The death of an archdeacon

Sudan: Militia attacks in South Sudan target churches and villages, and threaten 'peace' agreement | Faith J.H. McDonnell

Photo by Danielle Storm

Before the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the National Islamic Front regime and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), death was a daily reality in South Sudan. Khartoum's crude but efficient anti-personnel bombs—barrels stuffed with shrapnel, dropped from aging Antonov aircraft—targeted those who opposed its forced Islamization and Arabization. Khartoum also waged war through slave raids, orchestrated famine, helicopter gunship attacks, scorched earth campaigns, displacement of people, and the killing of church leaders.

Now, despite the peace agreement, the regime's long-term agenda for South Sudan apparently has not changed. Reports claim that Khartoum recruits and arms proxy militias to destabilize the South, killing civilians and scattering its people once again. At the same time, the Islamist regime uses money and promises of power to divide Southerners against each other. In this way Khartoum may demonstrate that the South, scheduled for a secession referendum in 2011, cannot govern itself.