Actually, in regard to the Sudan the Bush administration is pushing hard for a peace agreement to end the decades-long war. Largely, due to the support of evangelistic Christians from Bush's home town:
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The New York Times reported in October that evangelical Christians "sway White House on Human Rights issues abroad." The Times gave Christians credit for spurring George Bush to intercede in Sudan's civil war that has killed and displaced millions. (Bush's 2001 appointment of former U.S. senator John Danforth as a special envoy to Sudan came after Christian groups called on the administration to make peace in the Sudan a priority.)
Not mentioned in the Times report was the influential advocacy of Christians in Bush's hometown. In March 2003, Midlanders city-wide—from Methodist to Baptist ministers, from the Mayor and city councilmen to oil company executives and housewives, from the Catholic bishop to Lutheran and Episcopalian pastors—sent a letter to the government of Sudan, calling for a just peace in the 20-year war between Christians and Muslims.
"Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas," read the letterhead. "Hometown of President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush." The letter's underlying message to Khartoum: work towards a just peace or Bush's hometown will put pressure on the U.S. government to enforce the Sudan Peace Act, legislation passed in 2002 which requires that the White House monitor negotiations between the Sudanese government and the rebels in the Sudan People's Liberation Army.
The Midlanders' letter got the attention of Khartoum. Khidir H. Ahmed, the Sudanese ambassador to the United States, told me that Sudan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mustafa Osman Ismail encouraged him to talk with the Christians from the "village of George Bush" and invite them to visit Khartoum. "We have been talking since that time," says Ahmed.
The Midland Ministerial Alliance, whose members include personal friends of President and Laura Bush, became active on Sudanese issues after the city hosted the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church in 2001. The event, which focused on the persecution of Christians in Sudan, shocked the city into action, say Midlanders. (What also accounts for the city's interest in Sudanese peace is that several Midland churches have sister churches in Southern Sudan.)
Over the last two years Midland has become a stopping place for Sudanese exiles, who often note that West Texas looks like the Sudan. Basketball giant Manute Bol has visited Midland, as have a number of exiled Sudanese bishops. Twenty Sudanese exiles constructed a Sudanese village in Midland for a 2002 religious festival that attracted about 90,000 people.
Money and materials go from Midland to the Christians in Southern Sudan regularly. Midlanders financially support Radio Free Sudan, which broadcasts Christian radio in Southern Sudan. Children at a Christian school in Midland raised enough money to start two schools in Sudan, and continue to raise money to keep them going.
When the Sudan Peace Act was debated in Washington last year, Midlanders traveled to Washington to conduct a prayer vigil across the street from the State Department. When the act passed, the White House invited several members of the group to the Roosevelt Room in the White House for the signing.
Midlanders are significant enough participants in the Sudanese peace process that when the Sudanese foreign minister visited America in October, he placed a call to Dr. Jerry Hilton, the president of the Midland Ministerial Alliance and pastor of Bush's childhood Presbyterian church.
AN IMPROBABLE VENUE FOR GLOBAL diplomacy, Midland is now known to all the parties in the peace negotiations. Sources say the Midland Ministerial Alliance has channels to the Sudanese rebels, peace mediators in Kenya (the site of the peace negotiations), the State Department and the White House.
This makes them "a constructive player in the Sudanese peace process," says a U.S. government official familiar with the group.
"They have channels to both sides in the dispute," he says. "They are perceived to have useful contacts with the Bush administration and other Christian groups. I certainly pass on their views to other government officials."
"Don't mess with Midland," says a Washington insider who has worked with the Ministerial Alliance of Midland (the group has joined a coalition of human rights groups in Washington, D.C.). "All four parties to the peace negotiations—the government of Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the Kenyan mediator, and the U.S. government—have felt the pressure of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland. It has been remarkable."
The Midlanders, according to this source impressed with their "savvy," have communicated with both the Sudanese government and SPLA leader John Garang at critical moments in the peace talks, telling both sides that if they abandon the peace process Midlanders will cause political fallout for them in the U.S.
