First Sudanese civil war

The First Sudanese Civil War (also known as Anyanya Rebellion or Anyanya I) was a military conflict that lasted from 1955 to 1972. between the northern part of Sudan and the south that demanded greater regional autonomy.

Half a million people died in the seventeen years of war, which can be divided into three stages: the initial guerrilla war, the Anyanya and the South Sudan Liberation Movement. The agreement that ended the fighting in 1972 failed completely, restarting a conflict in the north and south during the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005). The period between 1955 and 2005 is sometimes considered a single conflict with an eleven-year ceasefire separating two phases of violence.

On July 2, 1976, when the president of the country Al Numeiry was returning from a trip abroad, an attempted coup d'état was carried out by 1,000 militants of the IFC (current NIF), an armed political group formed by students allegedly trained by the Libyan Government. The attempt failed and the subsequent repression was brutal.

Origins

Until 1946 the British Empire administered southern and northern Sudan as separate regions. At that time, the two areas were united into a single administrative region as part of a British strategy applied in the Middle East. This act was carried out without consulting the inhabitants of the south, who feared that they would be subjected to the political power of those from the north. South Sudan had been primarily inhabited by Christians and animists and considered themselves culturally sub-Saharan, while the majority of the inhabitants of the north are Muslims who considered themselves culturally Arab.

Since the February 1953 agreement between the United Kingdom and Egypt to allow Sudanese independence, internal tensions over the nature of northern and southern relations grew and peaked on 1 January 1956. when was independence day.

Development of the war

In August 1955 members of the Equatorial Corps of the Sudan Defense Force – administered by the United Kingdom – mutinied in Torit, Juba, Yei and Maridi. The immediate causes of the mutiny were the trial of a southern member of the national assembly and an apparently false telegram urging northern authorities in the south to oppress southerners. The riots were suppressed, but the survivors fled the towns and began an insurgency in rural areas. Poorly armed and poorly organized, they constituted little threat to the outgoing colonial power and the new Sudanese government.

However, the insurgents gradually became a secessionist movement formed by the 1955 mutineers and southern students. These groups formed the Anyanya guerrilla. Starting from Equatoria (Equatoria), between 1963 and 1969 Anyanya spread to the other two southern provinces of Upper Nile and Bahr el-Ghazal. But the movement was marred by internal ethnic divisions. O'Ballance writes that one of the Sudanese army's four infantry brigades had been stationed in Equatoria since 1955, periodically being reinforced when necessary.

The government was unable to take advantage of the guerrilla's weaknesses due to its own factions and instability. The first government of independent Sudan, led by Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari, was soon replaced by that of a coalition of several conservative forces, which, in turn, was overthrown by the coup d'état of the Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Ibrahim. Abbud in 1958. Discontent with the military government led to a wave of popular protests that led to the formation, in October 1964, of a provisional government.

In these protests, the Islamist Hasan al-Turabi, who was then a student leader, made his first appearance. Between 1966 and 1969, several predominantly Islamist administrations proved incapable of addressing the variety of ethnic and economic problems and conflicts that afflicted the country. Following a second military coup, on May 25, 1969, Colonel Yaafar el-Numeiri became prime minister and quickly outlawed political parties.

Confrontation between Marxist and non-Marxist factions within the ruling military class led to a new coup d'état in July 1971 and a short period of rule by the Sudanese Communist Party before anti-communist factions replaced el-Numeiri. in control of the country. That same year, the German Rolf Steiner, who had been clandestinely advising the rebels, was arrested in Kampala (Uganda) and deported to Khartoum, where he was tried for his anti-government activities. Initially sentenced to death, he served three years in prison until he was released due to pressure from the West German government.

In 1971, former Army Lieutenant Joseph Lagu unified all guerrilla forces under the South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM). This was the first time in the history of the war that the separatist movement had a unified command structure to achieve the goals of secession and government formation in South Sudan and it was the first organization that could claim to speak and negotiate in name of the entire South.

End

With the mediation of Christian organizations, the World Council of Churches and the All Africa Conference of Churches, which spent years making efforts to gain the trust of both belligerents, the Addis Ababa Agreement was reached in March 1972. that ended the conflict. In exchange for ending their armed insurrection, the southerners were granted a unified administrative region with several defined autonomous powers.

The Addis Ababa agreement was only a temporary solution. The Khartoum government repeatedly violated the agreement and increased its actions in the south in the mid-1970s, triggering the second civil war in 1983.

Effects

Half a million people, of whom only one hundred thousand were considered armed combatants, were killed in the seventeen years of war and hundreds of thousands were displaced from their homes.