The great team at the Progressive Policy Institute published my assessment of the Sudan elections.  In the policy memo, I call upon President Obama to follow through on his inaugural promise to autocrats around the world:

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared, “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Unfortunately, in the case of Sudan, the hand remains extended, even as the fist remains clenched and poised to strike….It is not too late for President Obama to hold firm to his inaugural promise and declare his administration’s disapproval of politics as usual in Sudan. When the election results are announced this week, he can lead the international community in interpreting their significance. Rather than offering unearned praise, he should state that the administration still regards Bashir as an indicted war criminal on the wrong side of history. If the U.S. fails to stand up for its principles, advocates for democracy around the world will be disheartened, the Bashir government will continue to act with impunity, and the Sudanese people will lose faith in America, even as they face an uncertain and potentially dangerous future. (Read the rest of “Khartoum Dispatch: Assessing the Sudan Elections”)

Good timing for the report to be issued, as the administration’s response has been taking shape over the last 24 hours. My colleague, Robert Lawrence, provides a summary in our election roundup at Save Darfur. In short, the administration denounced the elections as neither free, nor fail – without assigning real blame to any actors in Sudan. The elections apparently were stolen by themselves.

In a short post today, I also reflect on what this means for politics going forward in Sudan over at Change.org:

The elections in Sudan over the last week have given rise to the broadest and most public debate about the governance of the country since before the 1989 coup that brought Omar Al-Bashir and his regime to power. Opposition parties, civil society organizations, and a nascent youth movement have participated loudly in the process — despite ever-present threats of intimidation and repression. These important elements of Sudanese society seized on the first openings of political space, even if many used the opportunity to boycott and denounce the electoral process…

A return, therefore, to purely autocratic politics may not be entirely possible. The chances, however, are more likely in the event that the Obama administration and others in the international community whitewash these elections and explicitly or implicitly confer legitimacy on the Bashir regime.

In response to this line of reasoning, James Traub at Foreign Policy writes on the Obama administration’s handling of the elections, and the advocacy community’s reaction to the administration’s overall policy of engagement. He asks some very relevant questions, such as: will engagement prove more effective this time than it did in the past?

Read the rest of this entry

The Carter Center and European Union today issued preliminary reports on the Sudanese elections.  Both found that the elections failed to meet international standards.  Here is an excerpt from the Carter Center report:

While it is too early to offer a final overall assessment, it is apparent that the elections will fall short of meeting international standards and Sudan’s obligations for genuine elections in many respects. Nonetheless, the elections are important as a key benchmark in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and because of the increased political and civic participation that has occurred over the last several months. Ultimately, the success of the elections will depend on whether Sudanese leaders take action to promote lasting democratic transformation.

I focused on this final sentence in a Huffington Post piece yesterday.

What Path Next for the Sudanese Regime?

On a recent pre-election trip to Sudan, a knowledgeable analyst told me that President Omar Al Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is not a monolith but a broad church. Like other aging autocratic regimes, the NCP has largely exhausted its ideological fervor. Rather than incessantly extolling the virtues of an Islamic state as in the first years of the 1989 coup, most energy is now focused on devising the best ways to remain in power. The multiplicity of spokespeople – some moderates and some hardliners – within the party actually serves it quite well, as it is able to project different and oftentimes conflicting narratives to serve its core overriding objectives.

Statements on the closing days of Sudan’s first multiparty elections in 24 years offer an insight into differences within the NCP on the best ways to handle public messaging. They also forecast that the “good cop, bad cop routine” specialized by the regime over the last two decades is likely to continue.

(Read the rest here)

The Africa News Blog at Reuters has similar analysis: “One step forward. How many back?”

My colleagues and I at the Save Darfur Coalition will be writing more in the coming days. You can see our daily coverage of the elections thus far here.

(Crossposted at Poets and Policymakers)

The New York Times reports that at least 14 radio stations in Mogadishu stopped broadcasting music on Tuesday, “heeding an ultimatum by an Islamist insurgent group to stop playing songs or face ’serious consequences.’”

Because of these threats from Hizb Islam, the director of one of the radio stations said:

We have replaced the music of the early morning program with the sound of the rooster, replaced the news music with the sound of the firing bullet and the music of the night program with the sound of running horses…It was really a crush. We haven’t had time to replace all the programs at one time; instead, we have chosen these sounds.

In solidarity with the people of Somalia and music lovers there especially, I thought it would be an appropriate time to highlight Somali rap phenomenon, K’naan.  The powerful lyrics from his song entitled “Somalia” help paint the painful, oftentimes grotesque, and heroic stories of his people:

This is where the streets have no name and the drain of sewage

You can see it in the boy how the hate is brewin’

‘Cause when his tummy tucks in, fuck, the pain is fluid

So what difference does it make entertaining, threw it

Some getting high mixing coke and gun powder, sniffin’

She got a gun, but could have been a model or physician

Have a listen…

World Refugee Day Celebration; Cairo, Egypt (2005)

The elections in Sudan are understandably grabbing all of the headlines this week.  The National Election Commission today extended voting for two days because of the widespread confusion and delays in the electoral process. The opposition parties boycotting the elections also directly attacked U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, as the head of the Carter Center’s election monitoring team, for their support of these elections. It is their claim that the Obama administration has made a deal with Omar Al Bashir’s government to support fraudulent elections in exchange for the referendum of southern secession in January 2011. At Save Darfur, we have put together a full summary of the election-related developments.

