This Post is for a United Sudan

Today, Sudan as we know it begins the process of ceasing to exist. Today, the Southern Sudan goes to vote for unilateral independence, and claim their right to form a new nation state.

Six years ago today on 9 January 2005, Northern and Southern Sudan signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, an ceasefire to end decades of civil war between to fundamentally different people groups. The agreement was to create a unity government and the North was charged to "make unity attractive." At the end of the six-year transitional government period, the South would be granted a vote on 9 January 2011, to stay...or to leave.

Northern Sudan didn't make unity attractive, and the forgone conclusion since the CPA's inception will be actualized beginning today. Southern Sudan will be the world's newest nation-state. It will be a poor nation state, with a weak but functional government which has been functioning since 9 January 2005. They will continue sharing oil (as agreed upon in the CPA) and they will turn their own oil wealth inwards to national development.

January 9, 2011...we've wondered for years, months, weeks what will happen today. We know how they'll vote, but will there be violence? Will the church's peacebuilding efforts have been enough? Will the North keep it's word and let the South go? Will disputed territories and conflicted oil money explode? Will the Southerners in the North be persecuted? Will 60% of the registered voters show up? Will the international community abandon the South?

The vote goes until January 15, 2011. The results will be released 6 February, or 14 February if contested. Southern Sudan will agree on a name and become it's own nation on 9 July 2011. The margin for corruption is huge and the stability of the region is at risk. But this is good. We want this. Africa needs this. Southern Sudanese deserve the right to write their own history untainted by oppression, underdevelopment, religious and ethnic intolerance, war, and death. We all deserve the right to thrive.

So adieu united Sudan. And in the off-chance you stay united, we'll know it was fraud...and we'll see a war of words, and violence.

Photo by Karen Kasmauski for CRS (peaceinsudan.org)