By Louis Charbonneau
REJAF, Sudan, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Under the blazing south Sudanese sun, hundreds of recruits dressed in pressed blue camouflage line up in front of the U.N. Security Council to show off what could soon be Africa's newest national police force.
Sudan's oil-producing south is three months away from a referendum on whether it should declare independence or stay united with the north, its foe in a decades-long civil war that ended in 2005.
The underdeveloped territory is racing to build up institutions that take it through the sensitive vote and beyond to the widely expected vote for separation.
What the new recruits lack in experience, regular pay and, in many cases, basic education, is more than made up by their enthusiasm, say trainers who have spent years guiding more troublesome students.
"Sometimes they say they haven't had anything to eat and we have to stop the training to get them some food," said Jan, a U.N. police trainer from the Netherlands who taught aspiring officers in Afghanistan.
"(But) these guys here, they really care, they're committed," added Jan, who declined to give his surname. "In Afghanistan they often wouldn't show up. I wish they'd been like this in Afghanistan."
The future police officers, parading in front of a visiting delegation of Security Council envoys, will be responsible for everything from protecting ballot boxes and voting centres to guarding against the unrest that many commentators fear will plague the plebiscite.
Their 9-month course has taken them through the arts of crowd control, riot pacification, VIP protection, arresting violent criminals, and treating victims.
They are also given a crack course in law, not always easy with high levels of illiteracy. "There are laws here," said Jan. "But if you can't read the laws it's very difficult to promote them. But we try to teach them."
There are around 20,000 trained police officers in southern Sudan, Sudanese officials told reporters at Rejaf. They added that their target was around 30,000.
The stakes are high for the southern Sudanese government. If the south is to have its own country, it needs a functioning police force in place and Sudanese officials acknowledge that they have a long way to go.
"We need your support in a serious way," south Sudan's Interior Minister Gier Chuang Aluong told the Security Council. "We have internal threats. We have external threats."
Among the biggest threats for impoverished south Sudan, said the chief of U.N. police in southern Sudan, Major General Rajesh Dewan, was the transfer of weapons to criminal elements in the south, cattle rustlers and tribal militants.
Diplomats and U.N. officials suspect that northern Sudan is supplying weapons to armed groups in the south, a charge Khartoum denies.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told reporters that she was impressed with the Rejaf police training centre, describing it as "light years ahead of the one in Liberia." She praised the fact that a third of the recruits were women.
Several of the trainees told reporters that they were eager to serve what they were convinced would soon be their own new country.
"I want to be a policeman to help our nation," said 27-year-old Ayun Nyok, adding he looked forward to working during the referendum, scheduled for Jan. 9, 2011. "That's what we really want to achieve, a referendum on our independence." (Editing by Andrew Heavens and Myra MacDonald)
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