Opheera McDoom has been covering Sudan for Reuters since 2003 and was the only resident Western journalist to witness Sudan's north-south peace deal from its start in 2005 to this month's referendum.
In the following story, she reflects on why Sudan went from so much optimism with the 2005 deal to an almost certain acrimonious split this year.
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - "Who will save us now?" The haunting cry of southern Sudanese mourning their dead hero rebel leader John Garang rings as loud in my ears today as it did in 2005 when Sudan buried its unity alongside him.
His death in a helicopter crash just weeks after taking office as vice president marked a turning point in Sudan's history from which it never recovered.
Now southerners are voting in a referendum to separate from the north as the peace deal ending Africa's longest civil war enters its final days.
I clearly remember the electric atmosphere of Garang's triumphant post-peace return to Khartoum -- who could forget?
The streets were swarming with millions of southerners who used to fear entering the city centre, traffic came to a standstill, buildings collapsed under the weight of people -- some even died in the chaos.
I watched, balanced on top of a rickety pre-fab building, as the hordes of people surged forward to see their hero, trampling the sound system so they could not hear him speak.
The war was over, their suffering was over, this was finally a country they could call their own, and young southerners stalked the streets: "This is our town now," they shouted, walking down the middle of Khartoum's main road.
Those were heady days in Khartoum, which witnessed a renaissance as emergency law was lifted, army checkpoints on every corner removed, foreign investment came flooding in and -- always a sign of progress -- the first foreign fast food restaurant opened up.
Members of Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) defied Islamic law and sat by the main road, sharing a bottle of whisky in plain sight. Suddenly Sudan's security forces, so feared for so long, began to fear the southerners. It really was a new Sudan.
I'd talked to Garang many times on the phone but I met him first in person on the day he became Sudan's Vice President. Exactly three weeks later he was dead. It changed everything.
The one man who was truly seen as a national figure by both north and south was gone forever and, after the shock faded, Sudanese lost hope and the will to work for unity.
"Are we a cursed nation?" one northern friend asked me in a desperate text message on hearing the news.
The news opened a Pandora's box of hatred which turned into the worst kind of violence. Southerners, thinking Khartoum had murdered their hero, began killing northerners and burning shops, cars, everything in sight. The retaliation was worse.
For days security forces did not intervene and young men armed with anything they could find formed gangs, patrolling at night to protect their neighbourhoods. Everyone carried a gun. The lines were drawn, the war had come to Khartoum for the first time and no one would ever forget.
THE SOUTHERNERS ARE COMING!
Once the killing subsided, Garang's deputy Salva Kiir was sworn in as vice president in a sombre ceremony.
"Who is this guy, what's he like?" a senior northern minister took me aside to ask during the ceremony.
This showed how little the north knew of the rebels they had fought for years. Kiir had negotiated the Machakos Protocol, the precursor to the 2005 deal.
The same official called northern families before Garang's return telling them to buy up land quick because "the southerners are coming!"
Not the best start to peace.
And it didn't continue well. Kiir, not the statesman that Garang was, found running the south of which he was also president an all-consuming job. He soon earned himself the title of "Vice Absent" in the north.
New southern ministers struggled to find their way in the northern-dominated halls of Khartoum's government and most gave up, meaning both northerners and southerners who had hoped that peace would change their lives were bitterly disappointed.
Khartoum tried to delay implementing most parts of the deal, and the former southern rebels were no match for the seasoned northern politicians.
But it wasn't just the northern and southern parties who let peace down. The people did too as many of the old attitudes based on tribalism and Khartoum's elite families prevailed.
In the capital, I paid for a southern boy to have treatment for a nasty, infected wound on his neck in a private hospital. The guards refused to let him in the door, even though he had the money, until I came and personally escorted him.
I still heard the word "slave" used to describe southerners, marriage proposals to northern women from southern Muslims caused family crises, and the phrases "bint naas," or from a "good family," often excluded those with any southern heritage.
Pale skin was beautiful, dark skin was not.
I saw similar attitudes from southerners.
A tribal leader in the south's Warrap state licked my arm to show he liked my paler colour and offered my colleague a number of cows to buy my hand in marriage.
Southerners would call northerners "Jallaba," a term harking back to the slave trade.
A friend whose car was stolen in Khartoum and found in Juba was told by police he'd have to pay 5,000 pounds (1,300 pounds sterling) and not a penny less to retrieve it, because he was a rich "Arab."
Had Garang lived would these attitudes have changed? I like to believe so. The younger generation give me hope.
In Khartoum's universities northerners and southerners mix freely without problems in classes and over lunch.
But as secession looms, and threats to exclude southerners from the north gain momentum, I worry if they will ever have the chance to mingle again.
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
