The World's Newest Countries (34 Created Since 1990) Thirteen other countries became independent through a variety of causes. March 21, 1990 - Namibia became independent of South Africa. May 22, 1990 - North and South Yemen merged to form a unified Yemen . October 3, 1990 - East Germany and West Germany merged to form a unified Germany after the fall of the Iron Curtain. September 17, 1991 - The Marshall Islands was part of the Trust Territory of Pacific Islands (administered by the United States) and gained independence as a former colony. September 17, 1991 - Micronesia , previously known as the Caroline Islands, became independent from the United States. January 1, 1993 - The Czech Republic and Slovakia became independent nations when Czechoslovakia dissolved. May 25, 1993 - Eritrea was a part of Ethiopia but seceded and gained independence.

October 1, 1994 - Palau was part of the Trust Territory of Pacific Islands (administered by the United States) and gained independence as a former colony. May 20, 2002 - East Timor (Timor-Leste) declared independence from Portugal in 1975 but did not became independent from Indonesia until 2002. June 3, 2006 - Montenegro was part of Serbia and Montenegro (also known as Yugoslavia) but gained independence after a referendum. June 5, 2006 - Serbia became its own entity after Montenegro split. Febraury 17, 2008 - Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. July 9, 2011 - South Sudan peacefully seceded from Sudan following a January 2011 referendum. Sudan itself was the first to recognize South Sudan and did so one day early, on July 8, 2011.

After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation - The New York Times The New York Times Africa |After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation Search Continue reading the main story Photo President Salva Kiir gathered with leaders from around the world to celebrate South Sudan’s independence. Credit Tyler Hicks/The New York Times JUBA, South Sudan — The celebrations erupted at midnight. Thousands of revelers poured into Juba’s steamy streets in the predawn hours on Saturday, hoisting enormous flags, singing, dancing and leaping on the back of cars. “Freedom!” they screamed. A new nation was being born in what used to be a forlorn, war-racked patch of Africa, and to many it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After more than five decades of an underdog, guerrilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic of South Sudan , Africa’s 54th state, was about to declare its independence in front of a who’s who of Africa, including the president of the country letting it go: Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan , a war-crimes suspect.

Many of those who turned out to celebrate, overcome with emotion, spoke of their fathers, mothers, sons and daughters killed in the long struggle to break free from the Arab-dominated north. “My whole body feels happy,” said George Garang, an English teacher who lost his father, grandfather and 11 brothers in the war. Continue reading the main story By sunrise, the crowds were surging through the streets of Juba, the capital, to the government quarter, where the declaration of independence would be read aloud. Thousands of soldiers lined the freshly painted curbs, tiger patches on their arms, assault rifles in their hands. This new nation is being built on a guerrilla army — the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, whose field commanders are now South Sudan’s political leaders — and the amount of firepower here is unnerving. Advertisement Continue reading the main story By 9 a.m., the sun was dangerous. The faces, necks and arms of the people packed thousands deep around a parade stand built for the occasion were glazed with sweat. A woman abruptly slumped to the dirt and was whisked away. “She fainted because she’s happy,” said a man in the crowd.

“There will be many others today.” In a column of black polished steel, one brand-new Mercedes after another, came the African leaders: Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president; Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s; Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia; Teodoro Obiang, Equatorial Guinea’s president and chairman of the African Union; Mwai Kibaki, Kenya’s president; and Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, among others. Video The Republic of South Sudan After more than five decades of guerrilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic of South Sudan, Africa's 54th state, declared its independence. By Nichole Sobecki|Vijai Singh on Publish Date July 9, 2011. . Watch in Times Video » embed But, almost inexplicably, Mr. Bashir, who for years prosecuted a vicious war to keep the south from splitting off and to prevent this very day from happening, drew the loudest burst of applause when his motorcade rolled in. “It is not happiness,” explained Daniel Atem, dressed in a suit and tie for the occasion, a miniflag flying from his lapel.

“If you are talking to your enemy, you cannot say, You are bad.” But, he added, “you know what is in your heart.” From the mid-1950s, even before Sudan shook off its colonial yoke in 1956, the southern Sudanese were chafing for more rights. Sudan had an unusually clear fault line, reinforced by British colonizers, with the southern third mostly animist and Christian and the northern part majority Muslim and long dominated by Arabs. The southern struggle blew up into a full-fledged rebellion in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s, and the Sudanese government responded brutally, bombing villages and unleashing Arab militias that massacred civilians and enslaved southern Sudanese children. Many of the same scorched-earth tactics associated with the crisis in Darfur, in Sudan’s west, in the mid-2000s, were tried and tested long before that here in southern Sudan. (The International Criminal Court has indicted Mr. Bashir on genocide charges for the Darfur massacres.) The central government also sowed divisions among the southerners, turning ethnic groups against one another.

