Blog Posts in Advocacy
Obama Administration Ramping Up Sudan Efforts (Or So It Seems)
In an important speech on foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only spent a few minutes on U.S. policy toward Sudan (thanks to Travis Atkins, a fellow at CFR, who posed a question). But what she did say regarding North-South issues – “the situation… is a ticking time bomb” – provoked a torrent of follow-up questions when a State Department spokesperson held his daily briefing with reporters.
The State Department sought to step away from the suggestion that war in Sudan was “inevitable,” but the press secretary continued to convey a sense of urgency. “We are very mindful that if, for some reason, full implementation of the CPA is not forthcoming, or if the referendum is not seen as credible, there certainly is the risk of further conflict,“ he said.
As someone who peruses the press briefing transcript daily, I can say this is the most attention directed at Sudan from D.C. journalists in recent months, and the fact that it led off the press secretary’s updates is also significant.
Encouragingly, press secretary PJ Crowley revealed that following Secretary Clinton’s remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations, she spoke by phone with Sudanese Vice Presidents Ali Osman Taha (from the North) and Salva Kiir (from the South) to “encourage and accelerate this process” of preparing for the referendum, set to take place on January 9, 2011. When asked whether Clinton discussed specific potential consequences with Taha, in the event that Sudan’s ruling party obstructs the preparation or meddles with the outcome of the referendum, Crowley’s vague response about “seeing some steps taken” suggested she did not. Regardless, this high-level, one-on-one engagement is a positive indication that the Obama administration is ready to ramp up its involvement during these crucial final four months leading up to the referendum.
Plans are underway for a meeting of heads of state on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly later this month to discuss Sudan’s referendum. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to attend and, notably, has reportedly committed to staying for a full hour. The Washington Post’s Colum Lynch went public with news (via Twitter) that President Obama would also attend, though it is unclear whether he’ll take part substantively in the discussions or simply stop by to meet and greet.
In response to the news of President Obama’s planned participation in the meeting, Sudan advocacy groups commended the direction U.S. policy seems to be heading, even at this late hour. Acknowledging the U.S. diplomatic efforts already taking place, a joint statement issued by the groups this morning noted that President Obama will be able to “push for bolder benefits and meaningful consequences” to ensure that the referendum is held on time and carried out in a credible way that helps avoid “what could be the world's largest conventional conflict next year.” But, they added, “the carrots and sticks must be robust enough to grab the attention of the parties, particularly the National Congress Party.”
Time will soon tell whether this flurry of activity surrounding Sudan lives up to the “all hands on deck” approach Secretary Clinton described yesterday. (Glaringly absent from these recent conversations is the worrisome situation in Darfur and its all-but-dead peace process.) The new lead U.S. diplomat charged with overseeing negotiations between North and South, Ambassador Princeton Lyman, arrived in-country at the end of August, and expectations are high that he’s got the track record and chutzpah to help light a fire under the two Sudanese parties during this short period of time.
Here’s to hoping that the burst of attention to Sudan – from both the Obama administration and journalists covering U.S. foreign policy – signals that the Sudan issue has reached a tipping point, with just four months to go until the historic vote and much to do in the meantime.
Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations (AP)
Mr. President: We Need Your Voice on Sudan
I was heartened to see the recent ad campaign in The New York Times by the Sudan Now coalition urging renewed presidential leadership on Sudan at this critical juncture. In the words of NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof, penned months ago, and more true with each passing day: “If President Obama is ever going to find his voice on Sudan, it had better be soon.”
Having first traveled to Sudan in 1989, my interest and involvement in this country has spanned the better part of 20 years. I’ve been there five times, most recently in 2004 when Senator Sam Brownback and I were the first congressional delegation to go to Darfur. Tragically, Darfur is hardly an anomaly. We saw the same scorched earth tactics in the brutal 20-year civil war with the South where more than 2 million perished, most of whom were civilians. Against this backdrop, after two and half years of negotiations and high-level U.S. involvement, the historic Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, was signed, thereby bringing about an end to war.
The CPA guarantees that the South will be given the opportunity to vote for independence in January 2011. The conventional wisdom is that they will waste no time in severing ties with the North. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that President Bashir remains at the helm in Khartoum.
With about four months to go, Bashir’s National Congress Party, or NCP, persists in dragging its feet—undermining and stalling CPA implementation at nearly every turn. Furthermore, the deeply flawed April elections do not bode well for the fate of a free, fair, and timely referendum process. Failure to deliver on the long-awaited promise of a respectable referendum could have grave implications.
