In April Sudan will hold elections, which will provide something of an interregnum between the the twin poles of state-sanctioned chaos in Darfur and the seemingly ceaseless conflict between Sudan’s north and south. Human rights groups still want to hold Sudan to account for its past perfidy, with an organization called the Enough Project calling for stiffer sanctions against Khartoum. Critics of Sudan (which really should count most of us) have been given fodder with the recent crackdown on opposition leaders. These elections will merely serve as an amuse bouche for the referendum on a formal division of the country between north and south, a process that seems pretty much destined to reinvigorate the civil war in the country. Khartoum will not accept opposition in the runup to an election? What makes us think that in the end it will accept the secession of a region over which it has gone to war repeatedly?