Tonight though, I wanted to take a brief moment to highlight another human rights issue: the status of refugees in Egypt. The treatment and daily life of refugees – mostly from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan – has never been easy. I know this from a year spent volunteering as an English teacher at a refugee center, Saint Andrews, in downtown Cairo. Due to these daily hardships, over the past few years, a number of refugees have attempted to travel to the Sinai peninsula and enter Israel illegally. In some instances, Egyptian security forces have shot at and killed refugees making the crossing, and the Israeli authorities have also violated the rights guaranteed to refugees.

Why am I writing about this tonight?  Because at least two Darfuris in Egypt are at immediate risk of forcible return to Sudan. Amnesty International issued a warning on Friday that the authorities planned to return Sudanese refugees Mohamed Adam Abdallah and Ishaq Fadl Dafallah to Sudan today, April 12. If returned, Amnesty warned that they would be in grave danger of being tortured or otherwise ill-treated in Sudan.

Read the rest of this entry

As the faithful readers of this blog will know, the first multi-party elections in 24 years began today in Sudan. With Save Darfur, I will be continuing to cover the events closely.

Today, I was fortunate to have an op-ed published at Al Jazeera English:

Legitimising Khartoum

“Things will be different after the elections,” asserted Ghazi Salahuddin, Sudan’s presidential advisor and chief interlocutor with the US, at the end of a meeting with a delegation from the Save Darfur Coalition of which I was part in February.

He expressed confidently to us that the national elections – the first multi-party elections in Sudan since 1986 – would fundamentally change Sudanese politics for the better.

Since that day, the credibility of the elections has been called into question by the withdrawal of candidates and the boycott of a number of opposition parties.

Rather than serving as a step forward in the long road to peace and democracy, many Sudanese now fear what a newly emboldened regime in Khartoum may mean for the country.

(Read the rest here)

If you are interested in even more information on the elections, I would recommend the following two sites:

• Al Jazeera English’s Special Election Coverage Page

• Sudan Vote Monitor – an independent Sudanese civil society initiative to monitor events in real time

Also, check out this photo essay in The New York Times of a Darfuri community in Brooklyn that I know well. They are watching the elections intensely and hoping things remain calm.

Lastly, here is a photo essay from Pete Muller (whom I had met in South Sudan) on a young singer, Mary Boyoi, who decided to run for these elections.

UPDATES

• Pictures at BBC from the first day of voting

• And an election song on YouTube by Mary Boyoi, the singer/candidate in South Sudan.

First posted yesterday at Huffington Post…

In scanning the news on Sudan early this morning, I came across a short item on Radio Dabanga’s website “Two opposition politicians arrested in Nyala” about a government security raid on the local headquarters of two national political parties.  As I wrote in an article at The New Republic today, this type of incident has been fairly common place during the two-month election period in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan.

And then I realized that I had actually met one of those detained, Dr. Nour Al Sadiq.  She is currently an appointed member of National Parliament representing the Communist Party.  Along with her party, she chose not to contest the elections in Darfur.  In a few days, therefore, she will lose her seat – and, as these arrests may signal, her limited protection from harassment by the Sudanese regime.

To check up on Dr. Nour—who in addition to her parliamentary responsibilities works with women in internally displaced camps—I called Salih Mahmoud Osman.  Also from Darfur, he serves with Nour in the Parliament as one of two other appointed members from the Communist Party.  Salih has received many awards for his legal and human rights advocacy since the beginning of the crisis in Darfur, and for these efforts endured a prolonged period of detention in 2004.

From Khartoum, Salih confirmed the arrests and that the security agents stormed their office in Nyala yesterday and seized documents and computers. It seems that the authorities targeted her and the other leader, Abdul Rahman Ahmed Hassan of the Umma Party for Reform and Renewal, for signing a statement with others this week urging Darfuris to not participate in the elections. Fortunately after four hours, Nour was released, but only after repeated threats and intimidation to stop these activities.

Read the rest of this entry

The New Republic posted my post-trip article on the Sudanese elections that will begin on Sunday.

Already Stolen

A visit to Sudan makes clear: The election is going to be a sham.

In February, as part of a delegation from the Save Darfur Coalition, I met Mustafa Ismail in Khartoum. Ismail is the country’s former foreign minister and current presidential adviser to President Omar Al Bashir. He thanked us for our “timely visit,” then proceeded to speak almost uninterrupted for close to an hour about the Sudanese regime’s new commitment to democracy, peace, and development. To that end, he urged the international community to endorse the country’s upcoming nationwide elections and stop “inflaming” the situation in Sudan with false accusations.

Now, with the Sudanese vote set to begin this weekend, the Obama administration seems to be doing exactly what Ismail had wanted. Last month, Scott Gration, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, said that “significant preparations have been made to ensure that the elections will really reflect the will of the people” (although he added that there were “logistical challenges” still to resolve). Then, last weekend—after the presidential candidate of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the major party that represents southern Sudan, withdrew from the race, citing the prospect of massive fraud and intimidation—Gration said that members of Sudan’s electoral commission had “given [him] confidence that the elections … would be as free and as fair as possible,” adding that they “have gone to great lengths to ensure that the people of Sudan will have access to polling places and that the procedures and processes will ensure transparency.”

Gration’s optimism is baffling. As I learned during my recent four-week trip to Sudan—when I visited Khartoum, the southern part of the country, and Darfur—there is no chance that these elections will be even remotely free or fair. (Read the rest here)