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Four bombs dropped on Holy Cross School in the Kauda region of Sudan that day in February 2000. Twenty-three were killed. Most of the dead were between 8- and 15 years old. Addil, 11, lost his arm.

"He was not a victim at the World Trade Center, but of another type of terror," Lane told Christianity Today. "That is terror of our family members because they are Christian. There hasn't been much attention to international persecution matters since September 11. My concern right now is that we don't turn so inward that we forget about our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world."

Lane is not the only policy observer concerned that religious liberty efforts will be forgotten. The Bush administration is seeking support from countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, which have been criticized in previous years by the U.S. State Department for religious rights infringements.

The United States Committee on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) voiced concern to President Bush on Friday that "in forging alliances against terrorism, the United States [would] compromise its commitment to human rights—including religious freedom—and democracy. We oppose policy tradeoffs."

Robert Seiple, president and founder of the Institute for Global Engagement and former U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, told Christianity Today that religious freedom will likely drop in priority.

"One thing you lose in these circumstances is nuance," he said. "You are left with only broad designations of 'good' or 'evil.'"

"There's certainly those who feel the lift of the U.N. sanctions on Sudan is a bad sign," said Lawrence J. Goodrich, director of communications for the USCIRF. "But that was underway before September 11. And those sanctions were largely symbolic."

He pointed out that U.S. economic sanctions have not yet been lifted. President Bush has also sent an envoy for peace into Sudan. "The administration is saying a lot of the right things [regarding protecting human rights], but we have to make sure that deeds and words match ," Goodrich said.

The State Department report was due September 1. Goodrich said it is understandable that the attacks would delay it further.

Nina Shea, director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner of USCIRF, fears religious freedoms are being bargained away.

"I'm concerned that there may be some people in the administration that would make a Faustian pact in exchange for intelligence, or to conduct military exercises within their borders, or in order to recruit them into an alliance," Shea told CT.

She said that her concerns were heightened when the administration stopped pushing the Sudan Peace Act in Congress and gave approval for U.N. sanctions to be dropped. The United Nations Security Council removed five-year-old sanctions on Sudan on September 28. The United States abstained from the vote.

"We've lost ground on Sudan since September 11," Shea said. Despite Sudan's claims to join the war on terrorism, she said, terror continues in the country.

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October (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45