Not on Our Watch (13 page)

The clear moral issues at stake in Sudan became the basis not only for congressional action, but for broader interest and activism among ordinary American citizens. This was critical for activists that began to work on building grassroots support for US involvement in Sudan.

In 1989, Roger, John, Gayle, and Brian D’Silva of the US Agency for International Development got together and created the Coalition for Peace in the Horn of Africa—an effort to try to raise awareness of the crises in northeastern Africa and push for greater US support for solutions. They began to build a small constituency of people who were educated about the war that the government of Sudan was waging against its own people.

Non-profit organisations like the US Committee for Refugees, Bread for the World, Centre of Concern, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch were critical in helping to build awareness. The National Association of Evangelicals and other Christian organisations also began paying attention to the crisis in Sudan. They did so in part because of the religious persecution and enslavement of Christians in the south, but also because the atrocities committed by the government were so heinous and so unrelenting that compassionate people of any religion simply could not ignore them.

Over the next several years, activists pushed members of Congress and the Clinton and Bush administrations to pay more attention to the situation in Sudan and to pass laws and implement policies aimed at isolating the Khartoum government, providing humanitarian relief to war-weary civilians, and—ultimately—ending the war. Milestones in these efforts included the Clinton administration’s decision to place Sudan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993, US diplomacy in the United Nations Security Council to pass multilateral sanctions on the government in 1996–1997, the Clinton administration’s decision (backed by a bipartisan coalition in Congress) to impose comprehensive unilateral sanctions against the government of Sudan, the Bush administration’s focus from the outset of its tenure on the peace process for southern Sudan, and President Bush’s 2003 appointment of a special envoy, former Missouri senator John Danforth, to help negotiate a peace deal between the government and the southern SPLA rebels. It was not surprising that the most important behind-the-scenes actor working with Senator Danforth to secure the deal was Roger, without whose involvement there might have been no agreement.

So what did these early Sudan activists do? How did they raise the temperature high enough beneath the US government to start punishing the Sudan government for their crimes and help end a twenty-one-year African civil war that killed more than 2 million people? Two stories illustrate how individual citizens became involved and made the difference.

Lost Boys of Sudan

As the war in the south heated up, thousands of young boys from southern Sudan were separated from their families. To avoid slavery, death, or forced induction into the Sudanese army, these boys walked hundreds of miles in the most hostile of terrains. More than 10,000 made it to refugee camps in Ethiopia, but thousands died along the way. When the Ethiopian government was overthrown in 1991, the boys lost their safe haven and were chased and bombed again, running back across the border into an unwelcoming Sudan. The fighting displaced more people, and the boys continued their trek farther south in Sudan, encountering further bombings and attacks. They were ultimately driven across the border into refugee camps in Kenya. Over 16,000 Sudanese boys (and some girls) ended up in Kakuma refugee camp alone.

One of them, James Garang (no relation to the late SPLA leader John Garang), told us about his harrowing journey: ‘On our two treks, we covered hundreds of miles and faced gunfire, lion and crocodile attacks, disease, and starvation. We often had to eat leaves and, to some extent, carcasses of dead animals to survive.’

Beginning in 2000, the US government began bringing some of these ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ to this country. By 2001, 3,800 Lost Boys had come to America. Life in America was certainly an improvement on the horrors of existence in southern Sudan, but the transition was not always easy. According to James, ‘Grappling with language barriers, culture shock, foreign land and foods and establishing ethics punctuated our first few years in America. We had to work, go to school, and pay rent for the first time in our lives.’ Fortunately, the Lost Boys were not completely alone, and many Americans—especially church groups—embraced their cause and helped them adjust to a new way of life.

Since then, several news pieces, magazine articles, television shows, and a couple of documentary films have been made or are in production about the Lost Boys. Among the projects are a brilliant novel by award-winning author Dave Eggers called
What is the What
, the documentary
Lost Boys of Sudan
by Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk, and an episode of the popular television show
7th Heaven.

Mylan and Shenk’s film was shown to the Congressional Refugee and Human Rights Caucus staffs and to staff at the State Department. The filmmakers work with community groups to offer audience members concrete ways to get involved with the Lost Boys and with larger Sudanese issues. As a result, some people have become mentors, organised fundraisers, and lobbied their representatives locally and nationally. In addition, a Lost Boys Education Fund, administered through the International Rescue Committee, was created to help all of the nearly 4,000 Lost Boys and Girls resettled in the United States. James called the support of Americans for the Lost Boys and Girls ‘phenomenal, unprecedented, and a stroke of luck.’ He added, ‘Almost all of us felt welcomed and loved upon arriving at various cities across America, from San Jose to Salt Lake City to Grand Rapids in Michigan.’

It was a 2001
60 Minutes
episode on the Lost Boys that led John’s close friend, the late Bobby Newmyer, the producer of such films as
Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Training Day,
and
The Santa Clause
movies, to set out to produce his own ‘Lost Boys’ feature film. Bobby explained, ‘I have always been politically active and aware, but never acted on it until now. I think I lost my way. I got married and had kids and was concerned with my business and making ends meet. One day, I woke up and felt this hollowness.’

His goals for making such a film were social (to re-invigorate communication between families and friends of the Lost Boys), practical (to share information on employment and educational opportunities for the Lost Boys), and political (to unify the Lost Boys in order to gain a political voice in Washington and translate needs into public policy). ‘The message is one of awareness,’ Bobby explained. ‘We want to spread awareness through the timeline of what has been going on, to expose this regime.’ Bobby’s wife Debbie is picking up the mantle after her husband’s untimely death and is pressing forward to make sure a movie about the Lost Boys gets made.

