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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Sep 24 2010 - 10:44:05 EDT
South Sudan-Are they heading for a crash?
Next year Africa could get its first new country, to be called South Sudan,
for almost 20 years. But the fledgling state looks perilously weak
Sep 24th 2010 | Juba and Khartoum
ON OR about January 9th, the people of southern Sudan should have an
opportunity to vote in a referendum on whether to break away from the
Republic of Sudan and create their own country. If, as seems likely, they
vote overwhelmingly for independence rather than to stay with the north,
Africa will get a freshly minted country by the middle of next year.
The government-in-waiting of the new country calls the referendum "the final
walk to freedom". For the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the
southerners' main party, led by Salva Kiir, it is the culmination of half a
century of often bloody struggle for recognition against successive Islamist
regimes in Khartoum. These tried to impose an Arab and Muslim culture on the
largely black African, Christian and animist south. By the time the fighting
stopped in 2005, Africa's longest civil war had cost 2.5m lives and
displaced many millions more. Much of the region was devastated.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the war set up the
semi-autonomous region of South Sudan, to be ruled by the SPLM, as well as a
government of national unity in Khartoum led by President Omar al-Bashir, to
include the SPLM. The two sides were to work for the country's unity in a
new federal arrangement, but the south also won the right to a referendum on
outright secession.
Despite the odd rhetorical nod towards unity, as demanded by the CPA, it is
rare to find anyone among the 8m southerners who is not going to vote for
independence. Indeed, Juba, the south's biggest town and capital, exudes a
mood of expectation. After a five-year makeover of the government quarter,
it gives every appearance of being ready to take its place among the
capitals of Africa.
Smart paved roads (and even streetlamps) now lead to brand-new
air-conditioned ministerial offices. Workers are putting the finishing
touches to a new presidential compound that occupies an entire block in the
middle of town. The president's own palace is a colonial-era building, but
it has been completely revamped with a splash of contemporary mock-Pharaonic
styling and buttresses tapering towards the upper floors. Behind it is a
helipad.
The shiny new presidential buildings include an office suite and large
conference and dining halls. The South Korean interior designer
enthusiastically invites your correspondent to admire the chandeliers and
carpets from his own country. The door frames are from China and the floor
marble has been imported from Uganda. But it is not all for work. Adjoining
the palace is a sizeable swimming pool and a presidential gym, though the
exercise bikes are still in their containers. There is even a pinewood
sauna, though you can work up just as much sweat by standing outside.
But beyond the SPLM leaders' rosy poolside view is a more worrying picture.
For a start, it is not certain that the Sudanese government in Khartoum will
let the referendum proceed as planned. Even if it does, the outcome will be
extremely messy. Moreover, outside Juba the condition of southern Sudan is
still dire.
Most southerners think they are marching relentlessly towards independence.
But the view from Khartoum is, as ever, utterly different. There, most
Sudanese are in a state of denial about the referendum, let alone about
independence. When it is mentioned, which is rare, it is only in terms of
"maintaining the country's unity". Although Mr Bashir has stated publicly
that the north will not stop the south if it wants to break off, almost
nobody in the north can bring himself to contemplate the probability that,
in less than a year, the country will be dismembered and broken into two.
Some fear that this attitude could even lead to a new war.
http://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/images-magazine/2010/09/
25/ma/20100925_mam983.gif
This state of denial stems partly from the fact that the north's politicians
never wanted the south to have a referendum in the first place. It was
forced on the north, as part of the CPA, only under extreme pressure from
the West. And as only people of southern ethnic origin will be voting in the
referendum, the rest of the Sudanese have had little reason to think about
it at all. Many politicians from Mr Bashir's ruling National Congress Party
(NCP) genuinely seem to believe that keeping Sudan as one big country is so
obviously better for everyone than breaking it up that they have only to do
a little bit of campaigning and spend a little bit of money, and the
southerners will come to their senses and forget the whole idea.
Denial is a river in northern Sudan
This delusion shows how little northern Sudan's ruling Arab politicians
understand southern sensibilities. In practice, it means that since June,
virtually for the first time since the peace deal was signed in 2005, the
north has been releasing money for road-building and other development
projects in the south. This is an extremely belated attempt to show the
benefits of sticking with the Khartoum government. The northerners' belief
that this may suddenly compensate for decades of oppression, aggression and
neglect illustrates how lightly many take southern feelings. It is also
indicative of the north's attitude to the referendum that the man appointed
to oversee it for Khartoum is Salah Gosh, well known to the CIA and to
Britain's MI6 as a long-serving former head of Sudan's intelligence
services.
Northern efforts to drag out, delay or sabotage the referendum are
increasingly blatant. A commission to oversee the referendum has only just
been settled upon, with four months to organise the vote. Even with everyone
working at full speed it will be barely possible to meet the January 9th
deadline. If it is missed, southerners will suspect that the north is trying
to deny them their vote, increasing pressure for a unilateral declaration of
independence, a doomsday option for the south, to be voted on by its own
parliament. This could well provoke another war with the north, as Mr Bashir
would refuse to recognise the new country-and many countries, especially in
Africa, would side with him.
