Jeffrey Gettleman: Colonial Curse Comes Up for a Vote in Sudan
[Jeffrey Gettleman is the East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times.]
More than any other continent, Africa is wracked by separatists. There are rebels on the Atlantic and on the Red Sea. There are clearly defined liberation movements and rudderless, murderous groups known principally for their cruelty or greed. But these rebels share at least one thing: they direct their fire against weak states struggling to hold together disparate populations within boundaries drawn by 19th-century white colonialists.
That history is a prime reason that Africa remains, to a striking degree, a continent of failed or failing states. And it helps explain why the world is now trying to stand behind southern Sudan as it votes, starting Sunday, on cutting its ties to the Sudanese government in Khartoum.
Voters are expected to approve independence, and if it does, South Sudan will become a rare exception in Africa — a state that is reorganizing its colonial-era borders. It might even set a precedent for others.
In any case, it has already set off an agonizing debate, a half-century in coming, over the wisdom of trying to hold together the unwieldy colonial borders in the first place...
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More than any other continent, Africa is wracked by separatists. There are rebels on the Atlantic and on the Red Sea. There are clearly defined liberation movements and rudderless, murderous groups known principally for their cruelty or greed. But these rebels share at least one thing: they direct their fire against weak states struggling to hold together disparate populations within boundaries drawn by 19th-century white colonialists.
That history is a prime reason that Africa remains, to a striking degree, a continent of failed or failing states. And it helps explain why the world is now trying to stand behind southern Sudan as it votes, starting Sunday, on cutting its ties to the Sudanese government in Khartoum.
Voters are expected to approve independence, and if it does, South Sudan will become a rare exception in Africa — a state that is reorganizing its colonial-era borders. It might even set a precedent for others.
In any case, it has already set off an agonizing debate, a half-century in coming, over the wisdom of trying to hold together the unwieldy colonial borders in the first place...