🇸🇩 Sudan

Remains at Jebel Sahaba record organised lethal violence between groups around 11500 BC, described as the earliest known war. It marks the Nile corridor of present-day Sudan as one of the world's oldest arenas of collective conflict.

By the eighth millennium BC sedentary Neolithic communities in what is now Sudan supplemented Nile hunting and fishing with grain gathering and cattle herding, and built cemeteries such as R12. Later migrations from the drying Sahara brought agriculture into the Nile Valley, creating the population base from which Sudanese states emerged.

Archaeological and anthropological evidence indicates that predynastic Nubia and Upper Egypt were nearly identical culturally, developing kingship simultaneously by 3300 BC. This gave the middle Nile an indigenous tradition of centralised monarchy rather than one imported from Egypt.

Social hierarchy formed from centuries of cultural and genetic mixing produced the Kingdom of Kerma from about 2500 BC in Upper Nubia. In its final phase from about 1700 BC it absorbed the kingdom of Saï and became a populous empire rivalling Egypt itself.

Egyptian New Kingdom campaigns south culminated in the occupation of Kush and the destruction of Kerma, with annexation of Nubia around 1504 BC. Nubia became a key economic, political and spiritual province governed by an Egyptian Viceroy of Kush, though rebellions continued for some 220 years.

By 1200 BC Egyptian presence in the Dongola Reach had ceased as the New Kingdom weakened. The withdrawal left space for indigenous Nubian political recovery further south.

Over nearly a millennium Kushite rulers constructed pyramid fields at El-Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal, Sedeinga and Meroe. These monuments remain the principal material legacy of the Kushite state and Sudan's most significant archaeological heritage.

Kashta's invasion opened nearly a century of Kushite rule over Egypt, with an empire stretching from South Kordofan to the Sinai. The dynasty was eventually defeated and driven out by the Assyrians, ending Nubian dominance of the Near East.

After the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom, the Kingdom of Kush was founded at the Nile confluences with its early capital at Napata. It became the longest-lived indigenous state in Sudanese history, enduring until around AD 350.

Napata was raided by the Egyptians around 590 BC, and soon afterwards the Kushite state resettled at Meroë further south. The shift moved the kingdom's centre of gravity deeper into what is now Sudan, away from Egyptian reach.

The Blemmyes' short-lived state in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia was destroyed before 450 by the Nobatians, who then founded their own kingdom. Nobatia became one of the three medieval Nubian kingdoms alongside Makuria and Alodia.

Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia all adopted Christianity in the sixth century, adopting a centralised state organisation modelled on Byzantine bureaucracy. The conversion shaped nearly a millennium of Nubian culture, literacy and art before Islamisation.

Probably between 628 and 642, Nobatia was incorporated into Makuria, consolidating northern Nubia under one crown. The larger state was better placed to resist the Arab expansion that followed.

Arab forces of the Rashidun Caliphate invaded Nubia in 641 or 642 and again in 652 and were driven back, making the Nubians among the few to defeat the Arabs during the Islamic expansion. The Makurian king then agreed a unique non-aggression pact with annual exchange of gifts, acknowledging Makuria's independence, though Arabs began settling east of the Nile.

Makuria attacked Egypt in 747 during the Umayyad decline, and again in the early 960s pushed as far north as Akhmim. These campaigns marked the peak of Nubian political power and cultural development between the mid-eighth and mid-eleventh centuries.

Arab nomads migrated into and gradually settled most of Sudan during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, intermarrying with Nubian and other African populations. The migration underpinned the Arabisation and Islamisation of central Sudan and the eventual dominance of Arabic.

A civil war in 1365 forced the Makurian court to abandon its capital for Gebel Adda in Lower Nubia, while Dongola was destroyed and left to the Arabs. Makuria survived only as a petty kingdom, collapsing after the reign of King Joel (fl. 1463–1484).

Sufi preachers settling along the Nile in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries spread Islam, and by David Reubeni's visit in 1523 King Amara Dunqas was recorded as Muslim. Un-Islamic customs such as divine kingship and alcohol consumption nonetheless persisted until the eighteenth century.

The Funj are recorded as founding the Sennar sultanate in 1504, absorbing Abdallah Jamma's territory as the Christian kingdom of Alodia fell. By 1523 the state extended as far north as Dongola, and it dominated central and eastern Sudan for three centuries.

After occupying Suakin around 1526 the Ottomans pushed up the Nile to the third cataract by 1583–1584, but their assault on Dongola was defeated in 1585. Hannik thereafter marked the frontier between Funj and Ottoman spheres.

The 1718 coup brought a dynastic change and a policy of pursuing more orthodox Islam, with the Funj propagating an Umayyad descent narrative to legitimise rule over Arab subjects. Arabic became the dominant language of central riverine Sudan and most of Kordofan by the nineteenth century.

A second coup in 1761–1762 installed the Hamaj of the Ethiopian borderlands as the real rulers of Sennar. The sultanate then fragmented, and by the early nineteenth century was essentially confined to the Gezira.

The Keira sultanate of Darfur, which had displaced the Tunjur in the seventeenth century, expanded eastwards under Muhammad Tayrab and took Kordofan in 1785. The resulting empire, roughly the size of present-day Nigeria, endured until 1821.

The Ottoman ruler of Egypt sent his son Ismail to conquer Sudan in 1821, meeting resistance only from the Shaiqiya and Darfur. Conquest was later extended under Ismaʻil Pasha to cover most of modern Sudan, incorporating it into an Egyptian-ruled state and bringing irrigation and cotton improvements in the north.

Ismail was removed in 1879 and replaced by Tewfik Pasha, whose corruption provoked the 'Urabi revolt and a British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Sudan was left in the hands of a corrupt Khedivial administration, deepening the discontent that fed the Mahdist movement.

An incident at Aba Island on 12 August 1881 sparked open revolt following the Mahdi's proclamation in June 1881. His campaign against the Turco-Egyptian Turkiyah culminated in the fall of Khartoum in January 1885, creating an independent Islamic state governed by traditional Sharia law.

Mahdist fighters captured Khartoum on 26 January 1885 after a prolonged siege, killing General Charles Gordon and ending Ottoman-Egyptian rule. Muhammad Ahmad's Mahdist State controlled most of Sudan until an Anglo-Egyptian force defeated it at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.

Muhammad Ahmad died on 22 June 1885, six months after taking Khartoum, and Abdallahi ibn Muhammad prevailed in the ensuing power struggle with Baggara support. He instituted an administration and appointed Ansar emirs over the provinces, ruling by brutal methods that kept regional relations tense.

A 60,000-strong Ansar force invaded Ethiopia in 1887, and in March 1889 Emperor Yohannes IV marched on Metemma, where he fell in battle and his army withdrew. The campaigns showed the Mahdist state's expansionist reach but also overstretched its forces.

The Khalifa's general attempted to invade Egypt in 1889 but British-led Egyptian troops crushed the Ansar at Tushkah. Further reverses followed as the Belgians blocked Mahdist expansion into Equatoria and the Italians repelled an attack at Agordat in 1893.

Kitchener's campaigns from 1896 culminated in a decisive victory at Omdurman on 2 September 1898, driven by British fears of French and Belgian claims on the Nile and the need to secure a planned Aswan dam. The Battle of Umm Diwaykarat on 25 November 1899 killed the Khalifa and ended the Mahdist War.

Under British pressure Egypt agreed in 1899 to share sovereignty, with Sudan run by a governor-general appointed by Egypt with British consent. In practice Sudan was administered as a Crown colony, and Britain worked to frustrate all efforts to unite the Nile Valley under Egyptian leadership.

In 1905 the local chieftain Sultan Yambio finally abandoned his struggle against British forces occupying Kordofan. Ordinances then enacted taxation on land, herds and date-palms, following precedents set under the Khalifa.

With the formal end of Ottoman suzerainty in 1914, Wingate was sent in December to occupy Sudan as Military Governor. Hussein Kamel was declared Sultan of Egypt and Sudan, and he and his successor Fuad I pressed for a single Egyptian-Sudanese state, an ambition frustrated until Saad Zaghloul's death in 1927.

