ABRIDGED HISTORY OF SOUTH SUDAN

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS ONLY AN ABRIDGED VERSION OF THE HISTORY OF SOUTH SUDAN COMPILED BY MARGARET AKULIA. To obtain a fuller understanding of the complex situation of the country, more extensive information is highly recommended.    

COLONIAL  SUDAN

In 1821, Mohammed Ali Pasha, the ruler of Egypt conquered the northern part of the Sudan and ushered in the Turko-Egyptian period in the country (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammad-Ali-pasha-and-viceroy-of-Egypt).  In 1839 he opened up regular trade routes to Southern Sudan in search of ivory and slaves which accelerated the movement and entry of Northern Sudanese Arabs into Southern Sudan as soldiers and slave traders during the 1840s. At later stages Egypt involved the British who were seeking an economic foothold in Central Africa as partners in administering the Sudan. From 1863 to 1879 Britain’s colonial strategy in Egypt was to encourage British mercenaries to serve under Egypt’s ruler. The Turko-Egyptian colonial period in the Sudan was followed by the Mahdia period, during which Muslims and Northern Arab Sudanese, particularly the Mahdist Ansars, strongly opposed the British-Egyptian influence in the Sudan because the British pursued a policy of separating the Sudan from Egypt with the possibility of transferring the administration of southern Sudan to the British East Africa Federation (http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/British_East_Africa_(Twilight_of_a_New_Era)).  

The plan failed to take off, but it provoked the Mahdists to stage an uprising in Khartoum against the British-Egyptian rule in the Sudan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_(Sudan). Following the uprising, Mohammed Ahmed the Mahdi, which literally means “savior” in Arabic, proceeded to establish a theocratic Islamic state that lasted for thirteen years. He advocated an Islamic state based on the Koran and proclaimed jihad (holy war) in defense of Islam in the Sudan. Throughout their thirteen-year reign in northern Sudan, the Ansars terrorized northern Sudan and took to raiding southern Sudanese communities for slaves and livestock despite the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807). While the Mahdist state was still flourishing in northern Sudan under Mohammed Ahmed, who continued as the Mahdi of the time, French and Belgian troops had already penetrated deeply into the Sudan through the provinces of Equatoria and the Upper Nile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatoria). Their objective was to divide the administration of southern Sudan among themselves. On September 2, 1898, at a battle dubbed the Battle of Omdurman, the Anglo-Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdists. PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO CONTINUE READING. 

In 1899, to prevent France and Belgium from making possible claims to the Sudan as they had already encroached into southern Sudan, the British signed the Condominium Agreement with Egypt (http://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/condominium-agreement-1899). This agreement accorded Britain political domination over Sudan. Hence began the history of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which lasted until 1955. The Condominium Agreement restored Egyptian rule over Sudan but the rule was part of a joint authority exercised by both Britain and Egypt. At the onset, nearly all administrative personnel were British Army officers affiliated with the Egyptian army. However, in 1901 civilian administrators started arriving in Sudan from Britain and formed the core of the Sudan Political Service. Egyptians filled middle-level posts while Sudanese acquired lower-level positions in small stages. The early years of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium rule in Sudan were marked by the return of missionaries to southern Sudan. 

Roman Catholics entered the Shilluk areas in 1901, American Presbyterians went to the Sobat River in 1902 and Nasir in 1904 and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) went to Malek, Bor District, in 1905. British policy in the Sudan in 1910 was to cut off southern Sudan from northern Sudanese influence. To accomplish that, Britain encouraged Christian missionaries to work in southern Sudan. They discouraged Arab traders from trading in southern Sudan and withdrew northern Sudanese Arab troops from southern Sudan. This plan was aimed at dividing the Sudan into two countries: the southern part was to be incorporated into a Federation of East Africa States as a buffer zone against the spread of Islam (http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/British_East_Africa_(Twilight_of_a_New_Era). Although it was the richest part of the Sudan, southern Sudan was virtually neglected economically from developmental benefits. Meanwhile, northern Sudan enjoyed all the benefits meant for the whole country. The south relied educationally on the literacy system of missionaries aimed at teaching pupils to read the Bible. The colonial administration discouraged the spread of Islam, the practice of Arab customs and the wearing of Arab dress and at that time, the British made efforts to revitalize the African customs and tribal life that the slave trade in southern Sudan had disrupted. 

