Category: News

By Tom Staal

From the latest World Food Program report: Sudan’s overall hunger outlook remains dire. More than 21 million people face acute or worse food insecurity, the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) finds. Roughly 375,000 Sudanese face level 5 (IPC 5), or catastrophic hunger, the highest level. Two cities ripped apart by violence – El Fasher in the west and Kadugli in the south – are categorized as in famine. While fighting and drone attacks are still widespread throughout the country, since the fall of El Fasher to the RSF last year it has been especially concentrated in Kordofan.

In mid-February critical humanitarian assistance has finally reached parts of South Kordofan, including Dilling and Kadugli – areas largely cut off from aid for more than two years. WFP transported food to support nearly 70,000 people, including 21,000 mothers and children with specialized nutritious food to prevent malnutrition. With more funding and access, WFP could do twice as much: supporting up to 8 million people each month and helping to more durably reverse the hunger tide. “We need to take a very balanced approach to our operations in Sudan,” says WFP’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response. “On the one hand, we need to be working on famine prevention and responding to people in areas where conflict is active – and pushing for access to deliver food to civilians where they are. But we also need to support the conditions for people to return home. That’s happening in the city of Khartoum and the central Al-Jazira state, where WFP’s food and nutritional assistance reached more than a million people once conflict had subsided. Many people are returning to shattered homes and infrastructure after months of sometimes multiple displacements.”

In February, the London-based Robert Hayward of Christian Aid attended the opening by Archbishop Justin Badi Arama of a second boardinghouse for 51 girls at the Juba Model Diocesan Secondary School paid for by Holy Trinity Cathedral, Gibraltar. He also confirmed that a new well and 40-student hostel (12 female, 28 male) are being funded at Bishop Allison Theological College in Yei, now affiliated with The Episcopal University headquartered in Rokon and Juba. Robert reports that Thoura Primary School in Omdurman, Sudan, is now being completely rebuilt with six 40-pupil classrooms and a teachers’ office, with funds from a UK trust. For now, in Omdurman the staff of Bishop Shukai Theological College is displaced to Cairo, and the prestigious CMS Girls’ Secondary School remains closed.

When Joseph Tucker was growing up in La Cañada, California and attending St. Bede the Venerable Roman Catholic grade school, students had to choose between joining the choir or serving at the altar. Joe and his friends chose to be altar servers instead of singing. But his resonant mature voice went public when, as a student at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, he joined the student staff of the college’s radio station, WZBT 91.1. Their logo was a whimsical image of Abraham Lincoln with googly eyes. Weekly shipments of newly released albums arrived at the station, and before graduation he was airing his own hour-long show.

Joe’s family gave him an early appreciation for world affairs. Undergraduate study of decolonization led to increasing interest in African politics, with postgraduate work in political science. Arriving in Washington, DC in 2004, he worked for the National Endowment for Democracy, the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He was honored to work with many committed public servants, including the late Ambassador Princeton Lyman, one of President Obama’s special envoys to Sudan and former US ambassador to South Africa during the transition from apartheid. Tucker and Lyman travelled together frequently to Sudan and South Sudan.

After spending enough time in the region to appreciate its complex history, including meeting political and civil society leaders plus a wide variety of people striving to make a difference, he notes the deep commitment felt by those Sudanese and South Sudanese who have risked their lives bringing much needed assistance, information, and hope to people in both countries. In particular, he was always impressed by the work of dedicated local print and radio journalists, some of whom were supported by the U.S. and operated in remote, conflict-affected areas.

Over the years, Joe’s commentary has been broadcast on BBC, NPR, Voice of America, and Al- Jazeera, among others. His voice was also heard by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he testified on Sudan in 2022.

Joe recently relocated from Washington, D.C. to Nairobi to follow current events in both countries and the Horn of Africa. AFRECS counts on continuing to hear his assured and informed voice via the internet.

