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South Sudan

In under three hours, South Sudan will become the newest country on Earth. Its prospects are both hopeful and dismal. Now independent, the South can ostensibly control a key resource found within its borders: oil. Both sides' desire to control this resource-- discovered in the late 1970s and early 1980s-- has exacerbated a civil war that ended finally in 2005, a civil war that stood as the longest of the twentieth century.

One of the reasons for the ongoing conflict, among a myriad of others, is Southerners' anger at Northern efforts to control their identity: for example, in 1983, President Jafar Nimeiri enacted what are called the September Laws, which applied sharia (Muslim religious) law to the whole of Sudan. These laws included the hudud, a group of harsh criminal punishments that include execution and amputation. This is part of what Ann Mosely Lesch contends is a Northern effort to force a common identity on a diverse population (something she calls the "control model" of government), instead of including the different ethnic and religious groups in government (what she calls the "ethnic plurlist model").*

Khartoum (Sudan's capital) was the first to recognize the independence of South Sudan, but recognition does not translate into an end to conflict. Fighting still takes place in Darfur and along the north-south border, a border whose boundaries remain ambiguous; and while the South owns oil-rich land, it can only export oil to Port Sudan through a pipeline that travels through the North. Khartoum has already threatened to block passage of the oil if the South doesn't pay enough of the revenue, and the South has responded by saying it will live off of credit, with oil as collateral.**

Still, there is a sense of optimism in the Sudan as independence occurs, an optimism that is the more deeply felt in a part of Sudan that has not just been ignored, but which has been purposely handicapped in its ability to educate its people and govern its country.*** Landlocked, underdeveloped, and poor, South Sudan will face serious economic and political challenges, but for the time, at least, its people will celebrate their new found freedom. One hopes, however, that this freedom will strengthen not just hearts, but the material circumstances of Southern lives as well.

*Ann Mosely Lesch. The Sudan: Contested National Identities. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.
**Heavens, Andrew and Alexander Dziadosz. "Sudan Recognizes Independence of Oil-Rich South." Reuters, 8 July 2011.
***Like other countries, Sudan has felt the sting of colonialism, but that pain seems to have been especially detrimental on the South. Indeed, it was in the South that the British purposely limited education to a select group, among other limitations.

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