Brains Like a Shoe

Finishing up my second full day in Pittsburgh.  I am here with the Save Darfur team for the G-20 Summit. Yesterday, we organized a great policy briefing entitled, “Sudan and the G-20: what the world’s richest countries can do”.

The three other panelists and I had a really interesting conversation on the issue for about an hour.   We discussed the various ways that the G-2o countries can collectively support peace and political reform in Sudan.  I specifically drew attention to the possible use by the United States and other partners of an internationally-brokered  debt relief package for Sudan as innovative new leverage point with the regime in Khartoum.  If President Bashir and the National Congress Party truly commit to peace, then debt relief should be on the table.  But if they continue to obstruct peace and commit grave human rights abuses, their recent appeals to the international community for relief from their burdensome $34 billion in debt should be roundly ignored.  I will be blogging more on this topic tomorrow.

Until then, you can watch a webcasting of the discussion here.

First posted today at Save Darfur…

Colonel Qaddafi

Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will trek to New York City this week to participate in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) – his first appearance at UNGA in his forty year rule of Libya. Columnists have been speculating for weeks, especially after the return of the Lockerbie bomber, on what the ever-enigmatic Qaddafi will say during his address and whose hands he will (be allowed to) shake.  Despite causing a controversy almost every time he speaks about African or Middle East politics, his about-face in 2003 on weapons of mass destruction restored his good graces in Washington and the allure of Libyan oil contracts assures his amenability to most European leaders.

Libya’s involvement in Sudanese affairs, and the Darfur crisis particularly, rarely make much news in the American press.  There is a possibility of course that Qaddafi will say something truly outrageous about Sudan during his UN address that will make headlines.  Speaking on the same day as President Obama and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the threshold though for significant news coverage will be high.  Then again, claiming as he did last month that Israel is behind all of Africa’s conflicts – including Darfur – may grab him some serious ink.

While many see such a ludicrous statement as Qaddafi just being his regular abhorrent anti-Semite self, other previous comments by the Libyan leader on Darfur begin to reveal a much more sinister role for the Libyan leader.  Two years ago, for instance, speaking at the opening of a short-lived round of negotiations in Tripoli between the Sudanese government and the Darfuri rebels, Qaddafi said:

“You might laugh if I say that the main reason of this issue [Darfur] is a camel…Africa has thousands of issues – they are about water, about grass – and Africa is divided into 50 countries, and the tribes are divided amongst so many countries, although they belong to each other.  The problem we are having now is that we politicize such problems between tribes.”

His seemingly innocent remarks actually affirm President Omar al-Bashir’s standard excuse that the Darfur crisis is merely a tribal conflict that escalated because of foreign intervention.  Perhaps we should expect this message-consistency from two authoritarian leaders (and neighbors) who collectively have tightly held their grips on power for sixty years as of this summer.   But there is more that Qaddafi hides from these remarks and his other comments on Darfur and the politics of Sudan.

To start, Qaddafi serves as an originator of the guns and ideology of the janjaweed.  As Alex de Waal has written:

In the 1980s, Colonel Qaddafi dreamed of an ‘Arab belt’ across Sahelian Africa. The keystone was to gain control of Chad, starting with the Aouzou strip in the north of the country. He mounted a succession of military adventures in Chad, and from 1987 to 1989, Chadian factions backed by Libya used Darfur as a rear base, provisioning themselves freely from the crops and cattle of local villagers….Many of the guns in Darfur came from those factions. Qaddafi’s formula for war was expansive: he collected discontented Sahelian Arabs and Tuaregs, armed them, and formed them into an Islamic Legion that served as the spearhead of his offensives. Among the legionnaires were Arabs from western Sudan, many of them followers of the Mahdist Ansar sect, who had been forced into exile in 1970 by President Nimeiri. The Libyans were defeated by a nimble Chadian force at Ouadi Doum in 1988, and Qaddafi abandoned his irredentist dreams. He began dismantling the Islamic Legion, but its members, armed, trained and – most significant of all – possessed of a virulent Arab supremacism, did not vanish. The legacy of the Islamic Legion lives on in Darfur: Janjawiid leaders are among those said to have been trained in Libya.

…In 1987, returnees from Libya took the lead in forming a political bloc known as the Arab Alliance. At one level, the Alliance was simply a political coalition that aimed to protect the interests of a disadvantaged group in western Sudan, but it also became a vehicle for a new racist ideology. The politically insignificant racist epithets of earlier times began to take on an alarming tinge in Darfur. The Alliance also latched onto the dominant ideology of the Sudanese state, the very different Arabism of Nile Valley. The war in Darfur at the end of the 1980s was more than a conflict over land: it was the first step in constructing a new Arab ideology in Sudan.

