Sudan: Can the northern elite allow peace to flourish?

January 9 marked the first anniversary of the historic "comprehensive peace agreement" (CPA), which ended the devastating 21-year war in the south between the central government in Khartoum and the impoverished people of southern Sudan. Despite the enthusiasm of the anniversary celebrations in the ramshackle southern capital of Juba, there are growing concerns that Sudan's powerful northern elite is not committed to peace and may again plunge the south into war. The CPA came about after years of negotiations, which dragged on inconclusively for more than a decade until the administration of US President George Bush came to office in 2001. After 9/11, Bush dangled the carrot of lifting sanctions imposed by the previous US administration in return for Khartoum's cooperation with Washington's phoney "war on terror" and a negotiated settlement to the unwinnable southern war.