Tom-Toms of Peace

Civil wars and chronic conflicts bedevil the world from Burundi to Northern Ireland to the Middle East and Viet Nam. But one civil war that has recently been settled was the 17-year struggle in Sudan between the 4,000,000 blacks of the south and the 11 million northerners, mostly Arabs. Three months ago, the leaders of the two sides--Major General Jaafar Numeiry, President of the Sudan, and Major General Joseph Lagu, commander of the southern guerrillas--met in Addis Ababa, capital of neighboring Ethiopia, and signed a compromise settlement negotiated with the help of U.N. refugee organizations.

Even after the Addis Ababa treaty, the tense and war-ravaged southern Sudan was closed to journalists. Last week TIME'S Robert Kroon was among the first Western newsmen in several years to visit Juba, the southern administrative post 1,000 miles from Khartoum, and the surrounding swamp and bush country, where vultures circle over deserted villages. His report:

Reconciliation is in the air, like the life-giving rains that signal the start of the wet season. The main street of Juba (pop. 130,000, swelled by refugees), a potholed red-dirt track, has been renamed "Unity Avenue." Overhead, banners in Arabic and English proclaim

At the heavily guarded federal military headquarters, an Arab, Major General Fatlalla Hamid, and Anyanya Leader Lagu pored over a sprawling map of Sudan's three southern provinces, discussing how to restore normality to the area for the first time since Sudan gained independence from Britian in 1956. Hamid and Lagu now live in the same house, work in the same office and tour the countryside together talking to Anyanya commanders.

They have also found a common scapegoat for their past troubles. Lagu insists that the British, not the northern Sudanese, were originally to blame for the civil war: "They deliberately kept us backward. They should .have taken a clear-cut line in the Sudan, either divide the country or unify it. They did neither, and we paid the price. But now the Sudan is finally going to work."

Some southerners are still wary of the new-found peace. Said Captain Choi Maror, a Dinka tribesman from Bahr El Ghazal province: "We don't trust those northerners yet. But we must live together. We are not brothers, but we can negotiate. We hear that the Russians and the Americans negotiate together, but do they trust each other? Still, it's better than war."

The south will be ruled by an autonomous regional council of eleven ministers, and the Premier will be Abdel Alier, 39, a lawyer who holds the post of Vice President in Numeiry's central government. Southern Sudanese, many of whom are Christians, particularly fear that the Arabs in Khartoum will submit to the influence of Egypt. Alier thinks that Numeiry has recently earned high marks for turning away pan-Arabist pressure and for seeking friendship with the Sudan's black neighbors. "The central government is opening Sudan's windows on the world for the first time since independence," said Alier. "We are finally on a new, independent national course."

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