Editorial
South Sudan looks set for freedom
It will need goodwill and aid to get going
Official results of the referendum in South Sudan will not be in for quite a while. However, vote counting at a preliminary level so far indicates that the people of the region have opted overwhelmingly in favour of breaking away from the north of the country and forming an independent state for themselves. The results, which Sudanese leader Omar el Bashir has promised to respect and which the international community means to see implemented, will bring to an end more than twenty years of a conflict dominated by a civil war. It will then be the responsibility of the South Sudan leadership to steer their new state, with a predominantly Christian and animist population, to stability and, most importantly, to peaceful co-existence with what remains of Sudan in the north.
South Sudan's leader Salva Kiir has made a good start by asking his people to practise a policy of forgiveneness toward the north after all this long spell of bitterness. He thus builds on the politics of the late John Garang, South Sudan's longtime rebel leader until, in a deal with the north, he became vice president of Sudan earlier in this decade. Garang died in a helicopter crash in 2005, but through the referendum vote his people have endorsed the goal of independence that led him into forming the Sudan People's Liberation Army two decades ago.
The emergence of South Sudan as a free country will bring to mind the long guerrilla war waged by Eritrean rebels against Ethiopia, ending finally in a settlement in 1993 through which Addis Ababa and Asmara agreed that Eritrea would be an independent state. One is also reminded of moves by the international community to enable people in parts of Europe, such as Kosovo and indeed former Yugoslavia, to go their own ways as free states. One wonders, though, if the peaceful way in which the Sudanese of the north and south have apparently come to a settlement can be replicated in the long-suffering Middle East, where a two-state solution involving Palestinians and Israelis remains elusive.
For South Sudan, the road ahead will be tortuous. It will need all the goodwill and assistance it can garner if it means to become a viable state. That will depend on how its leaders plan to steer it into the future and also on how sincere Khartoum will be in coming to terms with a region that was once part of it.
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