Brains Like a Shoe

Rebels in eastern Chad (Photo: Reuters)

First posted at Save Darfur…

Is there an end coming to the Sudan/Chad proxy war? Perhaps, and that may be a good thing in the long run, but in the short run the people of North Darfur are bearing the brunt of changing calculations by the ruling regimes in Khartoum and N’djamena. The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) last week issued an urgent warning about attacks on civilians by the Chadian opposition forces operating in North Darfur. These troubling developments may be in response to the much rumored rapprochement between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Chadian President Idris Deby.

A Sudanese delegation last week traveled to N’djamena, Chad, to continue bilateral discussions on ending the proxy war between the two countries. These talks­­—which began in October­—allegedly aim to create a “framework for joint patrols on their shared borders” and to normalize diplomatic relations. The United States has welcomed the dialogue as “a key element in advancing the Darfur Peace Process.” This reading is dead-on. Just as important though, the international community and the United States must offer support for the implementation of commitments made by both Chad and Sudan, while at the same time speaking out about any human rights abuses committed by all armed forces in the region.

The Small Arms Survey provides a helpful background to the tensions and hostilities between Sudan and Chad:

Throughout the 1990s Déby was a loyal ally of the regime in Sudan. He consistently refused to supply aid to Sudanese rebels—whether from Darfur or South Sudan—despite requests to do so since the early 1990s. But from 2003 he was unable to stop the two rebel movements in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), from using Chad as a rear base, recruiting combatants even among the Chadian Republican Guard (a pillar of his regime) and garnering support among the Chadian Beri, including those close to the government.

…Déby’s inability to prevent those close to him from supporting the Darfur rebels weakened his credibility among power-brokers in Khartoum. In response, starting in 2003, Khartoum incorporated Darfur based Chadian opposition elements into the janjawid…When these groups were not fighting alongside the Sudanese army in Darfur, they launched periodic attacks on Chadian territory.

In 2004 Khartoum started asking the numerous rebel Chadian factions to unite. From 2005, Déby began a rapprochement with Darfur rebel groups (SLA–Minni Minnawi and JEM), in exchange for their commitment to aid in fighting Chadian rebels on Chadian soil. The situation deteriorated rapidly .An attack on the border down of Adré on 18 December 2005 by the Rassemblement pour la démocratie et les libertés (RDL), a Chadian rebel movement made up of Tama led by Captain Mahamat Nour Abdelkarim, marked a turning point. Déby now realised that Sudan was decisively supporting Chadian rebels against him. While the rebels did not manage to take Adré, the raid allowed Mahamat Nour to display his strength and later assume the leadership of the Sudan-supported rebel coalition, the Front Uni pour le Changement (FUC). From this point onwards Déby actively supported the Darfur rebels.

In the last two years, this proxy war has included rebel offensives on both capitals. Two months ago, the UN Panel of Exports Report identified the Sudan/Chad hostilities as a key component of the Darfur ongoing crisis, noting that they serve as a chief “impediment to the political process that also has a negative impact on the settlement of the conflicts between Chad and the Chadian armed opposition groups and between the Sudan and JEM.” In the last month, in fact, Chadian President Idris Deby has both bombed rebel forces and offered to make peace with them.

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This is the third part of my review of Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (links to Part I and Part II). The review was published in the latest issue of The SAIS Review of International Affairs. To download the PDF copy with full footnotes, click here.

Stripping Agency of Victims

On his mission to teach Save Darfur a lesson, Mamdani himself ignores critical elements of the violence in Darfur, and in the process, strips the victims and perpetrators of their political agency. (Similar charges have been leveled at Mamdani’s treatment of the Rwandan genocide in When Victims Become Killers.) Mamdani is right to highlight the historical and political realities that led to the most recent outbreak of fighting in Darfur at the beginning of this decade. Save Darfur and others in the movement have been guilty at times of simplifying the nature of the conflict in order to attract and retain supporters. Indeed, Save Darfur shares this fault with advocacy organizations working on a whole host of other domestic and international issues, all of which vie for the same media space. Mamdani is right to point out the problematic consequences of such simplification. But Mamdani is wrong to use such instances to reason away the catastrophic violence and its impact on Darfuri society. Unable to delink his frustration with uninformed American liberal (or neo-conservative) interventionism from his analysis of facts on the ground, his book attacks the victims of violence for distrusting a brutal regime in Khartoum and seeking external assistance from the international community. To that end, he demeans Darfuris living in IDP and refugee camps as “consumers” who have abdicated their responsibility as “citizens” and committed all their hopes for salvation to humanitarian intervention.

