Thousands of Sudanese register to vote in secession referendum

After decades of war, ruin and dashed aspirations, southern Sudan moved a step closer to independence Monday as thousands registered to vote in a referendum that early next year could split Africa’s largest country in two.

The voter registration drive, marred by delays and political wrangling, began at about 2,700 centers around Sudan. The bulk of the turnout was in the semiautonomous south, dominated by animists and Christians, which on Jan. 9 is expected to secede from the mostly Muslim government in the north controlled by President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.

“A referendum happens only once,” independence leader Salva Kiir told a crowd at a registration station in the southern capital of Juba. “People must come out en masse; otherwise, it would mean people fought and died for nothing.”

Sudan’s fate is one of the most troubling questions facing Africa and the Obama administration, which fears the referendum could reignite violence along the oil-rich border between north and south. Two million people died in a 21-year civil war that ended in 2005 with a peace treaty that promised the south a vote on independence.

Bashir has said he will allow the plebiscite to go ahead. But some analysts doubt the president will relinquish the south, which generates nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day, about 80% of the country’s output. Officials from both sides have accused each other of attempting to provoke border hostilities before the vote.

The Obama administration, which critics say has moved too slowly on the crisis, has offered Bashir a number of incentives, including accelerating Sudan’s removal from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, if he does not spoil the referendum. The southern population is estimated as high as 9.7 million, out of a nationwide total of about 41 million.

Talks mediated by the African Union between northern and southern officials suggested a sliver of progress. The parties agreed to keep a “soft border” between them to allow business and cattle grazing in the sensitive Abyei tribal region. But the future of Abyei, which at the same time was to decide in a separate poll whether to join the north or the south, is complicated by disputes over eligible voters.

United Nations peacekeepers are stationed along the border. The wider fear is that a conflict between the two camps could further agitate the western region of Darfur. About 300,000 people have died in the sectarian conflict there in recent years, in fighting or from disease and hunger, resulting in accusations by the International Criminal Court that Bashir has committed crimes against humanity.

Registration for the independence referendum is expected to last just over two weeks. The Carter Center, founded by former President Carter, and other organizations have sent monitors throughout Sudan.

Sanne van den Bergh, a Carter Center field office director, said in a statement: “The success of the registration process is essential to ensuring broad participation in the referendum, which will determine whether Sudan remains unified or if southern Sudan becomes a separate nation.”

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com