On 9 January 2005 the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed a peace agreement after twenty-two years of violent conflict that killed over two million southern Sudanese and displaced another six.  Make no mistake this is an historic achievement of inscrutable and imponderable differences, the result of long and tortuous negotiations that could have failed at any moment without intense international pressure from the troika of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the stalwart Norwegians. 

It was the vindication of Dr. John Garang, leader of the SPLM, who envisaged a New Sudan of unity in diversity in 1983, a conviction from which he has never deviated during two decades of military victories and defeats, revolts against his authority, and interminable negotiations with disingenuous Islamist members of the National Islamic Front (NIF).  His consistency, determination, and patience have been rewarded.  He is now on paper the most powerful man in the Sudan as First Vice-President, President of the Southern Autonomous Government, and Commander-in-Chief of his own army.  The New Sudan will no longer be an Islamist state but a democratic "one Sudan regardless of race, religion, or tribe" in which the New South will have autonomy, retains its own army, receive fifty percent of Sudan oil revenues, and the right to vote for secession after six years. Those who have worked so hard for so long to achieve this triumph deserve our heart-felt praise, but they have had neither the time nor the energy to realize what they have accomplished or how to achieve it.  After the celebrations in the sober light of day the participants awoke to the fact they had little or no understanding of reality in the southern Sudan in their focused determination to complete the Naivasha Agreement