Sir, - The naivete of your reporter, Paul Cullen, is evident in his reportage (May 30th), but his gratuitous swipe at Britain is both misguided and offensive. Beneath a photograph showing appalling human deprivation he refers to "the legacy of a brief but bitterly divisive colonial past" and attempts to blame Britain, which left Sudan 42 years ago, by stating that Britain "encouraged the separation" of North and South and responded to the call for independence by "dumping both parts into a state".
The present state of affairs in Sudan is not Britain's fault. The preying on the Negro south by the Arabic north has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and they are now merely doing it more efficiently with the use of modern weapons, which have been supplied to them by countries manufacturing such products.
Whilst one knows that there were ulterior motives for their presence in Sudan, not colonialisation, rather government, it must be acknowledged that Britain did stop depredation by the North on the South. It is not to blame for its resurgence on its departure, any more than the Belgians are to blame for the Hutu and Tutsi chopping each other up; nor is any other third party to blame for strife between, for example, Serb and Croat, Turk and Armenian, Arab and Kurd, Arab and Persian, Zulu and Xhosa, Ethiopan and Eritrean, Ibo and Yoruba - the list goes on around the world.
There is little doubt that Sudan should be divided into at least two independent states, but I fear that if Britain had done so in 1956, Mr Cullen might now be blaming her for any troubles consequent on such partition. -Yours, etc., K. W. Supple Kane,
Castlebellingham, Co Louth.