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Perspective: Sudan – Land of Water and Thirst; War and Peace

by Dr. Paul J. Sullivan as a Special to the Circle of Blue Water News.

As we approach the January 2011 date for the referendum on the south, and as we see Darfur seemingly in an eerily, but uncertain, peaceful period, we need to look at the water situation in Sudan. Water will be a make or break issue for the peace process in Sudan and in deciding whether the Sudan will move forward in peace and prosperity or more poverty and war. It is a country that went through one of the most brutal civil wars in history. Millions were killed and displaced. Sudan is the country of Darfur, “The lost boys,” and lost generations. One of the driving forces behind the start of the last civil war between the south and the north was the Jonglei Canal. This is an idea that has been around for a very long time. It was to be a canal to bring the water through one of the largest wetlands in the world, The Sudd, more quickly to the north and to Egypt. But those earlier plans did not include much improvement in the lives of the people of the South and along the proposed canal. Dr. John Garang, one of the leaders of the southern rebels wrote his Ph.D. on the Jonglei Canal. The horrors of Darfur can be partly traced back to climate change, rain pattern changes, and water stress. Water is a very big issue in Sudan.

About 80 percent of the people in Sudan find their livelihoods in agriculture. Agriculture is about 40 percent of the country’s GDP and accounts for about 97 percent of the water use. Meanwhile 70 percent of agriculture in Sudan is rain fed. The rest of agriculture can find its water through small traditional spate irrigation and via khors, small mostly hand dug canals, or via huge irrigation projects, such as the Gezira project — which uses about 35 percent of Sudan’s water, and the many giant sugar irrigation schemes. Sudan has the largest area of irrigation in all of Sub-Saharan Africa, but even if this is poorly managed and maintained.

A close up of the fields in the Gezira Scheme, which is one of the largest irrigation projects in the world. It is centered on the Sudanese state of Al Jazirah, just southeast of the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers at the city of Khartoum.

Water is not just income and jobs in Sudan. It is life, most particularly in the dry areas of the country: in Darfur and in the north while most of the wetlands are found in the south. This huge country has many climate and water zones. It has massive underground water reserves that are part of the largest source of freshwater in the world, the Great Nubian Sandstone aquifer. It also has the large Umm Rawaba and other aquifers. Sudan has the Nile, the Atbara and many other rivers coursing through it. The country is also blessed with the Nile River Basin, which is a watered, mostly underground area that can stretch to 80 percent of the country. As much as 80 to 85 percent of Sudan’s population used the Nile Basin waters. Most of the rains happen in the south. Much of the Nile water comes from other places, like Ethiopia, Uganda and more. The waters from the White Nile and The Atbara in the south and west rise and flood at different times from the Blue Nile and other sources in the east and central parts of the country — no real efforts have been developed to coordinate and better manage these flows and stocks.

Sudan not only faces down the threats from a potential new civil war, it also faces external tensions that could build over the sharing, use and abuse of the Nile across countries in the region. There is only one agreement between the many nations who share the Nile and that was established in 1959 between Sudan and Egypt. As the other countries along the Nile, including the most likely new Sudan in the south, want to develop, demand on the water of the Nile for electricity production, irrigation, industry and more will grow greater. Sudan also shares groundwater resources and sources with other countries. Though the ground water flows, the data on this is as scarce as good management of it.

Astonishingly little of its recharged groundwater and its surface water are used in this often water stressed country. What is used is often wasted with inefficient irrigation methods and even quite destructive rain fed farming methods, and livestock overgrazing. Meanwhile the extraordinarily destructive mechanized agricultural system that is causing huge deforestation, land and river bank erosion, salinization, and more negative effects. Water treatment is almost unheard of in the country, especially in the south. Water-borne diseases are rampant and pesticide poisoning via the water-food chains are likely quite common in some areas. The growth of the mesquite tree and water hyacinth has also wreaked havoc on the country’s water systems.

