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| Africa Subsaharan |
| A country is born |
| 2011-07-08 |
| An Arab lament South Sudan becomes an independent sovereign state today, and for the overwhelming majority of its people it is a day of great celebration. But for the rest of Sudan, and for the Arab world, it is a sad day. Sudan is reduced as a result — physically, culturally, economically and politically — and so is the Arab world. The new country will not be part of it. Arabic, widely spoken in the south, will no longer have any status; the only official language will be English. Arabs, moreover, may find themselves discriminated against despite the declarations otherwise by the new states’ authorities. So too may Islam, the faith of the majority in the old Sudan. It did not need to come to this. A united Sudan could have survived. The blame lies wholly with successive governments in Khartoum, starting with President Numeiry in 1983 when he annulled the south’s autonomy and declared all Sudan an Islamic state, right the way through to the present president, Omar Bashir. If they had stuck to the 1972 agreement which ended the first civil war, by which the African and today largely Christian south was given autonomy, there would have been no second civil war, no divorce. The 1983 decision and all that flowed from it — coercion, repression, oppression‚ and which resulted in as many as two million southerners being killed or dying from famine and disease as a result of the conflict turned an autonomy movement into a secessionist one. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 Smart move to make English the official language. Just possibly they will become an African success story. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2011-07-08 23:36 |
| #1 But the Black Christians will not have to put up with the janjaweed anymore. The Nubians are not feeling happy but it makes all that work our country has done for the last 14 years worth it. Arabs have wrought enough damage in Africa. Remember that OBL sponsored the islamification of Sudan in the start. The state offered OBL to Clinton but refused as we hand "nothing to hold him on". |
| Posted by: newc 2011-07-08 22:47 |