Is this the same callous advice Mamdani would give to displaced civilians in Sri Lanka caught between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military, or to innocent Palestinians in Gaza caught between the violence of Hamas and Israel? To be sure, it is true that there exists genuine concern about the dependency psychology that may well be growing within a number of war-affected Darfuri communities. But these facts notwithstanding, Mamdani shows no willingness to explicate the political limitations of the 4.7 million Darfuris still affected by the violence of the last six years. Reading Mamdani, the Darfur and Sudan of the last twenty years appear like an oasis of freedom of expression, association, and political mobilization. Nothing could be further from the truth, as noted by Alex de Waal in his critique of Saviors and Survivors. Having endured an oppressive military regime since 1989 and then a campaign of ethnic cleansing, it is not surprising that Darfuris have struggled to unify under various rebel movements or to put forward a civil society alternative today. The last serious peace talks between the Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government revealed a glaring gap in the capacity of Darfuri groups to even state their collective demands clearly and to negotiate effectively. Since the failed Darfur Peace Agreement of 2006, the vicious cycle of rebel fragmentation has only made the voices of the average Darfuri even more difficult to discern. One must remember that facing similar human capacity challenges and the divide-and-conquer tactics of Khartoum, the rebels in South Sudan remained internally divided for years before unifying around the leadership and vision of John Garang.

Having so easily dismissed the concerns of three million displaced Darfuris by labeling them “consumers” as opposed to responsible “citizens,” it is natural that Mamdani can find no moral or political role for an advocacy organization like Save Darfur that works to amplify these concerns. To be fair, the advocacy movement must acknowledge that is has been slow to recognize its influence over the decision-making of Darfuri rebels who assume that the advocacy movement will remain quiet about their negotiating intransigence and human rights abuses in Darfur and neighboring Chad. With that said, though, some of the most useful efforts of the more mature Save Darfur Coalition have sought to provide platforms to Darfuris to tell their own stories and to provide time and space for Darfuris in the diaspora and civil society to articulate their concerns in future negotiations with the Sudanese government. The coalition funds and supports, for example, various efforts to engage these leaders in the peace process, given that both the Sudanese government and the personal ambitions and ideologies of Darfuri rebel leaders have stripped average Darfuri citizens of these opportunities. Not only does Mamdani fail to engage this part of Save Darfur’s work, he fails to acknowledge the importance of empowering victims in Darfur who are pitted in an asymmetrical set of negotiations about their futures with the politically astute Sudanese government.

In fact, based on Mamdani’s writings, it is an open question as to whether he has greater animus for the policies of the Bush administration or the grassroots mobilizing tools of the Save Darfur Coalition, which he regards as the “humanitarian face of the War on Terror.” Such outlandish claims demonstrate the shallowness of Mamdani’s research of Save Darfur. All of his quotes detailing the supposed race-based tactics and neo-imperial objectives of Save Darfur come from activists, journalists, or celebrities who are not formally linked to the organization. The book lacks reference to even a single interview with any members of the Save Darfur Coalition or its close partners. As the above narrative of the coalition’s emergence eludes, such interviews would have revealed a more interesting history of an organization that ultimately recognized its policy deficiencies and attempted to fill them with highly knowledgeable and experienced Sudanese and American policy makers and human rights defenders.

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This is the second part of my review of Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (link to Part I). The review was published in the latest issue of The SAIS Review of International Affairs. To download the PDF copy with full footnotes, click here.

Mamdani’s Case

With the publication of Saviors and Survivors in the spring of 2009, Mamdani has reentered the fray, this time selecting Save Darfur as his primary target. Denouncing the coalition for its ignorance of the historical and political realities in Darfur and Sudan, he writes that his book “is an argument against those who substitute moral certainty for knowledge, and who feel virtuous even when acting on the basis of total ignorance.” His more damning charges contend that Save Darfur intentionally portrayed the conflict simplistically as ‘Arab’ versus ‘African’ to appeal to Americans’ post-9/11 fear and antipathy of ‘savage’ Arab jihadists. He writes, “When Save Darfur advocates described the nature of evil in Darfur, it is unfailingly in the language of race.” This narrative, Mamdani argues, also serves as the basis for Save Darfur’s erroneous claim of genocide, which for American activists opens the door to humanitarian intervention directed by major international powers against weak states.

Mamdani does not stop with this sovereignty-based argument against new doctrines, like the UN’s Responsibility to Protect, which are espoused by liberal interventionists and hawkish neo-conservatives alike. He also insinuates that the coalition is driven by an expressly anti-Arab intent:

The Save Darfur lobby in the US has turned the tragedy of the people in Darfur into a knife with which to slice Africa by demonizing one group of Africans, African Arabs. For undergirding the claim that a genocide has occurred in Darfur is another, born of colonial historiography, that Arabs in Sudan—and elsewhere in the African continent—are settlers who came in from the outside and whose rights must be subordinate to those of indigenous natives.