Some of the most unspeakable violence, like the Bor massacre in 1991 when toddlers were impaled on fence posts, was internecine. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Christian groups had been championing the southern Sudanese since the 19th century. And their efforts paid off in 2000 when George W. Bush was elected president of the United States. He elevated Sudan to near the top of his foreign policy agenda, and in 2005, the American government pushed the southern rebels and the central government — both war weary and locked in a military stalemate — to sign a comprehensive peace agreement that guaranteed the southerners the right to secede. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up embed “Mabrook Janoob Sudan!” they yelled. “Congratulations South Sudan!” South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, wearing his signature black cowboy hat given to him by Mr. Bush, signed the interim Constitution. Then the speeches began. “This is a beautiful day for Africa,” said Joseph Deiss, president of the United Nations General Assembly.

“This is a remarkable achievement, a longstanding conflict has been stopped.” Perhaps. But South Sudan — Texas-size and with about eight million people — is already plagued by ethnic tensions and rebellions. More than a half-dozen renegade groups are battling the government, some with thousands of fighters. And relations with the north are still dicey. Negotiators have yet to agree on a formula to split the revenue from the south’s oilfields, which have kept the economies of both southern and northern Sudan afloat. And Mr. Bashir’s army has been pounding southern-allied rebels who have refusing to disarm just north of the border in the Nuba Mountains, which some analysts worry could drag the whole region back into a full-scale war. This is why Mr. Bashir’s presence here was such a curiosity. He did sign the peace agreement in 2005, and many southerners, however mixed their feelings are, are grateful to him for that. He seemed in a magnanimous mood on Saturday. “This moment came through peace,” Mr. Bashir said.

“We must respect it.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story He even thanked the United Nations for its hard work and said he wanted to bring peace to Darfur, though he did slip in, “Sudan’s unity would have been better,” but “I convinced myself that unity shouldn’t be through war.” Mr. Kiir then shared a few words. “We have waited for more than 56 years for this,” he said. “It is a dream that has come true.” “This land has seen untold suffering and death,” he added, somberly. “We have been bombed enslaved and treated worse than a refugee in our own country. We have to forgive, though we will not forget.” The independence ceremony then wrapped up much in the way the struggle began: with a barrage of very loud cannon shots. The crowd pumped their fists in the air and hollered, “South Sudan, oh yay!” Josh Kron contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on July 10, 2011, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Struggle Over, Independent South Sudan Rejoices.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe South Sudan becomes an independent nation - BBC News BBC News South Sudan becomes an independent nation 9 July 2011 Close share panel Media captionThe BBC's Will Ross describes the celebrations in the capital Juba South Sudan has become the world's newest nation, the climax of a process made possible by the 2005 peace deal that ended a long and bloody civil war. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are among international dignitaries attending celebrations in the capital, Juba. Sudan earlier became the first state to officially recognise its new neighbour. The south's independence follows decades of conflict with the north in which some 1.5 million people died. Celebrations in Juba began at midnight (2100 GMT). A countdown clock in the city centre reached zero and the new national anthem was played on television. South Sudan became the 193rd country recognised by the UN and the 54th UN member state in Africa. At the scene By Peter MartellBBC News, Juba Officials had planned for people to hold quiet celebrations at home, with the formal declaration of independence due later on Saturday.

But the people clearly couldn't wait. Two hours before midnight and lines of cars zoomed around town packed with people waving flags and waiting to celebrate. When the final countdown arrived, the atmosphere was wild. Groups ran down roads, dancing to drum beats. Soldiers and policemen joined in too, waving paper flags and laughing. A sign read: "Congratulations, free at last, South Sudan." But the people didn't need to read the message - they were already dancing and leaping with happiness. "It is a shout of freedom," said Alfred Tut, lifting his head back and screaming. South Sudanese celebrate their divorce The BBC's Will Ross in Juba says the new country's problems have been put aside for the night amid an air of great jubilation. People were in the streets, cheering, waving South Sudan flags, banging drums and chanting the name of President Salva Kiir Mayardit, he adds. A formal independence ceremony is due to be held later on Saturday. The Speaker of the South Sudan Legislative Assembly, James Wani Igga, is expected to read out the Proclamation of the Independence of South Sudan at 1145 (0845 GMT).

