Thank you very much for your question. It's a very pertinent question.
I would say two things. First of all, the CPA, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, is a recipe to end the war between the north and the south, but it never focused on the south. The south, as we know, has very few institutions. There is no state structure to talk about. So the CPA is definitely not the road map to do state-building in south Sudan. Yet this is exactly what's needed. So the next step should be--in fact, it should start now--to look at south Sudan and try to consolidate institutions in south Sudan. Consolidate the army, consolidate the police, and consolidate the rule of law, and try to establish an authority in Juba that reaches out to the various regions and decentralizes the little power it has.
There is already a plan for decentralization in the south, but it needs to go further. There's no question about that. But it's all being done in a very, very difficult, intense environment. As you know, the SPLM/SPLA has been a guerrilla movement for more than 20 years, and they have to face a number of challenges at the same time. One is to build a state in south Sudan. Another is to transform into a political party. And the third is to resist Khartoum's attempt to destabilize the CPA and to destabilize the south. The international committee has also put a fourth task on their shoulders, which is to help resolve the Darfur process.
It's a lot for one government. It's a lot for one new government. Very few people within the SPLM have government experience. I've witnessed that myself. Many, many of the officers actually are illiterate, and they have been absorbed into the administration. It doesn't make the administration particularly efficient.
The other thing I wanted to say is that I think you made a very good point about too much attention being focused on Darfur and not enough on the south. Even when I was at the UN, the message I was really trying to convey to my counterparts in New York was that more political capital and more political investment has to be put into the north-south, because the north-south peace process is the bedrock of peace. It's the only agreement that is holding in Sudan. It's holding Sudan together. If that collapses, they will be returned to war, and the return to war has cost in the last few years in the south as many lives as in Darfur. It has been extremely violent. It will be extremely violent.
You see Sudan now; it's holding together. The ceasefire is by and large maintained. Darfur is allowed to drift away. If the north-south process collapses, there will be no Sudan to talk about. As a UN official said to me recently, Somalia will be like a piece of cake compared to Sudan if Sudan implodes.