Newsweek today published an excellent primer on the threat of renewed war in southern Sudan that seems to be growing by the week. If you weren’t already convinced that the North-South tension in Sudan deserves urgent attention from the Obama administration and the international community, read this story.
Here’s the challenge in a nutshell:
The north-south war is threatening to reignite in a conflict that could spill over into a half-dozen countries in eastern and central Africa and bring misery to millions of people in one of the world’s poorest corners. Already more than 2,000 people have been killed in ethnic fighting in southern Sudan this year—with the rate of violent deaths now exceeding that in Darfur, according to the U.N. A 2005 peace agreement that stopped the fighting is on the brink of collapse, and both sides are rearming in advance of an independence referendum in southern Sudan scheduled for January 2011. But the north has used a range of stalling tactics in an attempt to thwart the poll—a situation that would lead the south unilaterally to declare independence. If it does, the war will almost certainly begin again.
Photo: Soldiers in southern Sudan