al Qaeda-style terrorists for use against opponents in Sudan and in other countries.
As soon as oil was discovered in the South, the Government began to do especially well. The country signed oil leases with a wide range of companies. China, Malaysia, and the Canadian favorite Talisman Oil also signed such agreements. For letting its facilities be used for war crimes, however, Talisman received much negative attention, especially from Alberta-born human rights activist and longtime Canadian Parliament member David Kilgour and from Sudan-oriented Freedom Quest leader Mel Middleton.
With the suppression of the Nuba Mountain people, and the Shilluk, their cultures would never again be as prominent as they had been. In the East, near Port Sudan, rebel movements continue until the present, despite the false fronts of various peace arrangements . These include the Rashidi Free Lions and the Beja Front.
After the African Union was deployed to monitor the ceasefire in the middle months of 2005, they became generally regarded as too few and too badly equipped to expand their mission. Former Marine Captain Brian Steidle was an observer with the AU. He brought back many photos and documents about the Khartoum/janjaweed genocidal attacks. The State Department tried to prevent him from publishing them.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was supported for years by Khartoum. It specialized in child-kidnapping, torture, and violent cult-like crimes including forcing children to murder their parents.
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin made ringing speeches about rescuing Darfur in the spring of 2005. But when the Sudanese made it clear that they wanted no help with the military equipment and advisors he offered, he withdrew from any more attempts at serious political or military solutions, despite the pleas of David Kilgour, Maurice Vellacott, and others.
All this while children died of malnutrion and disease. The DPA, the Darfur Peace Agreement, was signed in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, in 2006, but it brought no peace to Darfur but the peace of the dead.