Fought between the Arabized, Muslim-majority government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army and Movement, led by John Garang and based chiefly among the mostly Christian and traditional-religion populations of southern Sudan, the war reignited after President Jaafar Nimeiry imposed Sharia law nationwide under the September 1983 laws and abrogated the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement that had ended the First Sudanese Civil War's regional autonomy settlement. It became one of the longest running civil wars of the twentieth century, marked by famine and mass displacement and by a war within the SPLA itself after its own 1991 split along Dinka and Nuer lines, and it ended with the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Facts
Disputed
Death TollMillard Burr's documented tally for the U.S. Committee for Refugees, covering violence, war-related famine and disease, and government policy in southern and central Sudan across the war's 1983 to 1998 span: at least 1.9 million dead, a wartime count compiled under conditions where undercounting rather than overcounting is the likelier bias. Death TollThe round figure of about two million dead, the commonly cited total for the war's full 1983 to 2005 span in standard reference treatments and consistent with Douglas Johnson's own history of the war, extending Burr's 1998 tally forward across the war's remaining seven years. Religious DimensionHistorians divide over how central religion was to the war's causes. Douglas Johnson argues that the war's deeper and more durable causes were the political and economic marginalization of Sudan's peripheries, especially the south, by successive Khartoum governments, a dynamic that predates and outlasted any single government's religious policy, so that the 1983 Sharia imposition functioned as a proximate trigger and a potent unifying grievance rather than the war's root cause. Francis Deng, by contrast, frames the conflict substantially as a clash between an Arab-Islamic vision of Sudanese national identity promoted from Khartoum and an African, predominantly Christian and traditional-religion vision held in the south, arguing that the two sides' competing self-understandings, not merely their competing material interests, structured the war and its intractability. This atlas records the 1983 Sharia imposition as an attested trigger without adopting either camp's account of how central religious identity was to the war's underlying causes. 3 The Event
When It Happened1983 to 2005, from Nimeiry's imposition of Sharia law under the September laws to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. 1 PeriodThe conventional dates historians use for the Second Sudanese Civil War, from the 1983 collapse of the Addis Ababa settlement and the Sharia laws that reopened the war to the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Principal PartiesThe Government of Sudan under successive Khartoum administrations, chiefly Jaafar Nimeiry and, from 1989, Omar al-Bashir's National Islamic Front backed government, against the Sudan People's Liberation Army and Movement under John Garang, itself fractured by a 1991 internal split along Dinka and Nuer lines that produced years of intra-southern fighting alongside the North-South war. 1 Consequences
What It SettledThe January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, mediated internationally over more than two years of negotiation, ended the war, granted southern Sudan a six year period of autonomy, and provided for the January 2011 referendum in which the south voted overwhelmingly for independence, leading to the creation of South Sudan later that year. 1 Learn More
Sharia Law, a Reignited War, and a Split Within the SPLA
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The Second Sudanese Civil War reignited in 1983 after President Jaafar Nimeiry imposed Sharia law nationwide under the September laws and abrogated the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement that had ended the First Sudanese Civil War's regional autonomy settlement. It was fought between the Arabized, Muslim-majority government in Khartoum, led by Nimeiry and, from 1989, by Omar al-Bashir's National Islamic Front backed government, and the Sudan People's Liberation Army and Movement, led by John Garang and based chiefly among the mostly Christian and traditional-religion populations of southern Sudan.
It became one of the longest running civil wars of the twentieth century, marked by famine and mass displacement and by a war within the SPLA itself after its own 1991 split along Dinka and Nuer lines. The January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, mediated internationally over more than two years of negotiation, ended the war, granted southern Sudan a six-year period of autonomy, and provided for the January 2011 referendum in which the south voted overwhelmingly for independence, leading to the creation of South Sudan later that year.
Marginalization or Identity? Two Readings of the War's Deeper Cause
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Historians divide over how central religion was to the Second Sudanese Civil War's causes. The historian Douglas Johnson argues that the war's deeper and more durable causes were the political and economic marginalization of Sudan's peripheries, especially the south, by successive Khartoum governments, a dynamic that predates and outlasted any single government's religious policy, so that the 1983 Sharia imposition functioned as a proximate trigger and a potent unifying grievance rather than the war's root cause.
The scholar Francis Deng, by contrast, frames the conflict substantially as a clash between an Arab-Islamic vision of Sudanese national identity promoted from Khartoum and an African, predominantly Christian and traditional-religion vision held in the south, arguing that the two sides' competing self-understandings, not merely their competing material interests, structured the war and its intractability. The 1983 Sharia imposition is recorded here as an attested trigger, without adopting either camp's account of how central religious identity was to the war's underlying causes.
Cross-Tradition Connections
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This source names Sudan directly: "government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army and Movement, led by John Garang and based chiefly among the mostly Christian and traditional-religion populations of southern Sudan..."
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