In June 1947 at a conference christened the Juba Conference, British authorities forced the unification of southern and northern Sudan. The southern conferees at the Juba Conference were informed about the new decision to hand over the administration of southern Sudan to the new rulers, the Arabs in northern Sudan. A Sudan Legislative Assembly was formed by the British administration which handpicked thirteen delegates from southern Sudan to represent southern Sudan in that assembly. This was the start of the self-determination process for Sudan’s independence but the southern Sudanese were effectively excluded from the decision-making process. Consequently, the fate of the southern Sudanese people was effectively handed to the northern Sudanese. Following A JULY 1952 REVOLUTION IN EGYPT, the British expedited the northern Sudanese demand for the country’s independence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_1952). Accordingly, they drafted plans with the Umma Party of the Ansars for the formation of a transitional government. 

On February 12, 1953, the Egyptian government and the northern Sudanese sectarian political parties met without the southern Sudanese political groups and made the Cairo Agreement, which initiated the process of independence for Sudan (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1953/feb/12/sudan-anglo-egyptian-agreement). In 1954, on the eve of independence—which occurred two years later on January 1, 1956—there were over eight hundred positions that the British colonial administration left for Sudanese to occupy. However, only four junior posts were allocated to southern Sudanese. The southern Sudanese people were dissatisfied with such an unfair allocation of positions and they sensed this exercise as another type of discrimination and colonization of southern Sudan by northern Sudanese Arabs. 

On August 18, 1955, a liberation struggle was ignited in southern Sudan through a mutiny popularly known as the Torit Mutiny. Led by members of the British-administered Sudan Defence Force Equatorial Corps, the Torit Mutiny was the culmination of dissent that had been building in southern Sudan for over a century because of perceived exploitation by a predominantly Arab Northern Sudan throughout a number of colonial periods. It occurred a few months before Sudan declared its independence from Great Britain (http://www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection/detail.php?acc=1980-10-25-1). The British colonial authority wanted the whole country to remain under northern Sudan Arab rule but the notion of forced unity between the two parts of Sudan was totally rejected by all southern Sudanese who viewed this imposed unity with great suspicion due to past human rights violations meted on southern Sudanese by a predominantly Arab Northern Sudan.​ PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO CONTINUE READING.    

INDEPENDENCE AND THE FIRST CIVIL WAR

On January 1, 1956 Sudan declared its independence, ending fifty-six years of Anglo-Egyptian rule in the Sudan. However, in spite of this independence, hostility from southern Sudanese toward predominantly Arab northern Sudanese had already emerged forcefully when southern Sudanese army units mutinied in Torit on August 18, 1955. In other words, southern dissent continued because southern Sudanese begrudged the replacement of British administrators in southern Sudan with northern Sudanese instead of southern Sudanese. Furthermore, although Sudanese nationalism had developed by the time Sudan attained independence, it was an Arab and Muslim phenomenon with minimal to no involvement by southern Sudanese. Consequently, such nationalism had its support base in northern Sudan and not the whole country. The Torit Mutiny would eventually lead to the formation of the Anya Nya Freedom Movement which waged a 17 year war to win freedom for the people of southern Sudan with the ultimate goal being independence from Northern Sudan. 

This war is often referred to as the First Sudanese War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sudanese_Civil_War). The war waged by the Anya Nya Freedom Fighters was to protest continuing human rights violations by successive governments in the Sudan. For example, a Military chief General named Ibrahim Abboud who staged a military coup on November 17, 1958 and ruled Sudan until a popular uprising in 1964 waged a holy war (jihad) against persistent Anya Nya Freedom Fighters. General Abboud’s policy was to forcibly establish Islamic institutions in southern Sudan in direct opposition to the original plan by the British during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, to divide the Sudan into two countries with southern Sudan to be preponderantly Christian.  In the process of General Abboud’s determination to wage a holy Muslim war against predominantly Christian southern Sudanese, his regime committed enormous human rights abuses in southern Sudan. The Christian Sunday worship was banned throughout southern Sudan and Friday was declared a holiday for both Muslims and Christians in the whole country. 

