A Glimmer of Hope in Southern Sudan

For now, all's quiet on the north-south front. But President Omar Hassan al-Bashir may still have a few cards to play before January's all-important referendum.

BY JAMES TRAUB | NOVEMBER 24, 2010

It is Thanksgiving week, and it behooves those of us who write about the world to find something or other to feel thankful for, or at least hopeful about. That excludes most of my normal subject matter. I am, however, feeling ever so slightly optimistic about events in one of the most desperate places on Earth, south Sudan, where 2 million people died in a 20-year civil war with the north only ended in 2005. It now appears increasingly likely that the long-awaited referendum in which southerners will choose either independence or continued association with the north will in fact take place Jan. 9, as planned -- and even (though this is much less certain) that the government in Khartoum will honor the outcome, which will undoubtedly be a vote for independence. This would be a rare moment of unadulterated joy to the downtrodden and neglected people of the south and offer some hope for the rest of us that seemingly intractable conflicts can have a peaceful and positive end.

Why this uptick in confidence? Because Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his henchmen -- though brutal, duplicitous, and cynical -- are not irrational. According to virtually everyone I have spoken to, the regime has concluded that its best chance for survival lies in cutting a deal with the south rather than contesting the referendum. "I'm more optimistic than I was a few weeks ago," a U.S. State Department official, speaking from Sudan, told me. "There's a certain momentum now to the referendum." The central issue, then, is what Khartoum wants out of that deal and whether the government of Southern Sudan and the international community can deliver enough to convince the regime to part with over a third of its territory and virtually all of its oil-production capacity -- a prize which it fought one of the world's most savage civil wars to keep.

Bashir's government is so opaque, so fragmented, and so devoted to eleventh-hour brinkmanship that no one can say for sure what it is it actually wants. U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has been trying very hard to figure out Khartoum's price, and meet it. At present, for example, the two sides share equally in the country's oil wealth -- by far and away the chief source of revenue for each -- but because the south will wind up with almost all the oil, it must agree to share some portion of the proceeds with the north. And yet Scott Gration, the State Department special envoy to Sudan, was mystified during his last visit to find that Sudanese officials seemed almost blithe about this supposedly all-important issue. Did this mean that debt relief, aid, or foreign investment all of a sudden matters more to Khartoum than the oil it has fought so long to keep? Or is Bashir biding his time in favor of some adroit last-minute blackmail?

This month, the White House asked Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to go to Khartoum to convey to senior officials a new offer to remove Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for letting the referendum proceed and honoring the outcome. The designation is a major obstacle to foreign investment, and the Sudanese are said to have welcomed the gesture. But a U.N. official who met some of the same figures right after Kerry said that they scoffed at the idea that Obama could deliver on removing the north from the state sponsors of terrorism list, because this would require, as they knew, a vote of Congress.

Money is only one level of this dizzyingly complicated game -- which is just the type Khartoum likes to play. The Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA), which both north and south signed in 2005 and which mandates the referendum, requires agreement on borders, security, terms of citizenship, and a range of other issues -- virtually none of which have been settled thus far. Neither side has shown much interest in reaching across the table on any of these issues. Khartoum is seeking reassurances that a new government in the south won't jeopardize its security by harboring insurgents from Darfur or elsewhere; however, the Southern People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the ruling party in Southern Sudan, is reluctant to surrender that leverage, says the State Department official.

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS: SUDAN, AFRICA
 

James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of, most recently, The Freedom Agenda. "Terms of Engagement," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly.