The Sudan: Naivasha Agreement: Unity or Secession?

The Sudan is a typical example of troubled African and Arab Countries, where problems abound, whether ethnic, regional, and religious or caused by new elites (especially the military). Although Sudanese sociological studies have tackled, at an early date, the issue of diversity and unity as the basis for the construction of a Sudanese identity, and its Arab African role, yet the intransigent attitudes adopted by most of the political actors left no space for such studies to bear fruit. Numerous elements played negative roles in shaping the destiny of the Sudan. Foremost among these elements was the role of foreign influences, starting with British Colonialism, then Western influences in general, and the present American interventions. Then there was the backwardness of the production processes (Sudan being a simple cotton plantation), and the absence of any real social transformations (the ascendance of Religious Sects for a long period of time), which meant that the elites emerged through a false modernization process and not through such transformations. Then there were the successive military coups (38 out of 48 years of independence were spent under military rule), which affected the whole picture. All these elements meant that the problem in the Sudan is greater than just a simple identification of identity, or the conflict between one region or another over the right for self determination because it is originally a matter of exclusiveness or acceptance for the equal development i.e.: objective not subjective (ethnic… etc) factor. However, let us look at the results of the last Naivasha agreements in the light of the above facts.