Sudan’s People and the Country of ‘South Sudan’ from Civil War to Independence, 1955–2011

By Martin Bol Deng Aleu

(100% of proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to humanitarian efforts and projects of ADONGOR FOUNDATION and Euro-African Foundations, NGOs registered in Poland working for African people at home and in Diaspora. 

You may visit www.adongor.org to find all information about the charity and its goal activities for each of its branches globally. ADONGOR FOUNDATION was founded by the author himself in 2018 and is registered officially with the Ministry of Justice in Poland. Euro African Foundation on the other hand was founded by Mr Adil Abdel Aati, and is a charity working in partnership with ADONGOR FOUNDATION.)

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Sudan’s conflicts are rooted in the creation of the state. During Sudan’s Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, the Arabic Muslim north and Christian and animist south were ruled as two distinct entities. The north was modernized but the south neglected, creating parallel entities which overlooked the diversity and historical interrelations between the areas.

Sudan’s conflicts are rooted in the creation of the state.
A 1947 policy change to unify them meant that when the country was granted independence in 1956, Sudan was left with a heavily unified and centralized state, ruled from the north. The south, which already had social and political grievances, feared it would be dominated by the Arabic and Islamist North. Promises to create a federal system were soon broken.

In 1955, tensions flared up and led to the outbreak of the first Sudanese civil war. The conflict, which featured successive coups and regime changes, ended with the 1972 Addis Abeba agreement and another promise of political autonomy for the South. Disputes over the discovery of oil in the south in 1979, together with President Nimeiry’s decision to implement Islamic Sharia law for the whole of Sudan and end southern autonomy, led to a new surge in civil violence in 1983.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728355337

Martin Bol Deng Aleu

I live in difficult times , full of important political , social ,economic changes, from the British colonial to the civil war in Sudan between North and South Sudan which lasts from 1955 to 2005 finished with the agreement known CPA - Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan and SPLA/M in January 2005.

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© 2020 Martin Bol Deng Aleu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  08/06/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5534-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5535-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5533-7 (e)

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expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This book is based on materials and sources collected by the author.

Computer design and signatures signed:

     Martin Bol Deng Aleu, author

     Shiela Dela Vega and Adil Abdel Aati, editors

CONTENTS

List of Acronyms

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1   The History of Sudan and the Beginning of the Conflict

Chapter 2   Sudan’s Independence Heroes

Chapter 3   A Brief History of the Conflict

Chapter 4   Independence through the Civil War, 1955–2011

Chapter 5   The First Leaders of the SPLA/M 1983

Chapter 6   The People of South Sudan and their Cultures

Chapter 7   Aweil History and Background

Bibliography

Other works by the author

LIST OF ACRONYMS

PREFACE

I’ve lived through difficult times—full of important political, social, and economic changes. Among these are the change from British colonial rule of Sudan to the civil war between North and South Sudan, which lasted from 1955 to 2005 and finished with the agreement known as CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in January 2005.

Colonial rule, independence and two civil wars

Sudan’s conflicts are rooted in the creation of the state. During Sudan’s Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule, the Arabic Muslim north and Christian and animist south were ruled as two distinct entities. The north was modernized, but the south was neglected, creating parallel entities that overlooked the diversity and historical interrelations between the areas.

A 1947 policy change to unify them meant that, when the country was granted independence in 1956, Sudan was left with a heavily unified and centralized state, ruled from the north. The south, which already had social and political grievances, feared it would be dominated by the Arabic and Islamist north. Promises to create a federal system were soon broken.

In 1955, tensions flared up and led to the outbreak of the first Sudanese civil war. The conflict, which featured successive coups and regime changes, ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement and another promise of political autonomy for the south. Disputes over the discovery of oil in the south in 1979, together with President Nimeiry’s decision to implement Islamic sharia law for the whole of Sudan and end southern autonomy, led to a new surge in civil violence in 1983.

In the same year, a southerner, Dr John Garang, formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to fight for a secular but unified Sudan. In another coup, Nimeiry was dismissed and replaced by Sadiq Al-Mahdi after general elections in 1986. Al-Mahdi gave his armed militias free reign in the South; they killed, enslaved, and raped the local population.