Minutes later Sudan's national flag will be lowered and the new flag of South Sudan will be raised. In addition to Mr Bashir and Mr Ban, attendees will include former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the US permanent representative to the UN, Susan Rice, and the head of the US military's Africa Command, Gen Carter Ham. Under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, a referendum was held on independence, which was favoured by more than 99% of voters. The new country is rich in oil, but one of the least developed countries in the world, where one in seven children dies before the age of five. Unresolved disputes between the north and south, particularly over the new border, have also raised the possibility of renewed conflict. On Friday, Sudan's Minister of Presidential Affairs, Bakri Hassan Saleh, announced that it recognised "the Republic of South Sudan as an independent state, according to the borders existing on 1 January 1956", when Sudan gained independence from Britain.

South Sudan Size: 619,745 sq km (239,285 sq miles), larger than Spain and Portugal combined Major languages: English, Arabic (both official), Juba Arabic, Dinka Religion: Traditional and a Christian minority Main export: Oil Challenges ahead: One of world's least developed countries: Worst maternal mortality rate; most children below 13 not in school; 84% of women are illiterate Relations with Sudan: Dividing debts and oil; border disputes; citizenship Security: At least seven active rebel groups Q&A: South Sudan independence 'Southern brothers' President Bashir, who agreed the 2005 peace deal with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), stressed his country's "readiness to work with our southern brothers and help them set up their state so that, God willing, this state will be stable and develop". "The co-operation between us will be excellent, particularly when it comes to marking and preserving the border so there is a movement of citizens and goods via this border," he told journalists in Khartoum.

Fears of fresh conflict resurfaced after recent fighting in two border areas, Abyei and South Kordofan, which forced some 170,000 people from their homes. But separate deals - and the withdrawal of rival forces from the border - have calmed tensions. The UN Security Council has passed a resolution approving a new 7,000-strong peacekeeping force for South Sudan - but this is basically a rebranding of the force which was already in Sudan, mostly in the south. Khartoum has said its mandate would not be renewed, leading the US to argue that the 1,000 UN troops should be allowed to remain in South Kordofan. The 1,000 troops in the disputed town of Abyei are to be replaced by 4,200 Ethiopian soldiers. Our correspondent says keeping both the north and the south stable long after the celebratory parties have ended will be a mighty challenge. Media captionAll you need to know about South Sudan's independence The two sides must still decide on issues such as drawing up the new border and how to divide Sudan's debts and oil wealth.

Analysts say the priority for Khartoum will be to negotiate a favourable deal on oil revenue, as most oilfields lie in the south. At present, the revenues are being shared equally. Khartoum has some leverage, as most of the oil pipelines flow north to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Citizenship is also a key issue which has not yet been decided. A new law passed by the National Assembly in Khartoum has withdrawn Sudanese citizenship from all southerners. The UN refugee agency (UNCHR), has urged both governments to prevent statelessness. How to Become a Country in 3 Easy Steps How to Become a Country in 3 Easy Steps By Remy Melina | February 8, 2011 01:10pm ET MORE Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir has announced that, after two civil wars, the southern region of Sudan will separate from the north on July 9. What must the new Republic of South Sudan do to establish itself as a country, and how will it become the United Nations' 193rd member state?

In three easy steps, here's how to become an independent country: Step 1 Declare independence To establish a new country, the country must first satisfy the international laws rules that all free countries generally acknowledge and follow set forth by the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, adopted in 1933. The Montevideo Convention requires that a country must declare its intentions, which Southern Sudan did when a January referendum let the world know that people in the region plan to secede from its northern counterpart this summer. New countries are also required to exist within a clearly defined territory, and South Sudan's ongoing dispute with Northern Sudan over the two nations' official boundaries could hamper that process. Another requirement that the country have a permanent population necessitates that Southern Sudan negotiate the issues of citizenship and residency, as millions of southerners work in the north and vice versa. South Sudan has already met the requirement that the new country must have a government , with Sudan's current vice president Salva Kiir Mayardit already elected to serve as South Sudan's first president. The requirement that the country must be able to enter into relations with other sovereign states also appears to be met, as the U.S.

has already set up a diplomatic mission in Sudan's southern capital, Juba. Step 2 Gain recognition In order to be legitimate, a new country must be recognized by existing states within the international community. Each existing state bestows recognition at its own discretion, and several entities (including Taiwan, Palestine and Kosovo) are recognized as legitimate states by some countries, but not by others. In the U.S., the decision to grant a country recognition is made by the president, and President Barack Obama declared on Feb. 2 that the U.S. will recognize southern Sudan as a new, independent country in July. Experts are optimistic that other countries will recognize the Republic of South Sudan. "Sudan is almost certain to be guaranteed recognition," Alexander J. Motyl, a political science professor at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of "Imperial Ends: The Decline, Collapse, and Revival of Empires" (Columbia University Press, 2001), told Life's Little Mysteries. "The referendum was recognized by the international community and the U.S. in particular, and it's generally recognized as having been the victim of genocide.

