Brains Like a Shoe

Yesterday, Mo Ibrahim – the Sudanese philanthropist and mobile phone mogul – issued a new challenge to African leaders: integrate politically and economically now or else.

“Intra-African trade is 4-5 percent of our international trade. Why? This is unacceptable, unviable, and people need to stand up and say this… Who are we to think that we can have 53 tiny little countries and be ready to compete with China, India, Europe, the Americans? It is a fallacy.”

“Some of our countries, and I’m really sorry to say this, are just not viable…We need scale and we need that now — not tomorrow, the next year or the year after.”

Rather than making headlines with those words, Ibrahim had originally intended at the conference in Tanzania to award this year’s winner of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Prize – an annual award that is given to African heads of state who rule wisely and hand over power to elected successors.  The Foundation though could not agree on a worthy recipient of the prize.

So instead of highlighting a success story, he chastised the leadership in Africa: ”We are poor, we are hungry, we are going without…Something is drastically wrong. I think we have the right to ask our leaders: are they really serious?”  This gripping analysis does not need much further commentary.  The daily exploits of leaders like Omar al-Bashir in Sudan and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe against their people are well known.  Likewise, the daily hardships imposed on people throughout the continent by more subtle forms of political repression, corruption, and state decay are also well documented.  But what of the issue of state size and Ibrahim’s call for greater political and economic integration?

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Will Fischer – a field organizer at Save Darfur, veteran of the Iraq War, and former teacher in post-Katrina New Orleans – contributes his first piece at Brains Like a Shoe.

Here in America we, in recent years, have heard a great deal of the “invisible wounds” that people carry with them. Whether a story about a returning veteran of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or that of a Katrina survivor, the idea of the invisible wound is prevalent.

As someone who has dealt with, both personally and with comrades, the invisible wounds of war, I cannot even begin to imagine those unseen and untreated victims of the genocide in Darfur and Sudan. And I’m not just speaking of the treated gunshot or laceration.

Among many, the first images of the wars in Darfur and Sudan will spawn thoughts of the Janjaweed storming into villages, their AK-47s firing for effect and their torches at the ready. But what of what goes on out front, but in the shadows – in tents, allies, and in front of children. What of the use of rape as a weapon of war? Do these wounds ever heal?

In today’s Washington Post, Michael Gerson pens an article that tells of these very troubling tales.  Bec Hamilton also this week discusses the latest UN Panel of Experts report that states that “sexual and gender-based violence is rampant” in Darfur.

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Carlton continues his latest tour of Middle Eastern capitals.  When we last heard from him, he was in Syria. He just posted this entry from Jordan at Fair Policy, Fair Discussion…

On Sunday our delegation met with Bishr Khasawneh, the chief of staff of the Foreign Ministry in Jordan. It is clear from what he told us that Jordan, a U.S. ally and one of the so-called Arab moderates, is beginning to worry about recent changes in President Barack Obama’s policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Khasawneh argued that the president had started his first year in office on particularly strong footing. Obama signaled his commitment to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict by naming George Mitchell as his envoy for Middle East peace within 24 hours of taking office. He also made speeches, in Turkey and Cairo, that emphasized two points that Bush administration policy had ignored: 1) the critical importance of implementing a two-state solution and 2) the regional context of the conflict.

The need for a change in American policy is overdue, he said, after “good faith and confidence have eroded over eight years of stagnation” in the peace process. The Arab side has demonstrated its willingness to make peace with Israel and give it the legitimacy it deserves, by continuing to support the Arab Peace Initiative for the last seven of those years. Even after the Gaza war had such a deep, negative psychological impact on the region, all 22 Arab states and 57 Muslim states kept it on the table at the Doha summit in March. The time is ripe for American leadership.

Khasawneh said that the Obama administration had chosen the right issue, settlements, on which to challenge Israel and move the process forward. Jewish settlements, he said, had made the Palestinian portions of the West Bank into “isolated cantons.” Allowing their continued expansion while pressing for negotiations made no sense. Gesturing to the cup of coffee on the table, he argued that one person cannot negotiate with another over dividing a cup of coffee while one person continues to drink from the cup.