In 1988, a famine hit Sudan. As food became a weapon in the conflict, the famine led to an estimated 250,000 deaths. In total, around 2 million people died, and another 4 million were displaced. A 1989 coup led to Omar al-Bashir assuming the presidency. Under his rule, repression increased, while the situation in the south and other peripheries severely deteriorated.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement

and the secession of South Sudan

Things changed in the early 2000s when international pressure, based on the 1997 US sanctions regime—influenced by the notion that Sudan was supporting terrorist organizations and destabilizing the region—led to a north-south peace process. After extensive peace talks, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed by the SPLM/A and Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) in 2005. This ended the civil war and allowed for a referendum and eventual South Sudanese independence in 2011.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like my past to be saved from oblivion, so I would like to thank God and the Mother of God and Jesus Christ for their care and for being merciful to me and my family.

Special thanks to my loving wife, Monika Bol Deng Aleu, along with my daughters and sons—Maria, Alieat, Deng, and Aleu—who are always with me. They are still standing with me in all situations—in difficulties and sadness and in cheerfulness and happiness.

Special thanks to my dear friend and family friend Mr Adil Abdel Aati.

Many Thanks to Shiela Dela Vega and Adil Abdel Aati, May Arado, editors and to AuthorHouse UK Publishing Team for their care and help with my books publication.

Also many thanks to those who helped me and still support and help me with my family. God bless them all.

Special thanks to those people and organizations I couldn’t mention in this page.

And special thanks to Prof. Jan Bronisław Ciesielski, who studied in England and at the Technical University of Warsaw in 1952. He was the one who advised me and recommended that I write this book as a master’s or PhD work, because we’ve had such similarly difficult histories in our lives. Prof. Jan is ninety-three years old, and I met him when he was under care in our Caring Home and Treatment in Pilaszków, from 2011 to 2014. He has now returned back home to his apartment in Warsaw. Thank you so much, Mr Professor. And God bless you and all these who offer help to me and to each of my family members.

CHAPTER 1

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THE HISTORY OF SUDAN AND THE

BEGINNING OF THE CONFLICT

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1899, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was under British Controlling Powers

Introduction: Nubia, from 3000 BC

Sudan, short for the Arabic Bilad as-Sudan or ‘Land of the Blacks’, has much history that was influenced by Egypt, its close neighbour to the north. But it also has a strong personality as the eastern end of the great trade route extending along the open savannah south of the Sahara. In about 3100 BC, soon after the uniting of the empires of Egypt, the pharaohs spread their control as far up the Nile and as quickly as a boat could travel and transport them to the first waterfall in the region of current Aswan.

Over the centuries, the Egyptians pushed further south, past a development of waterfalls, first to raid and then to construct fortified settlements among the people of these middle reaches of the Nile. In 1500 BC, the pharaohs of Egypt extended their influence as far up the river as the fourth waterfall, in the region of the current Merowe.

The area between the first and fourth waterfalls is known as Cush. From Homer to the Greeks, Ethiopian peoples have lived in the areas of current Sudan and Ethiopia, or south of Egypt. The name of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, comes from the Latin name Nubia. Mahasi is the only dialect of Nubia that has survived from past to present. The entire region is rich in gold mines, and its name was derived from the word for gold, nub, in Mahasi.

From the sixteenth century BC throughout the most extensive period of imperial Egypt’s rule, it became conventional for pharaohs to build temples and shrines and write hieroglyphs in Cush.

In about 1520 BC, one pharaoh penetrated further south than any of his ancestors and left a writing some fifty miles upstream of Abu Hamad. In about 1250 BC, in the north, the flashiest statement of ownership was the four massive sculptures of Ramses II, engraved in the stonework cliff at Abu Simbel.

As in any colony of a long-term kingdom, the ruling class in Cush embraced the customs and principles of their imperial masters. At some time before the eighth century BC, the first lasting Cushite Empire was established at Napata near current Merowe and was entirely Egyptian in style. By that time, their god was Amun-Re.

In the early eighth century, Kashta, the king of Cush, kept a court so reliable in its Egyptian method that his children, after victorious Egypt, were willingly acknowledged as an empire of pharaohs.

The Cushite Dynasty, from circa 730 BC

The first intrusion of the kings of Cush into Egypt came in about 750 BC. Kashta defeated Upper Egypt, the region north of the first waterfall and Abu Simbel. From about 730 BC, his son Piye, or Piankhi, captured cities along the whole length of the Nile as far north as Memphis and obtained the submission of the local rulers of the delta region.

