The flags have been waved, the anthem has been sung, and the new currency will be in circulation this week: the Republic of South Sudan has been launched, and is off to who knows where?
Perdition, probably, for it is a "pre-failed state," condemned by its extreme poverty, 15 percent literacy and bitter ethnic rivalries to more decades of violence and misery. But what about the country it leaves behind?
It's telling that there is a South Sudan, but no North Sudan. What's left is still just Sudan. It's still the second-biggest country in Africa, and it still has four-fifths of the people it had before the south broke away. But it has lost a big chunk of its income: almost three-quarters of the old united country's oil was in the south. It's also an Arab country run by a dictator who has been in power for 22 years. So we know what comes next, don't we?