Sudan

The State Department this week placed Sudan on its list of states sponsoring terrorism because of sanctuary that Sudan provides for offices and training camps of such terrorist groups as Abu Nidal, Hezbollah and Hamas. Since the military coup in 1989, Sudan has been the sole client of the extremist regime in Iran, a trouble-maker and undoubtedly guilty as charged.Putting Sudan on the list with Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea begs other issues. It is without reference to possible Sudanese involvement in neighboring Egypt, where yesterday terrorists tried to assassinate the interior minister.

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 235th birthday, a new nation is being formed half a world away in East Africa. South Sudan is scheduled to officially become a new, independent country — the world's 196th — on July 9, just days after our own Independence Day celebrations. This is a truly historic event, the creation of a nation after 50 years of devastating civil war, and I hope all of us in the U.S. and around the world will celebrate this occasion with the people of South Sudan.

WASHINGTON -- Since well before Darfur's nightmare erupted over a year ago, a much deadlier war has raged, taking 30 times as many lives as the Darfur tragedy. This two-decade war between the government in Khartoum and an insurgency based in southern Sudan, when combined with the Darfur conflict, points to the central problem in Sudan: a regime at war with its own people throughout the country and willing to retain power by any means. A two-day extraordinary session of the U.N. Security Council beginning today in Nairobi, Kenya, could help change that dynamic if it stops avoiding this central factor.

Why is the Baltimore Sun and all major newspapers and news networks ignoring the bipartisan bill H.R. 1212, the "Restoring Essential Constitutional Constraints for Libyan Action Involving the Military Act"? Thirteen members of the House have already added their names as co-sponsors of H.R. 1212 in order to improve its chances of getting out of committee and being debated and voted upon in the full House of Representatives. Is the White House pressuring media outlets to ignore this challenge to the president's war making freedom?

JANJAWEED, they're called; the Arab horsemen who sweep into the impoverished tribal villages of western Sudan, shooting men, raping women, kidnapping children, stealing livestock, setting anything left ablaze. Over the past year, more than 1 million black Muslims have been driven from their homes, starving and destitute, by these marauding thugs doing the dirty work of the Arab Islamist regime in Khartoum that wants to eliminate support for Darfur rebels seeking to share national riches and power.

Crawford, Texas -- President Bush signed legislation yesterday intended to restrict U.S. investment in Sudan, despite his administration's concern that it improperly gives state and local governments a hand in foreign policy. The House and Senate, ignoring the administration's objections, approved the bill unanimously, and Bush signed it at his home near here while reserving the right to enforce it "in a manner that does not conflict" with the federal government's authority to conduct the nation's dealings with other countries.

A LITTLE MORE than a week ago, I sat with sick and grieving families in Darfur, located in the western part of Sudan. Much of region, roughly the size of Texas, has been devastated by death and destruction carried out by militia forces. The Sudanese government has used old animosities to maintain power by supporting the killing, raping and pillaging of millions of innocent people with government-sponsored militia known as the Janjaweed. We have come to learn, through witness accounts and young children's drawings, that Arab men riding on camels and horseback - the Janjaweed - continue to sweep through black African villages to murder, rape and pillage.

WASHINGTON - While the Group of Eight (G-8) leaders meet this week to discuss challenges to peace, security and development in Africa, the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, continues unabated. The international community's response so far to the tragedy of Darfur - where at least 200,000 people have died as a result of the conflict in western Sudan and more than 2 million others have been driven from their homes by government-backed Janjaweed militias - has been largely confined to a small African peacekeeping force with a limited mandate that will take months to deploy fully.

Lawrence K. Freeman is a brave man. He's probably one of the few Jews in America to call Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a friend. Guts this guy Freeman has. Guts and passion. Maybe a little too much passion.One of Freeman's passions is Sudan, which he thinks is a gosh-darned swell country. He and a delegation of African-American state delegates and senators visited Sudan inSeptember and again in January. They found no slavery, a kind, loving and beneficent government and - according to one member of the group - no civil war.This past Thursday, Freeman, who is editor of Executive Intelligence Review and a member of the Schiller Institute, a sponsor of the delegation, and members of that second delegation held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

UNITED NATIONS -- The International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants yesterday for a Sudanese government minister and a former militia leader accused of war crimes in Sudan's western Darfur region. Sudanese officials, however, said they would not hand over the accused pair, who were charged with dozens of counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Baltimore's Sudanese community is shrinking week by week, as scores of people have begun making plans to return to their African homeland. Their hurry is understandable — they have fewer than four months to build a new nation. Michael Lupai, president of the Southern Sudanese Community of Washington, a refugee support group, said that at its height, the local community of Sudanese immigrants numbered about 300. In the past few months, he said, that number has shrunk to 185 and is dwindling rapidly.

