Alex de Waal, a world-renowned expert on strife in Africa—especially the brutal conflict in Sudan—will be interviewed by Cathedral Dean Samuel Lloyd on May 9 as part of Washington National Cathedral’s Sunday Forum series.

De Waal’s appearance is part of an effort by the Cathedral congregation and a number of allied Washington-area churches and synagogues to keep public attention on the Sudan government’s sometimes genocidal repression of the country’s western province of Darfur.

On May 23, the Darfur Interfaith Network, which includes the Cathedral congregation, will stage a mass march from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Organizers say the 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. demonstration is intended to assure the surviving victims of the conflict that “they are not alone or forgotten.”

It would not be surprising if some victims feel abandoned by the world. The dauntingly complex issues underlying a conflict that has been raging in one part of Sudan or another for almost 30 years make it extremely difficult for outside observers to understand what is going on. For most people, it is easier to ignore the whole thing.

De Waal’s life work has been sorting out the complexities and nuisances of Third World wars that most people in the West just can’t seem to get their minds around. Since his PhD thesis at Oxford University on famine in Darfur and the rest of Sudan was published in 1989, he has written or edited scores of books and journal articles about the deadly conflict. He is affiliated with the Global Equity Institute at Harvard.

Sudan, geographically the largest country in Africa, has been fighting ethnically and religiously based wars ever since its independence from Britain in 1956. The conflict now known as the First Civil War began in 1955, ending in a cease-fire in 1972. The Second Civil War began in the mid 1980s and lasted until October 2004 when a U.S.-mediated truce, intended to establish a coalition government, took effect. Both of those wars were between the predominately Arab and Muslim north of the country—which controls the government and the armed forces—and the mostly African Christian and Animist south.

As the North-South conflict was winding down, warfare broke out in Darfur in 2003.  That war is still going on. Unlike the earlier wars, the conflict in Darfur is predominately ethnic. The residents of Darfur are mostly Muslims, like Northerners who control the government. But the Darforis are ethnically African and have been subjected to repression by the Arab-dominated government and allied Arab militias.

In recent months, there have been disturbing indications that the North-South conflict may be heating up again. The Darfur Interfaith Network, once focused entirely on Darfur, now also advocates for the South. The May 23 march is titled “Hope for Darfur, Justice in Sudan.”

The official position of the U.S. government has changed over the years. The Bill Clinton administration openly supported the Southerners and opposed the government. The George W. Bush administration acted as an impartial honest broker in developing the North-South armistice in 2004, mediated by former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, an Episcopal priest. The Obama administration, hoping for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, is also striving for impartiality, calling for free elections to resolve the issues.  The State Department described as an “important milestone” elections held in April even though most opposition parties boycotted the balloting which they described as “fatally flawed.”  Most non-governmental advocacy groups dismissed the elections as an attempt to legitimize the government which took power more than 20 years ago in a military coup.