Sudan, 1977 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

The dataset records an attempted military coupi in Sudan on 2 February 1977, corresponding to the Juba coup, a failed rising in the southern regional capital led by a group of about twelve former Anyanya guerrillas serving in the air force. The Anyanya had been the southern rebels of the First Sudanese Civil War, integrated into the national army under the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement that granted the south regional autonomy under President Gaafar Nimeiri. Discontent over the implementation of that settlement and southern grievances lay behind the attempt, in which the plotters aimed to seize Juba airport, with some accounts saying they also sought to free detainees from Juba prison.

The coup failed, members of the southern High Executive Council were briefly arrested, and the ringleaders were dealt with by the authorities. Nimeiri survived, as he had the far larger Libyan-backed insurrection of July 1976, and later that year pursued his National Reconciliation with northern opponents, even as tensions with the south persisted and would eventually reignite civil war in 1983.