Frist Joins Evangelist Graham on Trip to South Sudan

Franklin Graham's charity plans to rebuild churches destroyed in war. (David Kohl - AP)

JUBA, Sudan -- The jet took off Wednesday morning headed for Juba, the fledgling regional capital of southern Sudan and a place at the moment resembling a hot and sandy construction site.

In the pilot seat for the flight from Kampala, Uganda, was Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham. And in the entourage were several members of his Christian charity group, Samaritan's Purse, along with former Senate majority leader, onetime rumored presidential contender and, for now, surgeon and civilian Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

He had traveled to the group's far-flung health clinics before to operate on patients who, he granted, often had no idea who he was. The mission this time was a meeting with leaders of the semiautonomous region that only recently emerged from one of the bloodiest and longest-running civil wars on the continent.

But a U.S.-backed peace agreement between the southern Sudanese and the government in Khartoum is faltering badly as world attention has shifted to Darfur, the western region of the country where the government is accused of waging a campaign of violence that the United States and others have labeled genocide.

In the south, the conflict revolved mainly around oil-rich areas along a disputed border with the north. Like Darfur, it is layered with an ethnic dimension. But unlike Darfur, the conflict had a religious dimension and was cast at times as a war of persecution by the mostly Arab and Muslim government against the darker-skinned southerners, who mainly practice Christianity and indigenous religions.

It is that religious facet that has continued to draw in U.S. evangelical groups such as Samaritan's Purse, which has provided humanitarian relief in the region for a decade. Graham, who recounted with some relish diving into foxholes during wartime trips to the region, said his group has counted at least 500 destroyed churches amid a wider landscape of ruin. He was heading to Juba to tell leaders of his intention to rebuild all of them, he said.

The jet landed before noon in a cloud of sandy dust.

By then, about 90 flights had already buzzed into the small but busy airport, most carrying contractors who are building roads and government ministries from scratch, and living in encampments of tents that are so in demand that they rent at times for more than $150 a night.

A group of two dozen southern Sudanese leaders greeted Graham, Frist and the rest on the runway, and soon a convoy of trucks, SUVs and sirens was rumbling down the reddish dirt roads.

The first stop was the headquarters of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebel group that runs the region.

"We call it the wild west," Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the minister of regional cooperation, said to the visiting Americans. "You put down your tent under the tree, and you begin something."

Benjamin told Frist and Graham about all the roads that have been built -- "A miracle," he said -- but as the meeting continued, the news about the peace process was decidedly mixed.