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Comment by cherryteastain | Hacker News Reader

They have been independent since 1956. Other (majority non-European) British colonies/protectorates as diverse as Singapore (ind. 1965), Belize (ind. 1981), India (ind. 1947) and UAE (ind. 1971) managed to build peaceful societies.

We need to recognize that the people of countries like Sudan are not children who don't know any better, contrary to European leftists' views. They are fully functioning adults who made a series of choices that led to the present situation.

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> We need to recognize that the people of countries like Sudan are not children

Nitpicking here, but Sudan specifically only passed the median population age of 18 in the 2020s.

On gaining independence in 1956 Sudan endured two civil wars with up to a million deaths in the first civil war and between one and two million deaths in the second civil war.

Colonial governments like the British often (almost always) left a mess behind them.

Comparing Sudan to Singapore, India and the UAE is comical. This level of analysis on HackerNews, that ignores the realities of how different countries evolve / are influenced is why we cannot have an honest conversation.

Please enlighten us why it's comical. Economically, Sudan was richer per capita than India in 1960 and even as recently as 2017 [1][2]. It had, and still has, a more homogeneous population ethnically and linguistically. Yet India manages to keep things mostly calm while Sudan can't.

[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=sudan+nominal+gdp+per+c... [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=india+nominal+gdp+per+c...

I don't think India is a great example here. The Partition of India in 1947 resulted in over 1 million deaths.

On that note, reading about Bangladesh's split from Pakistan was gut wrenching.

So much senseless violence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide

That was before the country got its own constitution and had formed its national identity.

Not relevant as the partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947 which created the constitutions. The Act was agreed upon by the legislature representatives of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League, and the Sikh community with Lord Mountbatten.

The point stands that decolonisation was a mess and the colonisers played a large part in it.

I think the point is in spite of decolonization being orders of magnitude more messy countries like India have established fully functioning peaceful societies.

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