This week’s referendum in Sudan may finally liberate the long-oppressed southern population — but it might also carry dire consequences for Africa.

So far, careful and nuanced diplomacy — mainly in the Bush era, but also under President Obama — is working to produce a relatively amicable Sudanese divorce, allowing independence for mostly Christian southern Sudan. If such disputed areas as the oil-rich region of Abyei (where dozens were killed in clashes yesterday) can follow, the decades-old south-north civil war may well end.

Yet the first significant breakup of an African country since the end of the colonial era raises the specter of splits in other ethnically divided nations in the continent — and those divorces are less likely to be amicable. Is a wave of secessions ahead?

* No: Hilde Johnson is a Norwegian diplomat who — under the leadership of Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Ambassador John Danforth — helped facilitate the successful 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that put Sudan on the road to this referendum. She now tells me Sudan was a unique case: It is Africa’s largest and most ethnically diverse country, and constant wars there necessitated this kind of agreement. It won’t recur elsewhere, she predicts.

* Yes: Khartoum is consumed by buyer’s remorse these days about signing the 2005 agreement. You are next, aides to President Omar al-Bashir warn other African leaders.

As the Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations, Daffa-Alla Ali Osman, explains, Africa’s “fathers of independence” knew that national borders were drawn arbitrarily by the colonial powers, with little regard to ethnic divides. Nevertheless, he said, these anti-colonialists feared the redrawing of maps and warned, “Do not touch that Pandora box.” Tearing the oil-rich south away from Sudan, Osman told me, “will create a lot of havoc — if not in Sudan, in other African countries.”

* Depends: Susan Page, an Africa-desk deputy assistant secretary of state, says that splitting of countries, if at all, must be done — as in Sudan’s case — via agreement. America won’t recognize unilateral declarations of independence by runaway ethnic groups, she insists.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that the warnings to date about African breakups come mostly from Africa’s worst tyrants, such as Bashir and Libya’s Col. Khadafy. Ethnic strife has created havoc across the continent for decades. The Polisario group has long fought to split Western Sahara from Morocco; other secessionists battle in Senegal, Angola, Somalia and Congo.

So how do we assure that Sudan’s split doesn’t foster even bloodier wars? Yes, we have interests here beyond moral considerations. Natural resources (and propensity to welcome Islamist terrorists) make Africa an increasingly important part of the world — for us and for our competitors, such as China.

In an op-ed last week, Obama chalked up this week’s successful referendum to last October’s multi-nation UN meeting he chaired, which made it clear to Sudan’s leaders “that the international community was united in its belief that this referendum had to take place and that the will of the people of southern Sudan had to be respected.”

Obama’s efforts, as did those of his special Sudan envoy, Scott Gration, helped. But let’s hope he’s not too serious about the “international community’s” ability to solve problems.

Take Africa’s hottest current flashpoint, Ivory Coast. America and an alphabet soup of international groups (the AU, the EU, Ecowas, the UN) pushed for a presidential election last October — even though preparations for the voting were plainly falling short. Then they declared incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo the loser, even as the country’s Supreme Court (which Gbagbo controls) disagreed.

Now Gbagbo won’t leave the presidential palace. The army he controls has imposed a siege on a nearby hotel, where the declared winner, Alassane Ouattara, is protected only by UN troops.

The ill-advised election honed the north-south ethnic and religious fault lines; Ivory Coast now seems headed for a bloody civil war. And the only future solution to this botched experiment in “democracy” may very well resemble the split of Sudan.

So fasten your seat belts. Africa is headed for a rough patch. And beware one-size-fits-all solutions proposed by some fictitiously united “community.” Once again, America must lead.

beavni@gmail.com