Is this Pakistanism in Sudan?
Borders in Africa have long caused conflict. Now Sudan's Christian-Muslim divide could raise tensions
The referendum in Sudan, which will result in the secession of the south, is the first redrawing of an African colonial border by popular vote. The question many are asking is whether this will create a precedent across the continent.
When African heads of state created the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, they committed themselves to fighting colonialism and its legacy. Yet the one legacy they had no intention of ending was the borders of their own countries.
Some "decolonised" their national names. The Gold Coast became Ghana, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia, Nyasaland became Malawi. But almost none of them were prepared to decolonise their boundaries. The new African Union, formed in 2002, renewed this commitment.
So the Southern Sudan referendum was truly historic. In this country, the size of western Europe, it took two civil wars, the death of more than a million people and the displacement of millions of others to reach the simple decision to allow Southern Sudanese people to determine their own territorial destiny.
I have discussed the Sudanese civil wars with former presidents Jaafar Nimeiri and Omar el Bashir. Both were stubbornly protective of territorial integrity. Like other African leaders they were afraid of the domino effect. Even now, many in Khartoum fear that Southern Sudan's independence could lead to similar separatist demands in Darfur.
The borders of African countries were an aftermath of the Berlin conference of 1884-5 at which 14 European countries negotiated their scramble for Africa. The boundaries were drawn to suit the colonial powers, with little regard for the history or cultural cohesion of the colonised peoples. They often divided people who belonged together and forcefully enclosed communities who had no experience of shared government or economic co-operation.
The most absurd was the division of the Somali people into five parts – separate British, Italian and French colonies, with a fourth Somali fragment integrated into Ethiopia and a fifth into colonial Kenya. The Somalian people have never recovered.
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