South Sudan Independence (2011): Birth of the Newest Nation

South Sudan became an independent country on 9 July 2011, when it formally separated from Sudan following a referendum in which southerners voted overwhelmingly for secession. Its birth in Juba ended more than half a century of conflict between the north and south of Sudan, two civil wars that cost an estimated two million or more lives. South Sudan remains the world’s newest internationally recognised state and the most recent member of the United Nations.

Background: north and south

Sudan’s northern and southern regions had long followed different paths. The north was largely Arabic-speaking and Muslim, with strong ties to Egypt and the Middle East. The south was home to many African peoples, including the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari and Azande, who followed traditional religions or Christianity. In the nineteenth century the south suffered heavily from slave raiding launched from the north.

Under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, Britain governed the south largely separately from the north, restricting northern traders and encouraging Christian missionary schools. When Britain reversed course in the late 1940s and joined the two regions, southern leaders had little say. As independence approached, most senior government posts went to northerners, feeding southern fears of domination.

The first civil war (1955–1972)

In August 1955, months before Sudan became independent on 1 January 1956, southern soldiers mutinied at Torit. The mutiny grew into a guerrilla war, waged from the 1960s mainly by the Anyanya movement, against governments in Khartoum that pushed Arabic and Islam in the south.

The war ended with the Addis Ababa Agreement, signed in February 1972 and in force from March, under President Jaafar Nimeiri, which gave the south a regional government with its own assembly. For about a decade an uneasy peace held. Its breakdown was hastened by the discovery of oil in the south in the late 1970s and by Nimeiri’s growing reliance on Islamist allies.

The second civil war (1983–2005)

In 1983 Nimeiri divided the southern region and, in September, imposed a version of Islamic law across Sudan. In May that year troops at Bor had already mutinied. Their cause was taken up by John Garang, an army colonel with a doctorate from Iowa State University, who founded the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A). Unusually, Garang called not for southern secession but for a “New Sudan”, a secular and democratic state for all Sudanese.

The war that followed was one of the longest and deadliest in Africa. Fighting, famine and disease killed an estimated 1.5 to 2.5 million people, most of them civilians, and displaced around four million. Thousands of displaced children, the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan, walked to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya; some were later resettled in the United States. In 1991 the SPLA split when Riek Machar and other commanders broke with Garang, leading to bitter fighting between southern factions, including a massacre of Dinka civilians at Bor that November.

After the Islamist-backed coup of 1989 that brought Omar al-Bashir to power, Khartoum declared the war a jihad and armed southern militias against the SPLA. Oil production began on a large scale in 1999, raising the stakes for both sides.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement

Regional mediation through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway, gradually produced results. The Machakos Protocol of July 2002 recognised the south’s right to self-determination. Talks in Kenya culminated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed in Nairobi on 9 January 2005.

The CPA set up a six-year interim period. The south received its own autonomous government, the SPLA kept its army, oil revenue from southern fields was to be shared roughly equally, and at the end of the period southerners would vote on whether to remain in Sudan. Garang was sworn in as first vice-president of Sudan on 9 July 2005, but on 30 July he died when the Ugandan presidential helicopter carrying him crashed in bad weather. His deputy, Salva Kiir Mayardit, took over, and riots broke out in Khartoum and Juba as many suspected foul play, though investigations attributed the crash to poor weather.

The referendum and independence

The independence referendum took place from 9 to 15 January 2011. Southerners queued for hours at polling stations, and international observers judged the vote broadly credible. Official results announced in February showed about 98.8 percent in favour of separation, with turnout above 97 percent of registered voters. President al-Bashir said Sudan would accept the result.

On 9 July 2011, exactly six years after Garang had become vice-president, South Sudan declared independence at a ceremony in Juba attended by many foreign leaders, including al-Bashir himself. Salva Kiir was sworn in as president, the new flag was raised, and Sudan became the first state to recognise its southern neighbour. The UN Security Council created a peacekeeping mission, UNMISS, the day before independence, and on 14 July 2011 South Sudan was admitted to the United Nations as its 193rd member. It joined the African Union later that month.

Much remained unsettled. The border was not fully demarcated, and the oil-rich Abyei area, claimed by both states, had been seized by Sudanese forces in May 2011; its own planned referendum never took place. Fighting also broke out in the Sudanese border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, where former SPLA allies remained inside Sudan.

Aftermath

Independence left South Sudan with most of the old Sudan’s oil fields but no outlet to the sea; its oil still had to flow through Sudanese pipelines to Port Sudan. A dispute over transit fees led Juba to shut down production in January 2012, and in April 2012 the two armies clashed around the Heglig oil field. Agreements signed in September 2012 led to oil flows resuming in 2013.

Tensions within the ruling SPLM grew after Kiir dismissed Vice-President Riek Machar and the cabinet in July 2013. In December 2013 fighting broke out in Juba and quickly spread, often along ethnic lines between Dinka and Nuer communities. One study estimated that close to 400,000 people died as a result of the war by 2018. A revitalised peace agreement signed in September 2018 led to a unity government in 2020, though violence and humanitarian need have persisted. Elections promised for the end of the transition have been repeatedly postponed.

Timeline

• 1955, 18 August: Southern troops mutiny at Torit, beginning the first civil war.
• 1972, 27 March: The Addis Ababa Agreement, signed in February, comes into force and ends the first civil war.
• 1983, May: The Bor mutiny leads to the founding of the SPLM/A under John Garang.
• 2005, 9 January: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement is signed in Nairobi.
• 2005, 30 July: John Garang dies in a helicopter crash; Salva Kiir succeeds him.
• 2011, 9–15 January: Southerners vote overwhelmingly for independence.
• 2011, 9 July: South Sudan becomes independent, with Salva Kiir as president.
• 2011, 14 July: South Sudan is admitted to the United Nations.
• 2013, 15 December: Civil war breaks out in Juba.
• 2018, September: A revitalised peace agreement is signed.

Why it matters

South Sudan’s independence was a rare case in post-colonial Africa of a border being redrawn by negotiated agreement and popular vote rather than by force, in contrast to the failed attempt at secession during the Nigerian Civil War. It also departed from the principle, upheld since the Year of Africa and the wave of decolonisation, that colonial-era borders should not be changed. It closed a chapter of Sudanese history that ran alongside the War in Darfur, yet the new state’s troubles showed that independence alone could not resolve deep problems of governance, ethnic rivalry and dependence on oil.