Southern officers attend a farewell party, also held to commemorate the demobilization of 16,000 Southern officers and soldiers serving with the Sudan Defence Force, in Khartoum July 7, 2011. South Sudan splits away from the north on July 9 to create Africa's newest nation after southerners voted for secession under terms of a peace deal reached in 2005 to end a north-south civil war.
The UN Security Council will vote on sending up to 7,000 armed blue berets to the Republic of South Sudan, which wins independence from its former enemy Sudan at midday on Saturday.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN's secretary-general, has recommended that the new mission should focus on protecting civilians - with force if necessary - and on reforms to the police, army and justice systems. There are fears that from its outset, the world's 193rd country will be unable adequately to police its territory, guard its borders or protect its eight million citizens.
Sudan's majority Christian south fought its Muslim north for 38 of its 54 years of independence from Britain, and the hangover of that war is almost a million guns, mostly in civilian hands. The southern army, born from the rebel force which fought the war, is bloated with troops and drains as much as 60 per cent of South Sudan's annual budget. One diplomat in Juba quipped that it was "in essence the state's welfare system". The police force, provincial administration, courts and tax systems are, at best, stumbling, raising the risk of widening public anger among a population expecting an instant windfall from independence. "We need to be modest in managing the expectations of what South Sudan can achieve, and how quickly," said George Conway, the deputy head of the UN Development Program's office in Juba, South Sudan's capital.
In reality, the Republic of South Sudan will from its first days easily fulfil most requirements of a failed state.
Separated from the more advanced north, it will also immediately knock Zimbabwe off the bottom spot on the index of human development.
At least 80 per cent of the population is illiterate - rising to 92 per cent for women - the majority of civil servants did not finish secondary school and there are estimated to be fewer than 500 trained doctors in a country the size of France.
A 15-year-old girl is statistically more likely to die in childbirth than she is to finish school. "It's fair to say that these are political and security challenges that would tax even the most developed countries," said a senior Western diplomat .
There was little evidence of the severity of that challenge in Juba yesterday. Ahead of tomorrow's independence ceremonies, roads that were dirt tracks a year ago are freshly laid with asphalt. Armies of women swept streets as government gardeners planted bougainvillea bushes on the main roads preparing for an invasion by VIPs.
William Hague, Britain's Foreign Secretary, leads the delegation from London. Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, will represent the Obama administration.
So many presidential planes from other African countries are due to land at the city's ramshackle airport in the coming hours that civilian flights have been cancelled for two days. "We are very happy to show the world the best of our new country," said Abraham Mayom, 32, a mechanic working on a Chinese-made motorcycle by the roadside. "But what of next week, or next month, or next year? We are like a baby not yet able even to crawl. We will need help for long before we are up on our two feet walking alone." Almost pounds 90?million of British aid will flow through the small Department for International Development office in Juba this year - almost pounds 12 for each Southern Sudanese man, woman and child.
Sudanese refugees who fled to Britain during the civil war are returning home to invest money and spread technical know-how.
Albert Rehan, 38, who won asylum in Britain in 1995, runs a recruitment consultancy with offices in Juba and in Holborn, London, specialising in filling technical and managerial level jobs in South Sudan's booming private sector.
"I'm still struggling to find good candidates," he said, sipping sweet black tea under a mango tree in central Juba.
"But that's because now clients demand people with the right skills for the job, not just the right family name. That in itself gives us reason to be optimistic." That optimism must be tempered, however, by key planks in the peace deal that have still not been secured. There is no agreement on sharing oil, which lies mostly under southern soil, but must be refined and exported through the north. It is unclear how foreign debts, borrowed when Sudan was unified, will be repaid once it splits.
Of most concern is the border between the new neighbours. Its precise route has not yet been decided. Already Omar al-Bashir, the president in the north, is accused of supporting loyal militia in the south to raise rebellion, especially in the oil-rich Abyei state.
Tens of thousands of northern civilians are still fleeing south after repeated bombing raids against them by the Sudan Air Force, under the instructions of Mr Bashir who is already wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
The party of the decade will erupt in Juba this Saturday when Southern Sudan officially becomes the world's newest state.
The independence July 9 of South Sudan is seen by analysts as possibly the most significant development in modern African history since the end of apartheid nearly two decades ago.
"This is a truly historic moment," said Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, one of the key mediators during talks in and near Nairobi that resulted in an agreement on a referendum for self-determination. "Not many generations live to see the birth of a new nation.
It is a delight for Kenya to welcome the new state to the East African Community where she will naturally find a home."
They will be partying in many capitals across the world, too, from Nairobi to Kampala to Washington to Sydney where hundreds of Southern Sudanese took refuge from the many years of war that took up to a million lives.
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