Published: December 10, 2010

Amir Idris won’t reveal which way he’ll be voting in the upcoming Sudanese referendum. He says he hates to choose. Planned for Jan. 9, 2011, the vote on southern Sudan’s independence may result in the division of his native country into two states.

With the majority of southern Sudanese expected to vote for secession from the north and renewed conflict a possibility, Idris, associate professor of African Studies and associate chair of the department of African and African American Studies, is faced with not only a political choice but a personal one as well.

“If the country is divided, I’m going to be put in a position of choosing between the citizenship of my father and the citizenship of my mother,” Idris said. His father was from southern Sudan and his mother was from the north. “I am someone who belongs to two worlds,” he said.

Idris was born in northern Sudan in 1962. After graduating from the University of Khartoum in 1990, he was forced to leave Sudan due to his political criticisms of the Islamist regime led by now president of Sudan Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who seized power in a military coup in 1989. For the last 20 years, while living in exile, Idris has studied the social and economic implications of Sudan’s civil war, which began in 1983.

The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended the 22-year civil war between Bashir’s northern-based Islamist regime, the National Congress Party (NCP) and the southern opposition party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). The CPA also mandated the referendum on southern independence.

“The main objective of the CPA is not to divide the country into the north and south but to transform the entire political system in a way that makes unity attractive for all Sudanese,” Idris said. “But [the parties] failed.” These failures have manifested in many forms, according to Idris, including the civil war, ethnic cleansing, displacements and the practice of slavery.

Consequently the south’s population is expected to “vote overwhelmingly for separation instead of unity,” Idris said. Southern Sudanese “experienced war for 20 years, lost more than two million people and observed the destruction of their society.” Voting for separation seems like the logical decision, he said.

But in order to hold a credible referendum and ensure the parties will implement the results, Idris said three outstanding issues must be addressed before voting occurs. First, the north-south border must be clearly demarcated. Second, the issue of sharing oil revenues must be resolved. The majority of Sudan’s oil reserves are located in the disputed central region of Abyei and in south Sudan; however, the oil is pumped through the north to gain access to ports. Lastly, both parties must address the question of citizenship.

There are over two million southern Sudanese living in northern Sudan and tens of thousands of northern Sudanese living in the south, according to Idris. “Citizenship is a crucial issue because it determines the status of these people,” he said. If southern Sudanese vote for separation, it is unclear what the citizenship status of southern Sudanese living in the north and northern Sudanese living in the south will be.

“The problem is that the whole notion of citizenship has been defined along ethnic, racial and religious terms,” Idris said. “One of the main challenges that [will determine] whether Sudan remains a united or divided country is how Sudanese overcome their ethnic and racial identities.”

While most foreigners believe northern Sudanese are predominantly Arab Muslims and southern Sudanese are largely African Christians, Idris criticizes this simplistic characterization of Sudanese demographics. He does not view the distinction as valid because, according to him, “These kinds of identity have been created through long historical processes,” rather than representing truly identifiable racial or ethnic differences. “It’s very difficult to define who’s the African and who’s the Arab in Sudan,” he said.

The racial and ethnic identities assigned to northern and southern Sudanese should not be considered fixed, according to Idris. Many Sudanese were born in one region and live in another or they come from diverse families, similar to his own.

“My father came from the south, from a Christian background,” he said. “My mother came from a Muslim background. But they married. They lived together.” Idris said his father spent much of his life in northern Sudan after marrying his mother. “I observed and I lived the possibility of having people who have different histories, cultures and identities coexist peacefully in a shared space,” he said. “And what I mean by a shared space is the family.” His sisters live in northern Sudan and his brother lives in the south.

But the upcoming referendum is likely to challenge this conception of a “shared space,” as the vote is expected to divide Sudan in two. Over the past few months, international observers have expressed concern over the lack of adequate preparation for the referendum to take place on time, to protect against incidents of voter fraud, and to prevent post-referendum violence.

To defend against these potentialities, Idris said all “southern Sudanese who are eligible to register and vote have to be given access, whether in Sudan or in the Diaspora.” In addition, there must be no intervention from the NCP or SPLM in order for the process to be successful, he said.

“We should be mindful of the regional implications,” Idris said. “We have to be prepared to respond in case of a renewal of conflict that could lead to the displacement of millions of people.”