The precious water of Sudan is being degraded in many areas and wasted in others. Basin and catchment degradation are the norm in many parts of the country. The country is, on average, water rich, but it is management and maintenance poor.

Siltation near small and large dams is common. Suspended solids and stagnant water are common near the dams. Sudan needs the hydroelectricity — it is constantly in a severe energy crisis, but the dams could be more costly to the water and the environment than many may think.

Then there are the very difficult problems of what to do with the huge numbers of returning IDPs and the possible movement of southerners from the north to the south. Also, how are the north and the south to coordinate their water management and water uses? These are very big issues that need to be resolved, or at least managed better.

Sudan can solve its water and related problems with better data collection, better regulations and rule of law, improving incentives for using the water better, and simply managing the water better in an integrated water management system. All of this is easier said than done, but just about everyone who studies the water problems of Sudan, including many world class Sudanese, see the solutions, but also the excruciating practical problems in applying them. Poor governance and lack of governance capacity are huge issues, most particularly in the South.

Water is vital for food production, which is in decline as the population grows in Sudan. Clean water is vital for health and sanitation, but it is rare in and near the cities and even near some of the smaller villages. Most Sudanese use whatever water they can find, and sometimes that water is unhealthy, at times even deadly.

Water, land, food, energy and development are tightly and importantly interlinked. Water is also very much linked to the potential for peace in the country. The tensions and potentials for peace in Darfur, between the north and the south — and amongst many other in other regions, including between local tribes and clans — can be, in part, determined, by the availability, quality, sharing, management and maintenance of water sources in the country.

If the mismanagement and inadequate mediation methods continue we could see more wars and conflicts– and millions more dying and displaced. Water and all of its complex relations with land, development, opportunity, health, and more will be some of the reasons behind these preventable horrors.

Dr. Sullivan is a professor of economics at the National Defense University, Adjunct Professor of Security Studies and STIA at Georgetown University, and an adviser to Sudan projects at the United States Institute of Peace. He is an internationally recognized expert on the Middle East, parts of Africa, and international energy, water and other resource security and conflict issues.

These elections are a cornerstone of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. Another is the Southern self-determination referendum, scheduled for 2011 at the end of the peace deal’s six-year interim period. Both are absolutely dependent on the results of Sudan’s 2008 National Census.

On June 28, 2009, Eric Reeves published General Elections and Southern Self-Determination: At Growing Risk about the serious challenges facing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and Sudan’s ability/desire to hold fair and democratic elections. According to Reeves’ website, he “has spent the past ten years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally.” Even before starting his article, he begins with the statement:

“Increasingly pessimistic assessments of Sudan’s scheduled national elections (February 2010) [recently postponed until April 2010] make clear that the 2011 Self-Determination Referendum is deeply endangered. If the referendum is aborted, or occurs amidst the grim environment in prospect, it will re-ignite country-wide war.”

The paper is divided into sections that detail the various components that effectively compromise the election/referendum process in Sudan: 1) Sudan’s national census; 2) Logistical, technical, and administrative obstacles; 3) Censorship; 4) Khartoum’s efforts to destabilize the south; 4) Elections in Darfur; and 5) US policy towards Khartoum and the elections.

Near the former Abyei Market after May 2008 Crisis that saw heavy fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Army and displaced up to 100,000 people.

The contested results of Sudan’s 2008 national census, which is the critical first step in determining electoral boundaries and demographic details for resource distribution, have—according to Reeves—”serious anomalies that deserve attention.” The Director of the Census Commission, Awad Haj Ali, has suggested that displaced Southern Sudanese living in the north have been under-counted to 500,000 but may be as many as 1.5 million people. Considering the estimates of four to five million southerners displaced to the north during the war and a May 27 report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center that 2.24 million IDP’s have returned to the South, there could even more southerners uncounted in the census. The government of Sudan’s insistence that the census form not ask the questions of place of birth or origin may have influenced the results.

