Independence of South Sudan

January 11, 2011 - In our euphoria over the emerging independence of South Sudan, we should not forget that European countries caused Sudan’s grief to begin with; and that southern Sudan has many natural resources besides oil that, if well managed, can help the people recover. The roots of this crisis are in the Ottoman, French, Belgian and British colonial enslavement in the 19th Century, and in misguided international aid efforts that began in the 1960s. Prior to these western interventions, the northern nomads moved their flocks with the seasons in a relationship with their dry environment that had been stable for at least five millennia. They herded sheep and goats and used camels for transport, since their semi-desert environment would not support the cattle and farming economy of the southern tribes, who lived in a moister environment of grassland and shrub forest. The colonial masters forced southern farmers to move north and to settle around water sources that had formerly been the seasonal domain of the nomads. Their livestock overgrazed the land around these oases forcing the nomads into more marginal environments. After independence in 1956, mis-guided aid agencies drilled wells to ease poverty and encourage farming, further disrupting the pastoral patterns and causing large-scale desertification and loss of wildlife habitat. This resulted in repeated famines in various parts of the Sahel since 1968. The famines of 1973–1975 and 1984 were especially severe and burned into our minds the plight of starving people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Biafra (now returned to Nigeria) and other Sahelian countries. Climate change that began to be felt in the 1980s made it worse. The connection with climate change has been known for more than two decades and was discovered by Canadian wildlife biologists. But Southern Sudan still has its grasslands, shrub forests, swamplands and water sources to support the tribal societies that are still largely intact. After the peace treaty in 2005, wildlife biologists re-discovered massive wildlife migrations rivalling anything anywhere else in the world, including over 753,000 white-eared kobs, over 278,600 Mongalla gazelles and 155,460 tiang antelopes, even a few elephants—together more than 1.2 million big game animals. This is an ecotourism gold mine that, if well managed, would help the people rebuild their lives and societies