342 thE sudan handbookshrine, a 60-foot mound, and killed his son Guek, also a prophet. In
southern Sudan, Ngundeng is remembered for his peacemaking abilities
and for his foretelling of the coming of war and foreign aggression.OmaR Hassan AhmEd al-BashiR (b.1944). Rose to power in the
military coup that ousted Sadiq al-Mahdi’s elected government in June- He has been the head of the party, the NIF/NCP, that has ruled
Sudan ever since. A Jaali, born in the village of Hosh Bannaga, between
Shendi and the capital, Khartoum, he joined the army at 16 and studied at
military academies in Cairo, Khartoum and Malaysia. He was appointed
commander of the Eighth Brigade in southern Sudan in 1988. Following
the NIF coup a year later, al-Bashir became the Chairman of the Revolu-
tionary Command Council, the executive body of the new regime, and
assumed the title of President in 1993. He was elected for further terms
in 1996, 2000 and 2010 in flawed elections. In 1999 he consolidated his
internal position within the NIF/NCP by briefly imprisoning Hassan
al-Turabi, the ideological architect of the Islamist movement, and
thereafter sidelining him from power. In March 2009, the International
Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir for war crimes
and crimes against humanity, and in 2010, for genocide committed in
Darfur.
PaGan Amum OkiECh. Soldier and politician. An early recruit from
the Shilluk area to the SPLM/A, he was trained in Cuba and became an
SPLA Commander, later working closely with the National Democratic
Alliance, a coalition of Sudanese opposition parties formed in 1989 to
oppose the ruling Islamist government. He was closely associated with
the New Sudan policy of the SPLM both before and after Garang’s death.
He was elected Secretary-General of the SPLM and, following the 2010
elections, was appointed Minster for Peace and CPA Implementation in
GoSS, with primary responsibility for overseeing the negotiations for the
final separation of the south.The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors
(www.riftvalley.net).