Juba’s busy international airport is also the place to catch your Cessna 2088, a one-prop 10-seater chartered from Mission Air Fellowship. Archbishop Justin Badi Arama came to see us off on Thursday, February 5^th. Our flight started with a prayer. Flying northwest for two and a half hours at a maximum altitude of 12,00 feet, we landed at the city-sized United Nations refugee camp of Yida, located just south of the South Sudan-Sudan border. I was accompanying Andudu Adam el-Nail, the bishop of the Diocese of Kadugli, whose territory lies inside the boundaries of Sudan. The other passengers included John Inglis-Jones of the Australian Relay Trust charity, the Rev. Jim Tomkins of Hope Light Mission, and the North Carolinian Anglican priest Jared Wensyel, Executive Director of the charity Sudan Church Partners.

After eating a breakfast of ful (beans), bread, and excellent strong ginger coffee, sheltered by a wood framework draped with a dingy tarpaulin, we boarded a slightly overloaded air-conditioned SUV marked with an emblem of the Diocese of Kadugli in English and Arabic. Breezing through a half-dozen checkpoints, we arrived three hours later at Jao. The border crossing into Sudan consisted of a string across the road. Entering the Nuba Mountains, we arrived after another hour or so at the bishop’s compound equipped with electricity and wi-fi.

While the air cooled and it got dark, we met and chatted with Assistant Bishop Hassan and other clergy. Inside the bishop’s home, we ate chicken, chicken soup, salad, more ful, and slices of mango. Eventually I retired to my hot separate room with my computer and powerful fan, but no working light, or pillow.

In early 2024 the US termed Sudan the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. It has gotten worse since then. Now the UN says Sudan is the largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded.

Since 2023, 400,000 dead. 14 million forced to flee their homes because of fighting between two military groups that has ravaged the country. Of those displaced 4 million have fled to Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, and Ethiopia; 9 1/2 million are displaced within a country the size of the US east of the Mississippi.

Q. What is The Episcopal Church doing amid the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis known to the United Nations – Sudan?

A. We help feed the starving.

The 2 million Christians in Muslim-majority Sudan — about 4 or 5 % percent of the total population — include about 1 million Episcopalians. So, we are talking about a small minority.  Yet the Episcopal Church of Sudan, comprising six dioceses, is making a difference.  When the current civil war began in 2024, the Primate and his staff were ousted from their compound in Khartoum.  Computers and vehicles were destroyed. Troops bivouacked in the Cathedral.  They fled to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, reestablished their office and their bank account, and continued their work.

Since then, the Episcopal Church of Sudan has been transmitting funds, provided mostly by Church of England groups and AFRECS, to individual congregations to finance local food purchases.  It’s kind of amazing that this works in Sudan!  The Bank of Khartoum has an app called Bankak. This enables the Primate to transmit funds by cellphone to individual church leaders in the devastated cities of Khartoum and Omdurman — funds they use to buy food in the local market.  Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo estimates that last year the ECS provided food to 28,000 people.

That’s very impressive.

Q. What is the origin of this terrible war?

A. In 2021 two military elements aborted what appeared to be a promising transition to democracy.

• History:  After the popular overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, Sudan seemed headed for a democratic transition.  In 2021, however, the military – the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – dissolved the power-sharing government. 18 months later those two military elements went to war with each other, a war merciless toward Sudanese civilians.
• Enablers: The two armies continue to fight because of weapons coming to the RSF from the United Arab Emirates and to the SAF from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran.  The UAE is the worst offender; many of the weapons provided to the RSF came originally from the US. 
• Atrocities: The RSF and allied militias have carried out targeted ethnic violence amounting to genocide in Darfur against “non-Arab” groups.  Sexual assault against women and girls has been rampant.  The SAF has been guilty of bombings and drone attacks on civilians and has also been accused of mass rape.

