The war was divided into four major stages: initial guerrilla warfare, the creation of the Anyanya insurgency, political strife within the government, and establishment of the South Sudan Liberation Movement.

Although the Addis Ababa Agreement ended the war in 1972, it failed to completely dispel the tensions and addressed only some of the issues stated by southern Sudan.

[25] Additionally, the British colonial administration favored the northern elite during the process of decolonization, granting them a majority of political power during the transition to independence.

Also, the northern government superseded the jurisdiction of Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) by committing discriminatory violence against the southern minorities under the guise of internal turmoil of democratic growth.

Therefore, in addition to their limited representation in politics, the coercion by the northern government and the cultural restriction in achieving progress were critical factors towards the start of the war.

[33] The mutinies were suppressed with the dispatch of numerous troops from the north, though survivors fled the towns and began an uncoordinated insurgency in rural areas.

Starting from Equatoria, between 1963 and 1969, Anyanya spread throughout the other two southern provinces: Upper Nile and Bahr al Ghazal and provided heavy pressure on the Northern army's ability to properly maneuver.

The first independent government of Sudan, led by Prime Minister Ismail al-Azhari, was quickly replaced by a stalemated coalition of various conservative forces, which was in turn overthrown in the coup d'état of Chief of Staff Brigadier Ibrahim Abboud in 1958.

On the evening of 20 October 1964, a raid by security forces at the University of Khartoum during a seminar on "the Problem of the Southern Sudan" sparked off nationwide protests and a general strike.

That same year, German national Rolf Steiner, who had been clandestinely advising the rebels, was captured in Kampala, Uganda and deported to Khartoum, where he was put on trial for his anti-government activities.

[25] This was the first time in the history of the warfare that a separatist movement had a unified command structure with the mutual objective to secede and build an independent state.

[43] From the beginning of the war to the Addis Ababa Agreement, over 500,000 to 1 million people, of whom only one in five was considered an armed combatant, were killed while hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes.

[44] The Addis Ababa Agreement was observed by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and led to the establishment of regional autonomy for southern Sudan.