Other issues include the results for Darfur, which did not include the the internally displaced people in their camps. The increase by 332% in the population of migratory Arab groups in Darfur—who would presumably vote for Sudan’s governing National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP)— is, according to Government of South Sudan Minister of Presidential Affairs, “the strangest thing” in the results for Darfur that Reeves states is “the most conspicuous anomaly.”

The implications for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Southern representation loosing millions of votes in the upcoming elections, could reduce representation of the SPLM in the National Assembly to something approximating 21% that the census classifies as “Southern.” With a percentage below 25 in Sudan’s National Assembly, Southern representatives would no longer have the ability to reject constitutional amendments, which may allow the governing NIF/NCP to use legislative majority to “revoke key elements of the CPA, including the right to self-determination, or to extort an unacceptably high price for it.”

Reeves’ 14-page report reveals the fragility of the peace in Sudan as indicated no only in its first paragraph cited above but also in its last sentence, “On present course, both elections and peace in Sudan are doomed.” I hope for the people in Southern Sudan who I met and who are hoping for a solidified peace to settle in their country that the “growing risk” will be averted.

Interesting article:

- Sudanese Return to be Counted (BBC, April 2008)

World Food Program warehouse in Malual Kon, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, March 2009

Without context, the article is no more than another record of ‘tribal’ violence in an African country already mired by war. Without prior knowledge of the situation in Southern Sudan—and the Canadian media provides very little—the details are meaningless. Actually, Southern Sudan is in a post-war renaissance that may lead to a lasting peace, self-determination and independence; if, and only if, they can hold on to the four-year-old peace that Le Devoir describes as “already fragile.”

It’s important that news about Southern Sudan gets reported because newsworthy stories in Sudan are not just related to Darfur or to the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, which deserve media attention for the international condemnation and reduction of human rights abuses that can come from exposure. But the situation in Southern Sudan is also in need of media scrutiny to support democratization and to help maintain a fragile peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

Sudan’s second civil war since its 1956 independence from British colonialism, lasted 21 years and officially ended on January 9, 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in neighbouring Nairobi, Kenya. The CPA set up a power-sharing structure between the central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement with the creation of a coalition Government of National Unity for all of Sudan and the Government of Southern Sudan; both with new interim constitutions. The agreement allows for the transformation of the Southern rebel forces into a regular army for semi-autonomous Southern Sudan with Joint Integrated Units of both armies in specific border areas. It prescribes oil revenue-sharing protocols and the establishment of a border between the north and south of Sudan, which will transect oil-producing areas.

An interim period of six years is established to implement the peace agreement, after which the South can hold a referendum to decide to remain within Sudan or to opt for complete independence. This is tentatively scheduled for 2011.

Approximately two million people were killed during the war and about four million were displaced from their homes to other regions of Sudan and nearly one million refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Since its independence 53 years ago, Sudan has been at peace for only 15 of those years (1972-1983: Addis Ababa Agreement, and since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement). Despite these statistics, almost no editorial space in Canadian media is given to the current situation in Southern Sudan.

Media attention of the region was particularly abundant during the 1988 famine when more than 250,000 people starved to death. But since the signing of the peace deal, the media has focused more on the conflict in Darfur than the tenuous peace in the South. The negotiations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with former southern rebels may have added to the current civil war in Darfur, whose own rebels wanted to be included in peace negotiations but were kept from it.

The entrance of the UNMIS compound in Abyei, April 2009

Sudan presently hosts UNMIS, the largest United Nations mission in the world (not including the UN African Union Mission in Darfur) with a mandate of “supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement… [and] facilitating the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons.”

Why is the movement of refugees and displaced people more newsworthy when they flee war and persecution than when they return to the homelands they were previously forced to flee? The story of returnees to the south is a mirror into the future for Darfur refugees whose current situation is a glimpse into the past for the Southern Sudanese still struggling with their new peacetime conditions.

