Dr. Christopher Zambakari Founder & CEO, The Zambakari Advisory Hartley B. and Ruth B. Barker Endowed Rotary Peace Fellow Assistant Editor, Bulletin of The Sudan Studies Association ![]() As a global citizen, and as a native of South Sudan, I am deeply concerned about the ongoing crisis in the land of my birth. The country has been plagued by violence and political instability for decades, and the situation only gets worse with each passing day. With this in mind, I am drawn to share with you my analysis of the conflict in Sudan, its historical context, the key players and the impact the constant turmoil continues to have on the Sudanese people. I have in mind some solutions as well.
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Dr. Christopher Zambakari Founder & CEO, The Zambakari Advisory Hartley B. and Ruth B. Barker Endowed Rotary Peace Fellow Assistant Editor, Bulletin of The Sudan Studies Association ![]() Sudan is in crisis. Again. Sudan is further tattered, further cleaved and mutilated. The third-largest country in Africa has been marred by political instability and violence for decades. The country has experienced multiple civil wars, military coups and political upheavals. Chaos and states of emergency are almost commonplace, and millions of her people have been displaced. Poverty is widespread and political oppression is the order – or disorder – of the day. Again. Dr. Christopher Zambakari Founder & CEO, The Zambakari Advisory Hartley B. and Ruth B. Barker Endowed Rotary Peace Fellow Assistant Editor, Bulletin of The Sudan Studies Association ![]() Sudan is a country in northeast Africa that has been marred by violence and conflict for several decades. The ongoing conflict in Sudan has resulted in countless deaths and displacement of millions of people. The conflict has also had a devastating impact on the country’s social and economic fabric, leaving the country in a state of turmoil. This article explores the social historical context of the conflict in Sudan, how it came to be, and what led to the violence. Also discussed is what the international community, United Nations, African Union, and Arab League can do to bring the violence to an end. Nichola Mandil Ukeil South Sudan journalist, Instructor, Starford International University, South Sudan ![]() Conflict in Sudan? You may wonder which conflict, which war, which collision of arms and general butchery it is that has most recently caught the international community’s attention. The latest test of wills is a war not a month old and commanded by generals. Commanded by generals, in fact, who have been comrades in “arms and fate” for nearly four years since former Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir was ousted in 2019. Dr. Christopher Zambakari Founder & CEO, The Zambakari Advisory Hartley B. and Ruth B. Barker Endowed Rotary Peace Fellow Assistant Editor, Bulletin of The Sudan Studies Association ![]() Sudan is in crisis. Again. Sudan is further tattered, further cleaved and mutilated. The third-largest country in Africa has been marred by political instability and violence for decades. The country has experienced multiple civil wars, military coups and political upheavals. Chaos and states of emergency are almost commonplace and millions of Sudanese people have been displaced. Poverty is widespread and political oppression is, again, the order – or disorder – across the country. May 10, 2023 Dr. Christopher Zambakari Founder & CEO, The Zambakari Advisory Hartley B. and Ruth B. Barker Endowed Rotary Peace Fellow Assistant Editor, Bulletin of The Sudan Studies Association ![]() Recently, The Zambakari Advisory sat down with Ambassador Freeman in a wide-ranging Zoom call, posing questions on a series of subjects relating to the war in Ukraine, U.S. relations with China, the state of U.S. diplomacy, and the role of Africa and its emerging countries in a world shifting from unipolarity to multipolarity. Considered one of the “whiz kids” of the U.S. State Department when he entered the foreign service in 1965, Chas Freeman Jr. was for nearly 50 years involved in diplomatic service to his country including serving as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President George W. Bush, assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton administration, and interpreter for President Richard Nixon during the path-breaking 1972 China visit. Below are other excerpts from the March interview with Ambassador Freeman. Read the full issue published by Global Policy here! John Ashworth South Sudan Analyst and Adviser to both the Church Council and to the country’s Catholic Bishops ![]() “Peace usually has a price,” an Irish missionary friend is fond of telling me (especially after a drink or two), “and working for peace is harder than working for justice”. He was very involved in South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, and he knows what he's talking about. The price is often paid by those who are perceived as holding the moral high ground, and by the victims. It involves looking for a “win-win” situation, which necessarily involves compromise. Rose Jaji (PhD) University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe ![]() Women appear in much of the literature on violence as victims because violence is generally understood in terms that limit it to its direct or physical form, which is predominantly associated with men. The main result of masculinization of violence and its limitation to physical attack in the study of gender and violence is the pathologization of women, which obscures their political agency. Although women’s perpetration of direct violence is limited and largely unobtrusive relative to men in many conflict situations, women are conspicuous in perpetration of cultural violence, which Galtung (1990, 29) defines as “any aspect of culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form.” Cultural violence takes numerous forms that include art, science, ideology and language. Although it appears to be harmless, cultural violence justifies and legitimizes direct violence (Galtung 1990), and the two forms of violence are mutually constitutive. Cultural violence renders the idea of direct violence a palatable and appropriate response to perceived enemies identified through political ideology articulated through relevant language in Zimbabwean politics. The political discourse in Zimbabwe constitutes an integral component of cultural violence whose distinctive characteristics are name-calling and hate speech, which are exemplified by the depiction of political adversaries as puppets, traitors, and enemies who are a threat to the country and need to be “crushed.” Mahmood Mamdani, PhD. Director of the Institute of Social Research at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University, NY. ![]() In June 2010, Mahmood Mamdani was appointed Director of the Makerere Institute for Social Research (MISR) in Kampala, Uganda, which he since developed into what is arguably the premier center for graduate education in the social sciences and the humanities on the continent. On December 1, 2018, at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Atlanta, Georgia, Mamdani delivered the Hormood Lecture. His theme was “Decolonization and higher education: the experience of Makerere Institute of Social Research.” Parts—on the history of intellectual debates over the nature of the African university—of Mamdani’s lecture have appeared in this London Review of Books article. A major influence on Mamdani’s mission for MISR was the late Samir Amin, the Egyptian intellectual who passed away in August 12, 2018. Soon after Amin passed, we published a post by Max Ajl on Amin’s contributions to historical social science—and revolutionary theory. Ajl concluded that Amin’s contributions span an almost mind-boggling breadth. After hearing Mamdani remembering Amin, I approached him about publishing that section of his remarks on Africa is a country. He obliged. – Sean Jacobs. Abel B.S. Gaiya, A student of Christian apologetics and social theology ![]() Walt Rostow (1959) infamously put forth a five-stage theory of economic development, extrapolating from the experiences of the great industrialized nations. However, as dependency theories strongly pointed out, the conditions under which those countries industrialized is significantly different from those that prevailed after decolonization. In addition to this, democratic capitalism experiences turbulence, which I argue makes development under this global system a struggle against powers and against what I call “Burawoyan Cycles”. |
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