Sudan has experienced a number of revolutionary movements: for example, the Mahdist messianic movement of the nineteenth century, freeing the area for a time from the British and building its own society and administration; the nationalist movement of the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in independence from the British in 1956; the guerilla war that spanned the second half of the twentieth century and extended into the twenty-first century, pitting the southern region against the northern region, and led pr…