A woolen, not a velvet, divorce

Tomorrow is the first voting day of the South Sudan independence referendum, which ends on January 15.  Registration seems to have gone reasonably well, people are returning in substantial numbers to the South to vote, and Sudanese President Bashir has visited Juba, the South’s capital, and said the right things about accepting the results.  It is universally anticipated that the vote will go heavily for independence, which will occur six months hence in accordance with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

But this will be no “velvet” divorce between consenting and cooperating capitals.  There are still many issues to be resolved:  demarcation of the north/south border, holding of the Abyei region referendum, division of oil and oil revenue as well as debts  and water rights, citizenship rights for northerners in the South and southerners in the North, traditional grazing rights for nomadic pastoralists…the list goes on.  There are also problems that are likely to arise within the South, rife with local disputes, and within the North, some of whose politicians will see separation of the Christian and traditionalist South as allowing the mostly Muslim North to take a distinctly more Islamist direction.

So this is likely to be a bit rougher than Czechoslovakia, but nowhere near as rough as Serbia/Kosovo, where more than two years after independence Belgrade is unwilling to recognize the breakaway state.  Belgrade and Pristina haven’t even begun to deal with the many practical issues they need to resolve–at least Khartoum and Juba have begun discussions under the aegis of former South African President Mbeki.  A woolen divorce, at best, not a velvet one.

Of course a lot more could still go wrong.  The most likely problems seem to be South/South violence, violence against southerners in the North or northerners in the South, conflict over Abyei and other border areas, or failure to agree on oil, which has to flow from the South through the North in order to get to market.  The South by any standard is a weak state with little real control over its territory or capacity to delivery even rudimentary services to its population.  The North is significantly stronger, but its writ does not run much outside the Nile riverine population, it faces an active insurgency in Darfur, and its president has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.

Let’s give credit, however, to those who have at least avoided a crisis in the past few months.  The U.S. Government laid out a clear menu of carrots for the North and has also restrained its southern allies, who have patiently sat out abuse and air attacks in Abyei so as not to upset the referendum process.  The Chinese appear to have used their long-standing influence with the North and their new-found clout with the South to convince both that getting the oil investments they need requires maintaining stability.  The UN has redeployed its forces in the South towards the new country’s northern border, and the U.S.–working closely with other countries and international organizations–is amping up its assistance throughout the South.

Credit, if stability holds for the next week and beyond, above all should go to the leaderships in Khartoum and Juba, but not because they are good guys.  While neither has been willing or able in the last six years to “make unity attractive,” both seem to understand that peace will serve their purposes better than renewed war.  The South will gain the independence President Salva Kiir has always wanted, with ample dollops of foreign aid to ease the transition.  The North will lose a part of the country it hasn’t really controlled for decades and gain a good deal more leeway to pursue its Islamic vocation.  Bashir may well also imagine that behaving well will gain him some measure of immunity from the ICC indictment, as well as some relief from U.S. and other sanctions.

One note for those who believe the U.S. can only influence world events with military intervention, a category that includes many who favor it as well as many who oppose it.  Look ma:  no troops.  It is too early to declare success, but if success is to be declared it will have been achieved without the instrument that too many people think is the only effective one.  Diplomacy is messy–who wants to see Bashir continue in power and gain credit simply for avoiding creation of a crisis?  It is also risky–things could easily come apart before independence.  But if a crisis has been postponed for six, or twelve, or eighteen months, that is a big plus, one we should all applaud and try to sustain.