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Bashir in El-Fasher, Darfur

First posted at Save Darfur’s blog…

President Bashir’s National Congress Party in Sudan is driving for one primary goal: winning the national elections scheduled for April 2010.  All analysis of the NCP’s behavior between now and April should be viewed through this lens.

Bec Hamilton in a blog yesterday sees such motivations behind the NCP’s outrageous suggestion of closing down IDP camps next year:

[T]he NCP sees the 2010 election as a rare chance to start over with a clean the slate in the eyes of its neighbors, if not the broader international community. “Democratically elected Bashir” sounds so much better than “indicted war criminal Bashir.”

But the desire is not just to win the elections (the conditions have already been established such that short of radical changes that I don’t expect to see, I think it’s safe to say they have that one in the bag already). The desire is to be seen as having won them legitimately, which in turn requires convincing anyone who would dare to say otherwise, that the elections will be “free and fair.” The consequences of this desire are seen in several areas, one of which is the aggressive agenda that Khartoum is now pushing on IDP returns.

There is a very real sense in which those in Khartoum view the IDP camps themselves as the problem – as if the camps would disappear, then there would no longer be a “Darfur problem” and the world shift the spotlight. What the regime understands well is that “free and fair elections” and “2.5 million IDPs” are not concepts easily reconciled.

Part of the NCP’s effort, therefore, will be to make the case that the vast majority of Darfuris can participate in the electoral process.  A NCP-leaning newspaper this morning includes the headline, “The Displaced are the highest percentage of registered voters in South Darfur.” The article claims that in 10 days that 388,000 IDPs have registered to vote.  With no election monitors (domestic or international) working in Darfur, no one will be able to confirm or deny these numbers.

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Its been a crazy last two weeks, so my blogging schedule has been curtailed…but here is an attempt to get back on the horse.  Just a few items of interest…

Waq-al-Waq has “the scariest thing you will read today”: that Yemeni are now asking al-Qaeda to teach in their schools because of a lack of teachers.

… if al-Qaeda in Yemen ever turned itself into a positive organization, by which I mean an organization that could be for something instead of only against things, if it could provide services and be a force for good in people’s daily lives in Yemen then its growth potential would be nearly unlimited. I have always added the caveat to that statement that there was no evidence to support the idea that AQAP was looking to go that way, and this is a pretty flimsy piece of evidence but it is still evidence. Whether it is a one-off item or a precursor is impossible for me to know, even with my magic 8-ball.

The always insightful Hannah Allam based in Cairo and Baghdad has a great piece on Beyonce versus the world famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.

In the Darfur file, Ethiopia announced that it would send 5 long-awaited attack helicopters to Darfur.  This is good for the UNAMID force and helps Ethiopia’s already stellar image in the eyes of the West.  Such moves are one reason why the international community, as the Sahel Blog explains, ignores the repressive politics at home.

Bec Hamilton writes about Save Darfur’s partnership with the State Department this week to launch AskUS — a web 2.0 initiative to connect the Obama administration with citizen activists.  Jerry Fowler asked a number of incisive questions to the US Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration.

Finally, Khalid Nur responding to a post by Alex de Waal at Making Sense of Darfur provides a good summary of the coverage of the Mbeki report in the Sudanese press.  His analysis matches up with my own scouring of the Sudanese newspapers everyday:

Thumbing through the papers this is what I find. On 25 October Sadiq al-Riziqi who is the owner of Al-Intibaha the most strident paper against the SPLA and the Darfurians, rejected the Panel and especially the hybrid courts proposal. Al-Riziqi is exceptionally well informed about the goings on in the inner circles but he has his own views too. For the ordinary citizens of Sudan, al-Riziqi’s rejection is a good endorsement! But read the same paper three days later and we see a columnist hinting that if the procedures in the hybrid courts are correctly done then the NCP will accept.

