WORLD’S NEWEST STATE – SOUTH SUDAN

WORLD’S NEWEST STATE – SOUTH SUDAN

Guest Column:  By Rajeev Sharma

On July 9, 2011 a new country has come on the international map – Republic of South Sudan. With an eye on China’s already massive presence in the African continent, India has hit the ground running in South Sudan. Vice President Hamid Ansari has represented India in the official celebrations of the birth of South Sudan in its capital Juba. 

India already has a vibrant presence in Sudan and has been having multifaceted and substantial ties with Sudan. India has determinedly pursued southern Sudan for years when it became clear that the birth of a new country was only a matter of time. The Indian diplomatic establishment must be congratulated for making India one of the first Asian countries to open a consulate in Juba in 2007. The diplomatic engagement with South Sudan has been frequent and intense. There have been important to and fro visits between India and South Sudan. Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed,, visited Juba in June 2011 and concretized a road map for intensifying cooperation with South Sudan. A month prior to that Dr. Pricilla Kuch, minister in the office of South Sudan President, had visited New Delhi and met Vice President Ansari and External Affairs Minister SM Krishna. India had also stayed engaged with South Sudan leadership during the recent India-Africa Forum Summit held in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). 

India has also been vigorously implementing its economic aid diplomacy with South Sudan. It recently pledged five million US dollars for development assistance of South Sudan and capacity building projects such as a Vocational Training Centre and a Rural Technology Park under its Aid to Africa programme. Sudan is a major beneficiary under India’s Technical and Economic Cooperation programme. To continue with this engagement with South Sudan under this programme, India recently announced 75 additional seats for South Sudan. The Pan-Africa E-Network Project undertaken by India in Africa many years ago has been a run-away success and India has already conveyed to South Sudan leadership of its plans to extend the entire package of Pan-Africa E-Network, including its tele-medicine and tele-education components, to Juba. Moreover, India has been one of the largest contributors of troops to the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). This is in addition to the notable contribution of Indian police officers to both UNMIS and the Government of South Sudan. 

In fact, India’s intense diplomatic engagement with South Sudan has been going on for well over six years. In January 2005, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between Sudan and South Sudan in Naivasha, Kenya which was witnessed by E. Ahamed, who was Minister of State for External Affairs at that time also. On the basis of this agreement, a referendum on South Sudan was held on January 9, 2011 that brought to an end two-decade-old hostility between North and South Sudan. India has supported this peace agreement to the hilt. The people of South Sudan overwhelmingly voted with a majority with 99.77% for the creation of a new state. 

India will be watching the strategic implications of the birth of the new nation in Africa very closely because it is yet to be seen whether Sudan and South Sudan will have an amicable separation or whether they will go the India-Pakistan way. The two nations are intrinsically connected to each other and also inter-dependent on one another. Their substantial oil resources and income from oil exports would be an important glue to bind them together. 

Sharing of oil resources and the income thereof is a major problem area where slight differences can snowball quickly and jeopardize their relationship at the very outset. In fact, how the two neighbours handle their oil wealth will be the biggest test for their fledgling ties. Another equally volatile problem is the international debt that has accrued to Sudan as a single country over the decades. On both these issues, the two sides have been holding talks for quite some time but a resolution has remained elusive. 

The intricacy stems from the fact that three-quarters of Sudan’s oil production – an impressive half a million barrels per day, most of which is exported – comes from South Sudan. Will South Sudan proclaim sovereign ownership over its oil fields? Will Juba tell Khartoum that it will not share oil revenue? These are some of the tricky questions that still have no answers. But South Sudan cannot alienate Sudan and the two have to co-exist peacefully for the simple reason that though most of the oil production is from South Sudan, it is transported to the world oil markets through a network of pipelines that traverse through Sudan.

It is quite likely that South Sudan will declare sole ownership of its oil wealth. In that scenario, Sudan will be demanding transit fees from South Sudan. Sudan may demand a hefty transit fee amount in an attempt to force Juba to abandon the transit fee issue and settle for a simpler oil revenue sharing mechanism. All these issues are still in the womb of time and the two countries will start formal negotiations only after July 9. 

Another major strategic imperative for Sudan is that it does not lose any further territory after creation of South Sudan. The Darfur regions, the southern Kordofan area and the autonomous region of Abeyi are familiar bug bears for Sudan’s security managers. Many neighbouring nations have been eyeing these regions for long. Sudan will obviously not like a situation wherein it has to deploy sizeable armed troops on its borders with South Sudan, a luxury it can ill afford. 

It is in this context that both the countries can turn to India for learning how not to replicate an India-Pakistan situation between them. There is no better country than India to tell Sudan and South Sudan how an untreated wound can turn into a festering ulcer. India has seen this happening with Pakistan for the last 67 years. Though India cannot claim to be a tutor of the world for peace making, it can definitely teach Sudan and South Sudan on how to smoke the peace pipe.

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