Security organs in southern Sudan were instructed to round up and force all male adults in the different towns of southern Sudan to attend Friday worship in mosques. Islamization and Arabization were strongly imposed on all non-Muslims, especially Christians. All the schools in southern Sudan were either closed down or moved to northern Sudan. All the mission schools were nationalized or closed down. The missionaries who worked in southern Sudan were expelled and denied entry visas into Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were restricted to concentration camps and southern Sudan experienced a rigorous and repressive army occupation leading to intensified insurgency by the Anya Nya revolutionary movement which waged a 17 year war that ended with the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement also known as the Addis Ababa Accord on February 27, 1972. The agreement was facilitated by the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. http://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/SD_720312_Addis%20Ababa%20Agreement%20on%20the%20Problem%20of%20South%20Sudan.pdf 

The 17 year war waged by the Anya Nya Freedom Fighters ended with the signing of the February 27, 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement which granted southern Sudan local autonomy within the framework of a United Sudan. Although this agreement was a concession, there was relative peace despite the formation of the Anya Nya II Movement in 1974 by southern elements that refused the 1972 Addis Ababa Accord. Officers among these disgruntled elements formed the Anya Nya Patriotic Front (APF) in August 1974. This renewed movement became known as Anya Nya II named after the first movement known as Anya Nya I. It was a regrouping of Anya Nya I by disgruntled Freedom Fighters from the first insurgency launched in 1963 following the August 18, 1955 mutiny led by members of the British-administered Sudan Defence Force Equatorial Corps. This second liberation movement was formed in August 1974, but it was not formally launched until 1975. Born amid ideological uncertainties, Anya Nya II was launched with a mutiny in the military garrison of Akobo. In 1975, three years after the Addis Ababa Agreement of February 1972, a group of Anya Nya Fighters who were absorbed into the Sudanese National Armed Forces stationed in Akobo district pursuant to the February 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement staged a mutiny upon receiving orders of a transfer to northern Sudan. 

The mutineers of Akobo decided to return to the bush and continue the struggle against the Khartoum regime with the ultimate goal of liberating southern Sudan as an independent country this time. They crossed the border into Ethiopia and joined the other southern Sudanese refugees who refused to support the Addis Ababa Accord in 1972. Following in the footsteps of the 1975 mutineers of Akobo, the ex-Anya Nya soldiers in the government garrisons of Juba and Wau also staged mutinies the following year 1976. After recruiting and training fighters, the Anya Nya II Freedom Fighters began military campaigns in 1979 by disrupting communication links in eastern and western Upper Nile province as well as northern Bahr El Ghazal province, with the purpose of paralysing state economic power. They used mostly guerrilla tactics—hit and run methods and managed to overrun the government garrisons of Kutkea in 1979 and the government garrison of Akoka in June 1982. 

During the same year, 1982, a large group of university and high school students escaped from Malakal the capital of Upper Nile and joined the Anya Nya II rank and file at a place named Bilpam in Ethiopia. In May 1983, another mutiny by a group of Southern Sudanese in the Sudan Armed Forces ignited the second war between southern Sudan and Northern Sudan in full. This second war led to the formation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLM/SPLA) in July 1983 which was eventually led by Dr. John Garang de Mabior. PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO CONTINUE READING. 

THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

The war waged in full by the SPLM/SPLA is commonly referred to as the second Sudanese war. More vicious than the first Sudanese war, this war cost over 3 million lives and produced millions of internally displaced people. Using contradictory messages in all its external relations and engaging in a seemingly endless “principle-shopping” business, the SPLM/SPLA was very successful in amassing powerful weapons they turned on the southerners they purported to be fighting to free from oppression by Northern Sudanese. In other words, the first victims of the SPLM/SPLA were helpless southern Sudanese women, children, elderly people and unarmed civilians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sudanese_Civil_War). To the Arab world, the SPLM/SPLA gave the impression that their movement’s objective was to preserve the unity of Sudan under a secular system, a unity based on equality and justice for all Sudanese regardless of their color of skin or religious beliefs. 