After this success, Piye retired to his capital at Napata, where he built a great shrine to Amun-Re. But it was unbearable to continue to remain in control of Egypt from as far south as Napata. In about 719 BC or the twenty-fifth empire, the last establishment of the Cushite was the work of Piye’s brother, Shabaka, who succeeded him. Shabaka reintroduced the movement to the north, beating Bochoris, a successor of the former Egyptian empire, who Shabaka is said to have burnt alive. Thus, he connected himself firmly in Thebes and Memphis.

Here he and his successor might well have ruled peacefully for some time, since they were widely welcomed for their devout protection of the cult of Amun-Re. But it was their bad luck to accord with the greatest external danger yet to challenge the Nile people. The new power in the Middle East was the difficult state of Assyria, now cruelly pacifying the many small states and cities of Palestine and Phoenicia.

From about 705 BC, when Assyria had a new king, Sennacherib, there was an extensive revolt in the Middle East against Assyrian law. In support of the insurgents, the pharaoh Shebitku, who was Shabaka’s nephew, marched north from Memphis with Egyptian armed forces. He was seriously beaten, and Egypt became the next Assyrian target.

In 663 BC, the Assyrian king, Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, captured Memphis, seized the regal wealth and harem and claimed the title ‘king of Egypt’. When the Assyrian armed forces withdrew, leaving Egypt under the control of vassal leaders, the Cushites fleetingly recuperated Memphis. In the same year, another Assyrian voyage settled the matter. This time, Thebes was reached and plundered.

The traditional date for the end of the Cushite Empire in Egypt is 656 BC. But this was very far from the end of the empire itself, which endured in the Sudan for another thousand years—still burying the royal family in Egyptian pyramids at Napata and, subsequently, at Meroe.

In about 590 BC, the move further up the Nile to Meroe was made after an Egyptian voyage sacked Napata. Having lived in isolation as Persians, Greeks, and Romans followed each other in control of Egypt over the years, this southern outpost of Egyptian ethos slowly disappeared. Pyramids began to be constructed in brick instead of stone. The knowledge of writing elapsed. Finally, in the fourth century AD, Meroe was dismissed by an army from adjacent Aksum.

Christians and Muslims, AD 543–1821

As of the fourth century, Nubia had Christian fellow citizens to the north and to the south-east, as Egypt had formally accepted Christianity, along with the rest of the Byzantine Kingdom, and when the leader of Ethiopia was converted to Christianity by Frumentius. Then again, it was an additional 200 years before Dongola, at present day the central kingdom in Nubia, was transported to the interior of the Christian fold.

It was around AD 543 when the ruler of Dongola was converted to the Monophysite kind of Christianity, connected with the Coptic Church of Egypt and Ethiopia. Around 569, the conventional Christianity of the Byzantine Empire affected Mukarra, a neighbouring kingdom to the south.

For the period of the succeeding era, the Christians of Egypt and North Africa returned to the imperialist vigour of Islam. In 652, Nubia was left open to follow its innovative Christian path, partially decided by a contract. In the same year, Muslim Arabs arrived in the northern part of the area from Egypt. However, they chose to leave, on the condition that they would be given an annual allotment of 400 slaves.

The contract held for over six eras, for the duration of which the trade routes saw numerous Muslims travelling south into Nubia. In the 1270s, Muslim attacks started in earnest, all under the control of Baybars, the on-the-go Mameluke sultan of Egypt. In 1315, the annual honour was finally removed, and a Muslim was positioned as the power of Dongola.

After 1517, in the initial Ottoman years, the Muslim rulers of the Sudan were occasionally the governments of a powerful command in Egypt. More frequently, though, they were tribal kingdoms, proclaiming control for a time of wide region in excess of their direct native zone. A new vicissitude came in 1821, when the area was fervently occupied by the most antagonistic ruler of Egypt at the time of the Baybars—the Ottoman viceroy Mohammed Ali.

Egyptian rule, from1821

In 1820, Mohammed Ali sent two armed forces south into the Sudan, each commanded by one of his younger sons. By 1821, they had captured enough of the region to set themselves up a military command centre on the point of land formed by the convergence of the Blue and White Niles. The long thin shape of the site, coming to a