The civil war now raging in Darfur has displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2003*, while more than 2.24 million Southern Sudanese have returned to their homeland since 2005*. Both are impressive migrations of people that require an important amount of support from the United Nations and other NGOs to help them resettle. Donor countries like Canada, which provides $66.8 million in humanitarian aid to Sudan*, have an influence in Sudan’s future and also need journalistic scrutiny.

Recently settled homes in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, March 2009

Those that return to their homeland in the south believe that the peace deal will endure and are eager to help rebuild the country, while many are still unwilling to return for fear of the re-emergence of war. Those that do return, discover that—in many areas—living conditions in the war-ravaged south are more difficult than the areas where they are returning from: lack of sufficient drinking water, no schools, nor clinics and a difficult means for livelihood generation. Most arrive in their homeland after more than a decade of absence with little more than a few belongings. NGOs provide some with a tarp to set up a temporary shelter, blankets, water containers, cooking utensils and other non-food items, while the World Food Program provides food subsidies.

Being a refugee from war and a returnee to peace—both in Sudan—look all too similar and deserve equal attention. Media attention about Darfur needs to continue to help end the war there and it needs to begin about Southern Sudan to help it cling to its tenuous peace.

After contacting Joy Portella, Mercy Corps Director of Communications, Holmes’ statement is misleading. According to Portella and the official response to Holmes’ statement, “Mercy Corps, which was expelled from Northern Sudan in early March 2009, is not resuming operations in Northern Sudan.” Portella stated in an email that Mercy Corps Scotland has registered to work in Sudan and that he does “not yet know what Mercy Corps Scotland’s work in northern Sudan, including Darfur, will look like. That will be determined by the Mercy Corps Scotland team.” Each of Mercy Corps’ country offices work independently from each other and determine their own programs.

Geneva-based, CARE International, also issued a statement to clarify Holmes’ statement by writing that “CARE USA’s registration in Sudan remains void, and CARE USA will not resume operations in North Sudan” Their press release continued stating, “CARE International Foundation (Switzerland) has applied for a registration to operate in Sudan… CI Switzerland is a distinct and independent organization registered in Switzerland, under Swiss law, and is separate from CARE USA.”

Save the Children has not issued a statement, which may indicate that they may indeed have re-registered to resume work in Darfur and Northern Sudan. I hadn’t heard back from them by the time I submitted this post.

Presumably, PADCO, which was acquired by global design and management corporation, AECOM, will happily resume operations. Considering AECOM is a Fortune 500 company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, they cannot be viewed as an NGO nor a development organization. Their role, like all other for-profit corporations with shareholders wanting dividends, is to make a profit. It will be interesting to learn about the work implemented by PADCO in Darfur and N. Sudan.

Here is the transcript of the audio report with a few added photos:

Exactly three weeks ago, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur. Like many people in Sudan, I was glued to the television set to view the announcement. It was 4 p.m.

An anonymous blogger who worked for an international aid agency in Darfur wrote on AlertNet, that one hour after the announcement was made, his agency received a phone call. “The Government had revoked our licence and we must close all our programmes. No further explanation. First thing the next day we were told all international staff had to leave Darfur by 4 p.m.” They had to be out of the area exactly 24 hours after the ICC announcement.

According the the UN’s Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 13 International Agencies were expelled:
- Action contre la faim
- Solidarité
- Save the Children (UK & US)
- Medecins Sans Frontières (NL & FR)
- CARE International
- Oxfam (GB)
- Mercy Corps
- International Rescue Committee
- Norwegian Refugee Council
- CHF International
- PADCO
- And three Sudanese relief agencies were also closed.

The International Herald Tribune reported on March 21, that armed men looted Oxfam’s Darfur Warehouse, “stealing all of its contents.” While in Malual Kon, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal State where Mercy Corps has a compound, I learned that all of their equipment from their Darfur and Khartoum operations were seized since their expulsion: computers, communication radios, everything. Since their communication system was centred in Khartoum, they have had to reorganize their communication strategy for their activities in Southern Sudan.

