On August 18, 1955 - before Sudan gained independence from the Anglo-Egyptian condominium on January 1, 1956 - soldiers rebelled in the city of Torit.

Head of state Ibrahim Abbud, who came to power in a military coup in 1958, took brutal action against the rebels in southern Sudan to secure the unity of the country.

[3] The military dictatorship ended in 1964 when Abbud handed over power to a civilian government under Sirr Al-Khatim Al-Khalifa due to public pressure in the north.

A round table conference was convened in Khartoum to discuss a solution to the “southern problem” with representatives of the north and south but failed to produce any results due to irreconcilable differences.

[4] The new Umma Party government under Muhammad Ahmad Mahgoub stepped up military action against the south, which tended to increase support for the Anya-Nya and independence efforts.

[6] Soon after taking power, Nimeiry announced that he preferred a political solution to the conflict and sought talks with the rebels from the end of 1971.

[7] The North granted autonomy and the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region was created, ending a conflict that had claimed some 500,000 to 700,000 lives.

[9] Further tensions were caused by the large-scale Jonglei Canal project, which aimed to transfer water from the south to the water-scarce north.

[10] The concrete trigger of the second civil war was when, in May 1983, army units from Bor, Pibor, and Fashalla refused the order to go north and escaped to Ethiopia.

[11] Under pressure from the National Islamic Front under Hassan at-Turabi, which was close to the Muslim Brotherhood, President Nimeiry adopted Islamist positions from 1977 onwards.

In 1989, 30,000 SPLA fighters battled against 58,000 soldiers of the Sudanese central government, which was supported by Saudi Arabia and Libya.

At the beginning of 1989, after tough negotiations, the international community managed to wrest concessions from President Sadiq al-Mahdi to such an extent that Operation Lifeline Sudan was able to start supplying the starving population in the war zones.

The town used to be one of the trading centers for slaves,[14] was classified as particularly dangerous for aid organizations by USAID at the end of 2007 due to the Darfur conflict that broke out in 2003[15] and was the scene of a massacre 20 years earlier, in early 1987.

By May 1986, 17,000 Dinka had fled from the south to the supposedly peaceful El Diein, where there were occasional clashes with the local Fur and Zaghawa at the scarce water points.

According to an eyewitness report, on January 22, 1992, “a thousand men with modern infantry weapons” (Nuer SPLA fighters) razed four Dinka villages to the ground.

He was arrested by Garang in 1987, managed to escape at the end of 1992, and, with the support of the government, took part in attacks on civilians and looting at the beginning of 1993.

The year 1996 was seen as the high point of cooperation between the Sudanese government and the Ugandan rebel movement, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which, according to human rights organizations, may have received support from Khartoum for its attacks against civilian targets in the south until around 2005.

Although the NDA consisted of individual groups with very different interests, their common goal was the removal of the Islamist dictatorship in Khartoum under Omar al-Bashir.

After the conclusion of the Bürgenstock Agreement in January 2002, which ended the civil war in the Nuba Mountains, the government finally agreed to peace talks with the SPLA under pressure from the United States.

After 22 years of civil war between the predominantly Christian and Animist south and the Muslim north, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed.

In the peace agreement concluded between the government and the SPLA in 2005, it was agreed to create an autonomous region of southern Sudan, which is to be administered largely independently by the SPLM.

After the peace agreement was signed, there have been several clashes between northern and southern troops - the heaviest fighting took place in the Abyei region in May 2008 –, however, these did not escalate into a new war.

The start of peace talks with South Sudan made the black African population in Darfur feel even more neglected.