For the past several years, significant U.S. attention has been focused on the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, in which roughly three hundred thousand have died and nearly three million have been displaced. Meanwhile, continued violence in South Sudan--along with uneven implementation of the fragile peace brought by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and an impending 2011 referendum on allowing South Sudan to break away--raises fears that the country's civil strife will expand to disastrous levels. The country's major opposition parties boycotted Sudan's presidential election scheduled in April 2010--part of the first multi-party general elections in twenty-four years--citing concerns of irregularities in voter registration and insecurity in Darfur (SudanTribune).With much of the opposition boycotting, controversial President Omar al-Bashir received 68 percent of more than 10 million valid ballots and won another five year term.
U.S. foreign policy has treated Darfur and South Sudan as separate issues. But experts say both situations can be traced to Khartoum's central government, which has historically maintained control of the country's periphery through divide-and-rule policies. There is wide disagreement about the best policy course for the United States to pursue in Sudan, but analysts agree that any effective policy will have to consider Sudan's internal politics and the center's relationship with its periphery.
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