The conflict in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan illustrates how state policies concerning the control of land can cause local conflicts to escalate into large scale wars, which become increasingly difficult to manage or resolve. The conventional perspective on Sudan's recent civil war (1983-2005) - one of the longest and most complex conflicts in Africa - emphasises ethnicity as the main cause. This study, on the contrary, identifies the land factor as aroot cause that is central to understanding Sudan's local conflicts and large-scale wars. Land rights are about relationships between and among persons, pertaining to different economic and ritual activities. Rights toland are intimately tied to membership in specific communities, from the family to the nation-state. Control over land in Africa has been, and still is, used as a means of defining identity and belonging, an instrument to control, and a source of, political power. Membership of these communities is contested, negotiable, and changeable over time. For national governments land is a national economic resource for public and private development, but the interests and rights of rural majorities and their sedentary or nomadic subsistence forms of life are often difficult to harmonise with land policies pursued by national governments. The state's exclusionary land policies and politicsof limiting or denying communities their land rights play a crucial role in causing local conflicts that then can escalate into large-scale wars. Land issues increase the complexity of a conflict, thereby reducing the possibilityof managing, resolving, or ultimately transforming it. The conflict in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan, the regional focus in this study, is living proof of this transformation. Guma Kunda Komey is Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Juba University, Sudan.

The Sudanese peace agreement reached a crisis point in its final year. This book offers an analysis of the impact of the implementation of the agreement on different Sudanese communities and neighbouring regions. After a long process of peace negotiations the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed on 9 January 2005 between the Government of Sudan (GOS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The CPA raised initialhopes that it would be the foundation block for lasting peace in Sudan. This book compiles scholarly analyses of the implementation of the power sharing agreement of the CPA, of ongoing conflicts with particular respect to land issues, of the challenges of the reintegration of internally displaced people and refugees, and of the repercussions of the CPA in other regions of Sudan as well as in neighbouring countries. Elke Grawert is SeniorLecturer at the Institute for Intercultural & International Studies (InIIS), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany.