Sudan became independent in the mid-nineteen-fifties, and for most of the decades that followed, the country was at war with itself. Southern Sudanese, many of them Christian or following traditional beliefs, fought the Arab-led, mostly Muslim government in the north over political power, religion, land and later oil. The second civil war, which began in the early nineteen-eighties, killed an estimated two million people and displaced about four million. By the early nineteen-nineties, around half a million Sudanese refugees were living in camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. A peace agreement in the mid-two-thousands ended the north-south war, and in the early twenty-tens South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for independence and became a new country.
Conflict did not end. Within about two years of independence, fighting broke out in South Sudan between Dinka and Nuer members of the presidential guard and spread into a civil war that displaced millions. In Sudan, the Darfur region endured years of violence against Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and other communities. More recently, war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has driven what Minority Rights Group describes as roughly twelve million people from their homes, including more than four million who fled to neighboring countries.
Minnesota's communities formed in waves. The Department of Health's cumulative table counts more than 1,100 primary refugee arrivals from Sudan, with the largest numbers in the mid-to-late nineteen-nineties and early two-thousands. Carleton College's Religions in Minnesota project describes about four hundred Nuer settling in the Twin Cities during the nineteen-nineties, some resettled directly and others moving here from other states to join community. Dinka families built a congregation in Rochester. Because South Sudan did not exist as a country until recently, earlier South Sudanese arrivals appear in the data under Sudan. The table lists only about one hundred arrivals under South Sudan, most in the last two years. In the most recent state report, there were 59 new arrivals from Sudan and 43 from South Sudan.
The lesson for staff is to ask, not assume. A person born in what is now South Sudan may have documents that say Sudan. A person from Sudan may be from Khartoum, Darfur or the Nuba Mountains, with very different histories. Let people tell you which country and community they identify with.
