South Sudan: The World's Newest Country

Since the start of this blog in 2006 both Montenegro and Kosovo have become independent.  Now it is the Republic of South Sudan's turn.  At 12:01 am, July 9th local time (9:01 UTM, July 8th) the new republic came into being from Sudan, a country which it fought a brutal 22 year civil war with.  This is the first map change in Africa since Zaire renamed itself back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997.  It is also the first sovereignty change in Africa since Walvis Bay was transferred in 1994 from South Africa to Namibia.

Problems Ahead

Now the new country faces many challenges.  Already it has had several micro-civil wars between various tribes and military leaders.  United Nations peacekeepers planned to be rushed in to keep order but they face many challenges including a returning refugee crisis, poor internal controls, and no one quite knowing the final borders of South Sudan.

The last problem has manifested itself in the form of a shooting war.  The Abyei region, jointly administered by Sudan and the southern regional government, was due to have a referendum on whether it would join South Sudan.  The Sudanese government, however, dissolved the joint administration and cancelled the vote.  The state of South Kordofan, which Abyei is a part of, attempted to unilaterally join South Sudan.  This has started a war which the south stayed neutral in and even agreed not to take South Kordofan.

While I have been wrong before on geopolitical predictions I estimate within two years a moderate-to-serious civil war will occur in South Sudan.

South Sudan:  Truly a sub-Saharan African Country

The Republic of South Sudan has truly seceded from Sudan.  The Republic of Sudan models itself as an Arab, Islamic state in Northern (Arab-culture) Africa.  South Sudan is ethnically black African, it's flag use sub-Saharan (non-Arab) colors and style, and the flag even has the Star of Bethlehem on it representing its Christian nature as a unifying factor.

Where on the Map

Your maps are out of date.  Map from The Economist.

South Sudan is a land locked country.  If it wants to export it's oil, a must, it either has to arrange costly deals with Sudan or make new treaties with Ethiopia and have the goods then go through Somaliland.

Currently Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Yahoo Maps do not have South Sudan on the map.  I will report as soon as possible when the first one of these big three update their maps. (Update:  OpenStreetMap beat everyone)

South Sudan will most probably have an easy time being recognized by all countries.  Sudan itself is willingly giving it away and all five members of the United Nations Security Council have stated they will recognize South Sudan. This is greatly different from Kosovo, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.  All these unilaterally declared independence without the consent of the losing country.  Many other countries are worried about making a prescient for other want-to-be breakaway states.

What's in a Name?

Several names were debated for the new republic.  Names like Kush recalled Biblical geography while others like Nileland were geographically based.  Much like West Virginia, however, the name of South Sudan was chosen for simplicity sake.

Guide to Heat Index's Health Impact on People

Heat index is the combination of temperature and humidity to determine how hot it feels to the body.  High humidity levels negatively impact the body's means for sweat to evaporate and thus interfere with the body's natural cooling mechanism.  That's why 90 degrees with high humidity feels worse than a dry 100 degree day.

USA Today made a chart showing negative impacts of heat index levels (hat tip: Daily Caller).

Image from the Daily Caller

For those who use the metric system here is a quick conversion guide:

80 Fahrenheit (F) equals 27 Celsius (C)
90F = 32C
100F = 38C
110F = 43C
120F = 49C
130F = 54C

Bohemian: From Czech to Counter-Culture

Bohemia is the western portion of the Czech Republic.  The region has long been known as Bohemia, even the Republican Romans referred to the area as Boihaemum.  Bohemian once universally meant, simply enough, a person from Bohemia.  The present-day ethnic group Czech is the same thing as a historical Bohemian.

So how did Bohemian go from Czech to become counter-cultural and hippie-like?  The answer is the French.  In the 1400s the Roma (gypsies) reached France.  The Roma came through Bohemia so the French word for Gypsy became "one who came through Bohemia" or, in French, Bohémienne.

French artists and others outside the mainstream society began moving in the poor Roma neighborhoods in the mid-1800s.  It was a nineteenth century yuppie gentrification.  The public then started to call these artists bohémienne.  The name stuck and migrated into the English lexicon.

Demographic mass migration through the corridor of present-day Czech Republic into France is why the term Bohemian (Czech) changed it's meaning to Bohemian (counter-cultural).

A Children's Guide to How GPS Works

The British educational website BrainPop has a free, easy to understand children's cartoon explaining how global positioning system (GPS) works.  The cartoon is for early years students but does a good job of explaining the basics.  There are other cartoons explaining geographical matters but there is a subscription fee.

Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln: Patriots, Presidents, and Geographers

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are well known as being three very significant presidents.  What many people do not know, however, is that they were all geographers.

George Washington's map of Mount Vernon. From Smithsonian Magazine.

George Washington spent his youth mapping and surveying much of northern Virginia.  His surveying mapped out much of the western Maryland-Virginia(-and now West Virginia) border.  The Library of Congress has an excellent online article about Washington's work as a geographer.

Thomas Jefferson was also a surveyor but he did so much more.  During the Revolutionary War he managed to take time out from being governor of Virginia to write his famous regional geography text book Notes on the States of Virginia.  During his presidency he commissioned the famous Lewis & Clark expedition.  Earlier, as ambassador to France he commissioned a moose hunting trip in New Hampshire to disprove French environmental determinism.

