Word: sudan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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President George Bush's announcement of sanctions against Sudan in an effort to end the bloodshed in Darfur reflects the sustained U.S. effort to end a conflict so ineffectually handled by the international community. The language he used in announcing a ban on trade with 30 Sudanese companies, one arms supplier to Sudan, two government ministers and a Sudanese rebel leader also resonated with humanitarian aid groups. "For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians," said the President. "My Administration...
...Darfur atrocities described by President Bush as genocide are perpetrated by the Arab supremacist Janjaweed militia, with support from Sudanese troops, against the farmer population of Darfur, who are mostly black Africans. In four years of fighting in this eastern, semi-desert region of Sudan, 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced. Last November, Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir finally agreed to a three-phase U.N. plan to strengthen the overstretched, 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur. Then, after five months of stalling, the Sudanese President gave the go-ahead in April...
...dervishes, distinguished by their green and red robes, eclectic prayer beads, charms and Rastafarian-style dreadlocks, represent a kinder, gentler picture of Sudanese society than the one world focuses on in the horrors of Darfur. While Sudan's Islamist government foments war there and disdainfully drags its heels over the implementation of a peace plan, the dervishes follow a mystical Sufi Muslim tradition that seeks harmony and "oneness" with the universe...
...Sufism has deep roots in Sudanese culture, and its influence is strikingly at odds with the oppressive Islamist political ideology that has long fueled conflict here. In the early 1990s, Sudan counted itself among the most rigid Islamist governments in the world: Riot police tear-gassed overly festive wedding parties, and the regime's determination to impose its harsh version of sharia law on the more Christian South helped to drag out the war. Its chief ideologue, Hassan al-Turabi, notoriously helped to radicalize Osama bin Laden during his years living in Khartoum...
...imprisoned by a regime that stamped out political opponents and critical voices. But the Islamists have not dared to interfere with Sufism. Apolitical and non-confrontational by its very nature, it offers a form of resistance that is harder to break. "Sufism is part and parcel of life in Sudan," says Gasim Badri, who heads a liberal women's university in Omdurman. "Even now, after 18 years in power, they have been unable to change the Sudanese people...