Monday, May 31, to clinch a peace deal that would end Africa’s longest civil war amid reports that Christianity is growing here on the ashes of burned down churches and despite persecution.
"The two sides last week renewed the ceasefire for the next three months because the existing one was due to expire today (Monday)," Kenyan chief mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo was quoted as saying but several news organizations.
Open Doors, which supports persecuted churches, cautioned that it remains "a big question" whether or not the peace accord will hold.
"We’re going to have to leave it in the hands of the Lord, because, right now, it’s signed. Of course, it has to be put into effect down the road, and so that’s the key. We need to keep on praying that this will really end the fighting," said Open Doors’ Jerry Dykstra in an interview with Mission Network News (MNN), a mission news service and broadcaster.
MILLIONS KILLED
However official Dykstra stressed that two decades of conflict, which killed an estimated two million people and displaced four million others, has not been able to destroy the apparently rapidly expanding Christian family in mainly Islamic nation.
"The tremendous news is that despite the persecution and the burning of churches, there’s been amazing growth of Christianity. In fact, we believe the figures show it’s been grown to almost 70-percent of South Sudan. This is just the way that the Holy Spirit works," he told MNN.
Open Doors teams are working to help train church leaders in dealing with persecution, as well as the new role of a facilitator in reconciliation, reported MNN, which urged its supporters to "pray for those involved with these challenges in the days ahead."
RECONCILIATION
Reconciliation is also part of the peace accord that will be further enhanced in the coming months. The deal is said to stipulate a power-sharing structure in which the government will have 55-percent of the positions in the disputed regions and the rebels 45-percent.
Both sides have already established that the south should be autonomous for six years, culminating in a referendum on the key issue of independence, with Sharia law remaining in the north.
Despite tensions in some areas, the leader of Sudan’s southern rebel movement has claimed that the war is ending, because neither side could win on the battlefield, and they were under both domestic and international pressure to strike a deal.
SUDANESE SOLUTION
"The solution to the Sudanese problem is to create a stable Sudanese state," said John Garang of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the Voice of America (VOA) network reported. He said he has a vision of a country with "a self-sustaining economy, and a stable, inclusive government, in which all different ethnic groups, different tribes, different religious groups agree upon a form of governance, and are equal stakeholders with equal opportunities, a state in which they are able to co-exist in harmony and development."
His Sudan People’s Liberation Army took up arms in 1983 to demand better treatment for southerners, who are predominately black Christians and animists, from the Muslim Arab-controlled government in Khartoum. Analysts warn however that the agreement does not address a separate civil war in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where 15 months of fighting has reportedly displaced more than one million people.