Hence: their grievance and the legal procedure are both considered legitimate." Step 3 Join the United Nations The United Nations asserts that, because it itself is not a country, it does not possess any authority to recognize a state or government . But being admitted into the U.N. goes a long way toward a new country becoming recognized by the international community. In order to apply for U.N. membership, the aspiring country first needs to send an application letter, along with a declaration that it will follow the United Nations charter, to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The application is then passed along to the Security Council, where it must get the affirmative votes of at least nine of the 15-member Council. If any of the council's five permanent members (China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the U.S.) vote against the country, the application does not go forward. If approved, the Council's recommendation for admission is then presented to the General Assembly for consideration, which consists of the current 192 U.N. member states.

A two-thirds majority vote is needed for the new country to gain admission into the U.N., and if approved, its membership becomes effective on the date the resolution for admission is adopted. Which 30 countries decided to be independent? - BBC News BBC News Which 30 countries decided to be independent? 5 February 2013 Close share panel Image caption Celebrations after results in the Southern Sudan referendum in 2011 The Scottish government says it will take until March 2016 for Scotland to become independent if there is a "Yes" vote in the referendum in autumn next year. First Minister Alex Salmond said the timescale was in line with previous international experience. He told BBC Scotland: "30 countries have gone through the process of having a referendum and then becoming independent.

"The average timescale for these 30 countries since the Second World War is 15 months - we've actually allowed a bit longer than that in the process." Mr Salmond then asked: "If 30 other countries managed to do it, then why couldn't Scotland?" The Scottish government has given the BBC a list of the 30 countries which it says have decided on independence since World War II - along with the year they took UN membership. 1960 Central African Republic 1960 Dahomey (Republic of Benin) 1960 Upper Volta (Burkino Faso) 1960 Togo 1980 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 1981 Vanuatu 1993 The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 1994 Palau South Sudan celebrates a sweet day of separation | World news | The Guardian Close This article is 5 years old David Morbe had paint on his jeans, his shirt, his hands and the frames of his black-rimmed glasses. Beads of sweat clung to his forehead and ran down his back, past the inch-long shrapnel scar.

Chisel in hand, he walked slowly around the base of his giant sculpture, carefully inspecting the detail on the eagle crest in front, and the name inscribed on the back – John Garang de Mabior. Morbe knew that nothing he created would ever be as important as the four-metre tall statue of South Sudan's liberation hero that he and his two fellow sculptors had conceived and built. It was Friday evening in Juba, the southern capital. In a matter of hours, tens of thousands of people, virtually all of whom had suffered in some way during nearly 40 years of conflict since the end of colonial rule, would surround the statue on this dirt field to celebrate the birth of their nation, after a tragic false start 55 years ago. "The independence of Sudan back then was the beginning of slavery in South Sudan ," said Morbe, 35, as the sun began to set. "This is going to be the real independence for our people." The moment arrived shortly after noon in sweltering heat on Saturday.

Watched by dozens of heads of state, including Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, the south's wartime enemy, southern president Salva Kiir – black suit, black tie, black cowboy hat – unveiled Morbe's statue to huge cheers. Christian and Muslim leaders said prayers, and Sudan's national anthem played. "That's the last one [that we sing], the end!" shouted a government official gleefully in the VIP stands. A man dressed as the Statue of Liberty held a sign that read: "Free at last. Republic of South Sudan." Soldiers and traditional dance troupes paraded by before the Speaker of the southern parliament read the independence proclamation. The Sudanese flag was lowered, and the flag of South Sudan raised. Kiir took the oath of office. The north-south, Arab-non-Muslim divide that has always existed in Sudan was made official; the country split in two. "We congratulate our brothers in the south for the establishment of their new state," said Bashir, taking to the podium. "The will of the people of the south has to be respected." Congratulations flooded in from afar.

David Cameron, who was represented by Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, said it was "an historic day, for South Sudan and the whole of Africa". "Reaching this moment has required leadership and statesmanship from all sides. The actions of the government in Khartoum in recognising South Sudan's independence have been significant, and I hope that today marks the beginning of a new and peaceful chapter in relations between north and south." The US president, Barack Obama, granted South Sudan immediate recognition as an independent state. "Today is a reminder that, after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible," he said. In the huge crowd, where boys held up paper flags and women ululated, emotions were barely contained. "This is very great actually," said Taifa Kuer, a finance ministry official who, at the age of seven, became one of Sudan's famous "Lost Boys", marching for a month to Ethiopia before returning to fight for the rebel cause when he was just 14.

