After over 20 years of brutal civil war and excruciatingly difficult negotiations that succeeded only because of overwhelming pressure on Khartoum from much of the rest of the world, South Sudan has proudly taken its place as a sovereign state. That was the easy part. The next stage, creating a viable state that meets the economic, political and social needs of its people is a daunting project that will require unmatched courage and sacrifice from an entire generation of both leaders and ordinary citizens.
The conflict -- more precisely, conflicts -- in Sudan have never been simply North versus South, Arab versus African, or Muslim versus non-Muslim, nor good versus evil (although given the behavior of the government in Khartoum it is very hard to avoid that frame.) Sudan, like so many countries in the global South, is a largely artificial set of borders imposed on a complex and diverse set of pre-existing communities. In many countries in Africa and elsewhere leaders have at least tried to create a sense of national identity, of membership in a new community that transcended older, narrower identities, but not in Sudan. Since independence in 1956 successive governments have taken a page out of the British colonial playbook and kept the various communities divided. Because the government in Khartoum, controlled by a rigid Islamist ideology, tried to impose Islamic sharia law throughout the country, the primary fault line of conflict for the past 40 years has been along the divide between those groups in the North of the country most heavily influenced by Arab culture and Islam and those in the South whose cultures are closer to those of their neighbors in Kenya, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The North-South conflict transcended and muted other conflicts, such as that between village farmers and pastoral nomads, or between large “tribal” communities in the South such as the Nuer and Dinka. By the time a loose coalition of international actors, including Sudan’s African neighbors, the United States, and several Western European countries, had brokered peace talks, there were two main protagonists. The government of Sudan and its military (“Khartoum”) and the major opposition movement, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement and its military wing, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLM/A).
On a side note, the ongoing conflict in Darfur revolves around the success of the Khartoum government in exploiting tensions between village farmers and nomads with their herds of goats and camels. It is not “Arabs” versus “Africans” or Muslims versus non-Muslims.
On a side note to a side note, the theme of conflict between nomadic herders and settled farmers is ancient and seemingly universal. The conflict makes a dramatic entry in Western literature with the fratricidal clash between Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd (originating, I’d guess in the period in which the Children of Israel were wandering the desert.) Oklahoma! is a more modern version.
The challenges facing the newly independent South Sudan are both external and internal. The external challenges are unresolved issues with the North, including continued armed conflict in the contested areas of Abiyea, Kordofan, and the Blue Nile. The exact terms and conditions under which North and South would cooperate and share oil revenues were only vaguely defined in the 2005 peace agreement and will have to be worked out quickly because oil represents the major (in the cased of the South, virtually the only) source of revenue for the government. (There is a large cautionary literature on oil as a curse rather than a blessing for a poor country.)
The internal challenges are staggering. Aside from oil, the South has no natural resources and what little infrastructure existed at one time has been severely eroded by the decades of war. Subsistence agriculture and animal herding employ almost all South Sudanese. Almost all manufactured goods are implored via the North. The international community has contributed billions of dollars through the UN and other agencies over the years and major donor countries have promised to continue aid. The diaspora community, largely in Britain and the U.S., has been a source of aid. A number of young men and women who have returned from the diaspora to provide the new government with significant expertise.
Regardless of regime type or ideology, ultimately governments have to deliver the goods and make people feel that they are better off now than they were. Poverty exacerbates frictions between communities and fuels suspicions that “those people” are getting more than their fair share or are undermining “our” progress. Poverty can make politics a zero sum game where benefits for one group come at the expense of everyone else. The challenges of poverty heighten the temptation to create a single party state and have it degenerate into a wealth producing mechanism for a ruling elite. Poverty makes it that much more difficult for the government of South Sudan to reintegrate demobilized soldiers into civilian life and meet the needs of the thousands of veterans of the long conflict.
The great hope for the future, I think, is the immense enthusiasm and optimism of the people. If today’s euphoria and zeal can be channeled into a patient, determined commitment to a long, incremental process of growth and development, the great promise of the South can be realized.
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