Sudan: Has the Scorpion Lost Its Sting?

In the southern Sudan, the long-awaited rains have left the countryside carpeted in a lush green. The valley of the rain-swollen Upper Nile is alive with gazelles, dik-dik and brightly plumaged birds, and the elephant grass is five feet high. Over the past several years, that luxuriant growth often concealed guerrilla fighters of the dread Any a Nya (Scorpion) independence movement, but now there are signs that one of the most long-lived conflicts in Africa has begun to ebb. Last week, TIME Correspondent William Smith visited the Sudan and filed a report on a hopeful lull in the bitter, 14-year-old...

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