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Almost every day for 12 months, Dan Teng'o, a Christian relief worker from Kenya, talked with violence-fleeing refugees from Darfur in the western region of Sudan. All too often, he said, gaunt refugees arrived at border camps too weak to do much more than sound out a few words.

"A day or two after their arrival in July at the Otash camp near Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, most of the refugees couldn't even stand up. Some couldn't project their voice," Teng'o said.

"I have seen suffering. But nothing like this. It has changed my life. I don't take anything for granted anymore." Teng'o, associated with World Vision, is among a global vanguard of evangelicals working for comprehensive peace in Sudan. Beyond the humanitarian concerns, evangelicals have pressed for full religious freedom for Sudanese Christians facing one of the world's most extreme Islamic states.

In Washington, evangelical leaders have kept Darfur as a high priority. In a costly media campaign, a new group called Evangelicals for Darfur lobbied George W. Bush with full-page newspaper ads, telling him, "Without you, Mr. President, Darfur doesn't have a prayer."

At a press teleconference, Southern Baptist Richard Land called for a multinational force with "military teeth" that can "defy the genocidal government in Khartoum if necessary." Sojourners' Jim Wallis warned, "If security collapses, the aid groups will have to leave."

This brutal conflict is poised to enter its fifth year in February. The Islamic government of Sudan has ignored demands from Darfurians, mainly black Africans, for a fair share of development aid. There are long-standing ethnic and economic tensions between Sudan's Arabs and Darfur's black Africans. Darfur had autonomy until British rule in 1916.

The conflict reached a turning point in April 2003 with the rebels' successful attack on al Fashir, a garrison town in north Darfur. In response, the government unleashed local Arab nomads who conducted a scorched-earth strategy. These militias, armed by the government, have burned hundreds of villages, causing the death of up to 400,000 and the displacement of 1.9 million. The ongoing conflict has fueled the growth of rebel groups and more fighting. Arab militias are popularly called janjaweed ("devil-riding gunslingers"), and the janjaweed label the region's black Africans as "slaves" or "hyenas." When janjaweed capture rebel soldiers, they often castrate them before execution. They also rape refugee women who leave their camps to collect firewood.

On September 19, President Bush, facing political pressure to stop the genocidal slaughter, appointed Andrew Natsios, former head of usaid, as his special envoy to Sudan.

Less than a month later, Natsios showed up at Darfur's Otash camp. In the camps, he said, "people are so enraged." Unlike other high-profile visitors, Natsios, a former World Vision executive, has been to Sudan seven times.

He talked with a few of the 10,500 new arrivals who in October joined the 53,000 already there. The lines at the medical clinic were long. Emaciated children, some with malaria and orange-tinted hair, gave silent witness to serious malnutrition and near starvation.

International aid agencies, many of them faith-based, have made strong headway this year in providing emergency relief to 3.7 million out of 6 million Darfurians. Still, some 13 percent of the children are malnourished, slightly below the 15 percent that is considered the threshold for a famine emergency.

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December 2006, Vol. 50, No. 12