US worried as Southern Sudan heads for secession

With Southern Sudan now believed virtually certain to vote for independence in less than a year, worries are growing in Washington not only over a possible resumption of the North-South civil war, but also over the likelihood that the newly independent state will not prove viable.

Pessimism appears prevalent both inside and outside the Obama administration.

Officials and advocates alike fear that East Africa’s largest country may again be convulsed by violence after a concerted, protracted and ultimately successful US-led effort to end 20 years of disastrous fighting.

Renewed North-South warfare might yet be averted, a panel of 20 Sudan experts suggested in a report published a few months ago, but only if major disagreements are resolved before the southern Sudanese take part in a referendum scheduled for January 2011.

And “absent a change in the status quo,” added the report by the nongovernmental US Institute of Peace, “most of the important substantive issues between North and South — oil revenue sharing, security arrangements and the demarcation of boundaries — will not be resolved before the referendum.”

Neither consensus nor coherence

All analysts agree that the US, its allies and leading multilateral institutions must push harder for full implementation of the 2005 North-South peace treaty.

But “the international community’s position toward Sudan at this vital time reflects neither consensus nor coherence,” experts at the Enough Project, a Washington think tank, warned last month.

Instability is increasing in the South as weapons pour in from all sides.

US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice spoke out strongly against this arms race two weeks ago, suggesting that the Obama administration may be sharpening its focus on Sudan.

After months of deliberation, the administration recently announced that a new Sudan policy is being put in place that pushes Khartoum to meet benchmarks in regard to both Southern Sudan and the devastated Darfur region in the west of the country.

Ms Rice declined to name the suspected sources of the arms shipments into the South, and the Obama administration’s special envoy for Sudan, ambassador Scott Gration, indicated last week through a spokesman that he would not comment on reports of Kenya’s involvement.