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By Andrew Mosher
As in much of Africa, war is an old and seemingly intractible reality
for
the people of Sudan. In fact, civil war has largely defined the country
in
the world's eyes ever since it gained independence in 1956 from Egypt
and the United Kingdom. In the ensuing 40 years, rebels from the
country's southern provinces -
populated by black who practice African
Traditional Religion and Christianity - have fought periodically
against a Sudanese government dominated by the country's largely Arab,
Muslim northern population. The war has cost an estimated 2 million
lives
from fighting and famine, as the government and an array
of southern rebel factions battle back and forth across a devastated
landscape, with no apparent end in sight.
Conflict in Sudan, however, is older than the independent state.
Individual
tribes in the south have fought over cattle and grazing land for
centuries,
settling scores at the point of a spear. But the civil war that has
ravaged the
south for more than four decades has also changed the nature of tribal
conflict. Turf
battles that had nothing to do with the larger struggle nevertheless
were being fought with automatic weapons instead of
traditional ones. Tribal elders came to believe that modern warfare was
not
only killing their people, it was killing their culture. If modernity
was
part of the problem, tradition might be the solution, they
reasoned.
Early this year, the New Sudan Council of Churches brought chiefs and
elders
of the Dinka and Nuer, the south's dominant tribal groups, together in
an
effort to make peace through traditional means. Washington Post
photographer
Michel duCille went to southern Sudan and chronicled their efforts.
Enter Gallery 1: Thiet
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