The Lost Boys Essay

Fighting always affects the people who are near the conflict, but one civil war has forced thousands of innocent children to travel unthinkable distances simply to attain safety. Before they became known as the Lost Boys from the war, the group of mainly seven to seventeen year old males originally lived normal lives with their relatives in southern Sudan (UNICEF). From 1898, until 1956, Britain and Egypt jointly had control over Sudan in what was called the Condominium, which caused conflict in Sudan (“The Sudanese Civil…”). Because of the civil war in Sudan, The Lost Boys became a group of refugees who had to evacuate their homeland (Bollag). The boys in southern Sudan were an underprivileged group even before the Sudanese Civil War broke

While, the Sunni Muslims dominated in the North, in the South it was very diverse with several different religions and practices. Within the southern part of Sudan there were six different regions that had Ethiopia as their neighbor. (Nelson 119).Together, the diverse, southern peoples were united in their religious differences with the North. The four major cultural groups within the southern peoples were the Nilotes, the Dinka, the Nuer, and the Shilluk, with the Nilotes remaining the most popular group of the four. While their religious backgrounds differed extremely, all of Sudan shared a similar style of living in which the people lived in localized villages; some were migrant herders that usually kept to themselves or were violent towards other people (Nelson

Before the war, the British formed new codes in which they restricted the North’s interaction with the South, with the intent to preserve the separate cultural integrity and tradition of the regions in 1930. This British action put major setbacks on South Sudan’s education, economic advancements, and politics which allowed for the people of the North to form Social Darwinist views toward the Southern peoples. Holding on to their nationalist views, northerners felt more advanced and judged their abilities. Britain repealed their codes of restriction and reopened their interaction again in 1946, but about ten years later, Sudan received total independence from both Egypt and Britain, relieving Sudan from the Condominium. “In 1954, Sudan elected a new transitional government that was dominated by Northerners, adding fuel to a fire of mistrust already prevalent in the South.” (“The Sudanese Civil…”). This new government led to the start of a violent civil war that commenced on August 18, 1955 and did not end until around 1972. Brigadier General Ibrahim Abboud took over the government in August of 1958 and forbade Christianity, which provoked the fighting between the Sudan African National Union, or SANU, political outlaws who fought for the South’s freedom, and the North (“The Sudanese Civil…”). As it instilled fear and threat, the chaos and disruption