Millions of jubilant south Sudanese started voting today in a long-awaited secession referendum that is expected to see their war-ravaged region emerge as a new independent country.
Huge queues built up outside polling stations before dawn in the southern capital Juba where banners described the week-long ballot as a "Last March to Freedom" after decades of civil war and perceived repression by north Sudan.
"I am voting for separation," said Nhial Wier, a veteran of the north-south civil war that led up to the vote. "This day marks the end of my struggles. In the army I was fighting for freedom. I was fighting for separation."
The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended Africa's longest civil war, fuelled by oil and ethnicity, between the mostly Muslim north and the south, where most people follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.
In the north, the prospect of losing a quarter of the country's land mass - and the source of most of its oil - has been greeted with resignation and some resentment.
Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who campaigned for unity in the run-up to the vote, has been making increasingly conciliatory comments and this month promised to join independence celebrations, if that was the outcome.
US president Barack Obama said last night a peaceful, orderly referendum could help put Sudan back on a path toward normal relations with the United States after years of sanctions but warned a chaotic vote will mean more isolation.
Southern president Salva Kiir urged long lines of voters to be patient after casting his ballot this morning.
"I believe Doctor John (Garang) and all those who died with him are with us today and I want to assure them they have not died in vain," he said, referring to the southern rebel leader who died in a helicopter crash months after signing the accord.
Juba and Khartoum already looked liked the capitals of two different countries today.
In Juba, actor George Clooney and US senator John Kerry mingled with dancing and singing crowds. "It is something to see people actually voting for their freedom. That's not something you see often in your life," Clooney said.
In Khartoum voting centres were empty, and southern districts were quiet - tens of thousands of exiled southerners have returned for the vote. There were no banners acknowledging the historic referendum.
The vote's organising commission said it had defied gloomy forecasts of delays to deliver all voting materials on time for today's deadline.
The logistical achievements have not been matched by political progress. Southerners went to the polls without knowing the exact position of their border with the north or how much of Sudan's debt they will have to shoulder after a split.
The two sides have been locked in negotiations for months over how they might share out oil revenues - the lifeblood of both their economies - and settle other issues after secession. There is no public sign of progress.
The south also will have to face up to its own internal ethnic rivalries and resolve a bitter dispute with the north over the ownership of the central Abyei region. Armed Arab nomads clashed with tribespeople in Sudan's disputed Abyei region for the third day today, leaving an unknown number of people dead.
Abyei chief administrator Deng Arop Kuol - a southerner - said Arab Misseriya fighters attacked Maker village. Earlier attacks had been on the nearby village of Miokol, leaving one dead on Friday and an unknown number of casualties yesterday, he said.
Analysts have said central Abyei is the most likely place that could see a resurgence of violence more than five years after a peace deal ended decades of north-south civil war and allowed the south a referendum on secession.
Both north and south Sudan claim Abyei, a central fertile territory on their shared border used by both the Dinka Ngok, associated with the south, and Arab Misseriya nomads, associated with the north. Its status was left undecided in the 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war.
Abyei was also promised its own referendum on whether it should join the north or the south, but preparations for that vote were left in limbo after Dinka and Misseriya leaders failed to agree on who was eligible to vote and where Abyei's borders lay.
Northern and southern leaders have said they are now trying to negotiate a settlement but there has been no sign of compromise from either side.
Reuters