White Flag League

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WHITE FLAG LEAGUE

Sudanese nationalist movement founded in 1924.

Ali Abd al-Latif founded the White Flag League when the Sudan was governed by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement. The group consisted of about 150 minor officials and junior officers in the Egyptian army. Representing an alliance of Sudanese and Egyptian nationalists, it advocated the union of the entire Nile valley under the Egyptian crown.

The White Flag League was largely responsible for the 1924 revolt against the British. Events reached a crisis following the assassination of Sir Lee Stack in Cairo; Britain's Field Marshal Edmund Allenby demanded the immediate withdrawal of Egyptian units from the Sudan. Refusing to obey the order to evacuate, the Egyptian and Sudanese league troops mutinied in Khartoum. When Egypt ordered its units to withdraw, however, they complied. The Sudanese were left to confront the British on their own; their defeat marked the end of the revolt and also that of the White Flag League.

see also condominium agreement (1899).

kenneth s. mayers