Much of the middle third of the book, therefore, details the historical relations between tribes in Darfur to demonstrate that Arabs were no less indigenous to the region than Africans. After setting this record straight, Mamdani also describes how the recent ecological crisis of the Sahel and the proxy wars in Chad between Qaddafi and Reagan serve as important backdrops for the current conflict in Darfur.

Having spent the first 230 pages of his book undermining Save Darfur and then restoring the historical context of Darfur, Mamdani finally presents his version of events from 1987 until the present. Relying primarily on secondary sources, much of Mamdani’s story, which describes the root causes of tribal tensions in the region, has been told repeatedly by scholars like Alex de Waal and Julie Flint. What’s partly new is Mamdani’s submission that one tribe, the Fur, “first claimed ‘genocide’ and attempts at ‘a total holocaust’ in 1989” at a reconciliation conference that ended two years of skirmishes. He highlights this portrayal of victimization to show how both Arab and African tribes increasingly “saw themselves as victims” and adopted “exclusionist rhetoric that inevitably opened them to outside influences that further racialized and inflamed the discourse.” This analysis most resembles When Victims Become Killers (2001)—Mamdani’s controversial work on the Rwandan genocide—as it judiciously examines the breakdown in relations between groups and traditional methods of conflict resolution. Mamdani also correctly highlights the history of double-marginalization of Darfuri Arab tribes, from which the government recruited the janjaweed, and explains their mobilization. While Save Darfur as an organization has for years intentionally avoided framing the conflict as ‘Arab’ versus ‘African,’ the advocacy movement should consider integrating further historical details in its narrative of the Darfur conflict, especially as the message of Darfuris in the diaspora and of certain rebel leaders in exile grows increasingly ideological and the fate of Darfuri Arab tribes remains severely neglected.

And Yet, Is Mamdani Wrong?

Anger blinds analysis, and many parts of Saviors and Survivors read like an angry harangue against the Darfur advocacy movement, the history of British imperialism, and American foreign policy in Sudan and all of Africa—often done in a tone that equates all three. Somewhere in the midst of these excoriations Mamdani also takes time to account briefly for the mass killings and displacements that have occurred in Darfur over the last six years, although in this telling of the Darfur conflict, the Sudanese government avoids the long-arm of Mamdani’s wrath. He writes, for example, “[T]he conflict in Darfur began as a civil war in which the government was originally not involved.” This sentence is especially interesting since it seems to contradict Mamdani’s own writing from 2004 in which he states, “the security cabal in Khartoum . . . responded [to the first Darfuri rebel attacks in what became the civil war] by arming and unleashing several militia, known as the Janjawid. The result is a spiral of state-sponsored violence and indiscriminate spread of weaponry.” While opposing external intervention as a solution, back then Mamdani does hint at the International Criminal Court as an avenue for investigating crimes committed in Darfur.

Read the rest of this entry

This is the first part of my review of Mahmood Mamdani’s Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. The review was published in the latest issue of The SAIS Review of International Affairs. To download the PDF copy with full footnotes, click here.

Darfur. In 2002, the word meant nothing to most Americans, and little more to the country’s journalists, academics, and foreign policy makers. A scant seven years later, though, Darfur represents for many “a place where evil lived.” What happened in the intervening years is an interesting story of grassroots mobilization, in which hundreds of thousands of people learned cogent details about the crimes of Darfur, which they repeated to their friends and families and elected representatives. They explained first and foremost that the Sudanese government and its proxy militia, known as the janjaweed, were responsible for a large-scale campaign of death and destruction in western Sudan. Their stories highlighted the innocent civilians directly targeted by the government’s counterinsurgency operation against rebel movements in Darfur, and invariably listed the grim details of the hundreds of thousands dead, the millions internally displaced, and the facts surrounding the world’s largest emergency humanitarian operation. Urging a response from the United States government, many also highlighted how these ruthless attacks on specific ethnic groups and their villages constituted the twenty-first century’s first genocide.

Where did these Americans, and later many more around the world, acquire their information? At the beginning, the established human rights organizations—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and International Crisis Group (ICG)—provided some of the only detailed reporting and advocacy on the emergency that erupted in Darfur in the spring of 2003. These organizations have continued to publish regular reports on the situation, just as humanitarian organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières and CARE continue to issue urgent appeals to support critical relief operations on the ground. In the summer of 2004, though, leaders from many human rights groups, a few humanitarian organizations, Sudanese in the diaspora, and other concerned organizations came together at a meeting coordinated by the Committee on Conscience at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. to discuss the situation in Darfur and how to build a more effective advocacy campaign in the United States. Out of this meeting, the Save Darfur Coalition was born—its purpose to help coordinate ongoing advocacy efforts and build a more effective campaign to raise awareness about the violence in Darfur, with the goal of urging the American government to respond.

