c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ An aid worker who has spent 11 years in southern Sudan says a severe famine there that threatens to kill tens of thousands in the coming weeks is”carefully manipulated”by the Khartoum government and is akin to”genocide”or”ethnic cleansing.” Dan Eiffe of the Norwegian People’s Aid also told a Capitol Hill news conference Friday (July 17) the decades-old fighting between the Muslim-controlled government in the north and rebels in the mostly Christian and animist south is essentially a”religious war.””Religion is a very important issue here,”Eiffe said.”This is very much a religious war of fundamentalist Islam on the Christian population of southern Sudan.”People call them Christian animists. Well they’re not animist, they’re largely Christians and it’s our missionaries that have made them Christians … and then when they are persecuted by extreme Islam, we leave them to suffer in this situation.” If the crisis is left unchecked, Eiffe warned, by December some 2 million people in southern Sudan could die from starvation or fighting and the war could spread to other east African nations.”The bottom line here is that the government wants the land without the people,”said Eiffe, referring to the oil-rich area.”And it wants to go much further than that. It wants to go into Uganda, and into Kenya. … The government of Sudan is sponsoring terrorism in the region.” During the past 15 years _”the current phase of the war”_ some 2 million Sudanese have already been killed by famine and fighting and another 4 million have been displaced, Roger Winter, head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, told the news conference. “The context of the famine is war,”Winter said.”And the context of the war is injustice, human rights abuses and lack of development.” In an effort to combat the ills plaguing southern Sudan, Reps. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, and Frank Wolf, R-Va., last month called on President Clinton to appoint a special envoy”of significant stature”to help broker peace in the troubled region.

At Friday’s news conference, Hall said he met recently with National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and officials at the Agency for International Development to discuss the envoy proposal as well as stepping up aid to southern Sudan.”They’re going to take another look at the idea of sending a national envoy there,”said Hall.”I’m not sure that they’re terribly excited about the idea because it pretty much goes against their policy.” That policy has been”to isolate the north, to help with the various rebel organizations and to not really have contact with the Khartoum government,”Hall said.”What good does it do to not talk to the people in the north? I think we should talk to them,”he said.”I think if we can go to China … we can certainly talk … to the Khartoum government,”he added, referring to Clinton’s controversial 10-day China visit in June.

Last week, both sides in the civil war announced a three month cease-fire in southwest Sudan, the region hardest hit by the famine, to allow food deliveries there. However, aid workers say the cease-fire coincides with the rainy season when military manuevers _ as well as relief efforts _ are hampered because roads are impassable.”It’s extremely convenient for them to call a cease-fire now,”Jacob Akol of World Vision, the evangelical relief and development agency, told Reuters in Nairobi, Kenya.”But during this period it’s difficult for us to get any food in, and it’s due to end just when we can start using the roads again,”he said.

Still, Hall applauded the cease-fire agreement and called on the Clinton administration to press for international monitors in the region to check on its implementation.

Eiffe, a former Roman Catholic priest from Ireland who has worked to resettle more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees, praised the efforts of U.S. religious aid groups that he said have worked incessantly for years in Sudan.”It is World Vision who is in there, it’s Catholic Relief Services in the front lines _ first with the food, first with the supplies,”he said, adding that 75 percent of aid to Sudan comes from the United States.”… If American aid had not been there, the Sudanese people would not be there today. They would not be there today.” Despite the devastation ravaging southern Sudan, Eiffe said he has”no doubt”someday the people there will establish an independent nation.”I see the southern Sudanese situation as a very genuine struggle for freedom, democracy and human dignity,”he said.

DEA END PAQUETTE