Military Coup in Sudan 1985

General Abdul Rahman Siwar el-Dahab took power by coup in Sudan (April 6), imposing even harsher Muslim rule on the Christian and animist south. The civil war intensified, becoming a full-scale southern guerrilla war for independence, accompanied by massive starvation and disease that by the early 1990s had cost an estimated 1 million to 2 million lives; millions more emigrated to escape the war.