A new start for Sudan

„Northern and southern Sudan have fought each other for nearly 40 years since the country gained independence from Britain in 1956. Yesterday, the southerners began to take part in a week-long referendum on whether to secede. The majority are expected to say yes, the one doubt being whether turnout will pass the 60 per cent threshold set by an internationally mediated peace agreement in 2005. If it does, Africa will be on the way to acquiring its 54th state. It will be one of the poorest, but at least it will be free of the thuggish Islamist regime in the north.

The 2005 agreement expires in July, by which time it is hoped that north and south will have completed arrangements for dividing the continent's largest state into two. Mutual dependence over oil should encourage compromise: the south has most of the reserves, the north has the pipeline to a refinery and port on the Red Sea. Other unresolved matters are the position, post-independence, of southerners in the north, and vice versa; demarcation of the border; and the future of Abyei, a small, oil-rich area which is due to hold a separate referendum on whether to join north or south.

Donors will need to make good on their pledges of aid to the new state, which will have to build its institutions and infrastructure almost from scratch. And Khartoum must cease support for groups hostile to the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement, whether tribal minorities or the Uganda-based Lord's Resistance Army. The north, at any rate, has enough problems of its own, notably rebellion in Darfur, which southern independence is likely to revive. Its president, Omar al-Bashir, was indicted last year by the International Criminal Court for genocide. Small wonder that the southerners want their independence.”