A blessing in disguise. What the Copts recently experienced in Egypt, and what Sudan faces after the secession of the South, and what the Arab world faces in terms of conflicts that threaten certain regions with ethnic and sectarian fragmentation – perhaps these will be sufficient to quickly awaken a concern about the dangers of dissolution afflicting the Arab region. This danger will continue if the treatments of the crisis continue to range from denial and ignoring the problem, at times, to blaming foreign conspiracies, as happens most of the time. The wide range of reactions that condemned the bombing of the Coptic church in Alexandria was more than positive; these reactions should be noted at length and benefited from. In Egypt in particular, the condemnations should be accompanied by practical measures that head off attempts by entreaties, by the Copts for example, that involve calls of separation and requests for foreign protection. In Sudan, one might feel optimistic and hopeful. The referendum on the future of the South, which saw fears prevail about the possibility of holding it days beforehand, took place fairly smoothly; moreover, President Omar al-Bashir found the opportunity suitable to welcome the dominant trend among Southerners to secede from his unified “state,” if they chose to. He also promised he would go easy on Southerners when it comes to the repayment of around $40 billion in debts to Khartoum, so that their state may begin its life in a sound financial position. The source of hope vis-à-vis the referendum is also due to the fact that the situation in the South has opened people's eyes to what majorities are doing to “minority regions” in the Arab world. The situation that has resulted in Southern Sudan is not a new development; the region has been deprived of the simplest requirements of state-building, such as schools, hospitals, security organizations, and transportation networks. At the same time, this region has provided Sudan with the biggest share of its oil resources, as it contains around three-quarters of the country's total. There were no foreign conspiracies, or campaigns by Christian evangelicals, as some allege, needed for the region to wake up to the ills from which it was suffering. While Christian clergymen in the South are strongly pro-secession, and call for it, it was enough for Southerners to contemplate the history of their long war with the North, which lasted more than two decades and killed more than two million people, most of them Southerners. All they had to do was view the policies of successive regimes in Khartoum vis-à-vis them and others in Sudan, to come around to the option of secession. This option, despite its harshness, is less heavy a burden than the sufferings they encountered under the flag of national unity. In fact, if the rulers in Khartoum had put forward preserving unity as an alluring option to Southerners over the last five years, al-Bashir would not have had to go to Juba, in his last visit as the president of a united Sudan, and talked to people there about the benefits of remaining in a unified state. What right did he have to say such a thing? Who would believe a call such as this, while al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, accused of genocide in Darfur, a Muslim region that is “guilty” of nothing other than having a different tribal affiliation? Political units should not be enforced on people; it is one of the tragedies of our region that its geographical boundaries, which were able to retain their cohesion under foreign rule, are now seeing calls for dissolution and separation with the collapse of national, political, and interest ties, which used to bind people living under these borders. Perhaps the Sudan referendum will launch a much-needed wake-up call, about a better way to deal with the situation of minorities in the Arab world.
