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 country's 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 People's Liberation Army" (SPLA) under the leadership of John Garang, and the insurgency eventually escalated into a full civil war that also affected Sudan's east and west. Negotiations between the government and the SPLA almost resulted in a peaceful solution of the conflict, but ended after the 1989 coup d'état which brought the National Islamic Front (NIF) under Omar al-Bashir to power. The new regime was militantly opposed to any compromise, and was determined to completely crush the SPLA and all other opposition groups. An escalation of violence followed.