More Sudans Than You Can Shake A Stick At

Well; it's official. North and South Sudan have come to a civilised agreement to see less of each other in future. In a stroke the number of civil wars in the world has been reduced by one. It would be an act of purest cynicism to suggest that the number of international wars will soon increase by the same number. Don't worry about the North Sudanese though, they still have about three other civil wars running at the moment despite the fact that no lesser a personage than George Clooney told them to stop. It remains to be seen whether the South Sudanese will keep the family name. In my opinion they shouldn't, calling themselves South Sudan makes them sound like a state of America. Burkina Faso discovered that which is why it is now called Burkina Faso rather than Upper Volta which was more geographically useful but made the country sound like a part of ones digestive tract.

Still things are running smoothly at the moment in the Sudans, the furniture has been divided up and negotiations are continuing to see who gets custody of the oil reserves. Hopefully they won't have to get lawyers involved. Somewhere that might benefit from the involvement of lawyers is Libya where the worlds messiest divorce proceedings rage on. At the moment it seems to be a competition to see whether NATO will run out of smart bombs before Libya runs out of Qaddafi. In Syria and Yemen they are, unaccountably, fighting over Syria and Yemen. Somebody is eventually going to have to move out but it hasn't yet been decided who.

If anybody ever looks at the wretched bucket of suck which is our government and think "surely we can do better" there are plenty of examples in the world to prove we could also do worse. Although it has to be admitted that "At least we're better than Yemen" is hardly a ringing endorsement of our style of government. There are colonies of fungi that have a better system of government than Yemen. Its like winning a rugby league match against France. Of course you want to win but largely to avoid the utter humiliation of losing rather than because you will feel any pride in victory.

I'm not really sure what will happen in South Sudan. The last I heard they were planning to redesign their capital city so it looked like a rhinoceros, or at least, more like a rhinoceros than it does at present. This is not, I can't help thinking, the best use of their resources. I could be wrong of course. Suppose they pull it off? They would be a glittering, rhino shaped beacon of success; an inspiration to others all across the dark continent. Oppressed Africans everywhere will take heart from the South Sudanese example and institute a new era of peace, freedom and capital cities resembling animal crackers. This could be the inspiration Africa needs to really shake off the agonies of the past and step forward into a new tomorrow.

And if it all goes pearshaped at least there will be somewhere new for us to deploy peacekeepers.