TIMELINE

In 1987, Simon Deng, then a young boy in Sudan, awakened to the sound of screaming and gunfire, and heard his mother’s voice for the last time.

“She was calling to my two sisters to follow her and telling my brother to go with me,”Deng said.

“I was still lying on the bed not knowing what to do. My brother grasped my hand, and we jumped. Our neighbors’ houses were already on fire. As I ran across the yard, I heard bullets in the air, breaking the tree branches with a noise like a thunderstorm.”

The time line below will help paint a picture of what led to the situation in Sudan that uprooted the lives and family of so many young men like Simon, and how it came to be that Jackson, Mississippi could make such an impact on their future.

NOTE: Click on the (>>>) beside each Timeline descriptive below for more information.

• 640’s:   Arab/Islamic invaders conquered Egypt and entered northern Sudan read more >>> 
• 1500’s:   Islamic stronghold was established in Sudan read more >>> 
• Early 1800’s: Unification and Islamization of northern Sudan read more >>> 
• Late 1800’s:  Unification of western Sudan including Darfur through Mahdism read more >>> 
• Early 1900’s:  Northern Sudan was fully Arabized while British missionaries reestablish Christianity in Southern Sudan read more >>> 
• Throughout mid 1900’s: British exclusion of Southern Sudan read more >>> 
• In the 1940’s:  British betrayal and the beginning of northern Sudanese sovereignty read more >>> 
• In 1953: The beginning of the Civil War read more >>> 
• In 1956: An Independent State of Sudan read more >>> 
• In 1972: The end of war for 10 years read more >>>  
• In 1979: Oil read more >>> 
• In 1983: War reignited after the northern imposition of Sharia law. Beginning of the SPLM read more >>> 
• In 1987: The 1000-mile trek to Ethiopia for the young boys of Southern Sudan read more >>> 
• In 1991: An Ethiopian military coup forced young boys to flee back to Southern Sudan read more >>> 
• 1 Month Later read more >>> 
• In 2000: The journey to the United States read more >>> 
• In 2001:  9/11 attack read more >>> 
• In 2003: The horrors of Darfur read more >>> 
• In 2005: The end of the second civil war and the signing of the CPA read more >>> 
• In 2007: Sudan Reconstruction focuses on rebuilding Southern Sudan read more >>> 