While a number of groups signed the coalition’s unity statement that summer and over the course of the next year, Save Darfur as an organization grew slowly. Until mid-2005, the coalition’s staff consisted of a single coordinator with a limited human rights background, a handful of interns, and strategic assistance from a firm specializing in non-profit consulting. An advisory group for the coalition consisted of some individuals with knowledge of Sudanese politics and conflicts in this region of Africa, but the small staff itself lacked such experience. In that first year, though, Darfur as an issue began to emerge as a hot-button item, especially among American college students and those following international human rights crises. The Save Darfur Coalition’s efforts to engage grassroots activists contributed to this growing awareness, and overtime the coalition’s popularity and resources grew and beget greater popularity and resources. The moment of ‘take-off’ for Save Darfur probably occurred in April 2006 when its small staff, with the support of its member organizations, held a rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. that attracted an estimated 50,000 people—as well as noteworthies like then-Senator Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Six days after the rally, which garnered international headlines, one Darfuri rebel movement and the Sudanese government signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), thanks in large measure to the heavy pressure that was directly applied by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. Equally important is the fact that many believed that the agreement would pave the way for a UN peacekeeping force to take over the beleaguered peacekeeping operations of the African Union.

In the days after the signing, some staff within Save Darfur, as well as a number of activists, questioned whether an important step toward ending the crisis had finally been achieved. It became increasingly clear, though, in May of 2006 that the two other contending Darfuri rebel groups would not sign the agreement and that the Sudanese government would continue to object to a transfer of peacekeeping operations from the AU to UN. Save Darfur and the advocacy community subsequently took their lead from a report put out by ICG in June 2006 that stated, “If the DPA is not to leave Darfur more fragmented and conflict-prone than before, the international community must rapidly take practical measures to shore up its security provisions, improve prospects for the displaced to return home, bring in the holdouts and rapidly deploy a robust UN peacekeeping force with Chapter VII authority.”

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First posted at Save Darfur…

The New York Times on Saturday ran “Fragile Calm Holds in Darfur After Years of Death,” an article that discusses in detail the profound changes in daily life in Darfur since the early days of the genocide that began in 2003. This depiction of a Darfur that perilously hangs between war and peace may be front page news for the Times, but certainly not for those in the advocacy movement calling for a peaceful resolution to the seven-year old conflict, as well as immediate protection and justice for all Darfuris.

Jeffrey Gettleman writes:

The rebel groups that started the war in Darfur in 2003, catalyzing a conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, almost seem to have gone into hibernation. So, too, have the infamous janjaweed, the marauding bandits who raped, killed and terrorized countless civilians.

And this planting season, for the first time since 2003,United Nations officials say that tens of thousands of farmers who had been seeking refuge in squalid displaced persons camps returned to their villages to plant crops, a journey many Darfurians would have considered suicide until recently.

Gettleman quotes Lieutenant General Patrick Nyamvumba, the Rwanda commander of the African Union/United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID): “Frozen. That is a good word for the situation. It is calm, very calm at the moment, but it remains unpredictable.” While this does appear to be the case, as I wrote in August 2009, with or without active warfare though, Darfur remains a human rights crisis of the first order.

The article also fails to probe deeply into the ongoing obstructions by primarily the Sudanese government – but also the rebel movements – of the peacekeeping force. Nyamvumba states casually, “Yes, we have obstructions from time to time. But it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” However, as my colleague C.R. pointed out last month, such a claim from the new commander belies the U.N. Secretary General’s findings in his most recent report to the U.N. Security Council and the conclusions of the most recent U.N. Panel of Experts Report. It also contradicts recent statements from Rwandan officials following the death of their members in the force.

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Also posted at Save Darfur…

Yesterday, at the end of the first full day after the crackdown in Khartoum, the State Department finally released its statement condemning the violence used against protesters in Sudan. Calling for restraint and dialogue among all parties, the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, stated:

“I am deeply concerned about these developments and urge all parties to exercise restraint. Negotiations on issues of urgent importance to all of the Sudanese people cannot proceed in an atmosphere of intimidation.”

