The Sudan Handbook

344 thE sudan handbook

in exile until invited back to Sudan again as part of Nimeiri’s ‘national

reconciliation’ in the late 1970s. He was elected Prime Minister for a

second time following the return to civilian rule in 1986. Between then

and 1989, he headed a series of weak coalitions, doing little, his critics

argue, to prevent the NIF coup in 1989 that ended his premiership.

SalVa KiiR MayaRdit (b.1951). Soldier and politician. Joined the

Anyanya rebel movement in the late 1960s, reaching the rank of Major

by the end of the civil war in 1972. A Rek Dinka from Northern Bahr

al-Ghazal, Salva Kiir was one of the founders of the SPLM/A and in

1999, became the Chief of Staff and deputy to its leader John Garang. He

played a decisive role in the reunification of the SPLA, negotiating with

Riek Machar and later with Lam Akol. After John Garang’s death in July

2005, Salva Kiir became the President of Southern Sudan and First Vice-

President of Sudan and formed a government that incorporated many

of the movement’s former opponents and rival factions. He was elected

President of Southern Sudan in April 2010.

Tay Eb Salih (1929–2009). Writer. He published his first work in Beirut

in 1966, a collection of short stories in Arabic, The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid,

and gained international acclaim when his novel Mawsim al-Hijra ila

al-Shamal (1968) was published in English in 1970 as Season of Migration

to the North. This was followed by another, The Wedding of Zain which was

made into a film, but many of his other works remain untranslated.

Born in Karkmakol, northern Sudan, Tayeb Salih spent most of his life

in Europe and the Gulf, dying in London, aged 80, in 2009.

YasiR Said ARman. Senior northern Sudanese member of SPLM/A. A

Cairo University graduate and former member of the Sudanese Commu-

nist Party, he joined the SPLM/A in 1986 becoming a commander and

official spokesman of the SPLM. After the 2005 Comprehensive Peace

Agreement he was appointed leader of the SPLM parliamentary group in

the National Assembly, member of the SPLM Political Bureau and Execu-

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors tive Committee, and Deputy Secretary-General of SPLM Northern Sector.

(www.riftvalley.net).