Introduction

As revealed in the previous chapter, the severe fighting between the Government of Sudan and the Nuba-led SPLM/A dictated its own logic and dynamics in the region. Shortly after its extension from the Southern Sudan into the Nuba Mountains region in 1985, the war took on an ethnic dimension. The majority of the Nuba sided with and therefore were supported by the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) against the central government. Simultaneously, the Baqqara supported and were reciprocally supported by the government forces. As a result, the two previously co-existing groups were gradually divided into two heavily militarized political-administrative zones along ethno-political lines (see Manger 2003b, 2007; Komey 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b, 2010a).

Despite the antagonism that war brought between the Nuba and Baqqara a new and sporadic form of cooperation emerged (Suliman 1999). Some key actors from both sides were able to ‘strategically essentialize’ themselves and to develop a new pattern of shifting market places across the war frontiers: indeed, ‘trade has not been dormant throughout the years of wars in Sudan. Trade has bridged the political barriers, infiltrated garrisons and rural areas, crossed both national and international borders, as well as ethnic and religious divides’ (Fraser et al. 2004: xi).