The good began with a tragedy. The happy story has an awful beginning, the hero's vision turning to reality only after his death. This is probably the only way it would ever happen. Six months ago, a freakishly tall saint who made his home in Olathe, Kan., passed away from a mess of a disease contracted while saving lives. You might remember Manute Bol as the 7-foot-7 shot blocker in the NBA, designated by the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the tallest men in history, but there is so much more to his remarkable life.

"On a knife edge." That's an image used to the point of cliché by headline writers in British newspapers whenever a situation hangs precariously in the balance. Cliché or not, it perfectly describes the situation in Sudan. While millions around the world have focused on displacement and death in Sudan's Darfur region, southern Sudan has been moving along the path toward peace. This is remarkable because before violence was visited on Darfur, four decades of war left an even greater humanitarian tragedy in the south, with millions dead and displaced in a conflict that seemed endless and intractable.

WASHINGTON - -Former Rep. Albert R. Wynn's first client as a registered lobbyist is a unit of a Finnish company that has been sharply criticized by human-rights advocates for its work in Sudan, according to a recently filed disclosure report. The Maryland Democrat quit his House seat last year, months before his term was up, in order to join a powerful Washington lobbying firm. The early departure gave Wynn a head start on an ethics law that requires members of Congress to wait one full year after leaving office before they begin lobbying their former colleagues.

The doctor in Sudan told the young mother she was expecting. At least three babies, the doctor said, maybe four. Adwai Malual, a 28-year-old married bank teller, considered following the doctor's advice and going to Jordan for medical care. But then she thought of her older sister living in Prince George's County and her mother-in-law in Minnesota. Malual's mother, Anne Abyei, explained yesterday how her daughter decided to head to the United States. The trip would allow Malual to accomplish two goals: get medical care for herself and her unborn children, and meet with her mother-in-law before giving birth, the custom in Sudan.

Pakistani troops kill 30 militants near border ISLAMABAD, Pakistan : Pakistani forces killed at least 30 militants near the Afghan border, as the region's provincial chief called for "peaceful dialogue" in a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher. North West Frontier Province Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti said he told Boucher during the meeting in Peshawar that he wanted to "to resolve all political problems through peaceful dialogue, but there wouldn't be any compromise on maintaining the writ of the government."

CAIRO, Egypt -- Osama bin Laden denounced what he called a "Zionist crusaders' war on Islam" in an audiotape broadcast yesterday, pointing to the isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, talk of a Western peacekeeping force in Sudan and the Muslim outrage over Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad as new evidence of a clash of civilizations. His voice sounding strong and combative, bin Laden implied that killing American civilians was justified, beseeched Muslims to fight any Sudan peacekeeping force and called for the creators of the offensive cartoons to be turned over to al-Qaida for punishment.

AFRICAN HORRORS have been prominent in the news recently as crisis after crisis emerges from the detritus of various failed nation states. The role of European colonial ventures in creating these scenes of profound suffering and destruction is sometimes acknowledged, but with less conviction that the history of the later 19th century has much to tell us about the reality of Ethiopia and Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Angola or Zimbabwe at the beginning of...

A Carroll County-based aid organization has secured more than $26 million in funding from the World Bank to help build a health system in south Sudan, one of the most disease-ravaged, impoverished areas of Africa, officials at the nonprofit agency said. This award brings to nearly $100 million the African relief that IMA World Health, headquartered in New Windsor, is managing, primarily in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. IMA, formerly known as Interchurch Medical Assistance Inc., entered into a 40-month contract this month with the World Bank's multidonor trust program.

On June 4, 2003, as Liberian President Charles Taylor walked up the steps for the opening ceremony of the Accra Peace Accords in Ghana, I stood in front of the world's press and announced that I had unsealed an indictment charging him with 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The international community reacted with praise - and condemnation. Politicians and diplomats voiced concern that my announcement had jeopardized the newly organized peace process and hopes for stability in West Africa.