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Islamic Sudan Envisioned if South Secedes

By JOSH KRON
Published: December 19, 2010

JUBA, Sudan — President Omar Hassan al-Bashir promised Sunday to turn Sudan into a state governed by Islamic law if the south chooses to secede in a referendum next month.
“We’ll change the Constitution,” he said in a televised speech. “Shariah and Islam will be the main source for the Constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language.”
The comments were some of Mr. Bashir’s strongest words to date seeming to acknowledge the likelihood of an independent southern Sudanese state and outlining his vision for the northern half, which would stay under his control.
While northern Sudan is already largely governed by Islamic law, or Shariah, an interim constitution adopted as part of a 2005 peace agreement recognized the country’s ethnic and religious diversity. That agreement ended generations of civil war between the predominantly Arab and Muslim north and the mainly Christian and animist south.
The interim constitution expires next year, and with it the constraints and obligations of the peace agreement.

“If South Sudan secedes, we will change the Constitution, and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity,” Mr. Bashir said. Southerners are expected to overwhelmingly support secession in the vote, which begins on Jan. 9.

The government has sought to keep the country united, but in recent days senior officials have seemed resigned to the inevitability of a split. “We must not deceive ourselves or cling to dreams,” Nafi Ali Nafi, a senior member of the governing party, said last week.

The strong words were not out of keeping for Mr. Bashir, who faces international economic sanctions and has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and genocide in Darfur, in Sudan’s west. “The incendiary comments are no surprise,” said Eliza Griswold, an expert on conflict and human rights at the New America Foundation. “Bashir relishes the role of standing up to the West, and the south’s secession gives him the chance to pander to his base in Sudan and beyond.” But some analysts feared his comments presaged a future of repression for non-Muslims and southerners who remain in the north.

Mr. Bashir faces his own political obstacles, in addition to the indictment and pressure from the West.

Last week, an American diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks quoted Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as saying that Mr. Bashir had smuggled $9 billion out of Sudan. The government dismissed the allegation as “propaganda.”
Also last week, a member of Mr. Bashir’s party publicly criticized him for misleading the country, and Sudan’s former prime minister said the referendum signaled the end of the current political era.