Country Profile

Country Profile - Sudan

Country Profile of Sudan

President:  Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir

Capital: Khartoum

Land area:  Area 1,861,484 square kilometers measures about one-fourth the size of U.S.A

Population:  35 million, with growth rate at 1.78%; birth rate 30.1/1000 and life expectancy at 63.32.

Monetary unit:  Dinar

States:    

Languages:  Arabic(official), English(official), Nubian, Ta Bedawie and Fur.

Ethnicity:  Sudanese Arab(70%), Fur, Beja, Nuba and Fallata.

Literacy rate: 71.9%

Economic summary:  89.97 billion; per capita $2600. Real growth stands at 3.9% and the unemployment rate is recorded at 20%, whilst the inflation is 25%

Agriculture:  Production of commodities like cotton, groundnuts, wheat, sugarcane, mangos, bananas and general live-stock.  The economy of Sudan is reliant on exporting oil, gold and petroleum products.

Geography
Sudan, in northeast Africa, measures about one-fourth the size of the United States. Its neighbours are Chad and the Central African Republic on the west, Egypt and Libya on the north, Ethiopia and Eritrea on the east, and South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo on the south. The Red Sea washes about 500 mi of the eastern coast. It is traversed from north to south by the Nile, all of whose great tributaries are partly or entirely within its borders.

Government
Federal republic ruled by the National Congress Party (NCP) which seized power by military coup.

History
What is now northern Sudan was in ancient times the kingdom of Nubia, which came under Egyptian rule after 2600 B.C. An Egyptian and Nubian civilization called Kush flourished until A.D. 350. Missionaries converted the region to Christianity in the 6th century, but an influx of Muslim Arabs, who had already conquered Egypt, eventually controlled the area and replaced Christianity with Islam. During the 1500s a people called the Funj conquered much of Sudan, and several other black African groups settled in the south, including the Dinka, Shilluk, Nuer, and Azande. Egyptians again conquered Sudan in 1874, and after Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, it took over Sudan in 1898, ruling the country in conjunction with Egypt. It was known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1898 and 1955

Lt. Gen. Omar Bashir took over the coup in 1989. The De Facto ruler of Sudan was Hassan el-Turabi. He was a cleric as well as a political leader and was a major figure in the Pan-Arabic Islamic fundamentalist resurgence. In 1999 Bashir placed Turabi under house arrest and was later released in 2003. Since Bashir’s take over the U.N has lifted sanctions against Sudan, although the U.S still regards Sudan a terrorist state.

A cease fire was declared between the Sudan government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army(SPLA).

The military-led government of President Jaafar Numeiri agreed to autonomy for the south in 1972, but fighting broke out again in 1983. After two years of bargaining, the rebels signed a comprehensive peace deal with the government to end the civil war in January 2005. The accord provided for a high degree of autonomy for the south, and an option for it to secede. South Sudan seceded in July 2011, following a vote. However, the grievances of the northern states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile remain unaddressed, as provisions laid out for them in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement were never fully implemented.

Sudan and South Sudan have yet to fully implement security and economic agreements signed on September 27, 2012 relating to the normalization of relations between the two countries. The final disposition of the contested Abyei region has also to be decided. Since South Sudan's independence, conflict has broken out between the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, which has resulted in 1.2 million internally displaced persons or severely affected persons in need of humanitarian assistance. A separate conflict, which broke out in the western region of Darfur in 2003, has displaced nearly two million people and caused an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 deaths. Violence in Darfur in 2013 resulted in an additional estimated 6,000 civilians killed and 500,000 displaced.

The UN and the African Union have jointly commanded a Darfur peacekeeping operation known as the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) since 2007. Peacekeeping troops have struggled to stabilize the situation and have increasingly become targets for attacks by armed groups. In 2013, 16 peacekeepers were killed, UNAMID's deadliest year so far. Sudan also has faced refugee influxes from neighboring countries, primarily Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Armed conflict, poor transport infrastructure, and government denial of access have impeded the provision of humanitarian assistance to affected populations

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