Repairing the uneasy relationship between the northern and southern regions of Sudan is essential to ending the ongoing conflict in Darfur, U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cameron Hume said in a speech Monday at the University Club of Washington, D.C.
AU students also said it was important to mend the relationships within Sudan before the United States intervenes.
"The main historical challenge in Sudan isn't Khartoum in Darfur," Hume said. "It's the north-south divide."
Khartoum, Sudan's capitol, upholds the country's revenue and economic prosperity, which results in unequal distribution of wealth among the Sudanese, he said.
Since its beginning in July 2003, the conflict in Darfur has resulted in about 450,000 deaths and 2.5 million refugees, Hume said. However, the war between northern and southern Sudan has been going on for almost 50 years. There have been 100,000 deaths every year between 1980 and 2000 as a result of this civil war, he said.
"[The Bush Administration] said Darfur is genocide, but it never said southern Sudan was genocide," Hume said. "I just don't understand it."
Hume said economic and environmental volatility and the importance of ethnicity contribute to the conflicts between northern and southern Sudan, which is a country ruled more or less by three main tribes.
"It seems to me that you can't allow [the conflict] to continue," Kent Harrel, a sophomore in the School of International Service, said.
Hume said the Bush administration, Sudan and the African Union saw the need for change in Sudan. The Sudan Tribune reported that on Jan. 9, 2005 the Bush administration, Sudan and other African nations signed a peace treaty in Nairobi, Kenya, to end the civil war in Sudan.
Two years after the peace agreement, southern Sudan has had a positive economic change, Hume said. Revenue from Khartoum is finally being equally distributed to people in the south. Northern Sudan has removed about 73 percent of its troops from the south.
In the next two years a census will be taken, "which will lay the basis for 2009 elections in Sudan," he said. Then, southern Sudan will be able to decide if it wants to secede from the rest of Sudan in 2011, Hume said.
But Hume said complete cooperation between northern and southern Sudan, not secession by the South, will greatly help resolve the problems between the north and south and the Darfur region.
"In Sudan, the prospects of democracy, if the north and the south stay in the same body of politics, I think are pretty good," he said. "Then, [the north and south] will have to deal with each other. There has to be that degree of adherence to rules and to tolerance for others that allowed a larger political body to be successful."
Whether the United States should implement any new policies is another question.
"I don't think the U.S. can really make a difference," Alyssa Klein, a senior in SIS, said. "I think it's more of an issue that the U.N. should be taking care of."
Bob Burian, a sophomore in SIS, said the U.N. and the United States should intercede in the conflict.
"I believe we should intervene in the conflict," Burian said. "But I believe it has to be in consent with the U.N. and the African union because I don't believe [the United States] quite has the manpower."
Hume said the U.S. sends about $500 million to Sudan annually for humanitarian operations. Malnutrition and infant mortality have declined as a result. Yet the humanitarian program is inadequate, he said.
"You can't fix a place just by feeding people," he said. "You've got to address the security issues"
