Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

SUDAN PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY • 645incidents. Seven of these involved kidnappings of Western foreigners,usually aid workers, technicians, or missionaries. In most casesthe kidnap victims were released within a month or less. On 15 November1983, the SPLA decided to hold 11 kidnapped technicians ashostages. On 2 February 1984, the SPLA attacked a barge carryingforeign technicians building a canal for the Sudanese government,killing three and injuring seven others. On 16 August 1986, the SPLAdowned a domestic Sudanese air carrier with a SAM-7 missile, killingall 57 passengers and three crewmen.Starting in 1990, under the supervision of Iranian Islamic RevolutionaryGuards Corps advisers, the National Islamic Front beganbuilding its own militia, the People’s Defense Force, which was thendeployed against the southern rebels. In addition, Sudan has retaliatedagainst Uganda for supporting the SPLA by supporting an antigovernmentgroup in northern Uganda known as the Lord’s ResistanceArmy. Because of Sudan’s involvement in supporting Islamist rebelmovements in Eritrea and Ethiopia, both of these governments haveallowed their territories to be used as staging areas for the SPLA andother rebel forces. Beginning in 1991 the SPLA formed an alliancewith northern opposition groups in fighting the Sudanese regime.By 1995 more than one million people had died due to famineassociated with the war. Over two million people have been displacedin the government-controlled northern part of Sudan, morethan 650,000 have been displaced in the south, and another 200,000people have fled into neighboring countries. In July 1996 the Sudanesegovernment lifted a ban on flights into the rebel-controlled zonein order to allow the World Food Programme to fly in a C-130 cargoplane to drop food supplies into Bahr el-Ghazal Province, where ahalf-million people faced starvation. During late 1996 Bill Richardson,then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from NewMexico, negotiated the release of three Red Cross workers held prisonerby a rebel faction led by Kerubino Kwanyin Bol, who was alsoat war with the dominant SPLA rebel faction, led by John Garang.On 12 January 1997 both the SPLA, led by Garang, and the northernopposition Ummrah group, led by the former prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi, ousted in 1989, coordinated attacks and threatened the hydroelectricinstallation at Damazin on the Blue Nile, some 255 miles southof Khartoum, which supplied most of the capital’s electric power.In late 1997, seven key rebel leaders, including Riek Machar, who