Making a Country

Southern Sudan's leaders struggle to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.

BY ROBERT KLITGAARD | JANUARY 7, 2011

View a slide show of Juba, the world's newest capital, on the eve of independence

On Jan. 9, Southern Sudanese will head to the polls to vote in a referendum to decide whether to become an independent state. Barring massive vote-rigging by the government in Khartoum or a fresh outbreak of war, theirs will become the world's newest country. Riven by conflict for decades, this land of about 10 million people is among the poorest, unhealthiest, and least educated in the world. Independence would curtail the historic domination of the Arab Muslim north of Sudan over the black, largely Christian south. But conflict lurks -- indeed, barely lurks. In 2010, Dennis Blair, then the United States' director of national intelligence, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that among the world's unstable places in the next five years, "a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan."

Southern Sudan has potential. Its area -- larger than Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda combined -- contains rich lands, ample water, and resources. Sudan's oil fields are located in southern territory but are not yet free from northern control. Strong cultures and resilience have been fortified by years of war and self-reliance. Since a 2005 peace accord formally ended the civil war, Southern Sudan has had a semiautonomous government. Created almost from scratch, this regional administration had made progress. But if independence arrives, so will new threats of corruption and its close counterpart, instability.

How can this would-be country face up to the scourge of corruption? In 2004, in advance of the peace accord, the Southern Sudanese leadership addressed this very question, and it was my privilege to help facilitate its discussions. Invited by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I was impressed by the spirit and resilience of the Southern Sudanese, their frank self-diagnosis, and the need for more than development-as-usual in Southern Sudan.

 SUBJECTS:
 

Robert Klitgaard is a university professor at Claremont Graduate University. His eight books include Tropical Gangsters, Controlling Corruption, and High-Performance Government. A monograph version of this article, with photographs, is available here.

PEOTRE

11:38 PM ET

January 10, 2011

US interference

It at least has the appearance that the independence of Southern Sudan is a ploy by the United States to consolidate control over natural resources in the region. All the nonsense about genocide is part of this predatory policy, and not an attempt to bolster human rights in the region. If the outcome of the referendum is such a foregone conclusion, why conduct a referendum in the first place? If the outcome, as the author says, is not favorable to the United States, of course the elections must have been meddled with, but not the other way around. How many people accept this kind of analysis?

 

GRANT

7:34 PM ET

January 11, 2011

In order of your opinions. 1.

In order of your opinions.

1. It would be rather hard for the United States to gain control over the natural resources when you consider the fact that all of the pipelines run through the northern part of Sudan controlled by Bashir. You might want to check the infrastructure first before making unsubstantiated arguments next time.

2. Ethnic cleansing has already occurred in recent months in South Sudan by the Dinka tribe. It doesn't get much attention in Western papers but Al Jazeera has a good report on it (or do you feel that the Al Jazeera untrustworthy).

3. Why have a referendum? Because letting the people decide is the point of a democracy. Based on your logic if we already know who is going to win a presidential election we shouldn't bother having the election.

4. Lastly, exactly where did they make mention of an outcome being unfavorable to the U.S?