Since the firing of the first bullet in 1983, the reappearance of war between Northern and Southern Sudan has generally been interpreted as a typical ethno-religious conflict deriving from differences between Muslims and Christians, or Arabs and Africans. While this categorization had served as description of the earlier manifestation ofthe conflict in the 1950s, and still has some bearing on how the war is being conducted and perceived, my opinion is that the nature of the conflict has changed. Conflicts are processes, not static states, and over the last three decades developments in the Sudan have gradually if consistently changed the nature of the conflict from being a classic ethno-religious conflict to one mainly over resources, with the economic and resources crisis in the North emerging as a driving force in the Sudan civil war.