"We have prepared for the next generation so they won't suffer like we had to." Like many elated southerners, Kuer seemed stunned that the day had in fact arrived, which was perhaps unsurprising, given the mistrust that has existed between the north and south. Indeed, when Bashir and the then rebel leader Garang signed a peace deal to end the second, 21-year-long civil war in 2005, many doubted it would last. The agreement allowed for a six-year interim period where the south would govern itself, and have an equal share with the north of the revenues from the oil produced from beneath its own soil. The prize at the end of the transition was a vote for southerners on unity or secession. Garang advocated unity – the southern struggle was a struggle for marginalised people all over Sudan, he argued – but when he was killed in a helicopter crash just a few months after the peace deal the notion of unity died with him. In the referendum in January, 99% of voters chose secession.

The results spoke less of southern unity – there are dozens of ethnic groups in the south, and no real collective identity – than a desperate desire to rid themselves of the decades-long oppression and marginalisation by the northern government. When it achieved independence from Britain in 1956, Sudan was two distinct regions and peoples joined into one: a dry, Arab-dominated north, and a more lush, ethnically African south. The tension and suspicions were already rife; indeed, southern rebels had already taken up arms the year before, fearing, correctly, that the Arab leaders in Khartoum would exploit and abuse them. Charity Yuyada, 68, who watched the ceremony on television in Juba because she was "too old" to attend in person, remembered being forced to take school classes in Arabic rather than English. "That made us hate that language and the [Arab] people," she said. That first war lasted 17 years, and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Yuyada spent two and half years living in the bush. Peace lasted from 1972 to 1983, before Garang launched a new rebellion led by his Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

So heavy was the fighting in the countryside that Yuyada was forced to move to Juba, which was held by northern forces. When the SPLA launched attacks on the city in 1990, Yuyada moved to Khartoum for safety. She stayed there, a second-class citizen separated from her extended family, until this January, when she returned to Juba a day before the referendum. "In that 21 years of war we had lost hope of freedom," she said. "I'm so happy we are separating." But her excitement could not hide her lingering bitterness, which was also plain to see in the town centre. Among the many banners offering positive messages for the new country's future, there was this poem, printed on a banner sponsored by the Ministry of Energy and Mining: Our independence south is our separate house That embrace all the southerners To live freely in the bush Africans with our own traditions Herders after cows Illiterate with the goat leathers Backwards with the bird feathers Much better than to be scholars, Under the Arabs' domination" Morbe, the sculptor, had in fact been a scholar under Arab domination.

He was born and raised in Juba, suffering the shrapnel wound during the SPLA offensive on the city in the early 1990s. "It was a terrible time here during the war, not possible to describe," he said. "But we bore it." He was desperate to join the rebels, but it proved extremely difficult, since nobody was allowed to leave Juba without the permission of the northern government. So he concentrated on his studies, and in 2002 he won at place in the fine arts programme at Sudan University of Science and Technology, in Khartoum. On graduation, he wanted to take up a teaching post, but was denied "because I am a southern and I am not Muslim", he said. Instead, he returned to the south, finding work as a teaching assistant at Juba University's arts faculty. Last year, together with two other southern fine arts graduates, Anthony Gordon and Emmanuel Mateayo, he came up with the idea of a giant sculpture to commemorate the new nation. After presenting the proposal to the government's council of ministers, they received the go-ahead and a budget – and the news that the statue would be the centrepiece of the independence celebrations.

"I am so proud to have been part of this moment," Morbe said. "This day that we have wished for." Africa's new country | SocialistWorker.org Analysis: David Whitehouse Africa's new country David Whitehouse provides the background to the recent referendum in South Sudan, where voters overwhelmingly backed secession. January 26, 2011 Waiting in line to vote in the referendum (Al Jazeera) EXPECTATIONS OF a better life ran high as voters in South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for independence in mid-January. "You will be able to eat what you want and do what you want," one voter told the New York Times. That's a tall order, of course, in a new country ravaged by decades of civil war, where most people live on less than 75 cents a day, and nearly half are "food deprived," according to the UN. Yet festive crowds waited for hours in scorching heat to vote. Turnout was well over the 60 percent threshold for certifying the results, and early returns suggest that the officially tally may exceed 95 percent in favor of secession from Sudan.

Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president and the man in charge of much of the carnage inflicted in the South, saw the writing on the wall as the election approached. He launched bombing raids in the South as recently as December, but when faced with near-unanimous rejection of his regime--and under heavy pressure from the U.S. and its regional allies--Bashir agreed to honor the result of the vote. Final terms still need to be worked out before official separation can take place in July, including key points about sharing the proceeds from Africa's third-most productive oil fields. The 2005 peace treaty that ended the civil war also mandated the referendum on secession and specified, in the meantime, that oil money would be split 50-50 between North and South. Some 80 percent of the proven reserves lie in the South, but all of the oil currently runs through a pipeline to Port Sudan in the North. Many observers predict that a resumption of civil war is unlikely because the two sides need to cooperate if either is to reap significant revenue from oil.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - AFTER THE South Sudanese themselves, the next most enthusiastic advocates of Southern secession may be members of the U.S. business and national security establishment. The U.S. supported the Southern rebels in the late phases of the civil war, as the regime in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, became a vocal opponent of U.S. policy in the Muslim world. At the same time, U.S. sanctions against Sudan--in particular, the inclusion of Sudan on the list of "state sponsors of terrorism"--prohibited U.S. companies from cashing in on Sudan's growing oil business. Capital from China, along with Malaysia and India, filled the investment vacuum. China has spent more than $8 billion to get Sudan's oil flowing, including the construction of the key pipeline. Sudan currently supplies 30 percent of the oil consumed in China. It's little wonder that the U.S. was eager to broker the 2005 peace treaty, as officials hoped that Sudanese markets could soon open to U.S. companies. Bashir had already turned into a partial collaborator in the U.S.

"war on terror," so the way seemed clear to normalizing relations. The greedy smiles disappeared, however, when Khartoum responded to another U.S.-approved insurgency--in Darfur--with mass murder. In the face of worldwide horror at the new civil war in the west, the lifting of U.S. sanctions had to be put off indefinitely. The U.S. turned to Plan B: Get South Sudan ready for independence, and--voilà--the U.S. would have a new oil-rich client that's open for business. Covert aid to the Southern rebel force, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), became open assistance from DynCorp, a CIA-infused private contractor whose toolkit ranges from oilfield logistics to military training--a for-profit activity that's apparently allowed while sanctions are in place. With military-to-military connections cemented even before the birth of the new country, the U.S. enlisted the help of regional allies to broker this year's vote. This includes Uganda and Kenya, which already have significant investments in the South. South Africa sent former President Thabo Mbeki to be the prime mediator in negotiations over the terms of the referendum.

As president, Mbeki brokered the 2005 peace treaty with U.S. help. One foreign policy specialist in Johannesburg told the Inter Press Service that South African president Jacob Zuma's "first step would be to pay a state visit to the new country and take a big South African business delegation with him. It's about opening up opportunities for South Africa in a new country." The U.S. special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration, promised U.S.-backed security, infrastructure and investment to induce local governors, chiefs and strongmen to smooth the way to the independence vote. Sarah Childress remarked in the Wall Street Journal that the efforts of Gration and others "marks an apparent victory for U.S. foreign policy in east Africa--one that has secured for Washington a deeper advisory role" in the new nation. Childress neglected to note that the U.S. "victory" is a coup against its global rival, China.

She kept her eye on the bottom line, noting that "[p]roduction and concessions in the oil-rich south have long been controlled by the north, and it will take time before the South is able to assume control of the business or open its doors to Western companies." Meanwhile, other U.S. diplomats and Sen. John Kerry pressured Bashir in person, and Barack Obama wrote him directly to say that the U.S. would remove Sudan from the State Department list of terror sponsors if Bashir allowed and honored the independence vote. Obama's offer has a dual purpose, of course. Lifting of U.S. sanctions is a major inducement for a regime that may soon lose substantial oil revenue, and it would also complete the reopening of Sudan to U.S. investment. It's not clear whether Obama's offer places any conditions on the regime's behavior in Darfur, where 300,000 have died and ceasefire agreements come and go. In fact, some observers predict an intensification of the conflict as Darfurians take heart from the example of the referendum in South Sudan. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE SOUTH'S revolt has deep roots, beginning long before U.S.

officials became sympathetic to it. The civil war began when Southern soldiers mutinied against Northern officers in 1955, a year before independence from Britain. War continued at different intensities for 50 years, with barely a decade of peace, from 1972-83. The South's grievances centered around the longstanding concentration of power in the hands of Northerners. After independence, the best jobs and services remained in the northern Nile valley known as the "Arab triangle." Seventy percent of residents in the three provinces around Khartoum have access to piped water, while Southerners rely on wells and boreholes--and make do with less than 100 miles of paved roads. Successive regimes in Khartoum also conducted campaigns to spread the dominance of Arabic and the influence of Islam--although most Sudanese speak African languages, while most residents of the South are Christian or animist. The most recent phase of the war followed Chevron's 1978 discovery of oil in the South. In 1983, U.S.-backed President Gaafar Nimeiry put down a new army mutiny and dissolved the Southern Regional Government.

