The longest current war may be coming to a close. The London Telegraph reports that the Bush and Blair administrations scored a foreign-policy victory by pushing the warring factions to the bargaining table in the Sudan, resulting in a tentative peace agreement:

A peace deal to end Africa's longest civil war was finally signed last night. The fighting in Sudan, which has raged intermittently for nearly 50 years, has claimed two million lives. ... The conclusion of the fraught negotiations - in which the two sides have come under intense pressure from the United States - hands President George W Bush a rare foreign-policy boost in a Muslim country. ...

A transitional government headed by President Omar alBashir will take charge later this year. His fiercest enemy, John Garang, commander of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, will become vice-president.

North and south will split oil revenues equally and both sides will be represented in parliament, the civil service and the judiciary. After six years southerners will vote in a referendum offering them the option of independence.

The Sudan has fought a civil war since their independence from Britain in 1956, and as the Telegraph points out, has remained so economically disadvantaged that not one inch of tarmac nor one watt of electricity exists in the southern, non-Muslim rebel areas of the country. The Sudan has oil reserves which could transform the nation into economic viability if their politics could ever get straightened out.

So now we have the Anglo-American alliance liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, convincing Libya to cough up its WMD programs, engaging North Korea in the multi-lateral talks that were supposedly out of reach, and now they've helped end a 50-year war that kept millions in poverty and violence. What exactly do the Democrats have to say about George Bush's foreign policy?

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» Peace in the Sudan? from Back of the Envelope
If Bush has too many more of these "rare" foreign-policy successes in Muslim countries (Libya, Iraq, reform movements in Iran and Syria gaining steam, and a statement of principle from the Arab League to move toward democracy), in a hundread years pe... [Read More]

Tracked on May 26, 2004 10:09 PM