A former agent of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, David Ben-Ozil, has recently revealed that Israel took part in the Sudanese civil war between Sudanese government forces and southern separatist between the years of 1969 and 1971, the Anadolu Agency reported. In a new book, Ben-Ozil claims that he and a number of his colleagues actively took part in the war alongside the southern separatist movement led by Joseph Lagu. South Sudan is now an independent country. Ben-Ozil said that Israel helped undermine the Sudanese army in the war, trained separatists, and offered weapons and aid staff, among other things. Israel also helped the separatists to launch small militant brigades and built an airport for planes to transport weapons directly to the southern rebels. Israel's ultimate aim, claims Ben-Ozil, was to waste the time of the Sudanese army so that Sudan wouldn't be able to join forces with Arab armies in potential future wars against Israel. The former Mossad official also revealed that Israel actively forged relations with minorities in the Middle East as a means to undermine support for Arab opposition to Israel, and that this regional goal was behind its development of strong relations with countries such as Ethiopia, Iran and Turkey, and ethnic and religious groups such as the Maronites in Lebanon and the Kurds in Iraq.