Nimeiry, who had recently gained the backing of religious parties, also imposed shariah law. Within months, Southerners founded the SPLA, commanded by economist-turned-soldier John Garang, who studied at Grinnell College in Iowa and received officer training at Fort Benning. In 1985, a popular uprising centered in Khartoum, including a general strike over food and fuel prices, overthrew Nimeiry. Power, however, fell to a military-security elite that continued repression and pressed forward Nimeiry's campaign of "Islamization." In the South, the regime supported the growing reach of Islamic banks. Their investment plans included the mechanization of agriculture, a program that harmonized with demands from the International Monetary Fund and USAID to replace subsistence farming with production of cash crops for export. The policy "drew new regions into the civil war," according to a book by specialist Douglas Johnson. Khartoum pioneered a war strategy of arming indigenous ethnic militias to massacre and displace members of ethnic groups that supported the rebellion, thus freeing up choice land for the regime's allies--and clearing oil-rich areas of potential rebels.

The regime later employed this practice of building up proxy militias in Sudan's west when it armed the Arabic-speaking Janjaweed against rebels in Darfur after 2000. You'd never know it from today's pious intonations about human rights and self-determination--or the rhetoric of war against Islamist radicalism--but in the 1980s, the U.S. supported the repression in the South, even when Khartoum-backed militias were taking Southerners as slaves for sale in the North. Oil was a consideration, but the U.S. also backed the Sudanese dictatorship because the Soviet-aligned regime of Haile Mengistu in Ethiopia was backing the Southern rebels. In 1991, the Soviet Union broke up, and the Mengistu regime collapsed. Khartoum, which had served the U.S. as a strategic counterweight to Soviet influence in the region, was suddenly not so useful. Besides, the latest Sudanese regime--led by Bashir along with radical Islamist Hassan al-Turabi--supported Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. In response, George H.W. Bush cut off aid to Sudan in the middle of a regional famine.

In the ensuing years, the U.S.-backed Ugandan regime of Yoweri Museveni took up Mengistu's role as the cross-border supporter of the Southern rebels, a move that signaled that the U.S. had switched sides. WikiLeaks recently revealed that the U.S. nodded approval for years while another regional client, Kenya, shipped arms to the SPLA. In retaliation against Uganda, Bashir's government supported the cultish Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda, a group that has since spread depredation in Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. Many voters in the Southern referendum this month have said they fear that Bashir could interfere with an independent South Sudan by continuing to support groups like the LRA. This includes militias in the disputed and oil-rich Abyei region on the border between North and South. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - AS THE U.S. was shifting its support toward the Southern rebels, the regime in the North, under the influence of Turabi, was setting itself up as a center of Islamist politics.

Turabi hosted a range of Islamists, from relatively mainstream figures to radicals including Osama bin Laden, who, like Turabi and Bashir, had broken with the U.S. over its use of Saudi Arabia as a staging ground for war in the Middle East. Previously, bin Laden was a Cold War ally of the U.S. against the Russians in Afghanistan. In 1993, Bill Clinton's State Department put Sudan on the list of state sponsors of terror. Two years later, the Bashir regime made an overture to the West by assisting France in the capture of "Carlos the Jackal," but in 1996, the U.S. pulled its diplomats from Khartoum, saying that their lives were threatened. According to Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, the U.S. pullout followed a decision by Khartoum CIA station chief Cofer Black to put bin Laden under surveillance. Bin-Laden apparently concluded that the U.S. planned to kill him, and sent his own assassin to try to kill Black. Black later became chief of the al-Qaeda task force at CIA headquarters and now chairs a Blackwater subsidiary. In 1996, just months after the U.S.

pulled its diplomats and spies from Khartoum, Bashir expelled bin Laden, who made his way back to Afghanistan. Bashir--whose real ideology appears to Arab chauvinist--was willing to ditch his Islamist connections when it suited his interest to appease the West. In 1998, al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bill Clinton responded with cruise missiles aimed at bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan and the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, which allegedly made ingredients for chemical weapons. The U.S. later acknowledged quietly that the al-Shifa plant had no connection to weapons or to al-Qaeda. The destruction of the plant, whose key product was anti-malarial medicine, is likely to have condemned thousands of Sudanese to death. In the years before the U.S. attack, Bashir had tried to marginalize his Islamist co-ruler Turabi--and finally ousted him from the government in 1999. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, Bashir took another step toward the U.S. by handing over documents and 30 individuals to U.S. custody. Sudan nonetheless stayed on the U.S.

