EARLY HISTORY
Flashpoint for Conflict
Encouraging Hostility
Rise of the Jallaba
Vivid Memories
"My Cousin Mohamed" - poem
Seasonal Migration
Dawn of Abolition
Darfur
BEFORE INDEPENDENCE - 1900-1956
Pacification & Closed Districts
"Sudanisation"
AFTER INDEPENDENCE - 1956-1989
1956-1989
The First Civil War
Abyei - A Premonition?
A Ngok Dinka Song
"Islamic" Law
Civil War re-ignites
The SPLA
Loss of Moral Authority
Uprising
In 1983, a series of mutinies by Southern Sudanese army garrisons led to the formation of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the SPLA. This movement claimed to be fighting for the whole Sudan, rather than the southern independence that was the original aim of the rebels of the first civil war.
The SPLA was not exclusively Southern, and in the early days it raised short-lived hopes of an over- throw of the religio-political state ushered in by Nimeiri and the NIF. However, the country's residual racism means that northerners would be unlikely to rally behind a southem-led movement.
LOSS
OF MORAL AUTHORITY
When Nimeiri's regime executed a respected 76-year old religious scholar,
Ustaz Mahmoud Mohamed Taba, for alleged 'apostasy', in January 1985, it
damaged its claims to moral respectability. Taha was killed because his
progressive, tolerant and subtle views on Islamic thought were regarded
as a political threat. There was open public disgust at his execution.
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UPRISING
IN 1985
Two months later, as economic pressures grew, the Sudanese people turned
decisively against Nimeiri in the intifada (popular uprising) of April
1985, and a transitional government - led by his former Army Chief of Staff,
Swar ad-Dhahab Ahmad Eissa - took over.Top
