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pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page i The First Sudanese Civil War This page intentionally left blank pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page iii The First Sudanese Civil War Africans, Arabs, and Israelis in the Southern Sudan, 1955–1972 Scopas S. Poggo pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page iv the first sudanese civil war Copyright © Scopas S. Poggo, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the Unites States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60796-5 ISBN-10: 0-230-60796-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: February 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. Chapter 5 is a revision of “General Ibrahim Abboud’s Military Administration in the Sudan, 1958–1964: Implementation of the Programs of Islamization and Arabization in the Southern Sudan,” Northeast African Studies Journal, 9, no. 1 (April 2007): 67–101, reprinted with permission of the editor of the journal. Chapter 8 contains revised material from “The Politics of Liberation in the Southern Sudan 1967–1972: The Role of Israel, African Heads of State and Foreign Mercenaries,” The Uganda Journal 47 (November 2001): 34–48, reprinted with permission of the editor of the journal. Map credit: Sudan as of 2006: Permission of the UN Cartographic Section. pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page v In Memory of My Beloved Father Daniel Poggo Waran-Wunyang This page intentionally left blank pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page vii CONTENTS List of Maps ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1 Ethnicity and Race in Modern Sudan 9 2 The Torit Mutiny of 1955: Its Causes and Failure 21 3 Legacy of the Failed Mutiny: Government Repression and Rise of the Resistance Movement 49 4 Government Counterinsurgency Methods, 1955–72 73 5 General Abboud’s Response: Repression, Islamization, and Arabization, 1958–64 91 6 Emergence of Southern Sudanese Political Movements, 1960–72 113 7 Reorganization and Consolidation of the Guerrilla Movement, 1963–71 131 8 External Political and Military Involvement in Sudan’s Civil War, 1960–72 145 9 The Road to Peace, 1969–72 169 Conclusion 193 Notes 197 Bibliography 229 Index 241 This page intentionally left blank pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page ix MAPS Egypt under British Protection and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan xviii The Provinces of Sudan from 1948 to 1973 xix The States of Sudan as of 2006 xx This page intentionally left blank pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page xi PREFACE I am one of the five children of Daniel Poggo Waran-Wunyang (now deceased) and Anna Poni Wani-Buluk. I was born in the village of Dajur in Kajo-Kaji County in Southern Sudan in the early 1960s. My father was a farmer who also managed a grocery store for Mr. Habib, a Syrian merchant who owned the business. When I was still a little boy, my parents and I fled from Kajo-Kaji to Moyo, a town in the Madi District of Uganda, for refuge. The Sudanese government security forces wanted to arrest my father and several other Kuku businessmen for allegedly providing moral and financial support to the Anya-Nya guerrilla forces (the Southern Sudanese resistance movement) that were waging a war of liberation against the Sudan government. Indeed, many Kuku men had joined the Anya-Nya movement in Southern Sudan by the mid-1960s. But the vast majority of Kuku people fled to Uganda and became refugees in the Northern, West Nile, Central, and Western regions of that country. My parents and I settled in Gulu, a town in Northern Uganda, and were later joined by my sister and one older brother. Not until 1969 did I meet our oldest brother, who had taken refuge in Nairobi, Kenya, after the civil war in Sudan intensified in the mid-1960s. Our youngest brother was born in Gulu. Refugee life in Gulu was a difficult matter for my family and other Southern Sudanese families (Kuku, Latuko, Madi, Bari, Lakoya, Moru, Azande, and Acholi of Southern Sudan). We had to start everything over from scratch in a new environment whose inhabitants often labeled us loring ayela, an Acholi expression literally meaning those who run away from a problem. To be sure, it was the civil strife in the Sudan that had caused us to flee into Northern Uganda. Our parents were hardworking and resilient—they made sure we had enough food to eat every day, had sufficient clothes, and above all, had adequate health care. Although my parents did not have the opportunity to attend school, they envisioned sending all their children to school. While they bought us school uniforms and other educational supplies, the United Nations High pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page xii xii PREFACE Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda paid our fees and tuition. Uganda provided us with the qual- ity education we would otherwise not have obtained had my parents not sought sanctuary in that country. Mrs. Atey, a Ugandan Madi teacher in Primary One at Obiya Catholic Church School in Gulu, encouraged me to work hard and master the local Acholi language and culture. I also learned English, Swahili, and Kinubi, a heavily convoluted Arabic dialect still is spoken in Uganda today. As I grew up in Northern Uganda, I interacted with people from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, and this gave me a sense of appreciation of and respect for the people, cul- ture, and languages from other parts of Southern Sudan and Uganda. My intent to write about the history of the first civil war in Sudan is based on two events that had a profound impact on me as a refugee. First, a local Kuku clergyman named Eli, who preached the Sunday sermons in our church, one day abandoned his pastoral duty and joined the Anya- Nya movement in Southern Sudan. This remarkable decision was an expression of the frustration of most Southern Sudanese people, as well as a reflection of the magnitude of tension and conflict between the Northern and Southern regions of the country. Second, in 1966 through 1967, the Ugandan government under President Milton Obote cracked down on the Southern Sudanese refugees in Uganda who were allegedly raising money to support the Anya-Nya movement inside Southern Sudan. My mother was secretary of finance for the local Anya-Nya chapter in Gulu. Three Kuku men, who belonged to the same chapter and who also raised money, were arrested by Uganda General Service Unit personnel, tortured, and jailed for a short period. My mother was spared. My decision to major in history at the University of Juba in the 1980s (1982 through 1986) was based on my keen interest in studying the his- tory of Sudan, but above all in understanding the nature of the relation- ship between the South and the North. I particularly wanted to learn the root causes of Sudan’s first civil war. In my course of study, I also realized that the history of Southern Sudan had largely been written by foreign and Northern Sudanese scholars/historians. I also learned that very few Southern Sudanese historians had attained postgraduate qualifications, in contrast to Northern intellectuals. A case in point was the employment of three Southern Sudanese lecturers in the history department at the University of Juba. This was the first generation of Southerners who had majored in history at the University of Khartoum. My ambition was to pursue post- graduate studies to the Ph.D. level and subsequently make my own con- tribution to the historiography on Sudan in general, and on Southern Sudan in particular. I realized one of these ambitions when I wrote my pal-poggo-000fm 10/23/08 11:49 AM Page xiii PREFACE xiii master’s thesis, The Pattern of Azande Resistance to the British Rule in the Southern Sudan, 1898–1914, in the history department at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, in 1992. My six-year experience (1983 through 1989) of the second civil war in Sudan had far-reaching effects. Surviving the mortar and artillery and rocket bombardment of the city of Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan where I lived, strengthened my resolve to investigate the root causes of Sudan’s first civil war and write about it. I realized this dream when I completed my doctoral dissertation, War and Conflict in the Southern Sudan, 1955–1972, in the history department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1999. I was initially motivated to write about the first civil war in Sudan when Professor Robert O. Collins of UCSB gave me permission to access his huge collections of primary material on Sudan. Fellowships and grants from the University of California at Santa Barbara and San Diego enabled me to travel and conduct research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (1997), the Sudan Archive at Durham University (United Kingdom, 1997), and the Missionary Comboniani Archive in Rome and Verona (1998).