 Complete the following phrase:  Following its independence in 1956, Sudan had suffered from numerous internal conflicts over political, ethnic, and religious issues. In 1983, revolutionaries and separatists from the countrys mostly Christian-Animistic south banded together and launched an insurgency against the government which was traditionally dominated by Muslim elites from the north. The rebels organized themselves as the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army SPLA under the leadership of John Garang, and the insurgency eventually escalated into a 