I am deeply concerned that Sudan is headed for a resumption of civil war if the U.S. fails to exert the necessary leadership and influence. As a guarantor of the CPA we have a moral obligation to do so. Shortly before Congress adjourned for the summer district work period the bipartisan Sudan Caucus co-chairs, with Representative Michael Capuano as the lead sponsor, introduced a resolution (H.Res. 1588) urging consistent U.S. leadership to ensure the full implementation of the CPA, as well as peace and stability in Sudan during and after the mandated referenda. We continue to gain cosponsors to this timely resolution, but ultimately the administration must embrace this as a foreign policy priority. The stakes could not be higher. The Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (pdf) predicted that over the next five years, “…a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan” – more so than any other country.
The recent announcement that Ambassador Princeton Lyman has been dispatched to Sudan to mediate negotiations between the North and the South is a welcome development. But alone it is insufficient especially given the persistent news reports that the administration is considering an incentives only approach with Khartoum. These reports, while disturbing, are consistent with the administration’s uneven implementation of the policy it rolled out last fall. For months now President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan has been relying almost exclusively on carrots even in the face of clear backsliding by the NCP. This is a worst case scenario and is guaranteed – if history is to be our guide – to fail.
During the campaign for the presidency, then candidate Obama said, “Washington must respond to the ongoing genocide and the ongoing failure to implement the CPA with consistency and strong consequences.” These words still ring true today.
Will President Obama find his voice on Sudan?
Congressman Frank R. Wolf (R) represents Virginia’s 10th District. He is currently serving his 15th term in office.
Bloody Weekend in Darfur Raises Question of U.N. Whereabouts
On the heels of incriminating evidence of the U.N.’s inability to protect civilians in Congo, news of violent clashes in Darfur over the weekend left U.N. peacekeepers again looking at best ineffectual and at worst complicit in government efforts to downplay the ongoing humanitarian crisis that is now in its seventh year.
Though details and mortality figures are sketchy and difficult to confirm, reports indicate that this latest surge of violence began on Thursday in a market in the town of Tabarat, in North Darfur. According to one leader in the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, a government-sponsored group staged the attack, “firing indiscriminately at shoppers,” and then attempted to cover up the extent of the violence by hauling away bodies in a truck. The death toll could be as high as 80, but U.N. peacekeepers – who didn’t arrive at the market until Saturday – confirmed 37 dead and 30 injured.
Sudan expert Eric Reeves obtained an internal U.N. report on the attack at Tabarat market that indicated peacekeepers were located just 15 miles away in a town called Tawilla. Despite the immediacy of the need for civilian protection, the U.N. forces were apparently awaiting approval for an intervention from force leaders in El Fasher, Reeves reported, who in turn were awaiting permission from the Sudanese government – even though government proxies were reportedly carrying out the attack.
Meanwhile in West Darfur, fighting broke out in the restive Hamadiya IDP camp on Friday night. A U.N. spokesperson initially said it was unclear what caused the violence, but Radio Dabanga described ties to incidents in July over the stalled Darfur peace process. Citing unnamed sources from aid organizations, Radio Dabanga reported that aid groups had received threats earlier in the week from a group backed by the Sudanese government. The group, which included some of the individuals expelled from the camp during the earlier incident, warned it would attack the camp if U.N. peacekeepers did not hand over those allegedly responsible for the three deaths that occurred in July. “Sources said that the elders of the displaced camp warned UNAMID that they expected at any time an imminent attack by this group backed by the government,” Radio Dabanga reported.
As with the recent attacks against civilians in eastern Congo, which unfolded in the vicinity of U.N. peacekeepers and with at least some U.N. awareness, discussion of the weekend violence in Darfur has focused largely on the failings of its peacekeepers – rather than on the perpetrators of the violence. Certainly this criticism is warranted. In his impassioned post for Dissent magazine on the complicity of the U.N. in efforts to brush aside Darfur, Eric Reeves describes through numerous examples how typical sources for reliable information on the suffering of Darfuris have gradually dried up, sometimes through direct action from the Sudanese government, but oftentimes through self-censorship, even among the highest U.N. officials charged with reporting.
Of course, UNAMID has chosen to limit its reporting, but this decision stems from concern that the Sudanese government can simply expel peacekeepers if it is displeased. This tenuous relationship creates a dilemma for UNAMID, but ultimately, in order to have the international backing UNAMID needs to pressure the Sudanese government to loosen its restrictions on movement and thus increase the force’s ability to respond to outbreaks of violence, UNAMID needs to be upfront about the conditions it is facing on the ground.