This is pretty much the double line taken by other well-known columnists too. Ahmad Al-Sharif (Al-Watan) lambasts Mbeki’s report as targeting national sovereignty and going beyond its mandate by putting into question the competence of the Sudanese judiciary. Kamil Idriss (formerly of the World Intellectual Property Organisation) in Al-Sudani, says that the idea of hybrid courts strike to the heart of the credibility of the Sudanese judiciary and is a humiliation. But read carefully what others are writing. One government spokesman, writing in Al-Ahdaf on 1 November, says that ICC Prosecutor’s welcome of the Panel’s proposal for hybrid courts should be bracketed: any mechanism set up in the wake of the AU decision will proceed without reference to the ICC. That is a way of setting the Mbeki recommendations apart from the joined-up three pillar process that the ICC is helping to set up in Kenya. In the Kenyan case, the ICC is joined at the hip to the hybrid courts and so also to the local courts, but this isn’t the case for the Darfur proposal. And most interesting, the leading Islamist Tayib Zain Al-Abdeen, writing in Al-Sahafa on 2 November advised the NCP to accept the hybrid courts proposal, saying that its own failure to prosecute anybody gives it no credibility to object, and it also cannot accuse the African Union of being a colonial conspirator.

One of the best commentaries was done by Khalid al-Tijani, for Al-Sahafa. He put his finger on the government’s basic dilemma. On the one hand, Khartoum cannot reject the Mbeki Report because any such action will threaten the cohesive African stance supporting Khartoum’s position on the ICC, while on the other hand the acceptance of the report would equally conflict with the latter’s principled rejection of the intervention of the ICC. This puts the front men for the government policy in an awkward situation and luckily the two men in question, Ghazi Salah Al-Din and Ali Osman Muhammed Taha are able to exercise self-restraint and avoid either outright acceptance or outright rejection, playing the game of watering down the recommendations in the implementation stage.

First posted at Save Darfur’s blog today…

This week, I have been writing about the African Union Panel on Darfur’s recent report delivered to and endorsed by the AU Peace and Security Council.  Having summarized the recommendations that Save Darfur submitted to the panel regarding the peace process, I will now summarize our recommendations for steps that should be taken to address the challenge of justice and the suppression of impunity arising from the conflict in Darfur.

In our submission, we highlighted the AU’s stated will in its founding documents to suppress impunity and ensure justice for mass human rights violations and atrocities.  As such, we urged the AU that “when faced with a choice between the rights of African people and the interests of African states and their leaders, the African Union should stand on the side of the people.”

To make the case for why justice was paramount to tackling the crisis in Darfur, we pointed to recent Sudanese history:

Parties negotiating the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to end the decades-long war between North and South Sudan decided to leave accountability mechanisms out of the accord.  Less than five years later, implementation of the CPA has fallen far behind schedule, violence has increased on border regions, and regional and international leaders have been forced to devote significant energy and resources to upholding the CPA and preventing a return to civil war.  Similarly, the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) failed to address the need to end impunity and ensure justice for the victims of the conflict that has raged in Darfur since 2003. This deficiency of the agreement was one major reason for its death on arrival – why it was unable to gain the confidence of the non-signatory rebel movements and much of Darfuri civil society, particularly community leaders in the IDP camps.

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In the first guest blog at Brains Like a Shoe, Carlton Cobb – a fellow SAIS-er – blogs about his meeting this week with Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Syria.  He first posted at Fair Policy, Fair Discussion. It would be great to get an active conversation going about what people think of Meshaal’s statements.

During a two-hour meeting with the CNI delegation in Damascus yesterday, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, told us:

It is not just to ask Palestinians to amend their charters without real change on the ground. Let us get our rights. Then we could discuss many issues, such as changing the Hamas and PLO charters or relations with Israel.

