Opinion articles provide independent perspectives on key community issues, separate from our newsroom reporting.

Melinda Henneberger

Sudan: It's not too late

Melinda Henneberger
Halima Muzammil (right) fled her home in Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, with only her clothes and her children after watching her husband shot and killed by government soldiers in a country that the U.N. says is on the brink of genocide.
Halima Muzammil (right) fled her home in Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, with only her clothes and her children after watching her husband shot and killed by government soldiers in a country that the U.N. says is on the brink of genocide. Melinda Henneberger mhenneberger@kcstar.com
Halima Muzammil (right) fled her home in Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, with only her clothes and her children after watching her husband shot and killed by government soldiers in a country that the U.N. says is on the brink of genocide. Melinda Henneberger — mhenneberger@kcstar.com

Sudan: It's not too late

By The Kansas City Star

The Star's Melinda Henneberger traveled to Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda for this series of reported columns on political persecution, forced starvation. potential genocide -- and one corner of the world where people are sharing their land, roads, and water, in the middle of a drought, with the 272,000 refugees of another faith who've moved in down the road since last summer.

These Sudanese love Donald Trump and need him to love them, too

In Sudan’s South Kordofan province, the Nuba people have seen few Americans. But they consider Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback one of the best American friends the Sudanese people ever had. And they view President Donald Trump as a hero, even though his travel ban would keep the Nuba out of the United States.

In Sudan, health care is a political act for hero doctors

In the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, a doctor’s decision to stay and work in hospitals that have repeatedly been bombed by government forces inspires the kind of gratitude that you can really only call love. In this forsaken corner of the planet, four doctors serve some 1.5 million people.

In South Sudan, the famine is official but the genocide is not

How many more people have to die in South Sudan before we decide that it’s a genocide? Or decide to intervene? More, apparently, though over 50,000 South Sudanese arrived in Uganda in January alone. If there’s to be any hope of saving the South Sudanese people from those who are running what’s left of their country, our new president will need to be more engaged than his predecessor.

The Ugandans who let 272,000 South Sudanese refugees move in down the road

Can you imagine 272,000 refugees of another faith moving in just down the road in your previously tiny village over the last seven months? America, meet Uganda, where in this almost all-Muslim corner of the country the locals already have made room for that many South Sudanese Christians fleeing famine and ethnic cleansing in a country on the brink of genocide.

Editorial: We can’t walk away from a world in crisis

There’s no serious debate about the fact that terror and instability are inextricably linked. But President Donald Trump’s budget aims to make our country safer by slashing such “soft power” staples as diplomacy and foreign aid — cuts that will prove counterproductive in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.

This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Sudan: It's not too late."

Get unlimited digital access
#ReadLocal

Try 1 month for $1

CLAIM OFFER