In southern Sudan, secession vote under way

JUBA, Sudan - Men and women walked to election stations in the middle of the night yesterday to create a new nation: Southern Sudan.

Some broke out into spontaneous song in the long lines. And a veteran of Sudan's two-decade civil war, a conflict that left 2 million people dead, choked back tears. "We lost a lot of people," said Lt. Col. William Ngang Ayuen, 48, who was snapping pictures of camouflaged soldiers waiting in long lines to vote. He turned away from his comrades for a moment to maintain composure. "Today is good for them."

Thousands of people began casting ballots during a weeklong vote to choose the destiny of this war-ravaged and desperately poor but oil-rich region. Because only 15 percent of southern Sudan's 8.7-million people can read, the ballot choices were simple: a drawing of a single hand marked "separation" and another of clasped hands marked "unity."

Long lines snaked through the southern capital of Juba. In rural areas, tribesmen carrying bows and arrows walked dirt paths from their straw huts to one-room schools to vote.

Almost everyone - including Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes in the western region of Darfur - agrees that the mainly Christian south will secede from the mainly Muslim north.

"We are saying goodbye to Khartoum, the capital of old Sudan. We are coming to have our own capital here in Juba," said Tom Drani, 48, a motorcycle taxi driver.

Southerners, who mainly define themselves as African, have long resented their underdevelopment, accusing the northern Arab-dominated government of taking their oil revenues without investing in the south.

The referendum is part of the peace deal that ended the 1983-2005 civil war. Northerners had no say in the voting, and the western region of Darfur, which belongs to the north, is not affected by the vote.

Independence won't be finalized until July, and many issues are yet to be worked out, including north-south oil rights, water rights to the White Nile, border demarcation and the status of the contested region of Abyei, a north-south border region where the biggest threat of a return to conflict exists. Most of Sudan's oil is in the south, while the pipelines to the sea run through the north, tying the two regions together economically.

Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir, wearing his trademark black cowboy hat, was emotional as he remembered those killed in the war. He voted at the mausoleum of rebel hero John Garang. "I am sure that they didn't die in vain," he told the crowd.