Hello again!
This week’s blog post will be profile on an important
political figure in the South Sudan, the First-Vice-President of the Sudan and
leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, John Garang.
John Garang was born in 1945 in what is now South Sudan. He
was born into a poor family and was orphaned by a young age. He had planned on
joining the first civil war in Sudan in 1962, but was convinced to get an
education by its leaders do to his youth. He was educated, originally, in
Tanzania and later, through the help of a scholarship, was able to earn a
Bachelor of Arts in Economics at Grinnell College in Iowa, USA. He was then
offered admissions to University of California, Berkeley, but decided to
returned to Tanzania and attend University of Dar es Salaam. He then returned
to the Sudan to join the rebellion. After the signing of the Addis Ababa
Agreement that ended the civil war in 1972, Garang became a soldier for Sudan
and moved up the ranks. During this time, he took a leave to pursue a master’s
degree and PhD from Iowa State University.
In 1983 when Garang was sent south with a battalion to suppress
anti-government rebels with other battalions, he secretly pulled his battalion
out and went to Ethiopia to join the rebels where he took command of thousands
of soldiers in the new Sudan People’s Liberation Army. This began the second
Sudanese Civil War. Libya, Uganda, and Ethiopia and controlled southern areas
of Sudan supported this movement. When the Ethiopian government was overthrown,
however, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army lost its Ethiopian support. The
Army, then, attempted to kick Garang out of his leadership position, but it
didn’t work. However, it exposed the factions within the southern regions of
Sudan.
In 2005 in Nairobi, Kenya, the Sudan People’s Liberation
Army signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government. With this Garang
was named the First-Vice-President to President Omar al-Bashir. In July of
2005, however, Garang died in a helicopter crash near the Uganda- Sudan border.
Thanks for reading my blog post! I hope you found it
interesting! Let me know what you think on South Sudan’s progression in recent
history! Have a wonderful week!
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment