Related articles and links |  1 of 6

While reporting for Christianity Today on the church in southern Sudan, I was invited by local Christians on a risky ministry trip to Gangura, a village near the town of Yambio just four miles from Sudan's notorious border with eastern Congo. This is territory of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a small, brutal militia fighting in northern Uganda to overthrow the government. Our guide's job description includes pointing out the evidence of past conflicts.

"This village was looted," he says. And, "That woman was abducted and released a few weeks ago." It gets worse. "Someone was killed here." Or, "Victims are buried here."

A wobbly wooden bridge brings us to Gangura. Grass-patched shelters form a semicircle around an abandoned market. Such villages are deeply embedded in the thick foliage. Villagers pop up from different directions. One of them is the chief. Since it is still early morning, tradition calls for polite inquiries. "How did you and your people sleep last night?" we ask.

He replies that his people did not sleep at all because an LRA raid occurred during the night. Some people (most likely women) who were abducted a few weeks ago have escaped into Gangura, and the LRA is furious.

"If you wait—say, an hour—they will show up," the chief says.

A World Vision security officer with us immediately says, "We have to get out of here."

One frail woman urgently tries to tell us her story. "They attacked my house and took everything."

But there is no time to listen. The risk is too high. It is time to scramble out of Gangura.

Millions have fled, millions have stayed, and millions have died in seemingly endless armed conflict. (Rebel groups and government-supported militias are largely to blame for any new violence.) The jerky and perilously speedy drive out of Gangura brings to mind the sincere question one pastor from Yambio posed to CT:

"We ask—where is this peace?"

Despite this pastor's poignant question, CT did find that Sudan's historic 2005 peace agreement stopped the war. But CT witnessed something else—the mustard seed–like beginnings of a deeper peace that is spiritual in character and stimulating great enthusiasm within the Christian community.

Four years ago in the remote city of Juba, southern Sudan's regional capital, residents were jubilant. Twenty-one years of war were over. The North, mostly Arab and Muslim, negotiated a settlement with the South, mostly black with a burgeoning Christian population.

Two million lives had been lost and four million people had been displaced during the war years. The January 2005 peace agreement between the Khartoum regime and Juba's Sudan People's Liberation Movement promised peace and prosperity. Newfound oil wealth would be shared proportionally in the largest country in Africa, ranked as the second "most-failed" nation in the world on the 2008 Failed States Index.

"There was great joy among the people," recalls Micah Laila Dawidi, an Anglican bishop in Central Equatoria, one of 10 states that compose southern Sudan. The eight million people of southern Sudan had good reason to celebrate: Lasting peace has eluded Sudan since its 1956 independence. Coming to power in 1989, President Omar al-Bashir routed his political adversaries, embraced fundamentalist Islam, expanded Sudan's military might, permitted genocidal killing in Darfur since 2003, and negotiated only when circumstances forced his hand. (Al-Bashir may soon be indicted for war crimes.)

Under pressure from the United States and the United Nations in 2002, al-Bashir and southern rebel leader John Garang agreed to a ceasefire. This agreement held for three more years as they finalized the peace agreement, which calls for a vote in 2011 on independence for the South. Garang was sworn in as al-Bashir's first vice president in early July 2005. "This is not my peace—it is the peace of the Sudanese people," Garang said. But the Christian leader, accused of war crimes in the 1980s, was killed weeks later in a suspicious helicopter crash.

next page... |  1 of 6

share this page

January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1