More people have died in Sudan's current civil war, the longest civil war in history, than in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya combined. But after President Clinton bombed Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, in 1998, Sudan faded from the forefront of international news.

I'll bet you thought the war in Sudan was over. Well, it's not. Supposedly, the warring factions, the government of Sudan (GOS) and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), have been negotiating the provisions for peace in the Machakos Protocol since July of this year. But, Gerhart Baum, the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan, reported to the UN General Assembly just last month that Sudan continues to operate in a state of emergency. Press censorship continues, and human rights abuses continue to surmount.

The civil war in Sudan is perhaps one of the most complex wars in recent history. A variety of clashing ideologies feed the war machine, including racial, cultural, geopolitical, and economic factors. In its 1998 report, Human Rights Watch characterized the root cause of Sudan's internal conflict as a clash of religious ideologies and the GOS's intolerant assimilation policies, which try to homogenize the Sudanese around the perceived principals of Islam. But anyone with the slightest knowledge of the principals of Islam can tell you that the egregious human rights abuses that the GOS systematically wages on the southern Sudanese have no foundation in the Holy Qur'an nor the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights.

It is important to examine the historical context of Sudan's civil war, with particular respect to the southern Sudanese, because the root causes of the current internal conflict have foundation in the history of Sudan.

Homer and the ancient world knew Sudan as Cush, Meroe, and Nubia, respectively. According to tradition, the Nubian kings converted to Christianity either through the efforts of Coptic missionaries from Egypt or through a Byzantine missionary sent by Empress Theodora in the fourth or sixth century.

Islam began to spread with the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD Arab Muslims destroyed the Christian cathedral in the Nubian city of Dunqulah in 652 AD, but they did not gain control of the region until the 13th century. Under the authority of the Ottoman Empire, Arab mamluks, soldier-administrators, ousted the Nubian king at Dunqulah and installed military rulers, thus began the decline of Christian Nubia and the rise of a military-oriented Islamic government. Nubia was renamed Sudan, the Arab word meaning black people. Arab Muslim rule continued until the late 19th century, when Charles Gordon, a British officer, was named the sovereign authority of Sudan. The British colonial rule continued until Sudan won its independence in 1956.

Prior to Independence Day, Arab Muslim nationalists began to oppose Britain's political hegemony, particularly with respect to its policies allowing a decentralized government in the south. In 1955, the southern Equatoria corps mutinied against the northern government in a preemptive response to anticipated assimilation policies. The corps believed the government would force assimilation policies on all southern Sudanese after the British forces departed. The southern rebellion was repressed, but a portion of the faction escaped and formed guerrilla bands called the Anya Nya. The Anya Nya morphed into several different armed opposition groups and fought successive military governments until 1983.

In 1983, Anya Nya emerged as the SPLA after President Nimieri imposed Shar'ia (Muslim) law on the southern Christians and the "animists" who practice indigenous religions.

Since the beginning of Sudan's second civil war, in 1983, over two million black, southern Sudanese have been killed. This number represents 5.7 percent of Sudan's total population; yet the UN fails to characterize the murderous crimes of the GOS and SPLA as genocide despite numerous reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and its own intra-agency reports that do just that.

The United States played silent witness to the genocide in Sudan until it was in its best economic interest to intervene, and when it finally stepped up to the plate, it produced the lukewarm Sudan Peace Act, which provides no measures to prevent Americans and the international community from profiting from the suffering of the southern Sudanese. In fact, before oil was discovered in south Sudan in the 1980s, US foreign policy largely ignored the war in Sudan--treating the war as just a bunch of black tribes and some Arabs killing each other.

Reportedly, Colin Powell and other political powerhouses worked quietly behind the scenes to influence a change in America's foreign policy toward Sudan. In April of this year, the Bush Administration sent Senator John C. Danforth (R-MO) and a team of government officials, well versed in the affairs of Sudan, on the senator's second mission to Sudan.

Danforth's mission to Sudan was largely welcomed by both the GOS and the SPLA. Being hyperaware of Sudan's history of failed peace agreements, the senator stressed to both parties that the United States' primary focuses were bringing an end to the suffering of the Sudanese people and ensuring that both parties implement whatever they promised to do. As a result of the Danforth mission, President Bush signed the Sudan Peace Act on October 21, 2002.

Based on the Machakos Protocol, the Act authorizes $300 million to support the infrastructure of southern Sudan.. The Act requires biannual updates on the process of peace negotiations. If the GOS fails to negotiate in good faith, the Bush Administration will seek an arms embargo resolution from the UN Security Council. If the SPLA fails to negotiate in good faith, the Bush Administration will withdraw its funding. The Act demands that both parties submit a list of war criminals and acts that constitute crimes against humanity to the US State Department. Most important, the Act demands that both parties allow for safe humanitarian relief missions to south Sudan.

Ironically, shortly after President Bush signed the Sudan Peace Act, Sudan's current president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, reportedly denounced the Act on a Sudanese radio program, and favored a return to the Machakos Protocol, which the GOS abrogated shortly after it was enacted in July 2002. Even more ironic is the fact that although the State Department characterized Sudan as a terrorist nation in its most current annual report, Patterns of Global Terror (2001), the Sudan Peace Act did not establish capital market sanctions.

Capital market sanctions would prevent US oil company involvement in Sudan and would prohibit companies from raising capital for oil development by trading its securities in any capital market in the US Consequently, this failure allows companies like the Canadian oil company, Talisman, to trade securities on US stock exchanges. Additionally, these companies can continue profiting while they do nothing to stop the GOS's scorched earth policy, which secures the oil fields by clearing the indigenous southern Sudanese tribal groups off their land. Lack of capital market sanctions means, for Talisman and peers, that silence is not golden, silence is black gold.

The framework for peace is written in the Machakos Protocol, the Sudan Peace Act, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Amnesty International's Human Rights Principles for Companies. Both the GOS and SPLA are aware of at least some of these documents.. But greed and ego compel the GOS and the SPLA to continue their turf war to the detriment of their own country and their own people.

In the best interest of the people of Sudan, the United States must establish capital market sanctions. Failure to do so creates policy that allows America to profit from the suffering of her global neighbors. The UN Security Council must send peacekeepers to monitor and investigate violations of the peace agreements. The UN must recognize south Sudan's right to self-determination, and recognize an independent, sovereign south Sudan. The natural resources of Sudan must be distributed in a way that satisfies both parties. The United States must reestablish all embassy services in Khartoum and establish a complete embassy in south Sudan.

Understandably, the world's focus is on the seemingly impending US war on Iraq and the nuclear capabilities and intentions of North Korea, but achieving peace in Sudan must come to the forefront if the United States and the international community are truly serious about conducting a war against terror.