Arab world dismayed by prospect of Sudan split

The seemingly inevitable birth of a new nation in southern Sudan after Sunday's referendum is dismaying the Arab world which views the division of one of its members as an alarming precedent that could reverberate across the Middle East.

Like Sudan, many Arab states are afflicted by internal pressures stemming largely from ethnic and sectarian differences. Such rifts have come to the fore in recent years in countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Somalia.

Egypt, meanwhile, is reeling from the New Year's Eve bombing of a church in Alexandria that killed 25 Christians and has unleashed a wave of anger among the minority Coptic community against their government and Muslim countrymen.

"Arab commentators see what is happening in Sudan very much in the context of sectarianism taking a grip on the region," said Gerald Butt, the Cyprus-based author of several books on the Arab world. "The Kurds want their independent state in northern Iraq, the south Yemenis want their state and the southern Sudanese want their state."

Sudan's division between a predominantly Christian south and Arab Muslim north will also deal a demoralising blow to the region's cherished dream of "Arabism", Mr Butt added in an interview.

This decades-old ideal envisages a unified Arab world that had cohesion, even though it contained separate nation states whose borders - as in Africa - were mostly delineated by imperial European powers. These arbitrarily drawn boundaries rarely took into account the ethnic, tribal or demographic realities on the ground.

"Under the vision of Arabism, however, it didn't matter if you were a Christian or a Sunni or a Kurd, but now that dream is evaporating," Mr Butt said. "Whatever you thought of Saddam, he at least had this kind of umbrella of Arabism. But now we're seeing tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq and a similar situation in Lebanon."

Rami G Khouri, the editor at large of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper, argued this week that many Arab countries which do not face such internal strains have guaranteed their stability mainly through strong-armed security measures.

"The choice between a fractured state and a police state is not a very pleasant one for the ordinary Arab citizen, but it looms increasingly as the unfortunate reality for most Arabs," he wrote.

The Sudanese secession vote poses practical problems of another kind for Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country. US embassy documents recently published by WikiLeaks showed that Cairo lobbied Washington last year to delay the Sudanese referendum by four to six years, fearing that an independent south would fail and the division would imperil Egypt's vital access to Nile waters.

Many soul-searching Arab columnists have blamed the governance of Sudan's president, Omar al Bashir, for his country's imminent split.

They also argue that Arab leaders could have done more to resolve the Sudanese question both diplomatically and practically - by investing in development projects in Sudan's impoverished south.

"There is a school of thought that Sudan's government ... didn't give a good example to the people of the south," Abdelbari Atwan, editor-in-chief of al Quds al Arabi, a London-based pan-Arab daily, said in a telephone interview.

A Lebanese-based columnist, who declined to be named, added: "Bashir couldn't run a proper government and this has led to Sudan's split. The lesson to other Arab leaders is, if you can't govern properly, this is the result."

Another theme in Arab media is that the West, in particular the United States, egged on by Israel, has engineered Sudan's division to weaken the Arab world while Western powers bolster their own global muscle by expanding blocs such as the European Union.

Experts say Arab governments now have little choice but to accept the referendum's outcome, especially after Mr al Bashir this week visited southern Sudan - where he has long been reviled - to deliver a conciliatory message.

He declared it was the "right" of southern Sudan's population to secede if they chose to, even though he would be "sad" if they did. Last week he said he would be "the first to recognise the south".

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly expressed concern over the referendum without openly stating that it is opposed to it. Egypt, the Arab world's other main powerhouse, has called in the past for Sudan to remain united but recently, along with Libya, pledged to accept the referendum's results.

Egypt and Libya share long, porous borders with Sudan, which they view as part of their strategic backyard. Among other concerns, they worry that any post-referendum violence in Sudan could trigger a flow of refugees into their territory.

But fears of renewed civil warfare in Sudan have receded in recent weeks. Belated as it was, Mr al Bashir's trip south and his placatory message there eased tensions.

During a visit to Sudan this week, the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, expressed confidence that the vote would be peaceful. "I don't feel any inclination to hostilities between the two parties," he said.

That Sudan's separation takes place smoothly is now the main concern of Arab leaders, said Khaled al Maeena, the editor in chief of Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily. "And the first thing the Arab world must do is to have relations with this new state ... so that Israel will not jump in before us", he added in a telephone interview.

Most Arab countries are, however, likely to take their time in recognising an independent southern Sudan, Mr Butt said. "There will still be a hope that the country can somehow be stitched back together again."

Salva Kiir, the president of southern Sudan's semi-autonomous government, has been at pains to ease Arab jitters. He insisted this week that his administration had no ties to Israel and declared that an independent southern Sudan would continue to have "good relations with the entire Arab world".

Analysts say Arab countries, in turn, will be keen to foster good relations with a new southern Sudanese state because its influence over Nile waters will give it strategic weight.

Taking a more sanguine view than many Arab columnists, Mr Khouri of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper, argued that the Sudanese referendum "should be seen as a positive development if it turns out to be peaceful".

Sunday's vote, he wrote, is "remarkable because it may be the only explicit and credible case of Arab people exercising the opportunity to define their country's shape and its ideological orientation".

mtheodoulou@thenational.ae

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