SUDAN: 'EVERY GUN MUST BE SILENT'

The riots that have killed at least 130 in Sudan are bad enough. Far worse is the danger that John Garang's death might restart a conflict that has cost an estimated 2 million lives since 1983. In July, barely three weeks before his fatal helicopter crash, the former guerrilla leader had been sworn in as Sudan's vice president, fulfilling a key provision of the peace deal that ended Africa's longest-running civil war earlier this year. Now Garang's designated successor, Gen. Salva Kiir Mayadit, is doing his best to keep the agreement alive.

Can he? Many Sudanese think not--but Kiir, tall and imposing like Garang, if leaner and less flamboyant, intends to prove them wrong. "There is no way I can convince them other than by my deeds," he told NEWSWEEK last week in carefully considered English. "Then, I think, the people will again gather their hopes." The Khartoum government, under heavy U.S. pressure, quickly confirmed Kiir as the new vice president.

Civilian politics may prove to be the toughest mission of the general's career. Unlike Garang, who earned a Ph.D. in economics at Iowa State University, Kiir was a graduate of Khartoum's Military College. When the Arab-dominated government placed the country under Islamic law in 1983, Kiir and other officers rose up with their fellow southerner Garang to fight for the freedoms of Christians and animists. Garang rallied international support for the southern cause, while Kiir mostly led their troops in battle.

Now the general says he wants no more fighting--including the separate atrocities being inflicted by Arab paramilitaries against black African farmers in the western Darfur region. "All guns must be silent," he says. The peace deal calls for an independence referendum for southern Sudanese in 2011, if all goes well, and Kiir wants to get ready. "There can be no development without peace," he said last week. "Six years is not that long to wait." For many Sudanese, the war has already lasted an eternity.