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Bordered on the east by the Red Sea, Sudan is the largest country in Africa. Its landscape changes from desert in the north to lush tropical in the south, with grassy plains and swamps in the center. Since independence from British and Egyptian rule in 1956, tensions between the Arab north and African south have led to two civil wars. In 1989, an army coup installed a military Islamic fundamentalist regime headed by Gen. Omar al-Bashir.