While Qaddafi introduced weaponry and ideology to Darfur in the 1980s, President Bashir and his National Congress Party were the ones to seize upon these assets and set Darfur ablaze in 2003.  One might, given his history in Darfur, expect that Qaddafi subsequently supported the genocidal counterinsurgency coordinated by Khartoum.  But the motives and objectives behind Libya’s policies towards Sudan since 2003 have been much more difficult to interpret and understand.

On the face of it, Qaddafi has presented himself as a peacemaker.  As the International Crisis Group writes, “While consistently opposing an international force in Darfur, it has hosted at times Darfur rebel and tribal leaders as well as government delegations.”  Rumors also abound that Qaddafi has provided Darfuri rebels with critical supplies of arms and financing.  Another ICG report concludes:

Libya has played a highly significant, albeit inconsistent, role in Darfur since the conflict began, culminating in its function as host of the peace talks. At various times it has shown a significant ability to influence all rebel groups and push them toward participation in a broader political process. Simultaneously it has given the NCP diplomatic cover to resist international pressure and efforts to strengthen the peacekeeping operation. As elsewhere in Africa, Libyan actions have been motivated in part by Qaddafi’s desire to be a powerful regional player and mediator but the proximity of the conflicts in Chad and Darfur and their domestic impact have triggered a more sustained effort than elsewhere.

And with the reunification of six Darfuri rebel groups in Tripoloi last month, Qaddafi is once again deeply involved in the currently stalled peace process.  For these efforts, U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration even publicly praised Libya’s contributions to the peace process recently.

Given this history, if Qaddafi does mention Darfur or Sudan in his address to UNGA, be sure to consider the historical context.  The U.S. has no choice but to engage Libyan officials as it pushes for the resumption of peace talks in Doha.  As a neighbor to Sudan and with significant clout over certain rebel leaders, Libya will be involved one way or another.  At the same time, the international community should not count on the mercurial Qaddafi to support unwaveringly a push for peace.  The AU/UN Chief mediator Djibril Bassolé, supported by the U.S. and other key countries, should claim this responsibility.

And if Qaddafi – with his trademark, megalomaniacal righteousness – does choose again to place all the blame for Darfur on external forces, someone should ask him:

• • Who supported a coup attempt against the Sudanese government in 1976?
  • Who funded the Southern Sudanese rebels against Khartoum from 1983 to 1985?
  • Who switched sides and supported a new government brought to power via coup in 1985?
  • And then who began talks about unification plans (Sudan and Libya) with Bashir after the Sudanese leader seized power in his own coup in 1989?

The answer, of course, to these stories for another day is the one and only Colonel Qaddafi.

Justice Richard Goldstone this past week released his much anticipated report to the United Nations Human Rights Council that investigated human rights abuses committed during the Gaza conflict in January.   The report found that both the Israeli Defense Force and Hamas were responsible for war crimes – and, as expected, Goldstone’s findings immediately precipitated an acrimonious exchange of verbal crossfire between partisans on each side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

While I admittedly have not had time to track all of the attacks and counterattacks, what I find interesting – and disappointing – is the way that this vitriolic debate immediately began to resemble the uproar that ensued after the International Criminal Court in March issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur.

Daniel Levy of the New American Foundation (a former Israeli negotiator) has written an extensive and incisive analysis of the post-Goldstone report reactions:

Most of the pushback and the vituperative attacks have come from the Israeli side, and indeed while comprehensive, the preponderance of the report does deal with Israel’s actions. This is no coincidence. The overwhelming majority of causalities and destruction were incurred on the Palestinian side (which is not to detract from the fact that all loss is tragic). The report is forthright in acknowledging the power dynamic at work…This relationship of power is crucial – too many Israelis and Palestinians have effectively dehumanised the other, but the practical policy and operational consequences of that dehumanisation are very different for an occupying power as opposed to an occupied people. Since the report’s publication, and in the context of its pushback, Israel has bemoaned a different power dynamic, namely that investigations such as these are not conducted when it comes to, for instance, American transgressions in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Indeed, it is not a fair world: the Palestinians are to Israel as Israel is to America. Ironically, it is international human rights law and humanitarian law, the essence of this report, that exists to partially redress this unfairness.

The official Israeli response has followed a familiar if disappointingly ritualistic pattern. The emphasis has been on pre-emptively discrediting the report’s findings rather than substantively addressing them. Israel’s key claim – that the mission had concluded its findings in advance of its investigation – would appear to be true, only in reverse: namely that the Israeli government had decided on its response to the report in advance of its publication.

