abundance of food crops and cotton. Northward beyond the Qash lie the more formidable Red Sea Hills. Dry, bleak, and cooler than the surrounding land, particularly in the heat of the Sudan summer, they stretch northward into Egypt, a jumbled mass of hills where life is hard and unpredictable for the hardy Beja inhabitants. Below the hills sprawls the coastal plain of the Red Sea, varying in width from about fifty-six kilometers in the south near Tawkar to about twenty-four kilometers near the Egyptian frontier. The coastal plain is dry and barren. It consists of rocks, and the seaward side is thick with coral reefs. Sudan includes islands located in the Nile (including Aba Island, Badien Island, Sai Island, and, at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile, Tuti Island) and in the Red Sea (including the Suakin Archipelago). Political geography Sudan is divided into 18 states and one area with special administrative status. The states of Sudan are: Khartoum North Kordofan Northern Kassala Blue Nile North Darfur South Darfur South Kordofan Gezira White Nile River Nile Red Sea Al Qadarif Sennar West Darfur Central Darfur East Darfur West Kordofan (disestablished in 2005; reestablished in 2013) As a result of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005, the Abyei Area was given special administrative status and following the independence of South Sudan in 2011, is considered to be simultaneously part of both the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan, effectively a condominium. Soils The country's soils can be divided geographically into two categories. These are the sandy soils of the northern and west central areas, the clay soils of the central region, and the laterite soils of the south. Less extensive and widely separated, but of major economic importance, is a third group consisting of alluvial soils found along the lower reaches of the White Nile and Blue Nile rivers, along the main Nile to Lake Nubia, in the delta of the Qash River in the Kassala area, and in the Baraka Delta in the area of Tawkar near the Red Sea in Ash Sharqi State. Agriculturally, the most important soils are the clays in central Sudan that extend from west of Kassala and southern Kurdufan. Known as cracking soils because of the practice of allowing them to dry out and crack during the dry months to restore their permeability, they are used in the areas