SUDAN : Race, Religion and Violence by Jok Madut Jok

When I was in Nepal, I heard about the civil war in African countries, starvation, malnutrition, disease and death. Nepal was also suffering from political instability, unstable government and Maoist insurgency. Often political leaders and independent writers used to give example of Sudan and Somalia in term of failure state due to long civil war and political instability. The national wide debate on the ethnic and religious issues brought up the concern of possible ethnic clinging like in Sudan.
Here in Canada I met many friends from African nations like Sudan, Ethiopia, Eretria, Nigeria, Uganda, Chad, Somalia. As a Resident Manager I know some of them very closely and very often talked about the war and the reason of dislocation. Although every African countries has their own story of brutal civil war, the root cause is the same; division of the people by the colonizers to extract the resources even aftermath of independence.
SUDAN: Race, Religion and Violence is a book which is well researched and well written about the history of war in Sudan on the pretext of ethnicity and politics. After a decades of war, rebel uprising throughout the country, and power struggle, in 2011 it gave birth to the world's newest country - South Sudan. However, the birth of south Sudan was not a easy birth. It took the lives of over two million people and dislocation of the millions of citizens from Juba Mountains and Darfur.
Sudan was long been ruled by the North Khartoum. It was under British colonial rule from 1898-1956 known as Anglo Egyptian Sudan. The elite ruling group was the Arabs who discriminated the non-Arab people living in the South. In 1958 Ibrahim Abbud came in power with the military coup. His rule for next six years led by heavy handed military dictatorship. The country was already hit by seventeen year long North- South civil war when Arab soldiers came to replace the British soldiers.
 Sudan got independence in 1956. After independence Abbud's policy of cultural homogenization, and division of Arab and non-Arab Muslim and Islamization escalated the relation between the South and the North.
Sudan is the nation of 175 major ethnic and linguistic groups and 325 other smaller ethnic groups. The majority of the people (over 80%) live in the south are Christian and majority over 90% people of the North are the Islam. The main cause of the war between the South and North is the religion. During the dictator rule of the Islamic leaders of the North, they heavily bombed the villages of the South Juba mountains. More than two million people lost their lives and thousands of them took refugee in neighbouring countries like Chad, Eretria and Ethiopia. Many women were brought to the North to work in the houses and provide sex service to the army.
Another genocide took place in Darfur. The Arab Muslim indiscriminately killed the people who were not the Arabs and Islam. It was one of the greatest human disasters in the human history according to UNDP.
In 1989 Omar Hassan  Ahmad al Basir, former brigadier of Sudanese army, came in power with his military coup and became the seventh president of Khartoum government. He sent the state army to kill the people who oppose his rule, who were not the Islam. It was a ethnic clinging. People were killed, women raped and mutilated, food and medicine was banned, even the Khartoum government stopped the foreign aid to the war torn areas. Millions of people died and millions of them were taken as a refuse by  Chad and other neighbouring countries and, later by the US and Canada.
In 2011, North and South officially separated and became the independent nations. However, there is still political instability and civil war ongoing.  
This book offers everything you want to know about Sudan, its history of civil war and consequences.