ABYEI, TEN thousand square kilometres of largely swamp and scrub brush, with its 150,000 people, its militias of warring nomads and heavily armed villagers, is where Africa and the Arab world meet. They do so most uneasily and at times bloodily. On the day South Sudan formally announced the result of its January 9th poll, a 98.83 per cent vote for secession by a third of the country from the north, Abyei, straddling their 1,250-mile still-disputed border, remains a running sore, one of the major unresolved legacies of the unitary Sudan that may yet drag the country back to war.
The overwhelming vote was no surprise, a hard-won chance to put an end to years of ethnic and tribal conflict and repression of the south by the largely Arab, Muslim north. Over three decades, until a precarious 2005 peace deal, civil war had cost some two million lives.
Along with the impressive result, the commitment yesterday by Khartoum, in the guise of Sudan’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to accept the parting of the ways and to recognise the world’s newest state was welcome. But before southern Sudan, one of the poorest places on earth, where more than three-quarters of adults cannot read, formally declares its independence on July 9th, it will again have to test the limits of the goodwill and good faith of its former masters in the north on a number of issues.
Unable to agree on who could participate in the secession referendum in Abyei, both sides agreed to postpone the vote there, while both insist the bitterly divided territory will remain their’s. And although the landlocked south and Abyei are home to most of the nation’s crucial oil wealth, the north expects to negotiate a substantial share in the returns for pipeline access to the sea.
Other divisive unresolved issues include the drafting of two new constitutions, the sharing between them of responsibility for Sudan’s $40 billion crippling debt, the drawing of the north-south border, the citizenship status of southerners left in the north and the share-out of water from the Nile. Reflecting the difficulties in disengaging southern soldiers from the northern army, 50 died in a mutiny at the weekend in the southern town of Malaka after refusing to redeploy to the north.
Both sides are also working with donors to achieve debt forgiveness but there is concern that the global financial crisis will mean desperately needed development funds for both states will be in short supply. There is still a real danger that South Sudan’s brave venture into nationhood may yet be stillborn.