CNN.com - Egypt fears division of Sudan - August 27, 2002

I can see why -- Egypt has enough problems without its southern neighbor breaking up. But Sudan as constituted really doesn't make sense as a country. It's large and unwieldy, and the southern parts of the country (which may secede under a possible peace plan) are ethnically and religiously unlike the north. There's no reason for these two regions to be one country except that somebody sometime decided they were. That the Arab, Islamic north (which is ruled by Islamists trying to impose sharia on the whole country) should rule over a predominantly "African" and Christian or animist south is nonsensical.

Egypt is afraid that the breakups might spread to the rest of Africa. Of course, most African states are ethnically diverse -- Egypt is the exception in that it actually makes sense as a country. Among the many ways Europeans screwed up Africa was in how they divided it up when they left. I grow more convinced as time goes by that Africa will have to find its own paradigm, something unlike the European nation-state. The USA, or (maybe better) Canada would seem better role models -- confederations of smaller entities, each keeping some degree of self-determination and maintaining their own identities. (Heck, the EU model actually makes some sense.) So many of Africa's nightmares have come because they've tried to mold European-style nations out of diverse groups, and it just doesn't work. (It doesn't work in Europe, either. See Yugoslavia for an example.)