Republic of the Sudan or Republic of Sudan is the largest African country by area.The country is situated at a crossroads between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, Kenya and Uganda to the southeast, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest. It is the tenth largest country in the world by area.-----------------------In 1820, Northern Sudan came under Egyptian rule when Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, sent armies led by his son Ismail Pasha and Mahammed Bey to conquer eastern Sudan. The Egyptians developed Sudan’s trade in ivory. Ismail Pasha, khedive of Egypt from 1863-1879, tried to extend Egyptian (and therefore British) influence south.--------Egyptian maladministration and misrule eventually led to a revolt led by religious leader Muhammad ibn Abdalla, the self-proclaimed Mahdi (Guided One), who sought to purify Islam in Sudan. He led a nationalist revolt against Egyptian/British rule culminating in the fall of Khartoum and the death of the British General Charles George Gordon in 1885. The revolt was successful and Egypt and the British abandoned Sudan, and the resulting state was a theocratic Mahdist state.-----------------The Mahdiyah (Mahdist regime) imposed traditional Islamic laws. Sudan's new ruler also authorised the burning of lists of pedigrees and books of law and theology because of their association with the old order and because he believed that the former accentuated tribalism at the expense of religious unity. The Mahdiyah has become known as the first genuine Sudanese nationalist government. The Mahdi maintained that his movement was not a religious order that could be accepted or rejected at will, but that it was a universal regime, which challenged man to join or to be destroyed. Originally, the Mahdiyah was a jihad state, run like a military camp. Sharia courts enforced Islamic law and the Mahdi's precepts, which had the force of law. Six months after the fall of Khartoum, the Mahdi died of typhus, and after a power struggle amongst his deputies, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, with the help primarily of the Baqqara Arabs of western Sudan, overcame the opposition of the others and emerged as unchallenged leader of the Mahdiyah. After consolidating his power, Abdallahi ibn Muhammad assumed the title of Khalifa (successor) of the Mahdi, instituted an administration, and appointed Ansar (who were usually Baqqara) as emirs over each of the several provinces. Regional relations remained tense throughout much of the Mahdiyah period, largely because of the Khalifa's commitment to using the jihad to extend his version of Islam throughout the world. In 1887, a 60,000-man Ansar army invaded Ethiopia, penetrating as far as Gondar. In March 1889, king Yohannes IV of Ethiopia, marched on Metemma; however, after Yohannes fell in battle, the Ethiopian forces withdrew. Abd ar Rahman an Nujumi, the Khalifa's best general, invaded Egypt in 1889, but British-led Egyptian troops defeated the Ansar at Tushkah. The failure of the Egyptian invasion broke the spell of the Ansar's invincibility. The Belgians prevented the Mahdi's men from conquering Equatoria, and in 1893, the Italians repulsed an Ansar attack at Akordat (in Eritrea) and forced the Ansar to withdraw from Ethiopia.------------------------In the 1890s, the British sought to regain control of Sudan. By the early 1890s, British, French, and Belgian claims had converged at the Nile headwaters. Britain feared that the other colonial powers would take advantage of Sudan's instability to acquire territory previously annexed to Egypt. Apart from these political considerations, Britain wanted to establish control over the Nile to safeguard a planned irrigation dam at Aswan. Lord Kitchener led military campaigns from 1896-98, culminating in the Battle of Omdurman. Following defeat of the Mahdists, an agreement was reached in 1899 establishing Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, under which Sudan was run by a governor-general appointed by Egypt with British consent. In reality, Sudan was a colony of Great Britain. From 1924 until independence in 1956, the British had a policy of running Sudan as two essentially separate colonies, the south and the north. The last British Governor-General was Sir Robert Howe, from 1947 to 1955.-------------------The first real independence attempt was made in 1924 by a group of Sudanese military officers known as The White Flag Association. The group was led by first lieutenant Ali Abdullatif and first lieutenant Abdul Fadil Almaz. The latter led an insurrection of the military training academy, which ended in their defeat and the death of Almaz after the British army blew up the military hospital where he was garrisoned. This defeat was (allegedly) partially the result of the Egyptian garrison in Khartoum North not supporting the insurrection with artillery as was previously promised. Afterwards, the newly elected government led by the first prime minister Ismael Al-Azhari, went ahead with the process of Sudanization of the state's government, with the help and supervision of an international committee. In November 1955, it declared the intentions of the Sudanese people to exercise their right to independence. This was duly granted and on January 1, 1956, Sudan was formally declared independent. In a special ceremony held at the People's Palace, the British and Egyptian flags were brought down and the new Sudanese flag, composed of green, blue and yellow stripes, was raised in their place.