Abraham Lincoln briefly was the county surveyor for Sangamon county, Illinois.  Lincoln soon returned to his law practice and politics which were his love.  However, he stated his geography work as land surveyor "produced bread and kept body and soul together."

Geography and the Declaration of Independence

When one thinks of the Declaration of Independence one most likely thinks of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  The reason the colonist sought these rights lies with the old rallying cry of "taxation without representation."  Taxation without representation is commonly asserted as the sole reason the thirteen colonies united to liberate themselves from the control of King George III of Great Britain and Ireland.

What many people do not know, however, is that the Declaration of Independence states many reasons for independence.  A large number of the reasons the United States declared independence have roots in geography.

Here's a list of the stated geographic reasons in the Declaration along with my explanation.  Note: 1776 English is used in bold.

"He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."


The colonies had their own local governments.  These governments had a governor appointed by the monarch and a legislature voted on by the people.  However, King George III would frequently abolish the legislature or forbid it to meet.  A "compromise" by the king was to allow the legislature to meet in London, England.  This was not a solution since an ocean that took up to six weeks to cross separated the colonies and England.  Sometimes colonists would hear about an allowable meeting location and time only after the time has passed due to the communication lag between colony and mother country.


"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."


The patriots of 1776 had no problem with immigration.  Colonists who were ethnically English, Scots, Scot-Irish, Irish, Germans, Swedes, and Dutch were united in a nationalism based on their colony along with their rights as Englishmen.  What they did have a problem with is being denied an influx of hardworking, skilled populations of tradesmen, merchants, and farmers from other countries.  It was the immigrants who would create the new frontiers for the colonies by pushing settlements into the continent.  To deny immigration was to deny the growth of the colonies.


For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world


The colonist favored free, open trade.  The United Kingdom practiced not capitalism (modern capitalism was defined by Adam Smith in 1776) but mercantilism.  Mercantilism taught that trade with foreign countries had to be limited and the colonies should serve basically as resource providers for the mother country while the colonies got only basic goods in return.


For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences


Trial by your peers was defined by the Constitution but English Common Law had long provided for juries to be from a similar population pool.  Under King George III, however, your peers could be the closest thing England could provide.  A Massachusetts farmer could find himself in the fate of London merchants.


For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies


The United States has always had a weird relationship with Canada.  The said province, the Province of Quebec, was a geographic monster stretching from present day Illinois all the way to Labrador.  This land was mostly French, only recently conquered during the French & Indian War.  In order to appease the large Catholic French population the king approved the Quebec Act.  The act allowed 1) French civil law to exist along side English common law, 2) the loyalty oath removed references to Protestantism, and 3) the Catholic Church was given freedom to function.

Quebec was much more than Quebec

This was unacceptable to the American colonists.  They saw all of Canada as the next colonies (the colonies has already bled for Canada as colonial militias provided much needed troops for the various invasions of Canada including the capture of Louisbourg in present-day Nova Scotia).  Allowing the French Canadians to remain French would prevent an Englishization of Canada and prevent the Canada from eventually entering the American colonial sphere.


Interestingly enough an Englishization did occur but only after the Revolutionary War.  An estimated 70,000 United Empire Loyalists, Americans who remained loyal to the United Kingdom, left the American colonies and settled in Canada.  These loyalists shifted the demographic balance in present-day Canada in favor of English-speaking Canadians.  Those who resettled in present-day Ontario provided a cultural border limiting the extent of French Canada and ensured that western Canada would be culturally English rather than French.


"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."


The charge of "mercenary" against German Hessian troops is somewhat unfair.  First, the troops were sold into service by their various monarchs to King George III.  Second, some were subjects of George III since at the same time he was King of Great Britain and Ireland he was Prince of Hanover, part of the Holy Roman Empire.


We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.


The colonies formally declare their independence here.  The declare themselves to be states, independent countries, comprising a united country much like the Holy Roman Empire was comprised of many independent, sometimes warring against each other, states.  Until the Civil War the term "United States" was treated as plural. One would say "the United States are" as opposed to thinking the country as truly one.

July 2011 Travel Photo: Pashtun Graveyard

Photo by Catholicgauze

Musakhel, Moses Village, lies on a contested border between various Pashtun tribes.  The village's location in a valley has made it a contested space between tribes, 1980s rebels, Communists, Taliban, and Coalition Forces.  Afghan National Police and Army do not even try to come here.  Over the years many battles have been fought and the dead fighters are laid to rest next to the deceased villagers.

Normal graves are marked with rocks but nothing notes the name of those buried below.  The graves of martyrs have flags waving from them representing Islam (green), martyrdom (black), and the Taliban (blue stripes on a white background).  Village elders' graves have small stone enclosures but no names are listed.

Grave sites has become a contentious issue between the native Taliban who are Deobandi Sunni Muslims and foreign fighters who are mostly Wahhabi Sunni Muslims.  The Deobandis combine many folk practices such as worshipping at grave sites, praying for the dead's intercessions as if they were saints, and even believing the sites themselves contain God-given magic powers.  The Wahhabis believe these practices are paganism in disguise and will attempt to "correct" Deobandi "errors" by destroying grave sites.  While Wahhabis believe their version of Islam is the purest because it came from the purest Arab tribes, Afghan Deobandis believe their version of Islam is the purest because non-Muslim forces have never conquered Afghan Muslims.  Many a Wahabbi has met a horrible end by Deobandis who hate outsiders attempting to correct their interpretation of Islam.