When a series of wars that have lasted the better part of half a century come to a supposed “conclusion,” as occurred with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 between North and South, moderated and monitored by the U.K., U.S., Kenya, and several other countries, it becomes news. And briefly, it garnered the attention that the agreement deserved. However, since then, the bitter aftermath in this war-torn area has drifted into the back of world consciousness, eclipsed by tsunamis, two major U.S. led campaigns, earthquakes in Haiti, and the myriad of other issues that have since had the spotlight of western media focused upon themselves. This has led to a lack of international monitoring and attention on the implementation of the peace itself, and today Sudan as a whole finds itself in a tense state of uncertainty, because in 2011 there will be a popular referendum to decide whether a large portion of the South will become a new, separate country.
In the aftermath of a contentious, and essentially ignored, series of the first “democratic” national elections, international attention is returning to the area which is likely to give the world its newest country by this time next year, in the form of South Sudan. A series of publications and high level writers have taken the time to take a second look at this area, one of the most underdeveloped in the world. I have already discussed one of these articles, by Nicholas Kristoff, but I bring it up again as it remains one of the best discussions of the work the Catholic Church is doing in South Sudan, particularly in the areas where I was most active, and with people who I worked including Cathy Arata and Fr. Michael Barton, two U.S. natives. The Time magazine article is written from Chuibet, just south of Tonj where I worked, just north of Rumbek, and the site where the Teacher’s Training College is being constructed, and it discusses much of the ongoing violence in that area.