After the assassination in Cairo of a Governor-General of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Britain administered northern and southern Sudan as essentially separate entities until independence. The separation entrenched the political and religious rift that later fuelled decades of civil war.

Two permanent battalions in Khartoum were renamed the Sudan Defence Force, replacing Egyptian army soldiers and serving under the Sudanese government. It saw action at the Walwal Incident and in the East African Campaign, forming the ancestor of Sudan's national army.

Government revenue peaked in 1928, after which Wafdist disruption, Italian border incursions from Somaliland and the Great Depression prompted London to cut expenditure. Cotton and gum exports were dwarfed by imports from Britain, leaving Khartoum with a balance of payments deficit.

Football had been introduced by British colonisers via Egypt in the early twentieth century, and an association was formed in 1936. An official national women's league followed in September 2019, and the women's national team first entered the Arab Women's Cup in 2021.

The 1936 treaty allowed the British Army to return to Sudan to protect the Canal Zone, secured training facilities and gave the RAF overflight rights. Anthony Eden called it the beginning of a new stage in Anglo-Egyptian relations, but it left the question of Sudan's status unresolved.

Italian forces crossed into Sudan in 1940 during the East African Campaign, and the Sudan Defence Force responded to the incursions. In 1942 the SDF joined British and Commonwealth forces in invading the Italian colony.

The Egyptian revolution of 1952 toppled the monarchy, abolished in 1953, and Naguib and later Nasser concluded that renouncing Egyptian sovereignty was the only way to end British domination in Sudan. Britain's client Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi lost support, and both powers agreed to let north and south vote freely on independence.

Southern army units mutinied in August 1955, beginning a seventeen-year insurgency against rule from Khartoum. The war ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement, which granted southern Sudan regional autonomy within a united Sudan.

Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956, when the Egyptian and British flags were lowered and Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari raised the Sudanese flag at the People's Palace, ending fifty-seven years of joint British-Egyptian rule under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. A polling process had produced a democratic parliament and al-Azhari led the first modern Sudanese government, but civilian rule proved short-lived and independence sharpened the rift between the Islamic north and the animist and Christian south.

The coup of 25 May 1969 made Nimeiry prime minister, abolished parliament and outlawed all political parties. A communist-led coup briefly succeeded in July 1971 before anti-communist officers restored him to power.

The agreement ended the first civil war and granted the south a degree of self-rule, producing a ten-year hiatus in fighting. It also ended American investment in the Jonglei Canal project, considered essential to irrigate the Upper Nile and avert famine among the Dinka.

Until the early 1970s agricultural output was mostly for internal consumption; from 1972 the government sought export-led growth. Falling commodity prices through the decade and rising debt-servicing costs from agricultural mechanisation instead produced economic crisis.

The Ansar mounted a bloody but unsuccessful coup attempt in 1976, but in July 1977 Nimeiry met their leader Sadiq al-Mahdi. Hundreds of political prisoners were released and a general amnesty for oppositionists followed in August.

The 1978 programme further promoted mechanised export agriculture. It caused great hardship for Sudan's pastoralists, deepening rural grievance.

War resumed in 1983 after President Gaafar Nimeiry imposed Islamic law nationwide, reigniting conflict with southern rebels led by the Sudan People's Liberation Army. The conflict and the earlier civil war together killed an estimated 1.5 million people before the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended it.

The 1983 census counted 21.6 million people including present-day South Sudan, while the 2008 census recorded over 30 million in the north, west and east and estimates put the 2024 figure near 50 million. Rapid growth compounded pressure on food, services and land.

Nimeiri imposed sharia law, symbolically destroying alcohol and instituting hudud punishments such as public amputations, followed by an Islamic economy in early 1984 abolishing interest and instituting zakat; he declared himself imam of the Sudanese Umma in 1984. The measures reopened conflict with the non-Muslim south and drove prominent poets and artists into prison or exile. Islam remained the state religion with sharia applied until 2020.

The army and allied Joint Force militias said on 30 June 2026 that they had made further gains against the Rapid Support Forces in Blue Nile state and Darfur. The Joint Force said it had captured Kolbus locality in West Darfur, near the border with Chad.

