A new African state will be born from Sudan's womb this week. The fifty fourth state in Africa will change the map of the entire continent and that of the one-million-square-miles country, considering it will no longer be the largest in Africa, as its geographic border and some of its political boundaries will be changing. The secession of the South is raising a series of challenges for the Sudanese on both ends, for the people of the region among the close and distant neighbors, for some European states and especially for the United States. This secession will open the doors before a series of consequences and questions. As for the post-referendum stage, it will be the main thing at stake considering it is no less dangerous than the stages which necessitated from the population half a century of civil wars that reaped the lives of around two million victims, depleted the energies and the resources, and prompted regional and international interferences. In Khartoum, the battle over the post-division is ongoing. Such an event was preceded by questions that are still on the table and revolve around the following: What will happen to the authority and the regime, to their shape and to the structure of the ruling party in particular? It is not enough for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to announce that the “salvation revolution” is proceeding and that the rule will continue, as it is not enough to call for a national unity government to face the stage of the great transformation. This is due to the fact that the opposition did not like this call following last spring's elections, and is now agreeing over the necessity of toppling the regime through a peaceful popular uprising, although it is recognizing that the current regime is not the sole one responsible for the division of the country into two parts. All the successive governments since the independence in 1956 until this day are responsible, even if at various levels, while the Southerners are not spared from the responsibility for this final situation. The participation in the rule, which was rejected before the referendum, will not be accepted after it. The Northerners know that the structure of the ruling National Congress Party features contradictions that are no less prominent that the ones between the rule and its opponents. Indeed, there are contradictions between the military men and politicians which exited the cloak of the Islamic Front, i.e. the cloak of Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, as well as among factions, power centers and interests within the party. For example, will those who have such interests and positions approve the establishment of a unity government, accept to leave power or even head to elections which might cost them their positions and interests? How will they confront the accusations saying they wasted the country's unity and hastened secession? True, all the Sudanese parties recognized the Southerners' right to self-determination, but what is also true is that the detractors of the ruling regime have been blaming it for not relying - in its policies - on what could have rendered unity an attractive choice for the Southern population during the five-year interim phase. The detractors of the Congress Party are accusing factions in it of having hastened secession to get rid of the South, in order to meet the requirements of the “racist Islamist agenda” as it was stated by leader of the Umma Party Al-Sadek al-Mahdi. Moreover, President Al-Bashir's rush to announce the implementation of the Shariaa following secession, has raised and is still raising the discontent of many Sudanese whose ethnical, cultural or religious plurality cannot be cancelled through a decision from a rule, which does not seem to have learned from the lessons of the South whose leaders expressed their rejection of the imposition of the Arabic language and the Shariaa by force and without taking this plurality into account. Had the future of the rule in Khartoum been the only critical challenge, the situation would have been much easier. However, the independence of the South in light of the difficult resolution of the Darfur issue will encourage the people of this province to proceed with the conflict with Khartoum to earn the self-determination right, and maybe even secession at a later stage… Consequently, if this “African” hatred toward the Arab is enhanced - as it is being expressed by the Southerners nowadays - if the center continues to monopolize the decision, the wealth and development and if the international issue remains present at the level of this case as it was previously present in the Southern case, the majority of the Sudanese are detecting the dreadful division which their country could reach. As for the Southerners, they are facing even greater and more dangerous challenges. In the past, they used to turn to the tribes and clans to face the threats coming from the North which played on their contradictions and conflicts for a very long time. During the next stage, will they remain silent vis-à-vis the rule of one party, one side or one tribe? Moreover, can one side govern the newborn state in the presence of a multitude of militias which might revive tribal ambitions that are fighting over the authority, over the interests and positions? This means that the intentions to build a democratic state which believes in the circulation of power are not enough in a community that still perceives the tribes, rather than the country or the state, as being sacred. First of all, there must be a joint national identity around which all the components could rally. This would be accompanied by the building of the state, considering that the South is exiting a centralized state and lacks the necessary institutions and committees to move forward, as well as the required infrastructure, state apparatuses or services facilities. This process requires massive budgets and – in the first stage – the support of the establishment of “strong ties between the Northern and Southern sides to protect the common interests and the continuation of peace,” as stated by the Southern parties and gatherings on