In order to best contextualize Nya and Salva’s stories, it is important to look at a brief history of Sudan and its civil conflicts.
From 1899 until 1955, Sudan is Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, ruled jointly by the British and the Egyptians. It achieves independence in 1956.
By 1962, however, the southern separatist movement, the Anya Nya, begins a civil war with the northern Khartoum forces.
Within seven years, socialist and communist Sudanese military officers under Col. Numeiri seizes power and outlines a plan of autonomy for the south. This autonomy is granted, with a provision for a capital at Juba, in 1972 after a peace agreement signed in Addis Ababa.
The Second Sudanese Civil War (the one Salva lives through) begins in 1983 when the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), led by John Garang, attacks the north for abolishing south Sudan’s autonomy. Numeiri had begun to abrogate parts of the agreement, imposing Shari’a law across the country. The Democratic Unionist Party, a part of Sudan’s ruling coalition government, drafts a cease-fire, but it is not implemented.
Over the course of this conflict, between 1-2 million civilians are killed. The United Nations sends in thousands of peacekeepers and tries to assist with the widespread famine.
By 1989, the military seizes power in Sudan. It remains in power until talks begin in Kenya in 2002 to agree to an end to the civil war; this is the Machakos Protocol, and it allows the south to seek self-determination after six years. In 2005 the North/South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) officially ends the war, providing for a permanent ceasefire, southern autonomy, a power-sharing government with the rebels in Khartoum, and a South Sudanese referendum on independence in six years’ time. Garang is sworn in as the first vice-president, but he is killed in a plane crash a month later.
In October of 2005, South Sudan forms an autonomous government, dominated by former rebels. Fighting continues, however, especially over oil resources along the divide between the two regions.
South Sudan becomes an independent state on July 9th, 2011, but tensions persist to the present day. The estimated number of people killed since December 13th, 2013 is over 50,000, along with 2.47 million refugees and asylum-seekers. Alex de Waal describes the decades-long pattern: “These episodes do not end clearly or decisively. Rather, killings diminish as the pattern of violence changes from a bipolar confrontation to fragmented or anarchic conflict. This is related to the way in which Sudan’s wars end neither in outright victories nor durable peace settlements, but rather in political realignments that reconfigure and may reduce violence. Sudanese live under the constant threat that war and mass atrocity may flare up again.”
