John Garang was born in 1945 into the Dinka tribe in the remote Bor district near the Nile River.

He completed his secondary education in Tanzania, he went on to study economics at Grinnell College, Iowa.

In 1970, he walked away from a graduate fellowship offer at the University of California, Berkeley, to take up arms against the Khartoum regime.

Garang's first took part in guerrilla warfare at the start of the civil war with the southern-based Anya Anya movement in 1962.

The Anya Anya uprising ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa peace agreement under which south became a self-governing region.

Garang joined the Sudanese military and moved to Khartoum. He eventually rose to the rank of colonel after attending training from the US army infantry school in Fort Benning, Georgia.

In September 1983, when the SPLM took up arms and fought against the government for self-determination in the southern part of the country, Garang once again left Khartoum to take up arms.

The wing of the Sudanese army which he had commanded during the 1970's became the centre of SPLM's armed wing – the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

His death has left Sudan wondering what will become of the peace process it worked so hard and so long for.