Last month I had the honor of witnessing the birth of the newest country in the world: the Republic of South Sudan. After a decades-long deadly struggle for freedom, South Sudanese celebrated for days over the realization of their dream of independent statehood. The jubilation was tinged with real concerns, however, over the challenges of the embryonic state of South Sudan and the threat posed by an angry, isolated, and besieged government of the Republic of Sudan left behind in Khartoum.
It seems to me there are three overwhelming dangers for the Republic of Sudan posed by partition, accompanied by three related opportunities. First, immediate and extreme human rights crises in parts of Sudan, particularly the Nuba Mountains, provide an urgent imperative to exercise the international responsibility to protect civilian life. Second, growing armed and unarmed internal opposition in Sudan focused on a real alteration of the status quo provides an opportunity to hone in on fundamental reforms in governance and how power is shared in that country. And third, the total failure of existing conflict-resolution processes for the various conflicts in Sudan and between the two countries offers a major opportunity to alter the mediation paradigm to focus on a national solution in the North.
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