JR-Publications-Sudan-Handbook-1

212 thE sudan handbook

entered the Cold War on the side of the Arab bloc and the socialist states.

This had a direct effect on the conduct of the war in the south. Egypt and

Libya assisted the Sudan with weapons and trained personnel (especially

pilots), and the Sudanese army was substantially rearmed by the Soviet

bloc. Israel, for its part, now took an interest in the Anyanya, and was

assisted in its support by Idi Amin, first as commander of the Ugandan

army, and then as military dictator of Uganda itself.

Just as the Anyanya were finding a new unity through Israeli support,

Khartoum was afflicted by its own Cold War factionalism. The attempted

communist coup against Nimeiri in 1971 weakened his position and gave

him a strong incentive to seek an end to the civil war through negotia-

tion. Joseph Lagu received Israel’s backing, and as the conduit for military

supplies was able to bring the other Anyanya units under his command

and supplant the exile politicians as leader of the movement (now

renamed the Southern Sudanese Liberation Movement, or SSLM).

The Addis Ababa Agreement and the Lessons of Peace

It was from this position of relative weakness and strength that Nimeiri’s

government and Lagu’s SSLM were able to negotiate an end to the war

in 1972. The Addis Ababa Agreement gave the south less than the self-

determination that the many guerrilla groups had claimed they were

fighting for, and the semi-autonomous Southern Region established with

its capital in Juba was far less than the federal solution the southern

leaders of the 1950s had advocated. Its survival was based on an alliance

between Nimeiri and the south against Nimeiri’s northern opponents

• especially those parties such as the Umma, the DUP and the Islamic
  Charter Front (later to transform into the National Islamic Front) who
  were committed to a unitary Islamic state in one form or another.
  This alliance lasted through the two most serious coup attempts
  in Khartoum in 1975 and 1976, but began to break apart in 1977 with
  ‘National Reconciliation’, when Nimeiri offered his strongest northern
  opponents, including Sadiq al-Mahdi (the leader of the 1976 coup attempt)

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors and Hassan al-Turabi, places in the government. This brought hard-line

(www.riftvalley.net).