the eve of the referendum. However, these relations will not be set straight as long as some are “bragging about” having gotten rid of the “rule of the Arabs” and their Shariaa, as well as about the relations which have been and will be established between the South and Israel. Indeed, will Khartoum ever be reassured while the Hebrew state is enhancing its presence on the South's border? The Southerners are entitled to celebrate independence as long as it is their choice, but the recollection of the past in approaching the North might renew the wars and the tragedies. There are a lot of issues between the two sides and they require cold-blooded solutions, from the clear and decisive demarcation of the border – especially in the Abyei region which does not need more than a match to restore the tragedies of infighting – to the agreement over the oil wealth. It is worth mentioning that the revenues of the latter in the past were expected to constitute a positive factor in securing peace and just development instead of being an element of conflicts and rivalries fueled by foreign ambitions. There is also the issue of citizenship, considering that around three million Southerners are living in the poverty belt surrounding the triangular capital while there are Northerners living and working in the South, in addition to the issue of the debt and a dozen issues linked to the currency and investments among others which will be raised by secession. In that same context, the South's secession may enhance the ambitions of other entities in the African space to reconsider the borders they have inherited from the days of colonialism, knowing that the member states of the Organization of African Unity agreed following its establishment in the 1960s not to touch the borders drawn up by colonialism, in order to avoid dormant wars between old tribes, sects and entities. There is no doubt that the African Union, which will soon receive the fifty-fourth member state, will be responsible for the security of this state whose birth should not renew a war that was the longest in the history of the continent. In the meantime, the responsibility of the Union will also be to secure a rapid settlement that would put an end to the Darfur crisis, so that the dreamers of mini-states tailored to fit their regions and tribes do not come out from their hiding place and drown all of Africa in the swamp, at a time when the Union is watching with a lot of concerns the current conflict in the Ivory Coast among other locations. Moreover, the establishment of the Southern state will present another problem that will face all the Nile Basin states, will escalate the war over this river, and will complicate Egypt's and Sudan's positions as they are being asked by Ethiopia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda to ensure a fairer allocation of the water and the reconsideration of the shares provided for in the agreement sealed by the British colonialists in 1929. The share which will be needed by the newborn state will constitute the object of a major dispute, not only for Khartoum and the other countries but also for Cairo, while this issue will become an inherent part of the national security of each of these countries, and especially that of Egypt. On the international level, the American administration – during the last stage – was mainly focusing on the necessity of staging the referendum on time, and on presenting a series of incentives to Khartoum. Consequently, it did not heed the flaws which affected the parliamentary elections held last spring in Sudan and were perceived by the opposition as being a falsification to keep the regime afloat, just as it did not heed the building of real democracy in the North, as well as in the South. It remained silent so that the ruling National Congress Party would not obstruct the referendum and all the measures related to this event, as the administration perceived the success of the referendum as being a new accomplishment to be added to the credit of President Barack Obama who needs similar achievements to enhance his “arsenal” in the next presidential race in two years. Moreover, the American administration did not give the post-secession stage and its security, economic, political and social repercussions any attention, and only started promising to provide aid to the two sides to deal with the impact of the divorce a few days ago. It even promised to lift the sanctions off Khartoum in order to avoid the renewal of war, despite what this means in terms of the failure which might be more dangerous than the one which affected the administration of President Bill Clinton that did not know how to spare Rwanda from massacres that claimed the lives of around 800,000 victims in 1994. Consequently, Washington will be invited to assume the biggest share of the burdens which will be generated by the birth of a state lacking the minimum level of the requirements of survival on the economic and services level, in addition to the building of the institutions and the prevention of the eruption of a tribal conflict in the context of the race over power. In the end, the Sudanese still remember Colonel John Garang who was fighting for a new and different Sudan, but who – although he realized the difficulty of achieving his ambitions – never relinquished the Southerners' right to self-determination. To him, the new Sudan meant the establishment of a secular state, believing that the African element which constituted the majority in the country could transfer Sudan from its Arab space into another one that would lead it out of the Arabic language mechanism and the Islamization of the law mechanism in which the Northerners were relentlessly engaged. He left and his dreams left with him, while the ambitions of his Northern rivals to link the South to the Arab space - even if by force – have all failed. Hundreds of thousands of victims fell, and hundreds of thousands were displaced in the deserts and woods. So, in light of these difficult experiences, did the populations of the two sides become aware of the meaning of plurality on the religious, racial, cultural and traditional levels?
