This chapter deals with the recruitment of soldiers into the various armed movements in Sudan, with a strong focus on the SPLA. After a brief historical background to the conflict between North and South Sudan, and the foundation of the SPLA in 1983, I will switch to the perspectives of my respondents to reconstruct the contexts from which they joined the movement and their motivations to do so. A categorization of respondents will be presented on the basis of their most prominent motivation to join. A short analysis of data gathered among people who did not join the movement, will further add to our understanding of factors contributing to a person's joining. Finally, after a revision of the categories of respondents found with regard to motivation to join the SPLA, I will present similar data concerning three guerilla movements in Eastern Sudan. Although the respondents from these militias are relatively small in number and provides less basis for generalization, they are also more diverse, including narratives of some of the founders of these militias. Comparison between individual level data gathered within the various movements, will create room for tentative theoretical conclusions regarding the survival and success factors of building a rebel movement. These will be discussed in the last section of this chapter.

Independence, war, peace and the foundation of the SPLA

Tensions between North and South

In Sudan, armed rebellion against the central government has occurred in all peripheral areas of the country, with the most recent outbreak in the western region of Darfur, where the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed in 2006, but where the conflict is still ongoing. Armed groups have also been active in the eastern region, where peace talks led to the signing of the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement in October 2006. The longest running conflict and most intense in terms of the amount of casualties, is the rebellion of Southern Sudanese armed groups against the central government.

What the armed groups in the various Sudanese regions have in common, is that their rebellion is based on a rationale of economic and political marginalization of the periphery by the center. Historically, development in Sudan had always been concentrated in a few regions around the country's capital, Khartoum: a pattern that was to a great extent reinforced by the British colonial rule (Johnson 2004: 9-22).