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Please, don’t forget the people of Sudan
By Lauren R. Stanley
For the last several weeks, I’ve been in the United States, telling the story of the
people of Sudan whom I serve as a missionary.
I tell congregations and gatherings about what it’s like to be in a nation that only now
is beginning to live in peace after more than two decades of war, and how hard it is to
maintain this peace, which just began in July.
It’s a hard life in Sudan, I say. There is no infrastructure, little education or health care.
But the people are trying. They have hope that this peace, which is really more of a
calm, will hold. They are working on reconciliation, and trying to find a vision that will hold them
together.
As I serve as a witness on behalf of the people of Sudan, I always finish with the same
request of the listeners:
First, please continue to pray for peace. It was prayers – along with a lot of hard work
– that brought us peace at last in this war-ravaged nation. So please, pray for the peace of
Sudan. Without your prayers, I say, this tenuous peace we have will not last.
Second, remember us. For 21-plus years, a civil war raged in Sudan, one based on ethnic
and religious tensions. Two million people died, and 4 million more were displaced. And for much
of that time, people outside Sudan either didn’t know what was going on, or heard about the
terrible war, and then forgot about it. Sudan’s civil war was the longest-running in all of Africa.
But no one knew. So, please, do not forget us again.
And third, because this is the United States, I ask people to pray about how they can
help Sudan. We have money in this country; there is none in Sudan. So, if you can, help.
For a while, Sudan was important on the radar screens of a lot of people here in the
United States. Because of the ongoing war in western Sudan, in the Darfur region, people here
finally began to pay attention. “Genocide,” the United States labeled that war. The terrible
tales coming from Darfur captured the attention of Americans, at least for a while.
But not now.
Now, it seems, Sudan is off the radar screen once again.
“Sudan?” people ask. “There’s something going on there? But didn’t peace come to that
country?”
It’s easy to forget about all this warfare in Africa. There have been numerous wars on
that huge continent in the last 50 years, all of which are hard to keep straight. Countries have
changed names, new countries have been born, leaders seem to come and go.
So keeping it all straight is hard.
But we can’t forget just because it’s hard to figure out.
When millions die in ethnic warfare, when people are killed for their faith, our forgetting,
or worse, or refusal to pay attention, is the equivalent of rubbing salt in the wound.
The U.S. government, appalled by what was happening in South Sudan, helped broker a
peace deal there. The war there came to an end in January; the peace treaty went into effect
in July. But the money and help that was promised has not been as forthcoming as it needs to be.
In Darfur, the U.S. government promised $50 million to support African Union
peacekeepers as they tried to end the massacres. The money was to pay for helicopters, fuel
and ammunition, among other supplies. But earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives
voted to eliminate that money from the budget.
Once again, Sudan is being forgotten. Once again, the rest of the world is turning its
back on those most in need.
When I return to Sudan in the next few weeks, the last thing I want to tell the people
there is that once again, they have been forgotten. I would rather tell them that the United
States – and the United Kingdom and the United Nations – are still paying attention, are still
trying to help, will fufill their commitments and will work to ensure that the peace will come
for the entire nation, and that the peace that comes will stay.
For more than two decades, the Sudanese people have been forgotten by far too many.
Now is not the time for them to be forgotten again.
Please:
Pray for the peace of Sudan.
And never again forget the people there.
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