Internews—which is an International NGO affiliated with Mercy Corps—coordinates Nhomlaau FM in Malual Kon. It has three other community radio stations in Southern Sudan. One of these is located in Kurmuk, Blue Nile State, which is within the North/South transitional area. The radio station there was nearly closed along with Mercy Corps, but they managed to continue broadcasting by arguing their independence of the US-based NGO.

I’ve been travelling throughout Southern Sudan for the past four weeks and was recently in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal state, which shares its northern border with Southern Darfur. According to the IRIN News Network, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal is expecting an influx of Internally Displaced People (or IDPs) from Southern Darfur as conditions are expected to deteriorate as a result of the expulsion of the 16 NGOs. Although the report suggests that the UN and the Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission are “are preparing for potential inflows of Darfuris,” their arrival will certainly put a strain on the area’s already scarce infrastructure.

IDPs returning to Northern Bahr el_Ghazal in 2007 (courtesy IOM)

Since 2007, there has been a coordinated transport of hundreds of thousands of IDP returnees to Northern Bahr el-Ghazal from Southern Darfur and Khartoum. These people are returning to their homeland after being displaced during Sudan’s other civil war that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. Many are returning to rural locations without access to sanitation, safe drinking water, clinics or schools.

According to the International Organization for Migration (or IOM), many villages in the area have had a rate of IDP Returnees as high as 80-90% of their pre-2007 population. 2007 is the year when organized returns of Internally displaced people began in earnest with the help of IOM and the government of Southern Sudan.

waterhole in War Faj, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal

Access to safe drinking water is already in short supply throughout the state for those already living there. The influx of Darfuris could cause serious tensions at existing water sources and could lead to localized conflict. Waterborne infectious diseases, like cholera and meningitis, could become a serious problem.

To make matters worse, the rainy season is approaching. By the end of April, road travel will be become difficult and delivery of goods will be seriously impaired. Rain is a serious matter in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and neighbouring states. During the 2008 rainy season the state experienced serious flooding. During my time in the area, I’ve driven past remnants of nearly half a dozen temporary camps where thousands were displaced to during last year’s flooding.

Flood Map of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and Warrap States (courtesy UNJLC, Juba)

A March 1, 2009 report from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, writes, “The potential movement of 1.5 million displaced Darfur residents into Southern Sudan’s Northern and Western Bahr el-Ghazal states, due to disruptions in humanitarian assistance, presents a severe threat to food security in the two states.”

During a visit to Darfur four days after the ICC arrest warrant was issued President Al-Bashir said that his decision to expel the 16 NGOs from Darfur was “irreversible.” The position of the Khartoum government has not changed since, although they have vowed to replace the international NGOs with Sudanese agencies and end the need for aid in Darfur within the year. No clear solution is in sight.

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An interesting article about Fallout Scenarios as a result of the expulsion of 16 NGOs from Darfur can be found here.

Since the beginning of October, I’ve come to Le Cheval Blanc on Wednesday evenings to initiate a ritual meeting place among friends to establish tradition where non existed before. A recurrent gathering—without notice—to linger over a pint of locally brewed beer and discuss our respective projects and catch up on each other’s lives. Come after 17h00 and, barring lateness, I will be there. In my absence, carry on without me.

This ‘tradition’ is important now because I’m feeling somewhat shaky these days, having left much of my former professional self behind to begin anew. Bye bye book publishing. It was nice knowing you. We shared ten great years. But without the meetings, editorial schedules and launch deadlines, I find myself with blank agenda pages and insufficient diversity on any given day. Since I closed the bed & breakfast 77 days ago, the early breakfasts, dirty laundry and evening check-ins cease to guide my days with their punctual familiarity. And now I’ve moved to another part of town. Terra incognita. A potentially dreadful place if one is captivated by fear of the unknown. A place of potential crisis if left untethered. A panic attack circling like a pack of hyenas. A pocketed paper bag in the onslaught of hyperventilation. Luckily for me I thrive on change but it sometimes takes a bit of adjustment.

