J.R.L. Macdonald on a patrol into his country, and which later set up a post at Ikwoto. Xujang aroused opposition for his dictatorial ways, and was assassinated in 1912. Following the defeat of Muhammad Ahmad in 1898, the region came under the British Protectorate of Uganda in 1899. In 1914 it was transferred to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The first rough topographical map was published in 1917 by H. Pellew-Wright, a District Commissioner of Uganda who crossed the Imatong mountains from northeast to southwest, but the official map of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1922 only showed the outlines of the Imatong mountains in the heart of present-day Ikwoto county. In 1929 the botanist Thomas Ford Chipp, then deputy director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, reached the peak of Kinyeti. The same year he published a report on the flora with several photographs. The first detailed map appeared in 1931. The region remained isolated and underdeveloped. Sudan became independent in 1956, but a year earlier civil disturbances had broken out in the southern regions that did not want to come under control of the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Civil war years Ikwoto was relatively untouched by the fighting in the First Sudanese civil war (1955–1972). During the Second Sudanese civil war (1983–2005) large areas of Eastern Equatoria State were ravaged by fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and by many armed groups supported by both sides. In the late 1980s many Lango civilians were displaced to camps in government-controlled areas including Torit, Juba and Khartoum, and others to refugee camps in Uganda and Kenya. The SPLM was not always united. For example, the Nuer leader William Nyuon Bany defected from the SPLM mainstream in September 1992. He withdrew his forces from Pageri towards the SPLA headquarters at Magwi, which he attacked and captured. In early 1993 Nyuon captured Ikwoto, holding several women hostage before turning them over to Ugandan authorities. Control of Ikwoto changed hands several times. In November 1993 Nyuon was again attacking SPLA troops around Ikwoto. The influx of SPLA fighters and government troops led to a sharp rise in the number of guns available, and to their use in cattle raids and murders. Ambushes, rapes and killings by tribesmen armed with Kalashnikovs or even rocket launchers became common through the 1990s and into the 2000s. The security problem was compounded