"Along with millions of Americans associated with churches, synagogues and human rights groups, we intend to forcefully press our elected representatives, including the President, to bring the sanctions provisions of the Sudan Peace Act into full effect if no peace agreement is reached," they have written to the Sudanese government.
They recently sent the same message to Garang: "If the SPLM leaves itself open to blame for the failure of the peace negotiations, our ability to ensure immediate invocation of the Sudan Peace Act or to take other steps to hold the government of Sudan accountable or to cause the United States to take the side of the SPLM in any resumed military conflict will be enormously, perhaps impossibly compromised." (Garang was scheduled to visit Midland and meet with the Midland Ministerial Alliance in November.)
The Midland group has also influenced the State Department, according to this source. "Their level of commitment has allowed me to say to people at the State Department: 'Listen you guys if you treat Sudan as just another piece of business, if there is anything wanting in your effort, you are going to wake up and find the people of Midland coming en masse to Washington and the President will scratch his head wanting to know why people he knows are demonstrating and maybe even getting arrested in protest. I wouldn't want to be you trying to explain your failure of effort to the president,'" he says.
Every day in Midland Christians gather to pray for "Midland's Rising Son," President Bush. They also frequently engage in fasting. Nina Shea of Freedom House says that a "group of hundred people or so" met in Midland recently to pray for her "at the exact moment I was meeting with Bush" to discuss Sudanese and human rights issues. The Midlanders are "a powerful addition to our human rights coalition," she says. "They can reach Bush on a cultural level many people can't… I think they played a key role in keeping President Bush personally engaged in this."
And perhaps Laura Bush too. Shea says that at a White House event last year she had an opportunity to encourage Bush to press hard for peace in the Sudan. As she spoke to him, Laura Bush entered the conversation, saying that Sudan was in a "horrible" state. Shea heard later that Laura Bush's mother Jenna Welch, who lives in Midland and knows members of the Midland Ministerial Alliance, had attended a speech an exiled Sudanese bishop delivered in Midland.
John Miller, the State Department's director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, traveled to Midland earlier this year. He spoke before friends and members of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland at the downtown Petroleum Club and attended one of its prayer services. "It was the first time this Jew had been in the middle of a prayer session like that," he says. The meeting was "exhilarating." The Midlanders are the "spiritual descendants of the Church abolitionists of the nineteenth century," he says. "The Midland Ministerial Alliance is picking up where they left off." Miller recalls the group meeting with Senator Sam Brownback at the Monocle restaurant in Washington, D.C. for so long Miller had to call it a night.
Brownback recalls the evening. "These are beautiful and quite humble people," he says. "They represent the best of American moral interest." Asked what specific role they played in the Sudan Peace Act he spearheaded in the Senate, he said, "They were consulted on that." He says drafts of the legislation were "discussed with them" to see if "it was something they would support." "I am trying to go down and meet with them in the next few months," he says, calling them a "study in grass-roots faith-based diplomacy."
Deborah Fikes, a self-described "housewife" and "rancher's daughter," serves as the publicity director for the Midland Ministerial Alliance. Asked about the influence of the group, she acknowledges that its concerns are "forwarded to the top leaders in the Government of Sudan," but disclaims any influence on Bush. "We simply mirror the President's passion and determination to use our influence and empowerment to help those being persecuted and victimized around the world," she says.
But does Sudan's Ambassador Ahmed feel like he is speaking to the president through this group? "In a sense, yes," he says. "It helps to talk to people from his village," because "I would say that their relationship with Bush would not be a political one but a religious one." He believes they connect with Bush on a deeper level than most groups, sharing the same roots and faith with him. That "gives them an edge," he says. He also believes they can influence other Christian organizations with whom they are in contact, both domestically and in Sudan. If peace is achieved in the Sudan, the group could play a role in the reconciliation and reconstruction of the country, he says. |