----------------------- First Sudanese Civil War: The year before independence, a civil war began between Northern and Southern Sudan. The Southerners, anticipating independence, feared the new nation would be dominated by the North. Historically, the north of Sudan had closer ties with Egypt and was predominantly Arab and Muslim while the south was predominantly black, with a mixture of Christianity and Animism. These divisions had been further emphasized by the British policy of ruling the North and South under separate administrations. From 1924, it was illegal for people living above the 10th parallel to go further south and for people below the 8th parallel to go further north. The law was ostensibly enacted to prevent the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases that had ravaged British troops, as well as to facilitate spreading Christianity among the predominantly animist population while stopping the Arabic and Islamic influence from advancing south. The result was increased isolation between the already distinct north and south and arguably laid the seeds of conflict in the years to come. The resulting conflict, known as the First Sudanese Civil War, lasted from 1955 to 1972. In 1972, a cessation of the north-south conflict was agreed upon under the terms of the Addis Ababa Agreement, following talks which were sponsored by the World Council of Churches. This led to a ten-year hiatus in the national conflict.------------- Second Sudanese Civil War: In 1983, the civil war was reignited following President Gaafar Nimeiri's decision to circumvent the Addis Ababa Agreement. President Gaafar Nimeiry attempted to create a Federated Sudan including states in southern Sudhuan, which violated the Addis Ababa Agreement that had granted the south considerable autonomy.-----------------------The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) formed in May 1983. Finally, in June 1983, the Sudanese Government under President Gaafar Nimeiry abrogated the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement (A.A.A.).The situation was exacerbated after President Gaafar Nimeiry went on to implement Sharia Law in September of the same year.-----------------The war continued even after Numeiri was ousted and a democratic government was elected with Al Sadig Al Mahdi's Umma party having the majority in the parliament. The leader of the SPLA John Garang refused to recognise the government and to negotiate with it as representative of the Sudan but agreed to negotiate with Government officials as representative of their political parties. In 1989, a bloodless coup brought control of Khartoum to the hands of Omar al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front headed by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi. The new government was of Islamic orientation and later it formed the Popular Defence Forces (al Difaa al Shaabi) and began to use religious propaganda to recruit people, as the regular army was demoralised and under pressure from the SPLA rebels. This worsened the situation in the tribal south, as the fighting became more intense, causing casualties among the Christian and animist minority. The SPLA started as a Marxist movement, with support from the Soviet Union and the Ethiopian Marxist President Mengistu Haile Meriem. Over time, however, it sought support in the West by using the Northern Sudanese government's religious propaganda to portray the war as a campaign by the Arab Islamic government to impose Islam and the Arabic language on the Christian South. The war went on for more than twenty years, including the use of Russian-made combat helicopters and military cargo planes which were used as bombers to devastating effect on villages and tribal rebels alike. "Sudan's independent history has been dominated by chronic, exceptionally cruel warfare that has starkly divided the country on racial, religious, and regional grounds; displaced an estimated four million people (of a total estimated population of thirty-two million); and killed an estimated two million people."It damaged Sudan's economy and led to food shortages, resulting in starvation and malnutrition. The lack of investment during this time, particularly in the south, meant a generation lost access to basic health services, education, and jobs. It is important to distinguish the Sudanic Arab from other Arabs of the middle east. Sudanic Arabs are descended primarily from the ancient Nubians. In terms of racial origin, it is not clear what specific racial or ethnic group the Nubians originated from. Over a period of centuries, Arab immigration into the Sudan, intermarriage among Nubians and Arabs, and the introduction of Islam and the Arabic language, Arabised the Nubians into the Sudanic Arab of today. In appearance, the Nubians are similar to some Ethiopians and Eritreans; at one point, they shared a common history with the latter (See ancient Kush, and Axum). The Sudanic Arabs are further divided into many different tribes of Nubian or Arab origin, and some Sudanese speak a Nubian language as a mother tongue, and Arabic as a second language. This process of Arabisation was repeated throughout North Africa and the Middle East, i.e., in Libya, where the indigenous Berbers and conquering Arabs merged to form the modern Libyan Arab, as distinguished from the Persians of Iran, who accepted Islam, but rejected Arabic, and an Arab identity. Peace talks between the southern rebels and the government made substantial progress in 2003 and early 2004. The peace was consolidated with the official signing by both sides of the Nairobi Comprehensive Peace Agreement 9 January 2005, granting Southern Sudan autonomy for six years, to be followed by a referendum about independence. It created a co-vice president position and allowed the north and south to split oil equally, but also left both the North's and South's armies in place. John Garang, the south's elected co-vice president died in a helicopter crash on August 1, 2005, three weeks after being sworn in. This resulted in riots, but the peace was eventually able to continue. The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was established under UN Security Council Resolution 1590 of March 24, 2005. Its mandate is to support implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and to perform functions relating to humanitarian assistance, and protection and promotion of human rights.