Marginalization and ethnicization in the Sudan: how the elite failed to stabilize a diverse country

This paper is based on the hypothesis that the crisis of the Sudan has resulted from the failure of the elite to establish just and rational governance in this multicultural, multi-ethnic, Afro-Arab state, as well as their failure to harmonize a heterogeneous entity which embraces approximately 572 tribes. The country’s crisis of identity is a product not only of colonial policies, but also of the partisan/sectarian and ethnic-oriented behaviour of the ruling elite that have governed the country since its independence in 1956.