This came in response to a question posed by CNI Executive Director Helena Cobban, who asked him whether, in the context of Hamas winning the kind of peace agreement it seeks, the organization might consider amending its 1988 founding charter.

In the same round of questioning, Cobban had also asked whether Hamas would consider that the agreement it seeks, which is one based on Israel’s return to within its borders of June 4, 1967, would be understood by Hamas as one that ends the Palestinians’ decades-long conflict with Israel.

In other words, what is written in the Hamas charter seems under some circumstances to be negotiable. Meshaal’s answer was significant because it reflects a possible shift in Hamas strategy. The Hamas charter calls for a Palestinian state that replaces Israel and includes all of British Mandate-era Palestine.

Most Israelis equate this position with the destruction by force of Israel and, by extension, Jews. They argue that the Hamas position amounts to a call for a second Jewish Holocaust.

Meshaal’s statement demonstrated a willingness to accept Israel in the context of a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas, and the Palestine Liberation Organization before it, had previously emphasized the goal of replacing Israel by refusing to use the word “Israel” and instead using the term “Zionist entity,” implying that the state is illegitimate and temporary. Throughout our meeting, however, Meshaal chose to use the word “Israel” and almost never used the word “Zionism” or “Zionist.”

The last part of the statement quoted above demonstrates an implicit recognition of Israel, one of the three conditions that Israel and the Quartet have imposed on Hamas before agreeing to recognize it.

It is important to note that the PLO also held the same position of non-recognition of Israel for many years and only agreed to amend its charter under significant American and Israeli pressure. Meshaal noted that despite revising its position in 1996, the PLO still has not achieved a Palestinian state and, in fact, lost  popularity among Palestinians because of it.

A recurring theme of Meshaal’s answers was the difference between words and action. He downplayed the significance of the Hamas charter by pointing out that it was written in the “early days” of Hamas. Over time, Hamas has developed its political agenda, by agreeing to join the 2006 Palestinian Legsilative Council elections and accepting a solution to the conflict based on the 1967 borders. Hamas actions, he argued, should be more important than what is written in its charter.

He likewise argued that U.S. President Barack Obama should be judged by his actions and not his words. He expressed support for Obama’s speech in Cairo and said that Hamas was “ready to cooperate with Obama,” but that Obama’s Cairo speech was a “mirage” that had yet to become real. In his assessment, Meshaal felt that pressure from Israel and the “Israeli lobby” in the United States had caused Obama to back down far faster than Hamas had expected.

Just a few items of note…

First, the problems in Yemen have escalated quickly.  Waq al Waq reports:

The news that Saudi Arabia is bombing targets inside Yemen and is becoming much more intimately involved in the Huthi conflict is sparking, as it should, a great deal of speculation and numerous stories.

The Yemeni government is denying that Saudi Arabia is bombing targets in Yemen, although I have my doubts. The border is demarcated, but the lines tend to be drawn in sand and I think the potential for Saudi bombs straying across the border whether intentionally or not is high.

This is, as numerous people suspect, a major escalation in the war. What Saudi Arabia will do is still an open question, but sending ground troops across the border would be, in my opinion, a huge mistake.

Second, Michelle at Change.org hits the perfect note on what at first seems like a great story…

Did the UK just endorse racial profiling of refugees?

According to a decision announced on Tuesday by Britain’s Interior Ministry, all “non-Arab” Darfuri asylum-seekers will be allowed to remain in the country, contingent upon periodic reviews of the situation in Sudan:

“All non-Arab Darfuris, regardless of their political or other affiliations, are at real risk of persecution in Darfur and internal relocation elsewhere in Sudan is not currently to be relied upon,” the Interior Ministry’s UK Border Agency concluded in its operational guidance note.

Yes, non-Arab Darfuris were the targets of Sudan’s genocidal violence, and return from abroad is a very dangerous prospect. But while the situation in Darfur is perilous for those groups singled out by the government, the human rights situation is pretty crummy (in my professional opinion) across the entire country — for Arabs and non-Arabs and mixed races and foreigners and really anyone who happens to be there.

