The larger Sudan region will continue to face many challenges even after the referendum on South Sudan.
A referendum held in the province of Southern Sudan between 9 and 15 January to decide on secession saw voters overwhelmingly endorsing the formation of a new nation state. Southern Sudan has been a semi-autonomous region after the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (cpa, also called the Naivasha agreement) that ended the civil war between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NcP)-led forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLa/M).
According to the 2005 agreement, a referendum had to be held within a specific period and would require participation by at least 60% of the total electorate. This was easily met in the referendum. Nearly 99% of those who voted in Southern Sudan endorsed secession and the creation of a new nation state that would be carved out of the largest country in the African continent and would be called South Sudan.
It was partly a failure of the al-Bashir government to take steps to ensure unity and partly a geopolitical consensus among the major powers to bring about secession if there was no other option that fuelled the near-universal sentiment in the oil-rich region in favour of a separate state. The civil war between 1983 and 2005 is estimated to have taken the lives of more than 1.5 million people and it is to the credit of the Sudanese people that the referendum and its aftermath have not seen violence.
Instead, the rhetoric during and after the referendum by both al-Bashir and the leaders of the SPLa/M has been conciliatory and the talk is of maintaining soft borders, cooperation and a smooth transition to the formation of two separate nations. While the southern region is oil-rich, with exploration and mining being conducted by various multinational organisations, the pipelines to export oil flow through the north. Since South Sudan will be a landlocked country, the leaders in Juba – the capital city – seem to have reconciled themselves to the reality that sharing oil revenue with northern Sudan is inevitable. Khartoum too had realised that secession was impossible to stop because of the overwhelming sentiment favouring independence in the south as also the strong influence of geopolitical interests – the US, Israel and others in the region.
There remains the unresolved issue of the undemarcated Abyei region which lies close to the border between the north and the south and has seen conflict between the nomadic Messiria tribe and the SPLa/M. According to the CPA, a separate referendum was to be held in the Abyei region (which too is oil-rich) to determine if it is to be with the north or the south. But it has not been possible to hold a referendum because no agreement could be reached even on registration of valid voters. Lasting peace in the larger Sudan can be guaranteed only after the status of Abyei is successfully resolved.
Sudanese history suggests that the events leading to the creation of two nations could have been avoided, if it were not for ethnic and religious rivalries in the country and the burden of western influence. During the cold war, the authoritarian Islamist governments in Khartoum, strengthened by western powers, were able to put down popular and progressive forces in the country. The first civil war between the north and the south in the 1960s was settled by creating a separate administrative region. Sudanese forces were subsequently recruited by the west in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan but with the end of the Afghan war the western powers had no need for an alliance with the Islamists. The Sudanese Islamists later imposed a strict sharia code on the people of the south who were predominantly Christian or of African “animist” religious persuasion. Such actions naturally fuelled the civil war. Coveting Southern Sudan for its petroleum resources, the US even armed the militias in the region to take on Khartoum and, as WikiLeaks documents revealed recently, covert military funding and arming continued after the CPA was signed. There is also the influence of China, arising from the competitive presence of Chinese companies which are engaged in oil extraction in the region. The largely impoverished people of the south hope that an independent nation state will guarantee a more just disbursal of the profits from oil extraction.
A release from the cycle of violence that has gripped the south is only possible if, unlike the NcP of the north, the SPLa/M becomes a democratic force. There are myriad tribal identities in the south and there are already reports of resentment by some groups about SPLa/M’s dominance. An independent South Sudan will have meaning only if it is a more inclusive nation. As for the north, it is still mired in an unresolved conflict in the western region of Darfur. The repercussions of the protests sweeping across north Africa are also now being felt in Khartoum. With the international community led by the US eyeing the resources in the larger Sudan region, it seems only a strengthening of democratic forces in both Sudan and South Sudan can ensure peace
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