Sudan is Africa's largest, and arguably, its most divided nation. Right now, Sudanese are getting ready for a historic vote that will allow them a chance to re-draw the African map. The vote happens on Sunday and Takeaway producer Noel King will be reporting from there all week.
Here’s the first of her dispatches: A background to the historic referendum.
On Sunday, January 9th, southern Sudanese are expected to vote to secede from the north of the country and form their own nation.
In many ways, Sudan already functions as two nations in one. The semi-autonomous South has its own president, its own laws, and its own diplomatic alliances. That state-within-a-state and the upcoming referendum vote are facets of a 2005 peace deal that ended a two-decade civil war. Observers say that war cost more than two million lives. And it was not the first. Sudan has been at war with itself since the end of colonial rule in 1956.
The North-South conflict was never as simple as it appeared. In shorthand, Sudan's black southern population, which practices mostly indigenous religions or Christianity, complained of brutal oppression at the hands of the mostly Sunni Muslim Arab North. The North's savage campaign of violence against the South was well-documented through the 1980s and 1990s. But the truth is more complex.
Southern Sudan has its own internal ethnic antagonisms that sometimes erupt into violent struggles for power. And Sudan's powerful northern government is controlled by an ethnic minority. It does not represent all Sudanese Arab Muslims.
The 2005 deal was hammered into shape with the help of many nations, including the United States, but it was nearly derailed by the death of John Garang. Garang, a southerner, rose from rebel leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army to the vice presidency of Sudan after the peace agreement. He was born in the village of Bor, Sudan and went on to earn an undergraduate degree in economics from Grinnell College in Iowa and a Ph.D. from Iowa State University. He was a hero to many — but not all — southern Sudanese. When his helicopter crashed into a mountainside six months after the deal was struck, many southerners believed the northern government had a hand in his death.
Violent rioting shook parts of the country in the days after Garang's death, and it looked like Sudan might return to war. But the deal held. Some observers speculate that southerners held their anger in check so that they might get to this moment: referendum.
There are still crucial unresolved issues: southern Sudan possesses most of the nation's oil — but before it can be exported the oil must run through northern pipelines. The oil-rich city of Abyei is still contested; north and south Sudan both claim ownership.
There are smaller but no less interesting questions: If southerners vote to secede, what will the new country be called? And a contest is underway to choose a new national anthem.
As Sunday's vote approaches, some sources within the diplomatic and aid communities say their biggest fear is not that the referendum will spark violence, but that the southern government's inability to lift its people quickly out of grinding poverty will spark disappointment, anger, and possibly a new conflict — within the newborn nation.
But on Sunday at least, with almost four million people registered to cast what may be the most important vote of their lives, many southern Sudanese will probably be living for the moment.