After enduring years of violent attacks by their own government and being treated as second class citizens in their own country, southern Sudanese (mainly black and Christian or animist) began 6 days of voting on the Referendum of Independence on January 9. This vote will decide whether or not the south will secede from the mostly Muslim north. The vote was called for in 2005 in a peace deal ending the 23-year civil war between the two regions.
Sudan has been war-torn for almost the entirety of its independent existence, which it gained from Britain in 1956. The Sudanese president's regime, based in the North in Khartoum, has been accused of unleashing Arab militias, known as janjaweed, against rebels in the Western Darfur region which have committed atrocities against ethnic African towns and villages, killing hundreds of thousands. Similarly, there is suspicion surrounding Khartoum’s support of the once-Uganda based Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by indicted war criminal Joseph Kony. Enough Project explains an LRA-Khartoum alliance wouldn’t necessarily come out of left field for the two became partners during parallel wars in northern Uganda and southern Sudan in the 1990s when Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni began supporting the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the main rebel group in southern Sudan and in retaliation, Khartoum provided the LRA (then based in Gulu, Uganda) with intelligence, arms, and training, and allowed the LRA to use southern Sudan as its base of operations. Aljazeera has reported as recent as July 2010, Kony has been suspected to have made contact with the Khartoum government, this verified by testimonies from escaped LRA soldiers.
It seems Khartoum would benefit from increasing instability in southern Sudan, especially post referendum vote results, thus leaving the region focused, among other things, on a renewal of an LRA-Khartoum union. Tracking the LRA’s whereabouts, Ugandan military officials view this as highly unlikely; though with the dense jungles of southern Sudan and neighboring Central African Republic, it may not be that straightforward. This is also particularly of interest to us as Ugandan’s presidential elections will be taking place beginning next month. More on the election soon.
Southern Sudan itself is among the world's poorest regions. The entire France-sized region has only 30 miles of paved roads. Because only 15 percent of southern Sudan's 8.7 million people can read, the ballot choices were as simple as could be: a drawing of a single hand marked "separation" and another of clasped hands marked "unity." However, one beacon of hope for the south is most of Sudan's oil lies within their claim; however, the pipelines to the sea run through the north, ultimately tying the two regions together economically. The South’s secession would likely deprive Khartoum of most of its oil reserves, no doubt sparking much controversy. The central region of Abyei has been and will continue to be the most likely place for north-south tensions to erupt into violence as it straddles the dividing line (residents of the Abyei region were promised their own referendum on whether to join the north or the south but leaders could not agree on how to run the poll and the vote did not take place as planned on January 9).
South Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) has said that the initial results of the referendum would be announced on January 31 (as of Jan. 21 reports still seemed this was possible). Should the vote be in favor of secession, Sudan, Africa’s largest nation, would soon become two, with Southern Sudan becoming the world's newest nation as early as July. More to come after the results are announced...and left wondering if an African country can truly hold to its initial deadline.
please be careful
ReplyDelete