History Of John Garang
John Garang: In about 1945, John Garang de Mabior was born into a Tuic pastoralist family among the Dinka people of South Sudan’s Upper Nile. In 1968, he joined the Anyanya movement, which fought the first round of the civil war between north and south Sudan (1955–1972). When the first north-south war concluded in 1972 with an agreement struck in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between Sudan’s then-president, Jaafer Nimeiri, and the southern rebels, the Anyanya troops were merged into the Sudan Peoples’ Armed troops, and Garang was promoted to captain.
Shortly thereafter, President Nimeiri appointed him as assistant director of military research at the Sudan Army General Headquarters in Khartoum. John Garang received his doctorate in agricultural economics from Iowa State University in 1981. Upon his return to Sudan, he began teaching at Khartoum University and the Sudan Military College, in addition to his employment at the military research center. His radical beliefs about the political participation (or lack thereof) of what he called “the marginalized areas” inspired many students at both universities.
During his time at the Sudan Military College and the Army General Headquarters, Garang rose to the position of colonel in the Sudan army, despite growing dissatisfaction with Nimeiri’s government’s policy against the south.
Plans to exploit southern oil resources, the mistreatment of southern labor migrants in the north, the extraction of forest reserves by military personnel working in the south, the policy of redesigning the north-south boundaries, the mass imprisonment of southern politicians, and attempts to undermine the Addis Abeba agreement all influenced Garang to develop his ideas into a distinct brand of nationalist thinking Garang proposed a system of distributed authority.
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He argued against centralizing political leadership in the capital, particularly in a large and diverse country like Sudan. He asserted that in such a country, the geographical dispersion of political leadership is necessary to maintain contact with the general public. Such thinking drew support from underrepresented tribes such as the Nuba, Fur, and Nubians in the far north, residents of the southern Blue Nile, and Beja in eastern Sudan.
On May 16, 1983, Garang participated in an army mutiny against the central authority. Kerabino Kuanyin Bol, a former Anyanya soldier and senior officer in the Sudanese army, led the insurrection in the southern town of Bor. The revolt was the outcome of discussions by former Anyanya officers in the Sudanese army who were dissatisfied with Nimeiri.
These policemen, along with certain politicians, recognized that the people of the south had hit a standstill in their efforts to implement the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement. Many southern army officers expressed dissatisfaction with the pact, claiming their superiors, particularly Joseph Lagu, the leader of the Anyanya movement, forced them to sign it. They claimed that they could not trust the northerners and that a return to war was unavoidable.
John Garang and colleagues created the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) in late 1983, with John Garang as commander-in-chief, as well as its political branch, the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM), which he also chairs. They launched the liberation struggle with a distinct ideology. Unlike the first phase of the north-south war, which called for secession, the SPLA aimed to liberate the entire country and establish a “New Sudan” free of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, or culture.
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Garang insisted on dropping the idea of southern independence, which garnered him respect among moderates in the north as well as support from foreign countries opposed to Sudan’s disintegration. Garang spearheaded the call to abandon the term “southern problem” for Sudan’s conflict, emphasizing that northern dominance and injustice did not solely affect the south.
Recognizing the conflict as a national problem, only a constitutional conference comprising all sectors of society, political groups, and labor unions could resolve it and adopt a long-term solution. To persuade Nimeiri’s government of the need for such a meeting, he urged all people in “marginalized areas” to take up arms in order to topple the dictatorship and establish a “united democratic secular Sudan.”
People interpreted Garang’s thoughts as a rejection of Arab-Islamic dominance in favor of a more African identity for the country. Garang rejected the common southern desire for separation and instead formed a socialist liberation movement in an attempt to gain international support from socialist/communist countries. However, many both within and outside Sudan eventually interpreted his pro-unity position as a euphemistic cover for separatist aspirations.
Garang propagated his point of view through an SPLA manifesto, which depicted the SPLA as a socialist movement seeking to enforce unity, but only in a state that recognized its variety and provided equal representation to all cultural groups. To achieve that goal, he sought the assistance of Haile Mariam Mengistu of Ethiopia, who provided guns and instruction. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also provided assistance. Both men were secretly pleased with the resurgence of the southern Sudanese civil war, which they saw as essentially an insurgency against Nimeiri.
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Within a few months and far into the mid-1980s, hundreds of young Nuer and Dinka, the south’s two main ethnic groupings, went to western Ethiopia for military training. The SPLA trained and deployed numerous battalions, capturing hundreds of towns in Upper Nile and Equatoria, resulting in additional recruitment from various ethnic groups in the south. In 1984, the SPLA established Radio SPLA, an Ethiopian radio station that broadcasts into Sudan.
On March 3, 1984, Garang delivered his first radio address, calling “upon all the Sudanese people to abolish the divisions among themselves that the oppressor has imposed through the policy of divide and rule.” More military victories led to political successes in the north, and the population became increasingly dissatisfied with Nimeiri’s government. While Nimeiri was in the United States in 1985, a popular rebellion broke out in Khartoum, ending his sixteen-year military reign.
The SPLA, led by Garang, claimed much of the credit for Nimeiri’s fall. The transitional military council assumed power and requested John Garang’s return to lead a post-transitional government, but John Garang declined, asserting that Nimeiri’s removal had not brought about systemic change. Soon after, the election of Sadiq al Mahdi as prime minister in 1986 validated his convictions.
Most of the south saw elections canceled due to the war, and the Khartoum administration recruited paramilitary troops to destabilize the civilian population. The SPLA perceived the ostensibly democratic period as a continuation of the northern tyranny, and the conflict persisted until June 1989, when a military coup established an Islamist administration under the leadership of President Lieutenant General Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir.
Since then, the government has exerted enormous pressure on the SPLA and Garang, despite the fact that it is Sudan’s first administration to face widespread international condemnation for its poor human rights record, terrorism, and religious discrimination. The majority of the inhabitants of the south, the Nuba Mountains, and the Southern Blue Nile regard the SPLA, led by John Garang, as their best hope of eliminating the Islamist, Arabized north’s perceived dominance over them.
This backing enabled the SPLA to survive a near-fatal split in August 1991, when a group of commanders dissatisfied with John Garang’s leadership attempted to replace him. The coup failed, and the splinter group established the SPLA-Nasir, led by Riek Machar, while Garang’s group became known as the SPLA-Mainstream.
Since 1991, SPLA-Nasir has grown into other organizations, including SPLA-United, the Southern Sudan Independence Army (SSIA), and, lastly, the Southern Sudan Defense Force (SSDF). In 1996, Riek and his Nuer followers reached an accord with the northern government. As of 2004, Garang’s SPLA controlled the majority of southern Sudan, as well as some territory in central and eastern Sudan.
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