[MENA] Sudanese refugee crisis

[Naio90]

Middle East News Agency ​

Khartoum, Sudan - Dozens of dead and injured have been reported in a spike of terrorist attacks carried out in northern Sudan, as part of the now decade long civil war between the Sudanese Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). This conflict, a succesor to the first civil war in the late 50s and 60s, has been going on now for over a decade with periods or greater stability and times of increasing violence. Neither the sudanese Government nor the SPLA were able to gain a definitive lead in this conflict. As a result the death toll continues to rise and the impact on the civilian population is critical. The political instability of the national government itself makes it impossible to progress towards peace. In June 1989, military officers under then Col. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, with National Islamic Front (NIF) instigation and support, replaced the Sadiq al-Mahdi government with the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation (RCC), a military junta of 15 military officers assisted by a civilian cabinet. The RCC al-Bashir military government banned trade unions, political parties, and other "non-religious" institutions. About 78,000 members of the army, police, and civil administration were purged in order to reshape the government. The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) is in control of large areas of Equatoria, Bahr al Ghazal, and Upper Nile provinces and also operated in the southern portions of Darfur, Kordofan, and Blue Nile provinces. The government controls a number of the major southern towns and cities, including Juba, Wau, and Malakal. Deaths on both sides are important, but the highest toll is paid, as usual, by the civilian population with near a million deaths due to starvation and drought, conseuqence of the displacement and destruction of vilalges and towns. Official numbers indicated that currently around 400,000 sudanese citizens are being contained on the egyptian-sudanese border, with many other thousands having crossed the border towards inland Egypt in the search for better living conditions. The egyptian Government has called its sudanese counterpart on multiple occasions asking for actions to mitigate this. Although the conflict seemingly came to a truce on december 31st 1994, the refugee crisis on both sides of the border continues. With Al-Bashirs unstable leadership, peace is not going to last.