South Sudan has erupted into jubilation as early referendum results leave no doubt a new country is about to be born, but the road to statehood remains littered with problems.
The demarcation of the border with the north, the sharing of oil revenues and the future of the disputed region of Abyei are only some of the contentious issues that need to be ironed out within six months.
Preliminary results of the January 9-15 referendum on self-determination show that secession from the mainly Muslim north is favoured by close to 99 per cent of voters in the Christian-dominated south.
While southern leaders are basking in the glow of a historical landmark in their decades-old struggle for independence, they also called for composure, reminding the population secession is not yet a reality.
The 2005 peace accord that ended more than 20 years of a north-south conflict in which about two million people were killed and around twice as many displaced provided for a transitional period that ends on July 9.
South Sudan should then become the world’s newest nation and Africa’s 55th state, but the interim period looks set to be packed with arduous negotiations between the two halves of what is still the continent’s largest country.
“It might even be more complicated to negotiate than the Comprehensive Peace Agreement itself,” one Sudan-based observer said on condition of anonymity.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party and the former southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement started talks in July on four main points: security, citizenship, the economy and international agreements.
Some 80 per cent of Sudan’s oil reserves, estimated at around six billion barrels, are in the south but can only be exported through a pipeline than runs into the north.
Both sides of the future border will therefore have to strike a deal on revenue-sharing that ensures there is no return to war over what is by far their main source of income.
With hundreds of thousands of southerners still residing in the north and a smaller number of northerners living in the south, both administrations will also have to decide on the status of these communities.
A fifth of the long border between the two territories remains disputed, straddled notably by the oil-producing Abyei enclave, which is claimed by both by southern Dinka Ngok and northern Misseriya Arab tribes.
A referendum on which side Abyei should belong to was supposed to be held alongside the main ballot on January 9 but was postponed indefinitely.
Clashes in Abyei have left up to 60 people dead this month alone, in a stark reminder that a resumption of a north-south civil conflict is a real threat.
“Abyei has so far proved to be the most difficult part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to implement, more difficult even than the determination of the rest of the north-south boundary or the division of oil revenues,” Sudan expert Douglas H. Johnson wrote this week.
He argued the only way to break the deadlock was to press on with the Abyei referendum and guarantee the Arab nomads grazing rights even if the region elects to join the south.
Talks over the Abyei tinderbox are due to resume on January 27 under the sponsorship of former South African president Thabo Mbeki and be conducted separately from the four main post-referendum issues.
However, with the clock ticking down on the July 9 deadline, the idea of a new north-south comprehensive agreement settling all unresolved issues is gaining ground.