January 10, 2005
NOTICED WHERE IT MATTERED:
Sudan, Southern Rebels Sign Peace Deal: Colin Powell urges both sides to honor the pact ending 21 years of civil war. He also calls on the Khartoum government to halt Darfur conflict. (Paul Richter, January 10, 2005, LA Times)
The Sudanese government and southern rebel groups signed an agreement Sunday that ends one of Africa's longest wars but leaves unresolved the bloody conflict in Sudan's Darfur region that has come to overshadow it.The deal reached after three years of negotiation seeks a comprehensive settlement after 21 years of fighting by allowing southern rebels to share power and oil wealth with the Khartoum government.
"Our people have experienced the bitterness of war…. Peace is indeed going to bring our country abundance," Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir said. "What was spent on fighting will now be spent on health, education and other services."
The civil war, which cost an estimated 2 million lives, pitted the central government in the predominantly Muslim north against Christians and animists in the south. Although the war has received relatively little notice in the United States, conservative Christian religious groups, one of President Bush's core constituencies, have pushed for intervention.
Meanwhile, rather than push to save the blacks of Darfur, the Black Congressional Caucus is still whining about OH and rather than trying to stop Muslim on Muslim violence in Darfur the Muslim-American civil rights groups are still carrying on about the Patriot Act. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2005 8:48 AM
Nobody does nothing. What a concept.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 10, 2005 3:15 PMAbout a year ago, I sat on a plane next to a Sudanese Muslim woman (unveiled; she was a moderate) who had fled southern Sudan some years before and had settled in America. She told me that a great thing about life in America was her ability to sleep at night without being awakened at the slightest sound and wondering if the government was coming to get her.
When I asked her what she thought of people who said America had angered the Islamic world and got what was coming to her on 9/11, she got a pained expression on her face and told me, in no uncertain terms, that the Islamists are nuts and there is no negotiating with them.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at January 10, 2005 3:23 PMHarry:
As always it leaves it to the Christians to do something about it and they are.
Posted by: oj at January 10, 2005 4:27 PM