Sudan’s Persistent Disrespect of the UNSC

The Making Of The Sudanese Second Civil War

When the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement was signed in March 1972 and peace returned to Sudan, few South Sudanese believed it would last. The agreement ignored a great deal of unfinished business . So when, a year later, Numeiri pushed through the digging of the Jonglei canal despite strong opposition in the south, the countdown the second war had already started.


A few years later the American oil company Chevron, struck oil in the Upper Nile province. The Khartoum government avoided naming the location, referring to it only as 450 miles south of Khartoum. Whatever the reasons for Khartoum's evasiveness, the regime could not stop the truth from getting out. Rumours spread that the wells where in fact in Bantiu, a town in the Upper Nile province. During a rally in Malakal in 1978, and while campaigning for the presidency of the regional government of southern Sudan, General Joseph Lagu, the leader of the opposition and the ex-head of the Anya Nya, waved a bottle at the crowd. It contained a sample of crude oil, that he said was from Bantiu. He told the gathering that the incumbent Abel Alier was not brave enough to challenge Khartoum for shrouding the whereabouts of the oil discoveries in secrecy. But he ,Lagu, was shouting it from the rooftops.

Southerners conceded that oil was a national resource, but they wanted the oil industry, including refineries, to be built locally to provide jobs and tax revenue and boost their economy that was at least two decades behind the North.

To their disappointment, not only did Numeiri reject their request but he also gave instructions for the oil to be piped and sold at Port-Sudan as crude and for any refineries to be built there. Numeiri did not stop at that; he began to carve off parts of the South’s territory presumed to be rich in oil into North Sudan. Southerners fought this in the parliaments in Juba and Khartoum but the fired-up Numeiri would not be dissuaded. The clock was now ticking faster and it is perplexing that the country did not plunge into war in 1980.

It wasn't long before the case of decentralisation of the South arose. A bitter constitutional argument ensued among southerners, Numeiri, seeing a gap, seized the opportunity to deal the South a final fatal blow. He ordered the democratically elected southern government in Juba to be broken up into three disconnected regions whose heads he would be appoint.

The point of no return had now been reached and Numeiri reasoned that the only way to prevent a full-scale rebellion in the South was to transfer the southern army units (composed of ex-Anya Nya combatants) to the North and replace them with more loyal forces from the North. His subsequent rash move on May 16th 1983 to dislodge the dug-in battalion 104 in Bor did not only ignite the second war but also ushered his own decline and his subsequent exit from power just two years later.

From the start, Anya Nya's faith in the peace had been weak. Secret cells existed, in which senior officers worked to thwart Khartoum's attempts to transfer Anya Nya units to the North. They believed the return to war was a matter of when and not if, so the officers wanted to ensure that, when the day came, the Anya Nya would be prepared. However, the final outcome was more mixed than the cells’ members had hoped.

Some officers could not wait until doomsday and reacted early in a series of mini mutinies which occurred sporadically throughout the ten-year lifespan of the 1972 peace deal. They later assembled into a single grouping known as Anya Nya II. So it could be argued that the return to the bush was a cumulative rather than a sudden process. When things finally came to a head in Bor on May 16, some members of the secret cells were at the forefront of the events; some followed them later, and yet others never re-joined the southern rebellion. On that historic day, Battalion 104 exchanged fire with a Sudanese army unit that had been flown in from the North to quash them. Led by Kerubino Kwanyin Bol, they withdrew from the town and began the long trek to Ethiopia. Among them was Col. John Garang de Mabior (whom Numeiri had previously sent to Bor as a messenger of peace, but who had decided to switch sides and join the mutineers instead). Along the way they were joined by William Nyon Bany who had led Battalion 105 out of Ayot after nearly annihilating an attacking force from Khartoum.

The rest of the story is the stuff of legends. Battalion 104 was rechristened Jamus (or Buffalo) and Battalion 105 was renamed Koryom (Locust). The SPLM manifesto was published later that year, and the leadership was established. Garang, Kwanyin, Nyuon, Kiir and many other names entered the national psyche; Battalions Jamus, Koriom, Kazuk, MuorMuor and others became household names. The history of Sudan had taken a sharp trajectory,nothing would ever be the same again.