Official Israel refused to co-operate with the mission, refused to meet with its members or grant them official entry into Israel (or to the West Bank or Gaza via Israel), and had even banned the media from being in Gaza at the time of Operation Cast Lead. Israeli officials have marched in lock-step in their assertive rejection of the report, from the avuncular figure of Shimon Peres right down to the pugnacious ex-bouncer foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman (lambasting the report from, of all places, Serbia – no sense of irony was detected).

In drawing comparisons with the reaction of the Sudanese government to the ICC indictment (and of many opposed to the indictment), let’s start at the end of this section of his analysis and work our way up.  First, the Sudanese government also refused to cooperate with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo – and then challenged his understanding of the facts by stating that Ocampo had never visited the scene of the crime.  Second, the Sudanese government has never responded substantively to the charges against it – instead, it has since 2005 attempted to discredit the ICC by questioning the motives of the prosecutor and the countries and NGOs in support of the proceedings.  Third, like the Israeli government this week, the Sudanese government has argued that international justice is “unfair” – specifically that the ICC only targets African countries and ignores the human rights violations of more powerful countries, namely the United States and Israel.

The Goldstone report and its recommendation that international venues of justice take up the Gaza case, if the Israeli and Palestinian authorities themselves continue to refuse to do so, actually weakens this last line of argument from Bashir and the National Congress Party. On this point, Goldstone himself in the New York Times defended the role of the international community in investigating egregious crimes like those committed in Darfur and Gaza – and challenged western governments to be even-handed in their responses to both:

Absent credible local investigations, the international community has a role to play. If justice for civilian victims cannot be obtained through local authorities, then foreign governments must act…Pursuing justice in this case [Gaza] is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state.

Finally, regarding the Goldstone report, Levy also discusses “the tension between the demands of seeking justice now and of influencing the course of future events.”

I anticipate that the constellation of political forces will mean that this does not reach international criminal proceedings, and I have no desire to see Israelis appearing before such tribunals. But what this report does, and this is one of its most significant contributions, is to point a finger at a failure and in fact an illegitimacy to the overall policy that guided Israel’s actions in Gaza. The report finds that the manifestations of human rights violations in Gaza were the structural byproduct of policies that encouraged the targeting of civilians – namely, an expansive definition of the so-called infrastructure of terrorism and an intentional price-tag of disproportionality.

In the case of Sudan, the debate over “peace versus justice” is the “tension” between now and the future – that is whether you can pursue both goals at the same time or, if by pursuing justice before the attainment of peace, one actually forsakes the possibility of peace, at least, in the present.   As we wait for another round of Darfur negotiations to begin, this question for Sudanese and the international community remains unresolved.

Yet disregarding whether Bashir ever ends up at The Hague, the arrest warrants issued by the three ICC judges for President Bashir, using Levy’s words, similarly “point[s] a finger at a failure and in fact an illegitimacy to the overall policy that guided” Sudan’s actions in Darfur.   Indeed, the Sudanese government’s deplorable mishandling of Darfur is summarized by the seven charges handed down by the ICC judges against Bashir: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, pillage as a war crime, and murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape as crimes against humanity.

In the coming days and weeks, I will have more to write on this subject – including looking at the U.S. reaction to the Goldstone report compared to its evolving position concerning the ICC proceedings on Darfur, how the Goldstone report places defenders of both Khartoum’s actions in Darfur and Tel Aviv’s execution of the Gaza war in rather difficult positions, and how the rebels in Darfur and Hamas have approached these mechanisms of international justice. Stay tuned.

Egypt is now suffering the consequences of irrationally killing all its pigs last spring.  The whole episode points to other major flaws in the system:

What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.

It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials….

“The state is troubled; as a result the system of decision making is disintegrating,” said Galal Amin, an economist, writer and social critic. “They are ill-considered decisions taken in a bit of a hurry, either because you’re trying to please the president or because you are a weak government that is anxious to please somebody.”

Meanwhile, my friend Nate tells a short story about the long suffering of  of a Kurdish family from Halabja.

Finally, Sec. of State Clinton raised some (lofty) expectations for this administration’s foreign assistance and development approaches at Brookings on Friday.  Until now, President Obama has been pillioried by the development community for his failure to appoint a USAID administrator:

Now, many of you have heard me describe our plans to integrate diplomacy and development as two of the three pillars in our foreign policy, along with defense. I’ve talked in different venues about the Obama Administration’s commitment to leading with diplomacy and engaging other nations. Next week, I will outline how we will approach development in tandem with our diplomacy – to be effective and efficient and enable the State Department, USAID, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation to pursue and execute 21st century foreign policy goals.

