Media returning attention to southern Sudan

Joseph and I have been exchanging notes and ideas for an essay tentatively entitled, "Why Southern Sudan Matters Now!" but it looks like others have already figured that out, too. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is generally thought to be one of premier African reporters working today, and his columns shed light on the atrocities in Darfur. His most recent video commentary, however, acknowledges that he and others may have overlooked the brewing tensions in the south, and that if war breaks out in the south again, the country as a whole returns to fighting.

What Kristof doesn't provide in the commentary is even a hint of a solution. What Joseph and I would like to focus on are the various American projects, like our own, poised to make a difference in the south. Southerners are understandably outraged that the northern Islamic government is not sharing oil revenues, but if war breaks out again, the projects that have already made a difference, like John Dau's clinics and Valentino Deng's schools, and the projects in the work, like ours, like Rebuilding Hope, like The New Seed of Sudan, will not be able to provide aid or hope for the future.