The Nuba people have been chafing against the Sudanese central government for years, complaining of neglect and oppression, and they want more autonomy, a familiar, dangerous demand in this huge, heterogeneous country that has been wracked by tensions since before independence from Great Britain in 1956. Sudan—or now the two Sudans—is a complex place with a dizzying amount of diversity. Before South Sudan split off, Sudan was the biggest country, geographically, in Africa. But it also had an unusually clear internal demarcation, reinforced by the British colonizers, with the southern part mostly animist and Christian and the north mostly Muslim and long dominated by Arabs. The Sudd, which means “barrier” in Arabic, historically separated the two, and the British even passed laws forbidding Muslim traders from entering the south.
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