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A gathering storm
Peter Goodspeed, National Post · Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011
On Sunday four million people in southern Sudan begin voting in a week-long referendum on whether to secede from Africa's largest country.
The vote will end with the birth of a new nation, the instantaneous creation of a failed state and possibly the reignition of Africa's longest war.
The immediate outcome has never been in doubt: South Sudan's mostly Christian and animist African people will choose overwhelmingly to leave a country dominated by the Arab and Muslim north.
But the ramifications of splitting Sudan could contain the seeds of another genocide, ignite a firestorm of separatism across the rest of Africa, or see central Africa plunge once more into a war that has already killed more than 2.5 million people.
At the very least, separation could disrupt oil deliveries from Africa's third-largest oil producer, damaging the economy of China, which gets 7% of its energy from Sudan.
Oil lies at the heart of Sudan's problems. The landlocked south contains more than 75% of the country's oil wells, but the north controls the pipelines that take the oil to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
"There is an overwhelming consensus that the South will vote to secede," said Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"The question is what happens the day after the vote. The potential complications are endless."
If southern Sudan secedes, the nation that will be born in July, after a mandatory six-month negotiating period, will be the first new state in Africa since Eritrea separated from Ethiopia in 1993.
But many Africans fear that may reinvigorate a wave of separatist movements across the continent, challenging the legitimacy of colonial-era borders that ignored differences of tribe, language and religion.
Separatist movements in Morocco's Western Sahara region, the oil-rich Angolan province of Cabinda, northern Mali, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria are all watching with interest.
"The most immediate danger is that of violence against the southern Sudanese in the North, particularly Khartoum," Ms. Ottaway said.
"There are already a large number of people returning to the South out of fear of violence after the referendum. After the referendum, there is a danger that Khartoum is going to tell southerners in the North to go home.
"Just as we saw in the Balkans, the partition of a country can lead to ethnic cleansing and disorderly repatriation."
Partition is a frequent precursor to unprecedented bloodshed and prolonged animosity -- just think India and Pakistan.
In Sudan's case, the Arab north oppressed the African south for centuries, frequently raiding it for slaves and seizing political control when the country became independent of Britain and Egypt in 1956.
Since then, two civil wars have deepened the divisions.
The 1983-2005 civil war saw 2.5 million people die as a result of conflict, famine and disease. Another four million were forced to flee their homes before a comprehensive peace agreement, negotiated with the help of outside powers, set up a power-sharing government in Khartoum and laid out a road map for a six-year transition to Sunday's independence referendum.
If the people of southern Sudan opt for independence, marking their ballot's open-hand symbol for "secession," instead of the clasped-hand image symbolizing "unity," they will give birth to one of the poorest, least-developed nations on Earth.
The new state, roughly the size of France, has fewer than 65 kilometres of paved roads; one in seven women die during pregnancy; one in 10 children die in infancy; and 80% of adults are illiterate.
Last year, almost half southern Sudan's population required food aid to survive. More than 80% of the region's health, education, water and sanitation services are provided by international aid groups.
"Up to 80% of South Sudan's population have been displaced at least once over the previous 15 years ... the challenge this presents to a region recovering from decades of civil war, and whose political status hangs in the balance, cannot be exaggerated," said Lucy Hovil, a senior researcher at International Refugee Rights Initiative.
Aid officials estimate as many as two million southern refugees have tried to resettle
in the South since the 2005 peace agreement. Tens of thousands have flocked to the territory in the run-up to the referendum.
They are struggling to adapt to an impoverished and war-ravaged region riddled with ethnic tensions and tribal disputes over cattle grazing, property and access to water.
In a region awash in weapons from the civil war, with few police and no justice system, disputes frequently turn into gunfights.
Last year, United Nations peacekeepers estimated more than 900 people were killed in southern Sudan; another 215,000 were forced from their homes by tribal clashes and rebel attacks.
In the past, the government in Khartoum exploited those rivalries by arming and supporting tribal militias to undermine southern Sudan's leadership.
Sudan's government and rebel armies still confront each other in unresolved border areas and remain on high alert. A surge in weapons imports, fuelled by oil revenues, has continued since the 2005 peace agreement.
There are also suspicions Khartoum may have armed tribal militias in a bid to plunge the South into chaos after secession.
"Regardless of the results, there are increasing concerns
around the humanitarian impact of the referendum," warns a report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "The risk of outbreaks of conflict, in contested areas and specifically along the North-South border, remains extremely high."
Sunday's vote had been imperilled by delays and the Sudanese government's reluctance to lose the oil-rich South, but countries like the United States did everything they could to pressure General Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese President, to respect the peace agreement and proceed with the referendum.
U.S. diplomats offered incentives to Gen. Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Darfur. These include promises to lift sanctions and review Sudan's status as a state sponsor of terrorism, in exchange for allowing the South to secede peacefully.
There was relief in Washington last Tuesday, when Gen. Bashir visited the southern capital of Juba and announced he would accept the referendum outcome.
"I personally will be sad if Sudan splits," he said.
"But, at the same time, I will be happy if we have peace in Sudan between the two sides. I am going to celebrate your decision, even if your decision is secession."
Still, the potential for conflict remains immense.
"The foundations for a constructive post-referendum relationship are yet to be laid," warns a report by the Belgium-based International Crisis Committee.
"Future arrangements on citizenship and nationality, natural resource management (oil and water), currency, assets and liabilities, security and international treaties must be negotiated, regardless of the referendum's outcome.
"The absence of a basic blueprint for the post-2011 relationship between North and South contributes to uncertainties about the political and economic future of each and risks the referendum being viewed as a zero-sum game."
Read more: A gathering storm
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