John Garang
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{{Infobox Vice President
| name=John Garang de Mabior
| image= John Garang.jpg
| order= First Vice President of Sudan
| term_start=[[January 9]], [[2005]]
| term_end= [[July 30]], [[2005]]
| president=[[Omar al-Bashir]]
| successor=[[Salva Kiir]]
| predecessor=[[Ali Osman Taha]]
| order2=President of Southern Sudan
|term_start2 =[[January 9]], [[2005]]
|term_end2 = [[July 30]], [[2005]]
|successor2 = [[Salva Kiir]]
| predecessor2=
| birth_date=[[June 23]], [[1945]]
| birth_place=
| death_date=[[July 30]], [[2005]]
| party=[[Sudan People's Liberation Army|SPLM]]
| spouse= [[Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior]]}}
{{Politics of Sudan}}
'''Dr John Garang de Mabior''' ([[June 23]], [[1945]] – [[July 30]], [[2005]]) was the vice president of [[Sudan]] and former leader of the rebel [[Sudan People's Liberation Army]].
==Early years==
A member of the [[Dinka]] ethnic group, Garang was born into a poor family in Wanglei village in Bor, Sudan, in the upper Nile region of Sudan (currently Jonglei State). An orphan by the age of ten, he had his fees for school paid by a relative, going to schools in [[Wau, Sudan|Wau]] and then [[Rumbek]]. In 1962 he joined the [[First Sudanese Civil War|first Sudanese civil war]], but because he was so young, the leaders encouraged him and others his age to seek an education. Because of the ongoing fighting, Garang was forced to attend his [[secondary education]] in [[Tanzania]]. After winning a scholarship, he went on to earn a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in [[economics]] in [[1969]] from [[Grinnell College]] in Iowa, USA. He was known there for his bookishness. He was offered another scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], but chose to return to Tanzania and study [[East Africa]]n [[agricultural economics]] as a [[Thomas J. Watson Fellow]] at the [[University of Dar es Salaam]]. As a member of the [[University Students' African Revolutionary Front]], a student group at the university, he made the acquaintance of [[Yoweri Museveni]], who would go on to become president of [[Uganda]] and a close ally. However, Garang soon decided to return to Sudan and join the rebels.
The civil war ended with the [[Addis Ababa agreement]] of [[1972]] and Garang, like many rebels, was absorbed into the Sudanese military. For eleven years, he was a career soldier and rose from the rank of [[captain]] to [[colonel]] after taking the [[United States Army Infantry School|Infantry Officers Advanced Course]] at [[Fort Benning]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]. During this period he took four years academic leave and received a [[master's degree]] in [[agricultural economics]] and a [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in economics at [[Iowa State University]], after writing a [[thesis]] on the agricultural development of [[Southern Sudan]]. By 1983, Col. Garang was the head of the Staff College in [[Omdurman]].
==The rebel leader==
In [[1983]], Garang went to [[Bor, Sudan|Bor]], obstensibly to mediate with about 500 southern government soldiers in battalion 105 who were resisting being rotated to posts in the north. However, Garang was already part of a conspiracy among some officers in the Southern Command arranging for the defection of battalion 105 to the anti-government rebels. When the government attacked [[Bor, Sudan|Bor]] in May and the battalion pulled out, Garang went by an alternate route to join them in the rebel stronghold in [[Ethiopia]]. By the end of July, Garang had brought over 3000 rebel soldiers under his control through the newly-created [[Sudan People's Liberation Army]]/Movement (SPLA/M), which was opposed to military rule and [[Islam]]ic dominance of the country, and encouraged other army garrisons to mutiny against the [[Sharia|Islamic law]] imposed on the country by the government.<ref name="battalion 105">Johnson, D. ''The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars'', Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 61-2.</ref> This action marked the commonly agreed upon beginning of the [[Second Sudanese Civil War]], which resulted in one and half million deaths over twenty years of conflict. Although Garang was [[Christian]] and most of southern Sudan is non-Muslim (mostly [[animist]]), he did not initially focus on the religious aspects of the war.
The SPLA gained the backing of [[Libya]], [[Uganda]] and [[Ethiopia]]. Garang and his army controlled a large part of the southern regions of the country, named ''New Sudan''. He claimed his troops' courage comes from "the conviction that we are fighting a just cause. That is something North Sudan and its people don't have." Critics suggested financial motivations to his rebellion, noting that much of Sudan's [[Petroleum|oil]] wealth lies in the south of the country.
[[Image:John Garang in crowd.jpg|thumb|left|Garang in a crowd of supporters]]
Garang refused to participate in the [[1985]] interim government or [[1986]] elections, remaining a rebel leader. However, the SPLA and government signed a peace agreement on 9th January 2005 in [[Nairobi]], [[Kenya]]. On July 9, 2005, he was sworn in as vice-president, the second most powerful person in the country, following a ceremony in which he and President [[Omar al-Bashir]] signed a power-sharing constitution. He also became the administrative head of a southern Sudan with limited autonomy for the six years before a scheduled referendum of possible secession. No Christian or southerner had ever held such a high government post. Commenting after the ceremony, Garang stated, "I congratulate the Sudanese people, this is not my peace or the peace of al-Bashir, it is the peace of the Sudanese people."
