Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: art slott who wrote (26122)	4/19/2002 6:21:33 PM
From: art slott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The Bloodiest War By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Sudan E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com EBEL AWLIA, Sudan — Their life stories are so braided with death and despair that Ajok Maniel and Nul Aru make the perfect Sudanese couple, a reflection of the world's most wretched country. Ms. Maniel fled the civil war in southern Sudan when an Arab militia allied with the government swept through her village, shot her brother dead and stole everything her family had. Mr. Aru fled when troops on the rebel side attacked and killed his brother and turned his family from tribal chieftains to refugees. Thus victimized by rival sides in the civil war, Ms. Maniel and Mr. Aru met and fell in love in this refugee camp of several thousand mud huts, married in 1996 and had three children. The eldest died of measles, and now the youngest, a frail 2-year-old girl named Akier, is dangerously ill as well. The world's attention may be focused elsewhere in the region, but this is by far the Middle East's bloodiest war, with two million Sudanese dead over the last 18 years. The war, arising from the rebellion by the southern part of the country (mostly Christian or animist and black African) against smothering rule by the Muslim, Arab northern part, has also left 4.5 million homeless. With temperatures in this bleak desert town in northern Sudan well over 100 degrees from dawn to dusk, with children dying as parents fret over which of their sick children they can afford to take to the doctor (a visit costs 20 cents), this landscape looks like a vision of hell. Walk among the mud huts and you meet: 8-year-old Boutros looking after his 4-year-old brother now that his mother has died and his father has vanished in the war; Antony Minaway, explaining that it is best if his five children eat the one meal a day they can afford, sorghum gruel, in the evening so that they can fall asleep afterward; and Angeline Henry wailing and cackling hysterically as neighbors explain that she went insane after troops killed her son and carried off her daughter. Yet now, amazingly, there is a ray of hope in Sudan — along with a couple of lessons for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The government of Sudan is stepping away from its terrorist past, and both the government and the rebels seem exhausted by a civil war that neither can win. The Bush administration is handling this country just right, and its special envoy for peace in Sudan, former Senator John Danforth, has achieved a cease-fire in part of the country and inspired growing talk that 2002 may be the year of the peace. "There's a real momentum for peace," notes Alex de Waal, an independent Sudan expert in London. And a new book-length report on Sudan from the International Crisis Group concludes, "A small window for peace has opened." One reason is that, despite occasional sound bites from the Bush White House about never negotiating with terrorists, that's what it is doing here, to its immense credit. It's precisely because this administration is willing to talk seriously and even upgrade relations with the terrorist-tainted government in Khartoum that there is some hope of ending the war. The Clinton administration's policy on Sudan was too idealistic, with Clintonites (and Congressional Republicans) so turned off by the awful government here that they began to flirt with the rebels in the south. But the rebels are also monsters, and it has been clear since 1998 that they could not win. So the American gift of credibility to the rebels arguably only prolonged Sudan's suffering. There may also be two lessons from this for the smaller but better publicized conflict northeast of here. First, even if leaders are as brutal and untrustworthy as Sudan's, it is worth negotiating with them — because in the real world it often falls to the thugs to become the peace-makers. Second, there is always hope, for if peace can suddenly glimmer here it should be able to shine in a holy land as well. In any case, while waiting for peace here in Sudan, children continue to die. In the mud hut of Ms. Maniel and Mr. Aru, little Akier is whimpering and crying, and the parents have gone broke buying medicine for her. But they fret that the doctor's diagnosis of malaria may be wrong, for despite the medicine Akier grows more feeble each day. The mother strokes her daughter's stick-like arm, but the girl just cries and cries.