I’m certainly no lawyer, but I thought that an individual’s asylum claim should be evaluated on the specific merits of his/her case. While its laudable for the British government to recognize the need to ensure of asylum to Darfuris, that protection should be extended to all Sudanese fleeing abuse in their home country.

Also read her piece about the shameless new movie, entitled Darfur:

The man “widely considered to be the worst working director today” + Darfur = Disaster.

You don’t even need to see the full film to tell — here’s all you need to know: White journalists in a gun battle with the Janjaweed.

Finally, my friend Maggie at ENOUGH has a great post from south Sudan about how the voter registration process is going.  It just started on November 1.

Darfuri Rebels at Negotiations

First posted at Save Darfur’s blog…

As I mentioned in my last post, at the request of the African Union Panel on Darfur (AUPD), the Save Darfur Coalition submitted recommendations to the panel on how to promote peace, justice, and reconciliation in Darfur.  You can read our full submission here.

Since no country or international organization has the institutional capacity or required relationships with the Sudanese parties to end the conflict alone, we first urged the AU to closely coordinate its efforts with the international community.  To that end, we recommended that the AU deepen its partnership with the United Nations for peacekeeping and peacemaking while at the same time coordinating all of its efforts with the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the League of Arab States, and key regional states.

In discussing the specific issue of peace, we first rebutted the charge of many that the pursuit of justice in Darfur through the International Criminal Court (ICC) proceedings had fundamentally interfered with the peace process:

Despite predictions to the contrary, the talks between the Sudanese government and some of the rebel movements have progressed considerably since the ICC Prosecutor requested an arrest warrant from the court for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in July 2008.  In fact, at the time of the Prosecutor’s announcement, no serious negotiations were taking place.  The naming of Djibril Bassolé as AU-UN Mediator that same month and the Qatari invitation to host the talks in subsequent months served as opportunities to re-launch substantive talks among the various parties.  There is no doubt, though, that the possibility of Bashir’s indictment contributed to the Sudanese government’s decision to return to the negotiating table.

It has been argued that the prosecution of Bashir would only embolden the negotiating stance of the Darfuri rebels…The signing of the “goodwill agreement” between JEM and the Sudanese government and the continuing negotiations serves as evidence that the peace process has not stalled because of the ICC proceedings.  On the contrary, the possibilities for reaching a peace agreement – while still not assured – appear closer now than at any point since the Abuja negotiations of 2006.

Writing at the end of June, we also stated that all pressure therefore should be placed on the parties to agree and adhere to a long-term ceasefire that “could give necessary space and confidence for the negotiating delegations to move to the next step of negotiating a final settlement.”   As for the structure of the mediation efforts, we recommended that the AU support a process similar to the Navaisha talks that produced the Comprehensive Peace Agreement:

As did Kenyan General Lazaro Sumbeiywo with the Naivasha process, AU-UN Mediator Djibril Bassolé should lead the Darfur process.  The Joint Mediation Support Team (JMST) should work with Ambassador Bassolé on the plan for a negotiation framework, timeline for negotiations, and appropriate mechanism for shuttle diplomacy.  Bassolé must also be supported by a strong team of diplomats and regional experts and backed by a small group of countries with leverage, high-level support, and full-time representation at the talks.  This inner circle should include the United States, United Kingdom, France, and China. An outer circle group of countries and multilateral organizations (UN, AU, Arab League) should also be engaged in a formal manner to discourage spoilers, and other key nations such as Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, and South Africa need to be thoroughly consulted.

On the specific matter of securing a comprehensive and inclusive Darfur peace agreement, we urged the AU to draw lessons from the failed Abuja negotiations and the failed attempts to revive the peace process over the last three years.  We felt the most important lessons from the past demonstrated a current need for the AU and international community to:

• Provide the armed movements with support for pre-negotiations and negotiations;
• Ensure that the Darfurians feel ownership of any peace agreement;
• Support strong civil society input and presence in the peace process;
• Ensure that a Darfur peace agreement advances peace, justice and democracy for all Sudanese; and
• Coordinate all support to the peace process with appropriate regional and international actors.

