Mark Goldberg says the international anti-genocide movement that began in the wake of Darfur could prevent the next crisis in Sudan.
On Jan. 9, South Sudanese citizens will head to the polls to vote on a referendum to determine if South Sudan will become a country independent from the rest of Sudan. That the southerners will overwhelmingly vote for independence is not in doubt — the south fought a 20-year civil war against the Sudanese central government that ended in 2005. Popular sentiment is clearly in favor of autonomy.
What is still unknown is whether the central government in Khartoum will let the south go without a fight, which includes the specter of genocide. In February 2010, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair cited Southern Sudan as a place where “a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur.”