640’s:   Arab/Islamic invaders conquered Egypt and entered northern Sudan.
Arab traders, with their newfound religion of Islam, pushed out of Saudi Arabia and into the northern parts of Africa, establishing Muslim strongholds in Egypt. As these Arabs pushed south into northern Sudan, they met resistance in the Sudanese Christian Nubian Kingdoms. In the late 600’s, a treaty known as the baqt between the Arabs and the Nubian Christians stabilized the area and held for some 700 years.
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1500’s:   Islamic stronghold was established in Sudan.   
Southern Sudan was home to a variety of African tribes. The Funj tribe moved north from Southern Sudan into Arab controlled Nubia. Before the Funj monarchy collapsed in 1821 the Funj people had become fully Arabized and Islamized, with a feudal-based economy with slaves and slave trading from the south supporting the ruling Funj class.
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Early 1800’s: Unification and Islamization of northern Sudan.    
An Arab and Islamic (Egyptian-Ottoman) force conquered and unified northern Sudan.  The swamps of the Sudd in southern Sudan discouraged Arab expansion into the south, and the area remained composed of fragmented, non-colonized African tribal regions, subject to frequent attacks by slave raiders.
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Late 1800’s:  Unification of western Sudan including Darfur through Mahdism.    
An Arab/Islamic religious leader proclaimed himself the Mahdi (“guided one”) and began a war to unify, Arabize and Islamize the African tribes of western and central Sudan including Darfur. Concurrently, European initiatives fought against the slave trade causing economic crisis in the Darfur region and the south.   After the death of the Mahdi in 1885, a British-Egyptian force took control of the central, western and northern portions of the region.
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Early 1900’s:  Northern Sudan was fully Arabized while British missionaries reestablish Christianity in Southern Sudan.
British missionaries traveled north from what is now modern Kenya into southern Sudan to convert the local tribes to Christianity and bring education to the region. The UK and Egypt continued to administer all of present day Sudan, but northern and southern Sudan were administered as separate colonies.
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Throughout mid 1900’s: British exclusion of Southern Sudan.   
In the south, African tribes had their own governance. Christian missionaries were entrenched in Southern Sudan preventing the spread of Islam in the area. To heighten the separation, British administrators passed an ordinance that actually drew a geographic latitude across the middle of Sudan, discouraging travel or trade south of the latitude.  This left the South an undeveloped, uncolonized and unpoliticized area by western standards.
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In the 1940’s:  British betrayal and the beginning of northern Sudanese sovereignty.
Despite earlier British promises that the South could eventually develop self-rule, the British colonial authority reversed that position at the Juba Conference of 1947 and informed the southern Sudanese authorities they would be governed by a unified administrative authority in the north in Khartoum. This action began a Southern distrust of the British and the policies of the north.
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In 1953: The beginning of the Civil War.  
The Arab-led Khartoum government reneged on promises to southerners to create a federal system with equitable representation, thus leading to a mutiny by Southern troops in Equitoria, the southern most province.  Feeling disenfranchised and cheated, these separatist Southerners began an initially low-intensity civil war aimed at establishing an independent South.  This war lasted from 1955 to 1972.
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In 1956: An Independent State of Sudan.
With the consent of the British/Egyptian Government, Sudan achieved independence.
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In 1972: The end of war for 10 years.   
After nearly two decades of civil war, the Arab-led northern government seemingly acquiesced to the southern forces by signing the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972 leading to a cessation of the north-south civil war and promises of self-rule in the South.
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In 1979: Oil
Large findings of oil were made in Bentiu, in Southern Sudan.  The oil became an important factor in the strife between North and South.
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In 1983: War reignited after the northern imposition of Sharia law. Beginning of the SPLM.   
Civil war was reignited by the South following the government’s forced Islamization policy which instituted Islamic or Sharia law and the reneging of all promises of equality between the north and the south. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), lead by the young Dr. John Garang of southern Sudan was set into motion.
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In 1987: The 1000-mile trek to Ethiopia for the young boys of Southern Sudan.
John Garang and other officers of the SPLA implemented a plan to protect the young male population of southern Sudan and ultimately build a new army of young southern Sudanese boys by leading some 25,000 little boys, ages birth to 9 or 10 year of age, out of southern Sudan and into a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
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In 1991: An Ethiopian military coup forced young boys to flee back to Southern Sudan.
New regime Ethiopian military operatives attacked the Sudanese refugee camp.  The boys were forced to run from the camp back westward into Sudan, first having to cross the Gila River facing crocodiles and drowning. The northern Sudanese army heard of the flight and descended on the border of Southern Sudan and Ethiopia to keep the boys, now military age from returning to Sudan.
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1 Month Later
The boys languished in the bush for over a month until the Red Cross found them and established a refugee camp on the border between Kenya and Sudan in Kakuma, Kenya. They were then dubbed by the international press, “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”  The children were aided by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees) where they received an education, food and medical treatment at the camp.  Additional refugees from Sudan eventually entered the camp, including women and little girls.
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In 2000: The journey to the United States.
The US and the UNHCR organized a mass migration of the young Sudanese refugees to the United States.  Of the original 25,000 young boys who were lead out of their country in 1987, more than half had perished along the way.  Some 5000 refugees, mostly boys, came to the United States through the guardianship of the Catholic and Lutheran churches.  About 65 come to Jackson, MS.
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In 2001:  9/11 attack.
The terrorist attack, in part through the participation of northern Sudanee operative, stops the mass migration of southern Sudanese into the U.S.
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In 2003: The horrors of Darfur.    
With a solid and unified SPLA and with some intervention from the United States and other western countries, the north/south Sudan civil war was showing signs of coming to an end.  In anticipation of probable peace and a likely, resulting U. S. and European push into oil production, the northern Sudan government and China (the only oil producer left in Sudan) collaborated to continue the chaos of war in other parts of Sudan, specifically in western Sudan in the region called Darfur.  Though the people of Darfur had, centuries before, succumbed to the pressures of the northern Arabs by adopting their language and their Islamic religion, they were made up of splintered tribes and, therefore, vulnerable to northern manipulation and oppression. Albeit Muslim, these Darfurians were African and did not appeal to the Government of Sudan’s sense of brotherhood or identity.  Therefore, to continue chaos somewhere, anywhere, in the teeth of the de-escalation of the north/south civil war, the government of the north in collaboration with the Chinese, deployed Arab speaking tribesmen, the Janjaweed (Arabic form of horseman) to reek havoc on the people of western Sudan in Darfur by perpetrating rape, massacre and forced displacement on the men, women and children of this area.  Thus began the horrors of Darfur.
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In 2005: The end of the second civil war and the signing of the CPA.    
In January 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was finally signed by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, establishing the sharing of natural resources and governmental power between the two regions.  John Garang was made Vice President of the entire country and President of the South. One month after his inauguration in July of 2005, Dr. Garang was killed in a helicopter crash.  His compatriot, Salva Kiir, was quickly sworn in to take his place.   Sudan Reconstruction Skills Search Project was then established to build an economic and humanitarian bridge between the U. S. and Southern Sudan.
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In 2007: Sudan Reconstruction focuses on rebuilding Southern Sudan.
As part of the mission of Sudan Reconstruction, several of its board members traveled to Juba, Sudan, to assess the possibility of humanitarian and economic programs in Southern Sudan.  Among the programs identified, Sudan Reconstruction’s first projects will be the rebuilding of a school in Juba with children from grade school level through senior high.  Concurrent with the rebuilding of the school, Sudan Reconstruction will gather the resources and establish the contacts to install an Internet laboratory at the University of Juba. These projects will be implemented with the human resources of our Sudanese refugees here in Mississippi and through the United States.
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