Hemedti, head of the RSF-led parallel administration, issued a decree on 1 April 2026 establishing an Interim Council of Justice in areas it controls, to prepare for selecting a chief justice and attorney-general and forming a constitutional court.

RSF and allied SPLM-N (al-Hilu) forces captured Kurmuk, Blue Nile state's third-largest town, on 24 March 2026, two months after attacking the state from South Sudan. More than 73,000 people were displaced by the offensive.

The army broke the RSF's siege of Kadugli in South Kordofan on 3 February 2026, reopening the Kadugli–Dalang road. The advance followed the army lifting a separate RSF siege of nearby Dalang a week earlier.

Chad shut its border with Sudan on 23 February 2026 after militia groups allied with Sudan's government crossed into the Wadi Fira region and killed five Chadian soldiers and three civilians two days earlier. Twelve more people were injured in the clashes.

Sudan's government announced on 11 January 2026 that it had fully returned to Khartoum, ending nearly four years of operating from Port Sudan as a wartime capital. The army had driven the RSF out of the capital in March 2025.

The RSF took control of the Heglig oilfield, a major source of Sudan's oil output, on 8 December 2025. Two days later South Sudanese troops deployed to help secure the site under a tripartite arrangement involving South Sudan, the Sudanese army and the RSF.

The UK imposed sanctions on four senior RSF commanders, including Abdul Rahim Dagalo, on 12 December 2025, citing their role in atrocities committed after the fall of El Fasher. The European Union had separately sanctioned Dagalo on 20 November 2025.

Widespread killings and rapes were reported after the RSF took El Fasher in October 2025, with later reports suggesting at least 60,000 may have been killed there. The RSF's apparent targeting of Black indigenous communities led international officials to warn of a repeat of genocide in Darfur.

The RSF captured El Fasher's army headquarters on 26 October 2025, seizing the army's last stronghold in Darfur. A UN report in February 2026 documented 6,000 killings in the three days after the city fell; other estimates of the death toll vary widely and remain unconfirmed.

The central bank banned private gold exports on 15 September 2025 in an effort to curb smuggling and preserve foreign-currency reserves. It reversed the ban on 5 November 2025.

In April 2025 a parallel administration was set up to govern areas held by the RSF and its allies. The move formalised the territorial partition of Sudan's governing authority during the civil war.

Fighting broke out in Khartoum on 15 April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, as a power struggle between al-Burhan and his deputy Hemedti, head of the RSF formed from the Janjaweed, over integrating the RSF into the army erupted into open war while an internationally brokered transition to civilian rule was being discussed. Within three days 400 people were dead and 3,500 injured, including three World Food Programme workers, prompting the agency to suspend operations; the war has since displaced more than twelve million people, with death toll estimates varying widely.

By December 2023 over 5.8 million people were internally displaced and 1.5 million had fled abroad, with reports of the Masalit massacres and up to 15,000 killed in Geneina; by April 2024 the UN counted 8.6 million displaced and 18 million facing severe hunger. US officials estimated at least 150,000 dead by May 2024, and by April 2025 famine affected nearly 25 million people including four million acutely malnourished children.

Reports in February 2022 described a Sudanese envoy travelling to Israel to advance relations. The contact continued a normalisation track opened after al-Bashir's fall.

On 25 October 2021, a month after a failed coup attempt on 21 September in which 40 officers were arrested, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, backed by RSF commander Hemedti, seized power, removing Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's transitional government, arresting civilian officials and declaring a state of emergency. Burhan became de facto head of state and formed an army-backed government on 11 November, ending the democratic transition begun after Omar al-Bashir's overthrow and triggering mass protests.

The quarrel over the Nile dam intensified in 2021, adding to tension along the contested border. Control of Nile waters remains central to Sudan's agriculture and energy prospects.

A political agreement signed on 21 November 2021 restored Hamdok while leaving Burhan in control, calling for the release of political prisoners and reaffirming the 2019 constitutional declaration. Hamdok resigned on 2 January 2022 after some of the deadliest protests to date and was succeeded by Osman Hussein; by March 2022 over 1,000 people had been detained, 87 killed and 25 rapes alleged.

