Gaafar Nimeiry (1 January 1930-30 May 2009) was President of Sudan from 25 May 1969 to 6 April 1985, succeeding Ismail al-Azhari and preceding Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab. He is best-known for having imposed sharia law in the country in 1983, leading to the Second Sudanese Civil War.
Biography[]
Gaafar Nimeiry was born on 1 January 1930 in Cairo, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and he was the great-grandson of a tribal monarch in Dongola. Nimeiry graduated from the Sudan Military College in 1952 and from the US Army Command College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, United States in 1966. In 1969, Nimeiry overthrew Ismail al-Azhari's civilian government and became the new dictator of Sudan, involving the country in the Yom Kippur War as an ally of Egypt. Nimeiry supported pan-Arabism and socialism, having been influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and in 1971 he founded the Sudanese Socialist Union as the sole legal party in Sudan. He put down two coups by Sadiq al-Mahdi's forces in the 1970s as well as a failed communist coup from the military in 1975, and after 1978 he was one of the few Arab leaders who was still friendly with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel in the Camp David Accords. In 1983, he made the rash decision of declaring sharia law in all parts of the country, angering Christians and animists in South Sudan and leading to the Second Sudanese Civil War beginning. In 1985, Nimeiry was overthrown while he was seeking financial aid in Washington DC, with Abdel Rahman Swar al-Dahab replacing him. Nimeiry died in Khartoum in 2009 at the age of 79.