Stop the killing, again

摘要

Africa's largest country has long been one of its most troubled. Sudan is a bubbling hotchpotch of sharply different regions, tribes and religions that have been clashing violently virtually since the day the British colonial administration left in 1956. Various governments at the centre, in Khartoum, have tried with scant success to control the periphery. Some 2m people are thought to have died in a civil war between north and south that has raged, more off than on, for the last three decades. And while a fragile peace signed two years ago between the Muslim Arab northerners, who have always run the show, and the black African (mainly Christian and animist) southerners has just about held, another vicious war, this time in the western province of Darfur, has been threatening since 2003 to tear the country apart yet again (see page 26).