AP Photo

The Sudanese conflict has entered a dangerous new phase. Between 1983 and 2005, the Arab-led government in Khartoum and its proxies struggled to defeat a militia movement aimed at establishing a new political order for the polyglot country, one that wasn’t based on violent coercion and racial privilege. The current fighting along the disputed border between Sudan and newly independent South Sudan threatens to throw the region back into chaos. Just seven years after a peace agreement successfully ended a war that had killed somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 million people (in a country with a present population of 8 million), there are daily reports of bombings and border attacks, troubling reminders of the frailty of the post-conflict status quo.