The foundation for our approach will be principles that will move us away from top-down assistance that too often fails to meet the needs of those we are attempting to help, or has only short-term effects. To solve the complex problems of poverty, hunger, health, climate change, where they intersect, we want to focus on those root causes, and look for approaches that really change, transform the environment in which people are making these decisions and in which governments are held accountable to a higher degree of performance and transparency. We will be looking for ways to not only explain our approach, but to highlight issues. I will be, for example, participating in an event with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, hosted by the UN and the United States Government, on food security.

*First posted at Save Darfur’s blog.

Five news items in the last week and today highlight the precarious security condition for Sudanese living in Darfur and South Sudan.

In the first, Frank Nyakairu at Reuters explores whether the resurgent Lord’s Resistance Army is now receiving financial or military support from elements in Khartoum.  Last week, the UN Deputy Special Representative and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Ms. Ameerah Haq, expressed grave concern about the increasing number of deaths due to the escalating attacks by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) against civilians – mostly women and children – in Southern Sudan’s Western and Central Equatoria States.

Suspicions abound that an old relationship has now been reborn.  A Ugandan intelligence official, for instance, notes: “They are estimated to be about 2,500 (strong) and operating in two languages, Acholi and Arabic.”  The use of Arabic points to possible renewed cooperation between the LRA and Sudanese intelligence (however, since the LRA recruits Sudanese – usually by abduction – this could also be a less troubling explanation).   With all this in mind, there is still no smoking gun and therefore an International Crisis Group expert concludes:

“We have heard the LRA appears to be better armed than it has been in the recent past…but we have no evidence to substantiate those allegations that Sudan is supporting the LRA.”

Another article this week explores the root causes for recent tribal violence in South Sudan. This year has been the bloodiest since the end of the civil war.  More than 1,200 people have been killed “in a wave of violence that has targeted villagers as often as cattle herders and women and children as often as men.”  Skye Wheeler at Reuters investigates the causes for the violent clashes, pointing out that many southerners see scary resemblances to the inter-ethnic violence of the early 1990s that was often encouraged and instigated by Khartoum.   He writes:

Senior officials from the south’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) have openly accused northern politicians of once again arming tribes and militias to destabilise the south ahead of the referendum. Khartoum denies the accusations.

Again, these claims still remain only suspicious rumors as there is yet no hard evidence to connect Khartoum to the recent wave of violence. The situation certainly though cries out for greater vigilance and further investigation.

Similarly, the drivers of continuing conflict and even the existence of continuing conflict in Darfur have been hotly debated over the last month.   As I wrote in an early posting, with or without active war, Darfur remains a dangerous and unpredictable place.   And recent figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirm this .  In 2009 alone:

Seven national humanitarian staff and three UNAMID staff have been killed.

12 humanitarian staff and 10 UNAMID staff have been wounded or injured.

11 humanitarians (seven international) have been kidnapped.

26 humanitarians and three UNAMID staff have been physically or sexually assaulted and 10 UNAMID staff have been wounded or injured.

11 humanitarians (seven international) have been kidnapped.

26 humanitarians and three UNAMID staff have been physically or sexually assaulted.

18 humanitarians and 11 UNAMID staff have been abducted during carjackings.

44 humanitarians and 12 UNAMID staff have been arrested or temporarily detained by the Government of Sudan.

64 humanitarian vehicles and 31 UNAMID vehicles have been hijacked or stolen.

There have been 103 assaults or break-ins on humanitarian agency premises, and 22 on UNAMID premises.

Given these statistics, it comes as no surprise that UNAMID announced this morning that it will increase patrols. And finally this morning we are receiving fresh reports about a Darfuri rebel splinter group attacking three Sudanese policemen which then resulted in Sudanese police and army activity around and inside three IDP camps.

As we continue to state, a peace process in Darfur and the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement are the only routes to long-term peace and security for conflict-weary Sudanese.  At the same time though, these stories and reports reveal that all of these negotiations are taking place in an environment of troubling violence and looming threats.   Since feelings of insecurity usually preclude comprise, the international community must ensure that investigating attacks and providing protection to civilians remains a constant priority.

