Sudan: De-radicalization and Counter Radicalization in a Radicalizing Environment

Abstract

Sitting at the crucial crossroads of the Arab peninsula, northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan is strategically important. Its stability will have far-reaching consequences not only for the African continent, but also for the United States and Western Europe, as many radical extremists might use Sudan for training, planning and attacking Western targets. The country remains one of the poorest in the Arab world, with a history of volatile narration, including decades of civil war, military coups, religious and ethnic persecutions, and alleged genocide, all of which have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions and torn the country apart economically, politically and ethnically. In the 1990s, Sudan’s name became associated with terrorism, training, supporting and ‘harbouring’ terrorists and terrorist organizations (Waller, 2011). In 2011, Sudan was split into two countries (North and South), both of which remain economically the poorest in their region, unreconciled, unstable, volatile and vulnerable to terrorism, inbound and outbound. Worse, they exist in a region where ‘sub-state terrorism is already endemic in Africa’ (Arya, 2009).