Politician. In 1943 he organised his own party called Ashigga (Brothers). His opposition to the British resulted in his arrest in 1948. In 1953 he won the elections and was made prime minister in 1954. Soon after Sudan gained independence in 1956, a military Government took control in 1958. In 1964 he re-emerged as the head of the NUP Party and was appointed President of the Supreme Council of Sudan in 1965. He was overthrown in a military coup in 1969. Britain, the colonial power, compounded the division, first by reinforcing the inequalities of development between the centre and outlying regions, and then by hastily granting Sudan independence in 1956, without taking the interests of the southern Sudanese into account. 'One amazing feature of the Sudanese conflicts is its tenacity,' writes Mansour Khalid (himself a former foreign minister) in his book, War and Peace in Sudan and notes. 'Like the mythical phoenix, whenever the flames of war die down, it surprises friend and foe by emerging from the ashes reinvigorated, more vicious and ready to inflict greater causalities.' Azhari was born in Khartoum, Sudan.