The human cost of the war has been immense, though no reliable figures exist to tabulate that cost. After nearly two decades of fighting issues of relief and rehabilitation have become entangled with the related issues of war aims and the peace process. The relief effort in the Sudan has become a contested example in current debates concerning the efficacy of humanitarian interventions. In this chapter we return to the questions posed in the preface: Is relief a political rather than an humanitarian issue? Do relief programmes shorten or prolong conflict? Can a focus on the technicalities of relief lead to a secure peace?

As has been described in earlier chapters (4, 8 & 9), the way the war is being fought is directly linked to the pursuit of long-term economic objectives in the country. The war economy of both the government and the guerrillas involves, in different degrees, the capture of labour, as much as the capture of territory. On the government's side, relief has become part of their development strategy, and population displacement, slavery and the exploitation of oil, often seen as separate issues by external observers, are inextricably linked in the war effort. In a reinforcing cycle, the economic strategy for the development of the country has produced the war as much as it has been a product of war.

War & economics

After the end to the first civil war a number of governments and international agencies became directly involved in the economic development of the Sudan. The repeated intervention of the US in rescheduling the repayment of the Sudan's debts enabled a succession of Sudanese governments to survive the economic crises of the 1980s. Dependence on the political backing of the US and the IMF, and increased reliance on the liquidity provided by international Islamist financial institutions, redirected the government's accountability away from its domestic constituency and towards its external backers. The direct involvement of UN agencies and other NGOs in the support of development projects and provision of services formerly the responsibility of the civil administration further distanced government from its citizenry, markedly so in the South, where the regional government was forced by lack of funds to contract out services to NGOs.