Finally, we wrote that after multiple failed peace efforts and meandering consultations, the issues at stake in Darfur are fairly well understood. Any final agreement, therefore, must include:

• A substantial sum for individual compensation to be paid by the government;
• International monitoring of a cessation of all forms of state support for the janjaweed militia structure and the complete disarmament of the janjaweed;
• International monitoring and support for encampment of all forces in Darfur (government, rebel, and militia);
• Administrative arrangements for Darfur;
• Power sharing for Darfurian constituencies; and
• A comprehensive plan to address the humanitarian, livelihoods, environmental, and development challenges that Darfur will face in the aftermath of the conflict

As noted yesterday, we feel that the recent AUPD report includes a number of the above recommendations.  Perhaps of most importance, the panel does not view the pursuit of justice as an obstacle to the pursuit of peace.  Instead, it states:

[E]ven as the peace negotiations are taking place, action should be undertaken to investigate the serious crimes that have been committed in Darfur, and to put in place measures to prevent the commission of fresh crimes.

Among other things, the report also make a strong case for the necessity of an immediate ceasefire and an “inclusive process of negotiations” involving the Darfuri armed movements, IDPs and refugees, political parties and civil society leaders.

The challenge of course will be in the implementation of these recommendations. The AUPD fell short of putting forward a concrete plan to support the UN/AU joint mediation efforts of Djibril Bassole.  The team’s responsibilities are outlined in general and ideas for better coordination are suggested, but the report does not detail exactly how – in its words – the “AU/UN Joint Mediation should be properly positioned to discharge its mission.” In short, a lot is left for follow-up work.

Yet, President Omar al-Bashir and the National Congress Party (NCP) are notorious for making verbal commitments to a peace process, only to continue their non-stop efforts to divide and intimidate those Darfuris seeking a durable and just peace agreement.  There is no doubt that Bashir and the NCP are now devising ways to influence the implementation of these recommendations.  It is for these reasons that we have called for the United Statesand the international community to put together a set of incentives and pressures to ensure that the Sudanese government does not unduly take advantage of critical processes like the Darfur negotiations.

In my next post, I will summarize the coalition’s recommendations for seeking justice in Darfur, and how the AUPD’s recommendations of hybrid courts could actually work as a mechanism for accountability complementary to – but not a replacement of – the ICC proceedings.

First posted at Save Darfur’s blog today…

The African Union Panel on Darfur (AUPD) chaired by former South African President Thabo Mbeki released its much-anticipated report and recommendations to African leaders on Thursday.   As mandated, the panel submitted specific “recommendations on how best to effectively and comprehensively address the issues of accountability and combating impunity, on the one hand, and peace, healing and reconciliation, on the other” (read the full report). Most reports in the press focused on the panel’s recommendation of hybrid courts to “investigate, prosecute and adjudicate the war and other crimes committed during the Darfur conflict.”

In addition though, the Mbeki panel’s recommendations also covered:

the process for reaching a Global Political Agreement (GPA); the important issues of justice and reconciliation; the promotion of dialogue among Darfurians; mobilising Sudan’s neighbours; the Sudan General Elections and the Southern Sudan Referendum; measures for the implementation of the agreements; support for the AU‐UN mediation process; and the role of UNAMID and the African Union in promoting and consolidating peace in Darfur.

As part of their seven month investigation, the AUPD consulted with a range of actors, including those in the advocacy community.  At the panel’s request, the Save Darfur Coalition submitted recommendations concerning ‘a comprehensive and inclusive Darfur peace agreement’; ‘the challenge of justice and the suppression of impunity arising from the conflict in Darfur’; and ‘the challenge of reconciliation and healing arising from the conflict in Darfur.’  In subsequent blog posts, I will compare the AUPD’s report with our recommendations.  With that said, we believe strongly that peace, justice and reconciliation are intertwined and cannot be dealt with in isolation from each other.

