“If South Sudan secedes, we (in the North) will change the constitution. There will be no question of cultural or ethnic diversity. Sharia (strict Islamic law) will be the only source of the constitution, and Arabic the only official language.”

After decades of on-again, off-again civil war in Africa’s largest country, the long-awaited democratic process has yielded amazing fruit. More than 98 percent of Southern Sudanese voted for independence from the Islamic Arab North, which was committed to the Islamization of the Christian and animist South.

That the referendum was held at all is miraculous. Although Sudan has no history of democracy, 80 percent of Southern residents voted. It was reported that even a 115-year-old woman voted in a polling place in Juba, the capital city of the South.

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, an International Criminal Court indicted war criminal, backed the final tally and said he wished to be the first to congratulate the new state.

The move allows the 2 million internally displaced Southern Sudanese who dwell in squalid camps surrounding Khartoum, the capital city of the North, to return home. On July 9, Southern Sudan will formally become independent, barring a major return of violence.

In the years leading up to the referendum, al-Bashir had repeatedly broken the stipulations of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the brutal civil war. The war plunged oil-rich Southern Sudan into death, disease and destruction. The aggression killed an estimated 2 million…

…Physical concerns abound for the new nation. Sudan lacks basic infrastructure, so word of secession may take months to disseminate. The news may trigger violence along historic tribal fault lines.

The 1,250-mile border between North and South must still be demarcated. On that border is Abyei, a region claimed by both North and South that contains oil and fertile soil. Several rival tribal militias are based there, each aiming for control: Arab nomadic Misseriya and the Ngok Dinka, who are sub-Saharan cattle herders. Many of the ingredients of the wider North-South war – the oil, the proxy forces, the historic rivalries — are concentrated in Abyei.

The North and South must now decide how to share abundant oil reserves of the South, where the border lies and who owns Abyei. These are vital issues, not only for peaceful transition to the South’s independence, but also for a positive relationship as sovereign nations. These questions could drag the North and South back into war.

Read More: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11646001/