Ahmad Alawad Sikainga is Professor of History at the Ohio State University. He is the author of City of Steel and Fire: A Social History of Atbara, Sudan's Railway Town, 1906 1984 (2002), Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (1996), Western Bahr al-Ghazal under British Rule, 1898 1956 (1990), and Sudan Defense Force: Origin and Role, 1925 1955 (1983). He is coeditor of Post-War Reconstruction in Africa (2006) and Civil War in Sudan (1993).