On 23 October 2020 Washington delisted Sudan, with Khartoum agreeing to pay $335 million in compensation to victims of the 1998 embassy bombings. Delisting reopened access to international finance and investment after more than two decades of isolation.

As of 12 July 2020 the transitional government repealed the apostasy law, public flogging and the alcohol prohibition for non-Muslims, and homosexuality ceased to be a capital offence. A further accord with rebel leaders in September 2020 separated state and religion, ending three decades of Islamic law and making Sudan a secular state.

UNHCR recorded over 1.1 million refugees in Sudan in August 2019, chiefly from South Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic and Chad, plus 1,864,195 internally displaced people. Sudan is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Sworn in on 21 August 2019, the economist Hamdok inherited shortages of food, fuel and hard currency and estimated that US$10bn over two years was needed to halt the panic, noting over 70% of the 2018 budget had gone on civil war measures. On 3 September he appointed 14 civilian ministers including Sudan's first female foreign minister and first Coptic Christian minister, a woman.

A July 2019 political agreement and the Constitutional Declaration signed on 4 August 2019 established a joint military-civilian Sovereignty Council as head of state, a new chief justice and a civilian prime minister; the Transitional Military Council was formally replaced on 21 August by an 11-member Sovereignty Council. The interim constitution made no mention of sharia law.

On 3 June 2019 security forces dispersed the sit-in with tear gas and live ammunition, killing more than 100 people. Sudan was suspended from the African Union in June 2019 over the lack of progress towards a civilian-led transitional authority.

The government joined an offer pool for a private-sector ground surveying satellite operating above Sudan, successfully launched on 11 April 2019. President al-Bashir had called for an African Space Agency in 2012, though plans were never finalised.

On 11 April 2019, after months of demonstrations culminating in a mass sit-in at army headquarters, the chiefs of staff intervened, ordering the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir and declaring a three-month state of emergency, ending nearly thirty years of his rule. Vice President Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf led the coup and al-Bashir was imprisoned; a Transitional Military Council took over, and security forces later killed dozens of protesters in Khartoum in June 2019 while dispersing a sit-in.

Protests began on 19 December 2018 after the government tripled the price of goods amid 70 percent inflation and an acute foreign currency shortage. The government arrested more than 800 opposition figures and protesters and around 40 died, but opposition groups converged into a united coalition and the youth-led movement continued.

President Obama signed an executive order on 13 January 2017 lifting many sanctions and unfreezing government assets held abroad, and on 6 October 2017 President Trump lifted most of the remainder. The moves began Sudan's re-entry into the international financial system.

Sudanese forces participated in the coalition campaign against the Houthis and forces loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh. The deployment aligned Khartoum with Gulf patrons whose financial support later sustained the post-Bashir military council.

Protest unrest known as the Sudanese Intifada subsided in 2013 after al-Bashir pledged not to stand again in 2015. He broke the promise and won the 2015 election amid an opposition boycott and turnout of only 46 percent.

Violence in Darfur in 2013 killed an estimated 6,000 additional civilians and displaced 500,000 more. Sixteen UNAMID peacekeepers were also killed that year, the mission's deadliest so far.

Security and economic agreements signed on 27 September 2012 relating to the normalisation of relations between the two countries have yet to be fully implemented, and the final disposition of the contested Abyei region remains undecided.

In April 2012 the South Sudanese army captured the Heglig oil field, which Sudanese forces later recaptured, a victory in the war over the border between Unity and South Kordofan states. The fighting followed the wider Sudanese conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile between the army and the Sudan Revolutionary Front.

South Sudan formally separated from Sudan on 9 July 2011 after the referendum promised under the 2005 peace agreement produced an overwhelming vote for separation in January 2011. Sudan lost about a quarter of its territory and most of its oil reserves, recognised South Sudanese independence along the borders of 1 January 1956, and left the contested region of Abyei to vote at a future date; over 97% of the remaining population adhered to Islam after the split.

