John Garang de Mabior (born June 23, 1945) is a Sudanese political leader and former leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army. He was born into a poor family in Wagkulei village, near Bor in the upper Nile region of Sudan. He is a member of the Dinka ethnic group.

Garang studied economics at Grinnell College where he received a B.A.. He was known there for his bookishness. He later took the commander's course at Fort Benning, Georgia and received master's degree in agricultural economics and a Ph.D. in economics at Iowa State University, after writing an essay about the agricultural development of Southern Sudan.

During the 1970s, Garang joined the Sudanese military, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Sudan People's Armed Forces (SPAF). In 1983, he was sent to crush a mutiny by 500 southern government soldiers in Bor who were resisting being rotated to posts in the north. Instead, he started a rebel movement, the Sudan People's Liberation Army(SPLA) which was opposed to military rule and Islamic dominance of the country, and encouraged other army garrisons to mutiny, due to the Islamic law imposed on the country by the government. This mutiny marked the beginning of the Second Sudanese Civil War.

The SPLA gained the backing of Libya, Uganda and Ethiopia. He and his army controlled a large part of the southern regions of the country, named New Sudan, despite being outnumbered and possessing no aircraft, unlike the Sudanese government. He claims 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."

Garang, though he and most of the Southern Sudan is Christian, has not focused on the religious aspects of the war. He has stated that he wants equality in all of Sudan, by which he means a unified country in which north and south devise separate constitutions, followed by a vote that would either impose one system, or continue with the two.

Garang refused to participate in the 1985 interim government or 1986 elections, and remains a rebel leader today. However, recent movements have been made towards peace with the Sudanese government. He is expected to take the post of vice-president of Sudan as part of the peace agreement ending the war that was reached in February, 2005.

External Links

• NPR Weekend Edition:John Garang: A Conversation on Sudan
• Official website of the Sudan People's Liberation Army
• A State Department archive of information from before January 2001