NYT: An American Puts Sudan’s Cause in the Spotlight →

This is a fascinating read about John Prendergast, who is working for human rights causes in Africa:

At 47, he has devoted all of his adult life to Africa, especially the Horn and Congo, formerly known as Zaire. He’s been jailed in southern Sudan. He’s had militiamen’s assault rifles jammed into his stomach in Congo. While we sat in the Juba restaurant in October, he was fighting off a rare infection that is a precursor to elephantiasis, contracted in Sudan a week or two before. Swollen glands throughout his body made him wince as he walked across the restaurant.

Prendergast laid a small map of Sudan — of the nation as it looks for the moment, not yet divided in two — on a table in front of Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, an insider in the South’s government in waiting, a towering man with tribal scars, six raised horizontal lines, spanning his forehead. The two men discussed the chances of the new country’s being born without causing more cataclysmic warfare. Scribbled notes cluttered the map as Gatkuoth brought Prendergast up to date on developments in the South, on fresh pacts being sealed between the main liberation group and an array of factions. The rebel leaders know from CNN, and from Prendergast himself — “So George Clooney and I met with President Obama last week …” — that Prendergast has pull with their ally America. And for Prendergast, the information that he can learn from those leaders is currency. The mix of his exhaustive knowledge and his marshaling of movie stars has placed him near the heart of the American administration’s role in Sudan’s impending rearrangement.

This is a rather long piece, so you might want to save it for reading later. Nevertheless, it’s well worth the time.