Q. So what can American Episcopalians do to end this humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan? 

 A. Request your elected representatives in Congress to support The Stand Up for Sudan Act.

The Stand Up for Sudan Act was introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) last year, available at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/935/text. When enacted, it would halt US arms sales to the UAE until it can demonstrate they are not being used in Sudan.

Executive Director

P.S. I have focused today on Sudan, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, but the Episcopal Church of South Sudan is an equally inspiring story and worthy of support.

Nathaniel Garang Anyeith Jak-Dit, retired Bishop of Bor, died February 24^th in Nairobi, Kenya. The Province of the Episcopal Church in South Sudan announced that the transportation of his body from Nairobi to Juba, South Sudan, and visitation homages at All Saints’ Cathedral, were scheduled for March 12^th and 13^th, respectively. 

Trekking with Bishop Garang in 1994 through war-ravaged communities east of the Nile, the American missionary Marc Nikkel wrote,  “He would declare to those who see themselves as the last remnant of holocaust, ‘God has not discarded you …He is doing a new and marvelous work beyond our understanding: He is transforming the peoples of Sudan.’” (Why Haven’t You Left?, ed. Grant Lemarquand, 2006.)

Photo: The Rev. Mary Bol celebrates Christmas with members of her congregation in Seattle.

“Seattle” may evoke for older Americans a yacht harbor and a 1993 movie directed by the late Rob Reiner, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. For a strong contingent of Sudanese Christians resettled in the Diocese of Olympia, however, Seattle has become home. Christmas Day saw Vicar Mary Bol of St. Michael’s South Sudanese Episcopal Church gather 130 worshippers to celebrate this most holy day.

Photo: Kamal Elsadig broadcasting on Radio Dabanga to the Sudanese diaspora around the world.

The Sudanese diaspora, scattered across Africa and the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Australia, depends on the radio for news of fighting, food scarcity, disease in refugee camps,  or atrocities in their homeland. Kamal Elsadig, the editor of Radio Dabanga in Amsterdam, arrived from El-Fasher in 2008 and states the mission of Radio Dabanga is “to be a public service media house for all Sudanese that enables people in all states and regions to participate in the exchange of knowledge, news, and information.”  

MORE AT: www.dabangasudan.org

Photo: Students at the Episcopal University in Juba, South Sudan, cultivate theology, law, and vegetables.

Graham Buttanshaw, a former missionary teacher in Uganda, used the month of November to go back to school in South Sudan. His tour of Episcopal theological schools included the former Bishop Gwynne College, now the theology department of the Episcopal University of South Sudan in Juba which includes the well-equipped library and the equally necessary vegetable gardens, allowing students to work both their hands and their minds.

Photo: The University Library has well-stocked shelves, plus a few laptops.

Graham promises good communication with friends who wish to explore investing in leadership training and entering into a partnership with Bishop Allison Theological College (BATC). CONTACT: g.buttanshaw@gmail.com

For three decades, the Diocese of Virginia has sustained friendships with the dioceses of Ezo, Renk, and Ayod in South Sudan. Continuing a relationship with the Diocese of Ezo, Rector Weston Matthews together with Jack Mathias and Leslie Siegmund of St. Francis, Great Falls, plan to meet in February in the Diocese of Salisbury, England with Bishop Isaac and Mama Nora of the  Diocese of Ezo. Through the Rev. Joy Warburton, the Mothers’ Union Branch of Trinity Episcopal Church in Arlington, contributes resources for internally displaced persons in Ezo. St. Mary’s, Arlington lay leaders Russell Randle  and Diane and Ed Wright have sent funds to Renk Diocese to support refugees arriving from Sudan and train new evangelists. After the November visit of Bishop Thomas Tut Gany, Anne and Jon Spear of St. Thomas, McLean, have provided resources for a school in Diocese of Ayod, exploring a new relationship. St. Paul’s, Alexandria, has supported a primary school in Renk for 30 years with “Pennies from Heaven,” contributed by their pre-school students. Other Virginia parishes support Hope and Resurrection Secondary School near Rumbek.