Military regimes favoring Islamic-oriented governments have dominated national politics since independence from the UK in 1956. Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war for all but 10 years since then. The war is rooted in northern economic, political, and social domination of non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese. Since 1983, the war and war- and famine-related effects have resulted in more than 2 million deaths and over 4 million people displaced.

The ruling regime is a mixture of military elite and an Islamist party that came to power in a 1989 coup. Some northern opposition parties have made common cause with the southern rebels and entered the war as part of an anti-government alliance. Peace talks gained momentum in 2002-03 with the signing of several accords, including a cease-fire agreement.

The peace agreement was signed on 9 January 2005.

CAPITAL Khartoum

SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT Military Dictatorship

AREA 2,505,813 Sq Km (967,500 Sq Mi)

CURRENCY The official currency is the Dinar (DSd), formerly the Pound (LSd), divided into 100 Piastres and 1,000 Milliemes.

POPULATION of about 30 million people. Approximately 70% are Muslim. 25% are practitioners of African traditional religion, and 5% are Christian. The latter two groups live mostly in the south. There are 19 major ethnic groups, 597 subgroups, speaking Arabic and more than 115 indigenous languages.

CLIMATE Sudan's climate ranges from tropical to continental while most of the northern half of the country experiences a desert climate. The dry season ranges from three months in the humid tropical south to nine months in Khartoum, with the hottest months July and August. Average annual precipitation varies from 160 mm (6.3 inches) to around 1,000 mm (39 inches) in Khartoum, with most rainfall occurring between April and October. Average temperature ranges in Khartoum are from 15 to 32 degrees Celsius (59 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit) in January to 26 to 41 degrees Celsius (79 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit) in June.

MILITARY expenditures consume 35% of the country's GNP.

EDUCATION AND HEALTHCARE Most of southern Sudan's impoverished five million people have no access to schools or reliable health care. National adult literacy rate is 30%.

Sudan says it will need $7.8 billion up to Dec. 2007, but will fund much of this from oil revenues.

Following are some key facts on the south of the country where war raged for 21 years.

* Poverty rate in the south is about 90 percent (50 percent in north).

* Sudan is ranked 139th out of 177 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's human development index. The HDI focuses on three measurable dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life, being educated and having a decent standard of living.

* The HPI-1 - which measures human poverty in developing countries - values Sudan at 31.6 percent, which ranks the country 51st among 95 developing countries for which the index has been calculated.

* One in three people in the south rely on food aid.

* Chronic malnutrition among the under fives is 48 percent in the south (35 percent in the north).

* Although the south is primarily dependent on subsistence agriculture about 47 percent of households do not have livestock.

Refugees in Western Darfur in Sudan (Photo: Torleif Svensson)

* One in four children born in southern Sudan die before the age of five, 48 percent from water related diseases.

* Children in Sudan have a mere 25 percent chance of living to 65.

* There is less than one doctor per 100,000 people in the south (1 to 2 in Darfur and 25 in Kenya).

* Sudan is one of the few countries to have seen access to safe water decline in the past decade. Many rural people pay as much as half their family income on water, often of dubious quality.

* In 2003 only 20 percent of children enrolled in school in the south, of which girls accounted for only one in four. As many as half do not continue beyond the first grade.

* Literacy rate for the 15-24 age group is 31 percent (78 percent in the north). Literacy among young women in the south is 16 percent. A woman in southern Sudan is many more times likely to die in childbirth than to finish eight years of school.

* There are no tarmac roads in the south. Rail connections between the north and south are largely out of service.

* Only about 15 percent of people in the country have access to electricity. (Sources: Framework for Sustained Peace, Development and Poverty Eradication, the development blueprint drawn up by Sudan's Joint Assessment Mission/U.N. Development Programme - http://hdrundp.org)