Birth of a Nation

South Sudan is poised to be the new nation of the world with effect from July 9, 2011. The citizens of the new nation are full of aspirations for a prosperous, progressive, peaceful and the harmonious relations with the rest of the world. In the process of the nation building, these are the ideal conditions. But in real world; the challenges of nation building are full of trajectories. Right from the inception of an independent Sudan since 1956, the soul of the nation was torn between the intermittent conflicts of North and South Sudan. A classical case of ethnic strife that divided Arab dominated Muslim North from Christian dominated African South. There are marked differences in ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural identities between North and South Sudan. But the matter of discord was more often the dilemma of development in South Sudan. South always pointed out towards North of exploiting its rich resources and building complexes around Khartoum. The negligence of South in the development processes as a periphery was one strong reason of discord.

In the course of the chequered history of Sudan, it became difficult to manage the nation together. As ethnically complex nation is where more than 100 dialects spoken and at least 50 major ethnic tribal groups with almost some 600 sub-groups. Since 1956, when British left Sudan; Jellaba (a group of Arab Sudanese) inherited the state power. As the Jellaba group was mainly concentrated in North-Central Sudan the consolidation of an Arab-Islamic hegemonic block in North-Central Sudan, and the conservation of underdevelopment and tribal peculiarities in the South. This evolved in the structural disequilibrium which manifests itself in the conflictual core-periphery dictomy to the most Southern Sudanese. Since the vision of Jellaba administration was constricted, self centered and self-serving.

Amidst the crisis at first stage, the constitution adopted in 1968 proclaimed Sudan as a unitary state, Arabic the official language and the Islam the official religion. This proclamation complicated relation between North and South even more. The new government in 1969 tried to diffuse the tension and announced the local autonomy for the socio-economic development of South Sudan. But internal political crisis in 1971 again caused tension and in 1972 the accord of regional autonomy was reworked in Addis-Ababa ending the 17 years old civil war. All was going well, suddenly in 1983, president Niemeyer declared that ‘sharia’ was to be the law of the land and this led the restart of the civil war. Further, the problem was escalated by SPLA attacking the ‘Nuba Mountains’, the zone of Arabs North and African South. The situation turned into worse in 1989, when the new government took over the power and perpetuated war till 1996. The country grappled four decades of conflicts. The new government was elected in March, 1996 and a 14 point peace agreement was signed between North and South Sudan that lasted to the UN process of deliberations, referendum, cessations and birth of a nation.

The imperatives of the new nation will be to forget the acrimony of the past and built a better future for its citizen. The oil rich South will be an attractive market for the world and secure nation for the human development.