Just mess it up
The other way in which the north might disrupt the referendum is by stoking
dissent and rebellion in the south to reduce the chance of what it calls a
"credible" referendum. Northern leaders have been doing this for decades,
using rogue groups, such as the brutal Lord's Resistance Army that
originated in neighbouring Uganda, as proxy militias to weaken the south and
keep its SPLM off balance.
The SPLM says the north is already up to its old tricks again. One rogue
SPLM politician, General George Athor, who alleges that an election for
governor in Jonglei state was rigged against him in April, when he stood as
an independent, has taken to the bush in the north of the state with
hundreds of armed followers. In a recent battle, the SPLM claims to have
captured a helicopter and loads of ammunition supplied to the general by the
Sudanese (ie, northern) army.
In northern minds, destabilising the south and mucking up the referendum
would undermine the legitimacy of any putative new country. Perhaps a new
bout of trouble will persuade errant and ignorant southerners to drop their
flirtation with secession and come back to the fold.
Meanwhile, the south's own politicians are playing into northern hands by
misruling and enfeebling the region on their own. Most of the huge number of
willing and devoted outsiders working for international charities or the UN
despair over the chronically slow pace of reconstruction over the past five
years. The disbursement of foreign money to rebuild the south has been
lamentably slow. But many also blame the SPLM leaders in Juba. Even among
the SPLM's usually loyal cadres frustration and criticism are growing.
The UN has produced a list entitled "Scary Statistics" to show how things
are going wrong. "It's as bad as bad can be," says a senior UN official. The
south still has one of the world's highest maternal mortality and infant
mortality rates. Some 85% of adults cannot read or write.
In the fields, so slender are the margins between success and failure that a
single bad harvest last year almost tipped the south into famine. More than
half the south's population is on "emergency assistance", meaning that they
will need food handouts this year. Some 1.5m will face "severe food
insecurity". The south has been saved from famine only by American money
pumped into the UN's World Food Programme. And even as malnutrition has
increased during the past five years of peace, the SPLM government has spent
more than $6 billion of oil revenue, received under a wealth-sharing
agreement with the north, not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars in
aid. Where, people ask, has the money gone?
The answer is to the army-and the Juba government. The SPLM leadership
spends 60% of its income on weapons and army pay, as an insurance, it is
argued, against renewed hostilities with the north. Corruption has also
become a problem.
The southern centre may not hold
The town of Bor, half an hour by plane down the Nile from Juba, was once a
busy trading post but now feels on a different planet. Signs of progress are
few. The Dr John Garang Memorial University, named in honour of the SPLM's
former leader who died in a helicopter crash in 2005, was set up in 2008. It
has about 100 students and has received $3m from Juba. Some southerners
educated in Kenya, Uganda and the United States during the civil war have
come back to teach. Bor's population has grown by about 70% in the last few
years, as families displaced in the war have returned. Its central market
does a brisk trade.
Yet only in the past year have a handful of brick buildings been built.
There is still no completely paved road in Bor or in the entire state of
Jonglei. In the rainy season, which can last for over half the year, getting
from one side of town to the other, let alone elsewhere in the state, can
become impossible. Security in Bor itself has improved, but the roads
immediately to the north and south are plagued by bandits. This summer the
WFP was feeding 44% of the state's population of about 500,000. Recent
floods may push that figure up.
The state's governor, Kual Juuk, a former guerrilla who was once close to Mr
Garang, laments that the lavish development of the centre of Juba has been
at the expense of the rest of the region. This galls him since Mr Garang
identified the concentration of development in Khartoum, at the expense of
the neglected regions in the south and west (especially Darfur) as a prime
cause of Sudan's civil wars. "The SPLM was supposed to be different, for
fiscal and political decentralisation," he says. "Now we are falling into
the same pit." He argues with the government in Juba but it ignores him.
"They are inward-looking," he says. "It is the same attitude in Khartoum."
Such disaffection is growing dangerously. The SPLM is not a democratic
outfit and barely tolerates criticism. In April's election, it sometimes
resorted to bullying and intimidation to see off independent candidates. But
in the south's incipient state of anarchy, these men, such as General Athor,
may become rebels all over again, and head off into the bush to wage war,
often backed by their own ethnic groups. Besides General Athor, another
losing candidate, David Yau Yau, is at large in Jonglei with hundreds of
armed followers in Pibor, in the state's east.
Such rebels will cause more instability, shut more roads and hamper
development even more. They may also open up ethnic cleavages between the
various southern groups, especially the Dinka and Nuer, which are the most
prominent at the heart of the SPLM.
There is also a worry that some neighbouring countries do not openly support
the prospect of southern independence, even though they all signed up for it
under the CPA in 2005. In truth, if the south does become independent, it
will need all the regional and international help it can muster. Its
people's shared detestation of Arab northerners will no longer be enough to
bind them together.
http://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/images-magazine/2010/09/
25/ma/20100925_map002.jpgCan Salva Kiir save the south?
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