Sudan: Country in Danger of Splitting, Warns Report

9 January 2009
allAfrica.com
By Faatimah Hendricks

Southern Sudan might break away from the north if the "troubled relationship" between Sudan's dominant centre and regions on its periphery are not resolved, a new report has warned.

The report, written by Edward Thomas for the British policy think-tank, Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), assesses the implementation of Sudan's 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended 20 years of war between the central government in Khartoum and forces in Southern Sudan.

The agreement, signed by the government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), aims to share power and wealth between the north and the south.

It provides for elections in mid-2009, and that Southern Sudan will hold an independence referendum by March 2011 to decide whether it should continue to be part of Sudan.

Thomas said the referendum was intended to be a "last-resort guarantee" against failure to bring about unity between the north and the south. Instead it had become "the non-negotiable centre-piece of the whole peace process, overshadowing the [the 2009] elections that were supposed to seal the agreement with a popular mandate."

Many of those he interviewed for the report felt that "the CPA no longer represents a hope for fundamental change in Sudan," Thomas wrote. "All but a few Southerners expect separation, and many Northerners are resigned to or even supportive of a split."

Despite the CPA's flaws, nothing in Sudan's history matched its "practicality, maturity and vision," Thomas said. "International supporters of the CPA need to recommit urgently and thoughtfully to help secure its implementation across the whole of Sudan…

"Sudan policy is not coherent at the moment: it is divided between the needs in Darfur and the need for comprehensive peace; it denounces the NCP while cooperating with its security forces on counter-terrorism…" With the advent of the Obama administration in the United States, Thomas urged a new approach linking policies on north-south relations, Darfur and other regions of Sudan.

Read the report: Against the Gathering Storm: Securing Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement

Document: 'Comprehensive' Peace Deal Was Not Comprehensive

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