The many agreements signed between the Sudanese government and the Popular Liberation Army (PLA) should bring self-determination for the south and, eventually, perhaps even the creation of a state. They may also inspire secessionist demands in eastern and western Sudan. Such demands, however, would lose urgency with the establishment of a pluralistic democracy in Khartoum, one that builds a consensus around the acceptance of ethnic, cultural and religious diversity and guarantees human rights and civil liberties.
Secession along ethnic divides could have serious consequences for water security in the Nile Valley, especially given that some Nile Basin countries are calling for the Nile Waters Agreement of 1958 to be revised.
Could this be punishment for Egypt's ideologically loaded and impractical handling of the Sudanese issue in the past?
But we must also bear in mind the incompetence of technocrats in managing the river. Large stretches of the Nile's banks have been effectively privatised, gobbled up for the construction of villas, private clubs and luxurious hotels. This repository of Egypt's collective memory has been turned into a private preserve. Could there, then, be a connection between Egypt's exclusion from the Nile Basin political game and the exclusion of the Nile from the lives of ordinary people?
This week's Soapbox speaker is assistant director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
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The many agreements signed between the Sudanese government and the Popular Liberation Army (PLA) should bring self-determination for the south and, eventually, perhaps even the creation of a state. They may also inspire secessionist demands in eastern and western Sudan. Such demands, however, would lose urgency with the establishment of a pluralistic democracy in Khartoum, one that builds a consensus around the acceptance of ethnic, cultural and religious diversity and guarantees human rights and civil liberties.