I’m reminded of a passage I recently read in Samantha Power’s book about the highly esteemed U.N. diplomat, the late Sergio Vieira de Mello. Faced with a quickly deteriorating security situation in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, and with U.N. Security Council members dragging their feet on what to do, Vieira de Mello said to his team in the war-torn would-be country, “If we learned anything in the last five years, it is that we have to stop telling the Security Council what it wants to know, and instead tell it what it needs to know. (...) We can’t censor ourselves.” Despite the brutality of the Indonesian troops in East Timor, countries were accepting Indonesia’s pledge to secure East Timor. “Should we not be skeptical in this regard?” Vieira de Mello wrote to colleagues at the time.
He was well aware that the recommendation from his team on the ground (in this case, supporting intervention by a contingent of Australian peacekeepers) would not be popular among Security Council members, but he felt strongly that this was the best option for alleviating suffering of East Timorese. “[If] we wish to avoid being a scapegoat, we should put the onus of rejecting solutions on others,” Vieira de Mello wrote at the time.
The U.N. peacekeeping chief in Darfur may have recently expressed support for a Sudanese government strategy to relocate Darfur’s displaced people and begin closing camps (a proposal rife with problems, as we have noted before), but the peacekeeping mission must reclaim its ability to report honestly about the constraints it faces in Darfur, many of which fall to the Sudanese government.
To be sure, the U.N. peacekeeping mission has fallen short time and again in its responsibility to protect civilians. But from its unique vantage point, operating day in and day out on the ground in Darfur, the U.N. peacekeeping mission should be far more outspoken about why, for instance, it was unable to respond quickly to outbreaks of violence this weekend. Acknowledging the extent of government interference – which is typically only hinted at in official U.N. statements – may have an effect on influencing just how much trust the international community places in the Sudanese government to find a solution in the interest of Darfuri survivors.
Photo: Children in an IDP camp in Darfur (AP)
MSNBC Calls on Prendergast for Sudan Segment
Enough Co-founder John Prendergast appeared on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” yesterday, hosted by Nora O’Donnell, to talk about The Enough Moment—his latest book co-authored with actor Don Cheadle—and to call for leadership in Sudan from the Obama administration.
Prendergast says there is still hope for resolution to the conflicts in Sudan not only because of the diplomatic weight the U.S. can wield, but because of the remarkable human rights movement that has emerged in solidarity with the people of Darfur. He says:
“In an unprecedented way people have come together all over the United States and around the world in support of people that they’ll never meet, in a place they’ll never visit.”
Here’s the interview:
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Join the movement and submit your own Enough Moment here.
The ‘Enough Moment’ for Confronting Africa’s Human Rights Crimes
When confronted with some of the worst human rights crimes on the face of the earth – rape as a tool of war, child soldier recruitment, and genocide – it is easy and even understandable to turn away in horror. It turns out, however, that more and more people aren’t turning away.
As we write in The Enough Moment, a book I’ve co-authored with Don Cheadle (www.enoughmoment.org), “a strange and beautiful cocktail of hope, anger, citizen activism, social networking, compassion, celebrities, faith in action, and globalization are all coming together to produce the beginnings of a mass movement of people against these crimes and for peace. And this is happening at the very time that an American administration is populated by a number of people who have been” leading voices against these human rights abuses. “We call the sheer possibility inherent in this confluence of factors the Enough Moment, and it means that our feeling that Enough is Enough might actually get translated into real change.” Don and I discuss how this change can come about, and how everyone can make a real contribution to that change.
At a personal level, anyone who decides to get involved experiences their own Enough Moment, when something clicks inside and being a bystander is no longer an option – you know you need to become what we call an Upstander. For Don, it was being involved in the film “Hotel Rwanda” and then getting the chance to go to Darfur. For me, it was seeing footage of the Ethiopian famine back in the early 1980s and not being able to get it out of my head. In The Enough Moment, we collect the stories and testimonies of three groups of people who discuss their inspiring Enough Moments:
- Frontline Upstanders: people who have survived tremendous human rights abuses and gone on to help rebuild their communities;
- Citizen Upstanders: folks throughout the U.S. who have taken extraordinary action on behalf of survivors of human rights abuses half a world away; and
- Famous Upstanders: well-known people from the worlds of entertainment, sports, and politics who have decided to use their fame to help bring about change.
To read more about these stories and learn how we can end these crimes, order the book at www.enoughmoment.org. With the release of the book today, we’re also launching our Enough Moment Wall, where you can watch videos of people describing their Enough Moment and record your own. As we write in the book, “There will always be injustice, driven by greed, bigotry, power. But the degree to which injustice is thwarted and countered and reversed is up to us. The battle is joined. We hope you will choose to be part of it. Millions of lives hang in the balance.”
This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.