Oil production fell from around 450,000 barrels per day to under 60,000, plunging the economy from boom growth of about nine percent in 2007 into stagflation. Output recovered to around 250,000 barrels per day by 2014–15, and in August 2012 Sudan and South Sudan agreed to pipe southern oil to Port Sudan.

Since South Sudan's independence, fighting between the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states has left 1.2 million people internally displaced or severely affected and in need of humanitarian assistance. Armed conflict, poor transport infrastructure and government denial of access have impeded aid delivery.

Oil profits drove rapid development even under international sanctions, with GDP growth of 5.2 percent in 2010 against 4.2 percent in 2009. Growth collapsed after South Sudan's secession, slowing to about 3.1 percent by 2015 with inflation near 21.8 percent.

Floods in July 2007 directly affected more than 400,000 people. The disaster compounded humanitarian pressures already severe from conflict in Darfur and the south.

The Chad–Sudan conflict of 2005–2007, begun after the Battle of Adré prompted a Chadian declaration of war, was formally halted by an accord signed in Saudi Arabia on 3 May 2007. It aimed to stop the Darfur war spilling along the 1,000-kilometre border.

The African Union-United Nations Hybrid Mission in Darfur has operated since 2007, but its troops have struggled to stabilise the situation and have increasingly become targets for attacks by armed groups.

The Darfur Peace Agreement was signed on 5 May 2006 to end three years of conflict, and a further agreement with the Eastern Front coalition followed at Asmara on 14 October 2006. Neither settlement produced a durable end to insurgency.

Sudan became one of the few states to endorse Morocco's claim in December 2005. The step marked a distinctive alignment within Arab and African diplomacy.

On 9 January 2005 the government and the SPLM signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, also known as the Naivasha Agreement, in Nairobi, following peace talks that gained momentum with several accords in 2002–04. It ended the Second Sudanese Civil War, granted the southern rebels autonomy for six years to be followed by a referendum on independence for Southern Sudan, and created protections for non-Muslims in Khartoum, with UNMIS established under UN Security Council Resolution 1590 to support implementation.

Arabic had been the sole official language before 2005, when the new constitution added English. The change reflected the accommodation of the south under the peace settlement.

Rebel movements accused the government of oppressing non-Arab Sudanese in favour of Sudanese Arabs, triggering a war in which Janjaweed militias were accused of mass atrocities. The conflict has been described as genocide, killing an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 people and displacing over 2.8 million, and the ICC issued two arrest warrants for al-Bashir.

UNESCO recorded over 3,000 Sudanese researchers leaving the country between 2002 and 2014, and by 2013 Sudan had only 19 researchers per 100,000 citizens, a thirtieth of Egypt's ratio. Only about 500 scientific papers were published in 2015, against roughly 10,000 a year in similarly sized Poland.

When al-Turabi introduced a bill to reduce presidential powers before the 2000 election, al-Bashir dissolved institutions and declared emergency rule. Al-Turabi's call to boycott the president's campaign and his contacts with the SPLA led to his imprisonment the same year, consolidating al-Bashir's personal control.

After Hassan al-Turabi invited Osama bin Laden to Sudan, Washington designated the country a state sponsor of terrorism, and following Al Qaeda's bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania launched Operation Infinite Reach against the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, wrongly believed to make chemical weapons. Sudan then expelled Egyptian Islamic Jihad members and encouraged bin Laden to leave as pragmatists sought to end its isolation.

On 16 October 1993 al-Bashir took the presidency and absorbed the council's executive and legislative powers. In the 1996 general election he was by law the only candidate, and Sudan became a one-party state under the National Congress Party.

Under the 1991 penal code women were barred from wearing trousers in public as an obscene outfit, punishable by up to 40 lashes. In one 2009 case a convicted woman was fined the equivalent of 200 US dollars instead.

On 30 June 1989 Colonel Omar al-Bashir led a bloodless military coup that overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi with the backing of the National Islamic Front. He suspended political parties, introduced an Islamic legal code nationally, and followed with purges and executions in the army, bans on associations and independent newspapers and the imprisonment of political figures and journalists. He ruled for nearly thirty years, during which Sudan adopted Islamist governance and fought prolonged wars in the south and in Darfur.