Soldiers of Christ.(Christians bring aid to Sudan)(Statistical Data Included)

For the first time in seven months, a plane with supplies from the outside world stood on the guerrilla leader's dirt airstrip. The Americans had brought corn, soap, medicine and boxes of Bibles printed in the local language, Nuer. But what made rebel commander Peter Gatdet happiest was the 440 pounds of salt. In the territory where the Sudanese People's Liberation Army operates--the swampy headwaters of the Nile, one of the world's most remote and primitive places--salt is a better currency than money.

The supply mission was like a covert operation. Over the next three days low-flying charter aircraft ferried in more than 20 tons of goods from the Kenyan border town of Lokichokio, 500 miles away. The pilots rushed for fear of Sudanese government bombers or helicopter gunships. But the Americans who carried off the op weren't U.S. spooks. They were in southern Sudan on behalf of a fundamentalist church from Orange County, California, called Calvary Chapel. The goal: to help people in Sudan's oilfields, driven from their villages by government forces to make way for foreign oil firms--a sinister new dynamic in the 18-year- old civil war. "We'll probably take some hits from people who'll say we're reckless or stirring up trouble," says senior pastor Gary Kusunoki, the soft-spoken leader of Safe Harbor International Relief, the church's missionary arm. But the ex-cop cites the Book of Timothy: "You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

During a week in the hottest Sudanese war zone, I watched crusaders intent on thrusting Africa's biggest country onto America's map. The new Bush administration is under fierce assault from one of its most important constituencies, the Christian right. Leaders of the Sudan lobby, including several powerful senators, say an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship in Khartoum enslaves and persecutes black Christians in the south--a charge Khartoum denies. They demand measures even tougher than Bill Clinton's to punish and isolate Khartoum for allegedly promoting terrorism and abusing its citizens. It's telling that one such group, Samaritan's Purse, is run by Franklin Graham, son of the Reverend Billy. It operates a hospital in guerrilla territory near the southern capital of Juba. Graham delivered the prayer at Bush's inauguration--and promptly afterward lobbied the new president for a tougher Sudan policy.

Human-rights and African-American groups are also pushing. They want to make Sudan the sort of cause that South Africa was in the 1980s, urging sanctions and disinvestment tactics that target Canadian, Chinese and Swedish companies working to develop Sudan's oil industry. Some threaten civil disobedience. Bush has ordered a thorough policy review. He may well announce a major peacemaking initiative before the month is out. Whatever he decides, Sudan is likely to become one of his more improbable foreign-policy priorities.

The new Sudan lobby isn't waiting for Washington, however. A growing "redemption" movement attacks slavery by buying back captives taken by Arab militias in the war zone, for cash. And Christian missionaries range far into the hinterlands, traveling without Sudanese visas in defiance of Khartoum, under the protection of the rebels. Khartoum denounces some of them as spies and gunrunners. Better-known relief groups such as Medecins sans Frontieres, also operate unilaterally in the south, without the government's permission and outside the umbrella of the decade-old United Nations relief effort, Operation Lifeline Sudan. The U.N. program can deploy resources only with Khartoum's approval--and Khartoum manipulates the rules, sometimes blocking humanitarian relief as a weapon of war.

The United States takes no official position on freelancing Americans. But it can hardly complain. Washington has been increasing support for relief operations beyond the purview of Operation Lifeline Sudan. Last year the United States Agency for International Development provided $17 million to groups that work in Sudan without Khartoum's permission, about half the amount agencies under the U.N. program received from Washington. The main recipient is Norwegian People's Aid, an advocacy group described in a report commissioned by the Norweign government as going "beyond the boundaries of what is generally considered humani- tarian practice."

The 12-man mission from Safe Harbor was intent on getting aid to the hardest-hit areas. The California group has led about 50 missions into Sudan in the past four years, and it operates a clinic in northern Uganda near the Sudanese border. It has come a long way in a short time. The group's organizer-in-chief, Reverend Kusunoki, got into relief work when, shortly after retiring from the San Clemente Police Department as a lieutenant, he set up a system to deliver drinking water to victims of the Los Angeles earthquake. A mission to postgenocide Rwanda followed, and Sudan was the ...