Overall, the AUPD report generally matches the solutions to Darfur and Sudan’s other interlocking crises that the Save Darfur Coalition has urged the U.S. Government and the international community to support through aggressive diplomacy and mediation.   On the specific question of hybrid courts, such courts could work as a mechanism for accountability complementary to the International Criminal Court (ICC).  It is important to underscore that the panel did not suggest that these courts would replace the ongoing proceedings of the ICC.  Rather, it observed that the ICC necessarily will only deal with those perpetrators most responsible for crimes in Darfur; an additional mechanism is necessary to ensure there is not impunity for lower level perpetrators.  The ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo concurred in his reaction to the AUPD: “The primary responsibility lies in national states…The ICC is just doing a piece — prosecuting the most responsible — but then there are other efforts needed.”

At its core, though, the report acknowledges that political transformation is necessary for peace in Darfur and all of Sudan.  The report reads:

Characterised by the inequitable distribution of wealth and power, this imbalance has fomented tensions and conflicts in Sudan and given rise to the situation that the Panel has been called upon to investigate. The Panel believes that all the various overlapping layers of conflict must be addressed, but above all that the fundamental problem of Sudan must be confronted if lasting peace for Darfur is to be realised. The Panel defines the fundamental problem of Sudan as “The Crisis of Sudan as manifested in Darfur.”

For this change to happen, the report also specifically suggests that Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) must make a strategic decision to open up political space:

To enable the people of Sudan to approach the next important phase of their history as one nation, without other distractions, there is an urgent need to secure a definitive peace settlement for Darfur before the 2010 General Elections and to ensure nationwide legal and security conditions to allow political activity to be freely conducted.

While these recommendations strike at the root of the political problem, the NCP seems nowhere close to implementing the National Election Act of 2008 as urged by the report – nor implementing the key elements of the 2005 Interim Constitution that guarantee important political rights.  Put another way, the NCP continues to resist fulfilling these obligations to open political space agreed to both in the spirit and text of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.  Thecurrent dispute within parliament between the NCP and the SPLM and northern opposition parties over a revised National Security Act and other issues of freedom of association demonstrates that Bashir and NCP party leaders believe they can keep their tight grip on power by playing the same games they have for the last two decades.

One can even read such an NCP strategy in its reaction to the AUPD report.  Second Vice President Taha offered a classic example of the long-practiced NCP delaying tactic of appearing to say “yes” when the real meaning is “no”: “The report listed several recommendations worthy of consideration and is no doubt worthy of our great tribute due to the efforts made by the African Union” (translation from article in Al Ray Al Aam).  He and other NCP officials have already expressed their deep misgivings about the hybrid courts. The Mbeki recommendations and other proposals for peacemaking in Sudan must be complemented with a significant set of incentives and pressures designed to achieve behavioral change by the NCP and structural reforms agreed to by all of Sudan’s competing stakeholders.

We are also concerned that the extension of the AUPD’s mandate beyond last week’s report constitutes another “initiative” that provides an alternative forum for the NCP to talk, talk, talk without doing anything.  To avoid this possibility, Mbeki and the other panelists should immediately commit their valuable services to support the efforts of AU/UN Chief Mediator Djibril Bassole.  He has praised the work of the panel, but stated that the recommendations should be implemented through the Darfur peace talks that are set to resume in mid-November in Doha.  The AUPD members’ involvement in the negotiations, as well as active support and leadership from U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration and the other special envoys, could result in a major step forward in these stagnant and fragile talks.  If there is a lack of coordination, however, the Sudanese government will inevitably play the various actors off against one another.

Tomorrow I will have more to write on this subject.  In the first of three blogs, I will describe our recommendations to the AUPD concerning ‘what can and should be done urgently to conclude a comprehensive and inclusive Darfur peace agreement.’