Southern Sudan’s almost sure split from the northern is likely to set a grievous precedent in an Arab world looking increasingly broke along sectarian and ethnic lines.
Southern Sudanese balloted for plebiscite this month in a referendum on whether to split away from Africa’s largest country. Final results are expected within weeks but initial results show more than 70 % confirmed secession.
The vote carried in view of 2005 peace deal that ended 22 years prolong civil war among the Christian and the Muslim of north.
The springing up secessionist sentiments, exclusive territories and deepening calls for autonomy in some Arab nations, the fault lines are widening between ethnic and religious groups, threatening to split loyalties in countries like Lebanon and Egypt.
The secession can be road to safety when union becomes a heavy unbearable burden over people, columnist Salama Ahmed Salama wrote recently.
The Sudan vote has sparked soul-searching about how the predominantly Arab and Sunni Muslim nations of the region have dealt with ethnic and religious minorities since independence from colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s.
Sudan is the biggest country in continent which covers a million square of land, linking river Nile the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa and borders the vital international shipping lane.
Other parts of region will also face the threat of splitting up if ruling class fail to deal with growing crises ,” columnist Elias Harfoush wrote last week in the respected pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat.
Apart from the Sudanese vote, some of the fractures already existing in the Arab world have grown deeper.
Western Critics believed that predominantly Arab and Sunni Muslims nations of the region have dealt with ethnic and religious minorities since freedom of Sudan from colonial rule inthe1950s and 1960s.
In Yemen, a secessionist movement is gaining strength in the south of the country, once an independent state that became part of a unified state in 1990. The south sought secession again in 1994, staging a revolt that was ruthlessly put down by the government in northern Yemen.
In Lebanon, whose survival on a delicate power-sharing formula filters down to the army and most government departments, haunting memories persist from the 1975-1990 civil war when Christians and Muslims turned against each other.
It is pertinent for the rulers of Arab world that to take the crises of their respective countries seriously and adopt solid measures for mitigating the miseries of their citizens other secession of various Arab led Muslim countries is no longer which ultimately safeguard the interests of vested stakes.
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