The [[United States State Department]] argued that Garang's presence in the government would have helped solve the [[Darfur conflict]] in western Sudan, but others consider these claims " excessively optimistic". <ref>{{cite web | title= Untimely Death| author=Reeves, Eric | work=[[The New Republic]] | url=http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050801&s=reeves080205 | date=2005-08-02}}</ref>
==Death==
In late July 2005, Garang died after the [[Uganda]]n presidential [[Mil Mi-17| Mi-172]] helicopter he was flying in crashed. He had been returning from a meeting in [[Rwakitura]] with long-time ally President [[Yoweri Museveni]] of Uganda. Sudanese state television initially reported that Garang's craft had landed safely, but Abdel Basset Sabdarat, the country's Information Minister, went on TV hours later to deny the report. Soon afterwards, a statement released by the office of Sudanese President [[Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir|Omar el-Bashir]] confirmed that a Ugandan presidential helicopter crashed into "a mountain range in southern Sudan because of poor visibility and this resulted in the death of Dr. John Garang DeMabior, six of his colleagues and seven Ugandan crew members."[http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050801/ap_on_re_mi_ea/sudan_plane_missing] His body was flown to [[New Site, Sudan|New Site]], a southern Sudanese settlement near the scene of the crash, where former rebel fighters and civilian supporters gathered to pay their respects to Garang. Garang's funeral took place on [[August 3]] in [[Juba, Sudan|Juba]].<ref>{{cite web | title=Sudan bids rebel leader farewell | work=[[BBC News]] | url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4126370.stm | date=2005-08-06}}</ref> His widow [[Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior]] promised to continue his work stating "In our culture we say, if you kill the lion, you see what the lioness will do."<ref>{{cite web | title= Widow of Sudan's Garang Steps In to Continue His Mission| author=Wax, Emily |
work=[[The Washington Post]] | url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901861_pf.html |
date=2005-08-30 | accessdate=2007-04-25}}</ref>
===Questions about death===
[[Image:John Garang waving.jpg|thumb|left|]]
Both the Sudanese government and the head of the SPLA blamed the weather for the accident. There are, however, doubts as to the truth of this, especially amongst the rank-and-file of the SPLA. Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, claims that the possibility of "external factors" having played a role could not be eliminated.{{Fact|date=July 2008}}
===Effect upon Peace===
Considered instrumental in ending the [[civil war]], the effect of Garang's death upon the peace deal is uncertain. The government declared three days of national mourning, which did not stop large scale [[riot]]ing in [[Khartoum]] which killed at least 24 as youths from southern Sudan attacked northern Sudanese and clashed with security forces. After three days of violence, the death toll had risen to 84[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4741149.stm]. Unrest was also reported in other parts of the country. Leading members of the SPLM, including Garang's successor [[Salva Kiir Mayardit]], stated that the peace process would continue. Analysts suggested that the death could result in anything from a new [[democracy|democratic]] openness in the SPLA, which some have criticized for being overly dominated by Garang, to an outbreak of open warfare between the various southern factions that Garang had brought together.
==Partial Bibliography of His Publications==
Garang, John
1987 ''John Garang Speaks''. M. Khalid, ed. London: Kegan Paul International.
==See also==
*[[First Sudanese Civil War]]
*[[Second Sudanese Civil War]]
*[[Sudan People's Liberation Army]]
== References ==
* ''Aufstand in der Dreistadt'' by Thomas Schimidinger in ''Jungle World'' Nr.32: August 10 2005; ISSN 1613-0766
{{reflist}}
== External links ==
*[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4496451 NPR Weekend Edition:] John Garang: A Conversation on Sudan
*[http://www.splmtoday.com/ Official website] of the [[Sudan People's Liberation Army]]
*[http://www.state.gov/www/issues/relief/sudanproject.html A State Department archive] of information from before January 2001
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4666701.stm Sudan ex-rebel joins government], [[BBC]], [[9 July]] [[2005]]
*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2134220.stm Obituary], BBC
* [http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-08-01T165844Z_01_L0128099_RTRIDST_0_INTERNATIONAL-SUDAN-DC.XML Deadly riots erupt in Sudan after Garang death], [[Reuters]], [[1 August]] [[2005]]
* [http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=16869 The return of a Sudanese survivor], opinion piece in [[The Daily Star]], [[Lebanon]], [[19 July]] [[2005]] - some info on early life
*[http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-08-09-voa37.cfm Uganda Joins Sudan in Investigating Garang's Death], William Eagle, ''[[Voice of America]]'', 9 August 2005
{{SSudanPresidents}}
[[Category:1945 births|Garang, John]]
[[Category:2005 deaths|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Sudanese Christians|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Sudanese politicians|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Grinnell College people|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Iowa State University|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Rebels|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Victims of helicopter accidents or incidents|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Second Sudanese Civil War|Garang, John]]
[[Category:Iowa State University alumni|Garang]]
[[Category:Watson Fellows|Garang, John]]
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