For the black African states, the SPLM/SPLA informed them that it was fighting against Arab expansion toward the south of the Sahara and it therefore served as a useful human shield worth supporting against Arab/Islamic expansion. To the Western countries, the SPLM/SPLA postulated that it was fighting against forced Islamization and Arabization of black African Christians in the southern part of the country. Having willfully exaggerated one of its contradictory messages respecting fighting a predominantly Arab and Muslim Northern Sudan to free Black African south Sudanese from forced Islamization, Americans especially Christians and African Americans rallied behind the SPLM/SPLA in full pursuit of an agenda that would turn out to be an unholy one. Christians all over the world also rallied behind the SPLM/SPLA and inadvertently aided the organization's fiendish agenda and fraudulence. Operating under the radar, members of the SPLM/SPLA raped, murdered and looted at will. 

They committed the most abhorrent forms of human rights violations against children, women, the elderly and unarmed civilians in total contradiction of the core teachings of Christianity namely love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In other words, members of the duplicitous organization duped Christians all over the world into believing that they were supporting fellow Christians in southern Sudan to win non-negotiable rights to worship the God of the Bible without the reproval of Sharia Law when nothing could be further from the truth. The falsity of the SPLM/SPLA would eventually manifest openly and set off the most horrific catastrophe of all time. Believing it was supporting a noble cause, the United States of America assumed the leading role in ensuring that the SPLM/SPLA got what it purported to fight for – freeing southern Sudanese from forced Islamization and Arabization of black African Christians in the southern part of the country.

The war waged by the SPLM/SPLA which is commonly referred to as the second North-South Sudanese war lasted for over two decades. After a lot of lobbying and pressure, it ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army on January 9, 2005 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi (http://unmis.unmissions.org/Portals/UNMIS/Documents/General/cpa-en.pdf). Following the signing of the CPA on January 9, 2005, Dr. John Garang the incumbent leader of the SPLM/SPLA served briefly as First Vice President of Sudan from July 9, 2005 until July 30, 2005 when he was killed in a helicopter crash after spending only 21 days in office. Following his death, the SPLM Leadership Council nominated and confirmed Dr. Garang’s deputy Lieutenant General Salva Kiir Mayardit as his successor and Dr. Riek Machar became his deputy. It was agreed that Sudan would remain united under President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and South Sudan would be ruled by the Government of South Sudan under the leadership of Salva Kiir Mayardit who would also assume the position of First Vice President of the Republic of Sudan. PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO CONTINUE READING. 

ESTABLISHING THE GOVERNMENT

After Lieutenant General Salva Kiir Mayardit took the oath of office, he and President Bashir worked out the coalition Government of National Unity in Khartoum and the Government of southern Sudan was also formed. However, bad governance, continuing rampant human rights violations as the habitual character of many members of the now ruling SPLM/SPLA, institutionalized corruption, tribalism, nepotism, dictatorship, illegal and forceful land seizure from citizens became the norm, just to mention a few. Wanton killings and abhorrent forms of human rights violations meted by SPLA forces on children, women and unarmed civilians continued unabated. Tribal and sectional skirmishes among different communities where thousands of civilians have been killed or displaced from their settlements have been the status quo and method of operation of the SPLA since it was constituted in 1983. These horrendous occurrences continued after the formation of the Government of South Sudan in 2005 when the SPLM/SPLA imposed itself on the people of South Sudan. 

THE INDEPENDENCE OF SOUTH  SUDAN

After the end of the interim period instituted with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, an internationally supervised referendum was to be held to resolve whether South Sudan should opt to become an independent state or remain part of Sudan (http://unmis.unmissions.org/Portals/UNMIS/Documents/General/cpa-en.pdf). The referendum took place from January 9, 2011 to January 15, 2011 and the majority wish for South Sudan to attain independence from Northern Sudan prevailed. 

On July 9, 2011, South Sudan was declared an independent and sovereign state and the pronouncement was accompanied by jubilation in South Sudan and around the world. A Transitional Constitution of the Republic of South Sudan, 2011 was drafted by a southern Sudan Constitutional Drafting Committee and it came into force on the day of the independence of South Sudan on July 9, 2011 after being signed by the president of the new republic Salva Kiir Mayardit. PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO CONTINUE READING.