Soudan, Sudan; same as it ever was
The latest issue of the Economist has an article about Sudan that informs us, grimly, "...some 50,000 civilians have fled into the bush, leaving Abyei town virtually deserted, a stark reminder that some 2m were killed and 4m displaced during the long conflict that ended in 2005." You read it: Two million killed! And, then there are the "continuing horrors of Darfur".
Now, consider this: "Thus the situation in Soudan for several centuries may be summed up as follows: The dominant race of Arab invaders was unceasingly spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the same time it harried and enslaved them." That's from "The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan" by Winston Churchill, which was written in 1899, while he was an officer in the British army. It's a wonderful book that graphically describes the conflict between the British forces led by Lord Kitchener and Dervish forces led by Muhammad Ahmad, who was attempting to conquer Egypt, drive out the non-Muslim "infidels" and make way for the second coming of the Islamic Mahdi ("redeemer).
And in case you think that a young soldier's account of 19th-century battles is irrelevant to today's realities, consider Churchill's take back then on the clash of civilizations:
"The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. ... No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
Not very politically correct, of course, but feminists and the atheists would surely agree with Churchill's assessment there. No? Meanwhile, back in Sudan, barbarity rules and horror upon horror is perpetuated. One way out of the darkness would be a federal Sudan, with the south getting autonomy, but, according to the Economist: "Others believe passionately that the Muslim-dominated, Arab north will never co-operate with the Christian and animist south, and that independence is the only way." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as Churchill might not have said.