I don’t fear the horizon ahead of me, of falling of the edge of the world. I enjoy facing the open ocean imagining the current taking me toward the rest of the world. These are moments when everything is possible. It’s the potential of it all that makes new projects worth pursuing. And it’s precisely this potential that leads me to Africa or more precisely to Sudan, a place devastated by post-colonial war. I read in this morning’s newspaper that just yesterday, at the National Forum on Darfur, held in Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir called for a ceasefire in Darfur and the immediate disarmament of the Janjaweed militias 1, 2, 3, 4. Maybe the western region of Sudan will grasp the tenuous peace that continues in South Sudan, where I’m headed at the end of January or early February.

South Sudan may be one of the more remote and underdeveloped regions of the world but it is on the cusp of something new. Something great. Great because it has been at peace with the central Sudanese government since 2005, after two debilitating civil wars (1956-1972 & 1983-2005). Great because four million refugees are returning to their traditional homeland. Great because schools are being built to educate the girls and boys who have now experienced peace for the first time. Great because elections are coming in 2009 and the population is learning about democratic processes by state-sponsored, privately owned, and community media. Great because in 2011, the South can hold a referendum( as mandadted in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the northern Government of Sudan (GoS) and the southern-based Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement) that can give the South independence from the rest of Sudan. I’m not adverse to separation but I’d like to ask the South Sudanese what they want in their context.

Everyone knows that holding elections or referenda after decades of war can be volatile in the best of times, but its potential for holding onto the peace is palpable. I want to be there, as it unfolds, to witness, capture and understand this potential.

South Sudan, as a political entity in and of itself, is without tradition. Its existence is new, since the 2005 peace agreement. I am not referring to the traditions of the various community and ethnic groups, like the Dinka, Nuer, and 68 others listed by The Gurtong Peace Trust. Their respective traditions go back farther than anyone can accurately refer to. Theirs are oral histories that have been passed on through generations since the beginning of time.

The tradition I’m referring to is in the tradition of peace and co-habitation within a geographic area and political setting that did not really exist before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The Agreement was signed on January 9, 2005, beginning a 6-year interim period and establishing South Sudan as an autonomous region within Sudan.

Now midway in this interim period, Sudan is preparing for elections. The Fifth National Population Census is underway to reveal the demographics of the country but I’m particularly interested in the South. How many people actually make up its population? A difficult questions considering about half of the four million refugees have yet to return to their ancestral lands. Some are internally displaced within Sudan, others are refugees in neighbouring countries, while still others have taken refuge in Canada, the United States, and other western countries. How can so many people who are still on the move be accurately counted? And how accurate must the count be to consider election results fair and democratic? There hasn’t been an accurate census taken in Sudan since 1983 before the beginning of its 2nd civil war.

To give you an idea of the challenges, Southern Sudan’s land mass is huge with an area of about 640,000 square kilometres (about the size of France), with a population estimated somewhere between 7.5 and 9.7 million. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFDA), the population is expected to increase by as much as three million in the next six years due to the natural increase in population and the return of refugees and internally displaced people. Where will they all live? What infrastructure is needed to accommodate their arrival? What will they do when they get to where they are going? Humanitarian and development aid is needed in South Sudan to provide for those who are already there, so how much more is needed to accommodate the returnees? These are questions that are rarely discussed in Western media so how else is one supposed to genuinely understand without interviewing the few that follow the case closely and talking to the people living through the tumultuous changes? Although the peace holds a huge potential to rejuvenate a wounded land and its scattered people, its erratic interpretation by those who’ve only known war—and the geopolitical wrangling by those interested in the South’s resources—can foment crisis conditions reminiscent of the recent past.

