Crisis Continues to Soar in Sudan

|TOP|According to a report by Pastor Sam Childers, founder of World Mission, which operates orphanages in Southern Sudan and Uganda, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan, is still evident and may lead the country into war once again.

The major conflict in Sudan began early in 2003 after a rebel group began attacking government targets, claiming that the region was being neglected by Khartoum, and that the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs.

The government of Sudan responded by allowing free rein to Arab militias known as the Janjawid (guns on horseback) who began attacking villages, killing, raping and abducting people, destroying homes and other property, including water sources and looting livestock.

Since then, millions fled their destroyed villages, many heading for camps near Darfur's main towns where there was not enough food, water or medicine.

|QUOTE|“The peace treaty between Northern and Southern Sudan is still unstable,” says Pastor Sam Childers, founder of World Missions, “We could be back to fighting—and this time, it could be a serious war,” he notes. “Next time it won’t be just rebel leaders with guns, it will be armies with planes and bombs.”

So far Childers and his organisation have rescued over 300 children caught up in the conflict between the North and South in the past eight years. The children he shelters are mostly part of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group operating in Uganda and Sudan. So far LRA has kidnapped more than 20,000 children since 1988 and forced them to become soldiers in the conflict.

“There are no peacekeeping troops in Sudan that I’ve seen,” he says. “The LRA are still killing people daily and they’re being supported by North Sudan.”

However, U.N. claims that over 4,000 of peacekeeping troops have been sent to Sudan.

|AD|Meanwhile, living conditions are critically desperate in the area surrounding the orphanage. “Within 25 yards of our gates the average child only eats one meal per day,” Childers says. “That’s only for survival, not to satisfy them,” he says.

Childers has observed people in the bush cooking leaves to make a watery soup, they are so desperate for any kind of sustenance. “In Southern Sudan you have to be very careful about storing food,” Childers notes. “There are so many people all around going hungry,” he says. “It’s a very hard thing. I’ve had to teach myself to do the best I can do today and then try to do better tomorrow—we can’t help all of them.”

In December, before Childers’ return visit to the U.S., he met with an SPLA commander at a village in South Sudan recently overrun by the LRA. “A lot of people in America are being fooled,” the commander told him. “Peace is not when 15,000 people flee a village.”