James Garang summed up for us just what all this support has meant to him and the other Lost Boys and Girls:

All the public attention we received since arriving to the US is encouraging, hospitable, and humane. This attention is both productive and educational—in the sense that most Americans came to learn from Lost Boys’ accounts some basic knowledge on Sudan. Some went as far as pressurising their congresspersons to push for legislation on Sudan. The American public and the Lost Boys of Sudan, through local activism, have indirectly contributed to the achievement of the peace agreement in southern Sudan.

Slavery’s Ugly Resumption

In Chapter 3 we discussed the Sudanese government’s support for slave raiding to terrorise civilians and depopulate areas of southern Sudan. Starting in the late 1980s, the government recruited and armed Arab militias called Murahaleen, offering them impunity to attack non-Arab villages, loot cattle, kill civilians, and enslave women and children. If these barbaric tactics sound familiar, it is because, with the exception of large-scale slave raiding, the government of Sudan has replicated them with the Janjaweed militias in Darfur.

The discovery during the 1990s that one of the most odious practices from American history was still going on in Sudan galvanised a groundswell of opposition to Khartoum. When John worked for the Clinton administration, there were people inside government, led by Susan Rice, who worked tirelessly to confront the Sudanese government on this issue. Susan coordinated with key members of Congress
[2]
to counter the atrocities being perpetrated by the Sudanese regime and, without the permission of the regime, travelled with John into rebel-controlled areas in southern Sudan to ensure US government attention.

The efforts of government officials were reinforced by the grassroots activity on the issue, particularly the efforts of church groups, who focused on the forced conversion of slaves to Islam. This broad array of religious groups, ranging from evangelical missionary organisations to the Catholic Church to African-American churches, formed a network that engaged in letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations at the Sudanese embassy, and other citizen activism.

In 1998, Maria Sliwa had a prestigious job in Manhattan, but she was feeling empty until she met Richard Wurmbrand, a Christian pastor and founder of the Voice of the Martyrs, which aids persecuted Christians around the world. Wurmbrand asked Sliwa to help the children of Sudan. She resigned from her job and started Freedom Now Communications, maintaining an informational website, sending faxes and e-mails to thousands of people, routinely speaking about the abuses and slavery in the south, and writing articles for a variety of publications. ‘I believe that people can be groomed to care,’ she explains. ‘People should be socially responsible, and some of that is already beginning to happen.’

An especially effective event was organised by a coalition of 40 evangelical Christian churches in Midland, Texas, the hometown of President Bush. The churches brought Sudanese refugees to tell their congregations about the horrible consequences of the war, especially the slave trade, raised money for humanitarian aid, and petitioned the White House to confront Khartoum. The Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC, was so concerned by this surge of activity in ‘the town of George Bush’ that the chief of mission of the embassy responded personally to the letter-writing campaign.

One particularly controversial tactic employed in the effort to stop slavery in Sudan was the practice of purchasing slaves back from Arab merchants in order to set them free. These efforts were undertaken by public schools, evangelical churches, and community groups in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, and they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the buybacks. Christian Solidarity International was the most prolific organisation involved in this effort, claiming to have freed about 8,000 slaves.

In February 1998, Barbara Vogel, a teacher in Aurora, Colorado, read an article to her fifth-grade class about Sudan, the human rights abuses in the south, and the efforts of Christian Solidarity International. Vogel was an associate at the American Anti-Slavery Group, an organisation founded in 1994 by Dr Charles Jacobs that works tirelessly to combat contemporary slavery around the world. Vogel’s students were so affected by the tragedy of Sudan that they launched the Slavery That Oppresses People (S.T.O.P.) campaign, aiming to raise enough money to redeem 1,000 slaves. One of the children asked, ‘Haven’t we learned anything from the past?’ They sold lemonade, T-shirts, and used toys and wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, who commissioned a story on their campaign. The class’s efforts eventually garnered the attention of the
CBS Evening News
, which, in turn, led to donations of over $50,000. The class also began an awareness campaign writing letters to national and international leaders urging an end to the slavery in Sudan. Other schools followed Vogel’s class’s example. ‘My goal is to show the power of children, to show that children want to help, and to show adults what children can do,’ says Vogel.

Reverend Gloria White-Hammond, a doctor who runs medical missions throughout Africa, first went to Sudan in July 2001. In the midst of the conflict, witnessing the physical pain and continued fighting, she felt ‘woefully inadequate and overwhelmed.’ Visiting a group of several hundred returning slaves, freed through a redemption programme, she spoke with one woman covered in scars who was accompanied by her two children, one of whom was the result of a rape. The woman said, ‘I have suffered in the north, and I will suffer in the south. But in the south I will suffer among my own people. Thank you for returning me to the place where the soil is the colour of my skin.’

White-Hammond understood that while she might not have enough medicine to heal all the wounds of the people she encountered, she could witness and tell their stories. She continues to do vocal advocacy work for the Save Darfur Coalition, and part of her focus is to encourage fellow African-Americans to ‘own’ an African issue, such as Sudan, and advocate for Africans.

Buying back slaves was emotionally appealing and, when documented, such as in the vivid June 1996 series ‘Witness to Slavery’ by two reporters from the
Baltimore Sun
, it verified the horrific reports of abuse and slavery that had been reported by NGOs and individuals but not necessarily believed by non-Sudanese for years. The story was actually unearthed in 1987 by John’s friend and colleague Suliman Baldo, who with Ushari Mahmoud published a tract at that time that outlined the roots of the resurgence of this odious crime.

Over time, questions arose about the authenticity and effect of the buybacks, but the efforts undeniably raised awareness throughout America of the plight of the southern Sudanese. The real issue is that the tactic only addressed a symptom of the underlying conflict. Well-intended groups could free thousands of slaves, but without outside political pressure, the war would continue to create tens of thousands more, especially since the money paid for slaves was often being channelled back into the Khartoum regime and its slave-raiding militias.