By Timothy Nsubuga – 12^th-18^th July 2010

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement [CPA] that was brokered by top international players succeeded in achieving one important thing for Sudan.  It ended decades of bitter civil war between the north and south.  Signed in Nairobi-Kenya in 2005, the CPA was also supposed to unite the Bashir-led north and the SPLA dominated southern part of Sudan until the people decide otherwise in a referendum promised in the same CPA.

In approximately six months time, Southern Sudanese will vote in a referendum on whether they should secede from the north and form Africa’s newest nation.  So the CPA could actually result in Sudan, Africa’s largest country, splitting into two.  Some analysts argue that the south’s poverty-stricken population, a population that is also traumatised by the long conflict and years of perceived northern exploitation, is likely to vote “yes” in the coming referendum.  According to some, “…many [southern Sudanese] are already looking beyond the referendum to work out what an independent south and a newly separated north might look like”.

After the April 2010 elections when opposition groups said the main northern and southern parties stamped out competition with intimidation and fraud, the signs most definitely don’t look good.  Human Rights Watch for example, said it collected reports of harassment, arbitrary arrests and attacks on opposition figures, activists and journalists during and since the elections on both sides of the north-south border.  “The actions of the two main parties [in the north and the south] do not bode well for democratic governance after the referendum”; said Tiseke Kasambala, a researcher working for the human rights NGO Human Rights Watch.

Uganda Correspondent reported two weeks ago that both President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and South Sudan President Salva Kirr had announced new cabinets in Khartoum and Juba respectively that included only a handful of low level opposition politicians.  Bashir’s National Congress Party [NCP] took most seats in Khartoum’s national assembly in the April elections while Salva Kirr’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement [SPLM] won almost every seat in the semi-autonomous southern parliament.

Both parties are however quick to add that their election victories were built on genuine popular support. “The cabinet was formed according to the result of the election”; said NCP official Rabie Abdelati.

Sitting where it does on the African continent with its large oil wells and a big Islamic population, Sudan’s strategic importance in the eyes of many world powers is not in doubt.  For a start, previous reports have suggested that the world’s most wanted man Osama Bin Laden once lived in Sudan and possibly planned his so-called “Jihad” from there.  The other big question is:  What implications would instability in Sudan have for its neighbours?  Well, Sudan’s stability, or the lack of it, is likely to have even greater geo-political implications for its politically volatile neighbours like Uganda, DRC, and Chad.  It is therefore likely that strategists in those countries will be watching developments in the forthcoming referendum for total secession very carefully.

A Ugandan Foreign Ministry official who responded to a request for comment on the subject by Uganda Correspondent said, “…it certainly worries us as a government.  We are watching the developments round the clock and weighing possible options at our disposal”.