US senator joins Evangelist Graham on trip to South Sudan
By Stephanie McCrummen
Feb 9, 2007 (JUBA, Sudan) — The jet took off Wednesday morning headed for Juba, the fledgling regional capital of southern Sudan and a place at the moment resembling a hot and sandy construction site.
In the pilot seat for the flight from Kampala, Uganda, was Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham. And in the entourage were several members of his Christian charity group, Samaritan’s Purse, along with former Senate majority leader, onetime rumored presidential contender and, for now, surgeon and civilian Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
He had traveled to the group’s far-flung health clinics before to operate on patients who, he granted, often had no idea who he was. The mission this time was a meeting with leaders of the semiautonomous region that only recently emerged from one of the bloodiest and longest-running civil wars on the continent.
But a U.S.-backed peace agreement between the southern Sudanese and the government in Khartoum is faltering badly as world attention has shifted to Darfur, the western region of the country where the government is accused of waging a campaign of violence that the United States and others have labeled genocide.
In the south, the conflict revolved mainly around oil-rich areas along a disputed border with the north. Like Darfur, it is layered with an ethnic dimension. But unlike Darfur, the conflict had a religious dimension and was cast at times as a war of persecution by the mostly Arab and Muslim government against the darker-skinned southerners, who mainly practice Christianity and indigenous religions.
It is that religious facet that has continued to draw in U.S. evangelical groups such as Samaritan’s Purse, which has provided humanitarian relief in the region for a decade. Graham, who recounted with some relish diving into foxholes during wartime trips to the region, said his group has counted at least 500 destroyed churches amid a wider landscape of ruin. He was heading to Juba to tell leaders of his intention to rebuild all of them, he said.
The jet landed before noon in a cloud of sandy dust.
By then, about 90 flights had already buzzed into the small but busy airport, most carrying contractors who are building roads and government ministries from scratch, and living in encampments of tents that are so in demand that they rent at times for more than $150 a night.
A group of two dozen southern Sudanese leaders greeted Graham, Frist and the rest on the runway, and soon a convoy of trucks, SUVs and sirens was rumbling down the reddish dirt roads.
The first stop was the headquarters of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebel group that runs the region.
“We call it the wild west,” Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the minister of regional cooperation, said to the visiting Americans. “You put down your tent under the tree, and you begin something.”
Benjamin told Frist and Graham about all the roads that have been built — “A miracle,” he said — but as the meeting continued, the news about the peace process was decidedly mixed.
Pagan Amum, secretary general of the SPLM, accused the ruling party in Khartoum of orchestrating an attempt to undermine the hard-won Comprehensive Peace Agreement in advance of a vote on secession scheduled for 2011.
Specifically, he said, the government is cheating the south out of oil revenue, building up its forces in the crucial, oil-rich Abyei province and dragging its feet on resolving the border demarcation, all in violation of the agreement reached two years ago. Amum also accused the government of funding militias to harass and drive away contractors.
“These are calculations for something bigger,” he said. “It is part of a major plan.”
Among other things, Frist asked about the availability of clean water. Benjamin explained that water was a problem: bullet holes in water tanks, toxic asbestos pipes. But soon it was time to go, and after firm handshakes and thank-yous, the convoy took off again.
The line of white trucks and vans rolled through town, kicking up dust as people stopped a moment to stare, then went back to hauling wood planks, selling cinder blocks and digging trenches.
More than 100,000 refugees have returned to the south in the past year or so, including Miyong Kuon, who lived in Omaha during the war and was among the crowd following Graham’s group. Though there is little in Juba to love besides sand and sky and heat, Kuon said it still felt like home. “Even if it’s a tent, home is home,” he said.
Kuon waited while Frist and Graham met with the southern Sudanese president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, a tall, bearded man who wore a black bowler-style hat.
After the meeting, Kiir told reporters that in his view, the central government “lacks the political will” to implement the peace agreement, but he also blamed “extremists in both camps” — including his own — for blocking progress.
“We are all convinced that going back to war will not be the solution,” Kiir said.
Frist told the crowd that he would report back to whoever would listen that southern Sudanese were committed to peace but that more outside oversight was necessary to make it work. Then, the convoy took off again.
In the late afternoon, the group met with an SPLM general and finally with the energetic speaker of parliament, who urged the U.S. government to consider Darfur and southern Sudan as different manifestations of the same, problematic Khartoum government.
Graham told the speaker that God had not abandoned the people of southern Sudan.
Afterward, the group posed for photos amid half-constructed buildings and low, twisted trees. And about 5 p.m., the convoy headed back to the airport.
(Washington Post)