If I can share challenges and successes of the peace process in written, audio and video reports and documentary films, which few others seem to be doing, then maybe it will be a little easier (if ever so slightly) for peace to settle in and make itself comfortable. That’s another reason I want to go.

Kapuscinski writes in the aforementioned book that experience has taught him that “situations of crisis appear more dire and dangerous from a distance than they do up close.” I tend to agree. He continues in the chapter about Zanzibar, that mythical island off the coast of Kenya, about when he chartered a plane from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar to report the previous day’s coup d’état there. He adds, “Our imaginations hungrily and greedily absorb every tiny bit of sensational news, the slightest portent of peril, the faintest whiff of gunpowder, and instantly inflate these signs to monstrous, paralyzing proportions.” Corporate media thrive on this sensationalism but I want to get past it; closer to the truth. However, Kapuscinski doesn’t denigrate the havoc that can reign during such times. He wrote “about those moments when calm, deep waters begin to churn and bubble into general chaos [...] it is easy to perish by accident, because someone didn’t hear something fully or didn’t notice something in time. On such days, the accident is king; it becomes history’s true determinant and master.”

I’ve never been prone to accidents and I plan on keeping it that way.

I’ve been asked over and over again, “Why Sudan?!” My immediate response — and the one which flows generously from my lips is, “Why not!” But I actually have dozens of reasons for chosing Sudan: First off, It’s the country with the largest geographic area in Africa and it’s in crisis! A 21-year civil war ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on January 9, 2005 between the government of The Sudan, based in country’s capital Khartoum and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) from the south of the country. The relative peace has persisted in the south of the country but another civil war in the western Sudananese region of Darfur rages on. The murderous attacks in Darfur started in 2003 between the Sudanese Army with its Janjaweed allies, and rebel forces: the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Since most attention is given to the war in Darfur (which it deserves), I though it would be interesting to learn about a part of Sudan that is in a post-conflict transition toward peace and democracy. Besides, I have a friend who is contracted by UNOPS and is based in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. And he said I can stay with him if I come. Although he may not be there when I go, he said he will help with contacts. How could I refuse an offer like that? Sudan is one of the least developed regions of the world, ranked 147th out of 177 countries in a 2007 UNDP Human Development Report. South Sudan (and the western region of Darfur) are the neglected areas of Sudan and may actually rank lower than the whole of Sudan.

Another reason to go to South Sudan, is to dive into my new identity without hesitation. Tear myself away from the complacency of North American comfort and go somewhere I know little about because mainstream media offers me little about this part of Sudan. Most of the killing is taking place elsewhere in the country, in Darfur. The same massacres that tormented the South are being repeated in Darfur. One civil war ends and another begins but the patterns remain the same. Foreign media follow the killings, express their outrage while forgetting Sudan’s past, its previous war. They ignore the future of the places they have left behind in search of front page stories, dreadful images and a higher circulation rates. Kaching.

I am interested in South Sudan’s future and I want to understand how its present will lead it there. I want to see for myself what the end of Africa’s longest civil war looks like. How quickly does the scent of peace waft across 589,745 km² to reach the 8.5 million people? What is the stench of peace to the millions of refugees now returning to the South, to villages whose ashes have long since melted into the desert? What does democracy taste like to the southerners who have an opportunity to vote for the first time in elections in 2009; and again in 2011 in a referendum for independence?

In Québec, we’ve had two referendums to decide whether or not to seperate from the rest of Canada. Both times (in 1980 and 1995) the electorate decided (in 1995 with a slight margin: 50.58% “No” to 49.42% “Yes”) that seperation was for another time. What will Sudan’s southerners decide? How will they be informed about the options and what are the logistic challenges for preparing for a referendum? Will the North government allow the South to take its land and resources behind international lines? These are questions I want to understand and questions I will investigate while on the ground in South Sudan. I arrive in Juba mid-January 2009.

For now, I have more reading to do. More contacts to make. An itinerary to determine. Interviews to set up and visas to obtain.