Multiple civil wars in southern Sudan and the conflict in Darfur are both symptoms of the historic marginalization of Sudan’s peripheries. Since it achieved independence from the British in 1956, Sudan has been ruled from Khartoum by a small group of predominantly Arab elites hailing principally from the Nile River valley in central Sudan. Rather than working to develop Sudan’s economy, empower people in the peripheries of the country, and pull its citizens out of poverty, these elites have hoarded wealth and power for themselves.

Southern Sudan and Darfur each belong to this historically marginalized periphery. Successive governments in Khartoum have either ignored these regions or sought to suppress them militarily. As a result, southern Sudan and Darfur are two of the poorest, most war-torn, and most underdeveloped places on Earth. In both situations, rebel groups arose to fight for greater political control and increased access to the resources controlled by ruling elites in Khartoum. And in both situations the government in Khartoum responded by arming and training ethnically-based militias and granting them impunity to murder, rape, forcibly displace, and loot property from civilians the government accuses of supporting the rebellion.

During the civil war in southern Sudan, the government armed Arab militias called the murahaleen to attack the SPLA and the Dinka people. In Darfur, government-backed Arab militias called the janjaweed are attacking the Fur, Zaghawa, Massaleit, and other ethnic groups accused of supporting Darfurian rebels. Another similarity is the Khartoum government’s cynical use of Sudan’s ethnic diversity as a weapon. The government uses “divide and destroy” tactics to engineer ethnic splits within rebel groups and foment increased chaos on the ground.

The ideological dimension of the conflicts also bears similarities. The ruling National Congress Party in Khartoum took power in a military coup in 1989, when it was called the National Islamic Front. Key decision makers within the ruling party espouse an extremist, racist ideology that justifies violence to reengineer Sudanese society.

The result is massive death, displacement, and destruction of livelihoods. From 1983 until 2005, the war in southern and central Sudan left more than two million people dead and drove some 4.5 million civilians from their homes. From 2003 to the present, the war in Darfur has killed at least 200,000 (possibly up to 400,000) people and driven more than 2.5 million people from their homes. One significant difference is the demographics of the victims. Southern Sudanese are overwhelmingly non-Muslim; they are either Christians or adhere to traditional belief systems. Darfurians are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.

In the context of this difference, analysis of the dynamics driving these conflicts has often been oversimplified. The civil war in southern Sudan has been painted as a war between the Muslim North and the Christian South. In reality, Christians are a minority in southern Sudan, and many northern Muslims – especially in the Nuba Mountains and Southern Blue Nile – fought with the SPLA against the government. In Darfur, the war is portrayed as Arabs versus non-Arabs. In reality, centuries of coexistence and intermarriage have blurred the line between Arab and non-Arab groups. A person’s sense of identity in Darfur is more political and cultural than physical, and the janjaweed are an extremist group that the Government of Sudan uses to fight its war.

Although both southerners and Darfurians experienced terrible trauma, Darfur has been spared from one of the most grotesque aspects of the war in the South: slavery. In southern Sudan, the Government of Sudan allowed the murahaleen militias to take slaves. The murahaleen raided Dinka villages in southern Sudan, kidnapped civilians, and sold them for domestic labor or field work in the north. One of the main lessons of the conflict in Sudan is the role of citizen activism in generating international action. The international community is unlikely to halt genocide and crimes against humanity unless there is pressure from ordinary citizens. In southern Sudan, the growth of a constituency of concerned Americans was the catalyst for the U.S. government’s decision to fully engage in the peace process that led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. In Darfur, it is the ongoing efforts of concerned Americans that keep the plight of Darfurians on the radar of policymakers in Washington. Sudan’s conflicts have captured the attention of citizens from all walks of life, and sustained pressure is critical to ending the Darfur crisis and helping Darfurians and southern Sudanese rebuild their communities.