Check out my update over at Save Darfur about Lubna’s case and what might happen next…

After being sentenced to jail on Monday for refusing to pay her $200 fine for violating Sudan’s indecency laws by wearing trousers in public, Lubna Hussein has now been freed.  Bec Hamilton in a piece at Foreign Policy explains that the head of the Sudanese Journalists’ Association (SJA) paid Lubna’s fine, but…

Check out my post at Save Darfur on Lubna Hussein’s trial in Khartoum…

Ms. Hussein’s trial demonstrates “to the world” what the Sudanese government in Khartoum considers “justice to be.”  This incident and the responses from Hamilton, APHRA and others also reveal one of the existential purposes of advocacy – to amplify the voices of those who are everyday courageously striving against a multitude of internal obstacles to improve the conditions and institutions in their own countries.  After highlighting these concerns, we in the advocacy community must then demand that our governments and the international community put human rights and justice issues at the center of their relations with regimes like the one in Sudan.

First published at Save Darfur’s blog…

On Tuesday, I attended a talk in Washington on “Engaging on Human Rights in the Middle East: Multilateral Frameworks and the Role of the U.S.” organized by the Project on Middle East Democracy and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.  The event focused on the ways in which multilateral frameworks work to promote or to inhibit human rights reforms in the Middle East, including the techniques authoritarian regimes employ to undermine the effectiveness of multilateral organizations.

Moataz El Fegiery, Executive Director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, spoke about the Arab League’s strategies and tactics to protect the violations of its members before the UNHRC, as well as other human rights bodies.  On Sudan, he discussed how the Arab and African blocs and other countries have consistently sought to restrict the mandate and block reports from UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan. Fortunately these countries lost a major battle in June when the UNHRC members – over the objections of the many African and Arab countries – voted to appoint an independent expert on the situation in Sudan.

In his comments, Joe Stork, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division ofHuman Rights Watch, attempted to assess the Obama Administration’s record on human rights in its first eight months in office.  He noted that those driving American foreign policy have said the right things in regards to the importance of promoting human rights.  Specifically, he referenced Obama’s speech in Cairo and UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s recent speech at New York University.  Overall though, he said that “It’s too soon to tell” whether this rhetoric will actually translate into actual policies.

To follow up on this early assessment, I asked Stork during the question and answer period how advocates should evaluate success on the human rights front in the context of the Obama Administration’s engagement-first approach to foreign policy.  As we have seen, engaging with a regime like Sudan’s may mean pushing for gradual change over time despite the existence of grave human rights abuses today in places like Darfur.

Stork responded by saying that in his opinion engagement should always be the default position.  Therefore, he supports Obama’s preference for dialogue before confrontation.  At the same time, he acknowledged that the U.S. bilateral relations with any country will involve a complicated and competing set of interests and priorities – and human rights usually is not a first order concern.  His general advice, therefore, for American foreign policymakers is to choose the one or two most important human rights issues to push aggressively on in their negotiations with odious regimes.

Should we apply Stork’s advice to Sudan?

Whereas human rights have seemed so far to be one cornerstone of the Obama Administration’s engagement on Sudan, there is no doubt that many issues (such as regional stability and combating terrorism to name only two) factor into Sudanese-American relations as well.  From experience though, we also know that pushing for policies to change the behavior of the Bashir regime falls low on the U.S. priority list in its bilateral relations with other countries who possess significant leverage (see, for example, where Sudan fell on the agenda for the meeting between Mubarak and Obama two weeks ago, or the U.S.-China Summit in July).  As advocates for peace and human rights in Sudan, we must continue to demand that human rights issues in Darfur and throughout Sudan take center stage in America’s engagement of Sudanese leaders.  For guidance on the key issues in Darfur today, Bec Hamilton has written a good piece after just returning from Sudan. We must also keep demanding that the U.S. make human rights a higher priority in its relations with regional powerhouses like Egypt and South Africa, as well as global powers like China.

The U.S. should also ensure that non-strategic partners have support in their efforts to promote and protect human rights at home and abroad.  Countries like Zambia and Botswana have played an important role in advocating for justice in Darfur, with the former voting for the UNHRC independent expert in June and the latter objecting publicly in July to the African Union’s opposition to the ICC proceedings on Darfur.  With several other African cases at the ICC and ongoing efforts to promote justice across Africa and the Middle East, Obama’s approach to Sudan serves furthermore as both signal and strategy for dealing with other complex cases in an increasingly multi-polar world that still often looks to the U.S. for leadership.

It’s my belief that the Obama Administration can amplify its engagement efforts with Khartoum by putting peace, protection and human rights not only at the centerpiece of its relations with Sudan, but also making some of its specific concerns about the Sudanese regime’s egregious behavior a higher priority with others.  This does not mean that Darfur or Sudan should be the first priority when speaking to the Egyptians or Chinese, but even raising it to the top five or top ten could go a long way in building a coherent multilateral approach to ensure Sudanese leaders feel the necessary pressure to take the critical steps to end human rights abuses and resolve the country’s interlocking crises.