"terror list." Turabi soon helped found the Justice and Equality Movement rebel group in Darfur, an Islamist complement to Darfur's African-identified Sudan Liberation Army, which had the backing of the U.S. and the SPLA. From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, U.S. commentators occasionally voiced hopes that John Garang of the SPLA could stitch together a U.S.-friendly political alternative to Bashir, a potential new government that would accommodate the Arab and Muslim mainstream, rebel forces in Darfur and the South, and the oppressed Beja minority based along the Red Sea coast. Garang was one of the few credible Southern political figures who still favored the geographic unity of Sudan. Garang became state vice president following the 2005 peace treaty. U.S. hopes for "turning" the whole of Sudan back into the U.S. camp--as it had been during the Cold War--died with Garang when his helicopter crashed in the same year. The Darfur war also set back any U.S. plans to build closer relations with Khartoum. Over the years when the U.S.

shifted its support from Khartoum to the Southern rebels, the constants in U.S. policy have been a drive to secure access to Sudan's oil and an imperative to box out its major global rival--first the USSR, now China. U.S. geopolitical interests finally tilted toward South Sudanese independence just in time for the first U.S. president of African descent to champion the cause of self-determination. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE NEW country still needs to dig out from the destruction of the civil war. The toll is staggering. South Sudan's estimated population is a mere 8.8 million, but 2 million or more died in the war. By the time of the 2005 peace agreement, 2 million war refugees were crowded into the slums of Khartoum, with 2 million more scattered in camps to the south. Since then, 1 million have returned from the "Arab triangle," with 180,000 arriving just since November, according to the UN. More than half a million more are expected to return South this year.

As in Darfur, the displacement of millions of people has left the majority destitute and hungry. Nearly one in seven children dies before reaching age five. It was not always this way. South Sudan's vast territory possesses rich soil, water from the Nile, and more cattle per capita than anywhere else in Africa. During the decade of respite from civil war from 1972-83, the region was quickly becoming the breadbasket of the region, according to specialist Alex de Waal. Oil revenue will help in rebuilding people's lives--if it doesn't end up in the pockets of a new elite that has grown up since the cease-fire. The successors of Garang are president Salva Kiir, a Dinka and a war hero, and vice president Riek Machar, a strongman of the next-largest tribe, the Nuer. The allotment of positions by ethnic group could portend a future of narrow, competing fiefdoms--a recipe for corruption and government nonfeasance.

Mbeki told the New York Times that if South Sudan fails to "manage [its] diversity carefully...you will get the same fractures that took place in the whole of Sudan in south Sudan." Ethnic cleavages may shape the outcomes of two major unresolved questions of the secession--citizenship rights and the status of Abyei. Residents of Abyei, the oil-rich province that straddles the border, were supposed to choose whether to join the North or South at the same time that Southerners voted on secession, but negotiators deadlocked on who qualified as a resident. Many people in Abyei are nomadic, so their residence may be questioned, but the real source of contention is that the Misseriya tribe fought on the side of Khartoum during the civil war--and might tip the vote toward the North. It's also still not clear whether Southerners in the North--or vice versa--will have citizenship rights where they live. In a worst-case scenario, ethnic cleansing would be the final midwife to national separation. The Northern regime has already announced plans to deport homeless child refugees back to the South, according to the Sudan Tribune. Much thus depends on what happens in Northern politics.

With the vote on secession, Bashir's fate is now tied more closely to the U.S. Obama's offer to lift sanctions was not just a bribe to get Bashir to respect the vote. It was also a lifeline for Bashir as he faces critics who will say he "lost" the South and got nothing for it. Bashir faces opposition on all sides, from Africans in Darfur to the Beja rebels--and, crucially, from the Islamists including Turabi, who have a national base. Bashir placed Turabi under arrest after the secession vote when Turabi called for a Tunisia-style uprising in Sudan. Bashir, like Nimeiry before him, may also face opposition from the urban poor. In anticipation of the loss of oil revenues to South Sudan, Bashir raised the price of sugar and fuel, according to Nisrin Elamin, writing on pambazuka.org . In the same week, U.S. agriculture officials seconded the UN's recent warning of a potential "food price shock" worldwide. With the Tunisian and Algerian revolts in mind, U.S.

officials may tilt even more toward support of Bashir as they fear what forces would replace them. They could offer relief, for example, from Sudan's $36 billion foreign debt. That would give Bashir incentive to keeping playing along with the peaceful separation of the South.

Question: What became the world's newest independent country in 2011?
Answer: South Sudan