SPLM leader Yassir Arman arguing with police

Today, at the end of the second day, we have the following to report.  First, the Juba alliance announced that it would not hold another demonstration tomorrow, but would postpone the effort until next Monday, December 14.  Sudanese newspapers this morning also reported that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir would meet today with Sudan’s First Vice President and leader of the Sudan’s People Liberation Movement (SPLM) Salva Kiir to discuss Monday’s events and to seek solutions on overcoming the roadblocks in the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

As for the political climate in Khartoum and much of the rest of the country, it remains tense.  Al-Sahafa reports that the Sudan Scholars Authority (Muslim scholars) issued a fatwa (a religious decision) prohibiting Muslims from joining demonstrations organized by the “enemies of Islam” and that the government is entitled to prevent sedition and chaos in the country. The opposition mocked this fatwa and considered it as clearly a propaganda item of the National Congress Party (in Arabic). Afrik.com also has a story claiming that five Ugandan businessmen were killed during the violent clashes between the police and protesters in the Southern Sudanese town of Rumbek. And despite a number of claims by observers and participants, police in Khartoum again denied that they used teargas on Monday against the protestors. Meanwhile, the Sudanese Journalist Network called for an investigation of detentions of and alleged abuses against five reports – including the confiscation of their tape recorders – during the demonstration.

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Protests in Sudan Today

First posted at Save Darfur…

Omar al-Bashir and his National Congress Party (NCP) failed another test today of their commitment to holding free and fair elections in Sudan scheduled for April 2010.  Responding to a march (see video here of crowds chanting “Freedom, Peace and Security”) planned by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and northern opposition parties, the Sudanese security forces violently quashed the demonstration and arrested a number of Sudanese politicians and activists.  We have been compiling information throughout the day.

The following is a run down and here is also a collection of pictures.

Amnesty International confirms that over 200 people, including opposition leaders and human rights activists, were arrested at the demonstration. It demanded that Sudanese authorities announce the names and whereabouts of those arrested and either charge them with recognized criminal offenses or release them immediately:

“This is yet another example of the culture of violence that the Sudanese government has adopted,” said Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of the Africa program at Amnesty International. “The government must respect the right of protesters to peacefully assemble and express their views. This is a crucial time for Sudan and all parties should abstain from using violence, especially in the light of the coming elections and referendum.”

Two of the leading members of the SPLM, Pagan Amum and Yasir Arman, were among those arrested. Our sources tell us that Arman was beaten severely by a group of police officers before being taken to the hospital.  Both men are now free. The children and grandchildren of Sudanese opposition leaders Sadiq al-Mahdi (Umma Party) and Hassan al-Turabi (Popular Congress Party) were also detained during the day. Here is an interview of Amum from prison:

All of us have been arrested in violation of our constitutional right of peaceful demonstration and marches. Our intention was to present a petition to the members of parliament to enact within these two weeks the Referendum Law on the right of self determination for the people of southern Sudan…Sudan is on the edge of an abyss and we must do everything to preventing it from falling into this abyss of disintegration and chaos…[We are protesting] so that these laws are enacted in conformity with the constitution so that there are freedoms which will ensure that the upcoming elections will be free and fair.

Al-Jazeera reported early this morning that the Sudanese security blocked them from covering the protests and confiscated their tapes.  Fortunately, they captured this footage before being shut down. Our colleague has quickly translated and transcribed two interviews in the footage.  The woman in a white toab(Sudanese national dress), a member of the Umma party, about a third of the way through the video says:

The arrest of the SPLM leaders and members of the Sudanese parliament has proved that there is no freedom in Sudan. This demonstration is peaceful, the people are peaceful. If the government is facing it with this number of military and police forces and with harassment and violence, that means this country doesn’t have freedom, no respect for law and order, no freedom of expression.  This consequently demonstrates the reality that the government is using the force to maintain its seat (in power) and is not allowing any democratic transformation in this country to take place.

After this interview, the man in suit, a member of PCP, asserts:

It’s impossible for the election to take place in an environment dominated by oppression and dictatorship. It’s crucial to change the laws one of which was referenced by the police today to justify their reaction to the protest…because the government’s justification for their reaction is Article 127 of the Sudanese criminal laws that allows the authorities to stop any kind of demonstration or protest even if its peaceful, as well as prohibiting any gathering for delivering statements of protests to the government…The demonstration is calling for the reform and amendment of many laws that were supposed to be amended based on the Sudanese Interim National Constitution.

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First posted at Save Darfur…

Are African countries that are state parties to the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court playing a shell game with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir?  Since the issuance of his arrest warrant by the ICC in March 2009, Bashir has repeatedly received invitations from African leaders to attend summits and conferences that eventually result in the dispatching of non-fugitives of international justice to serve in Bashir’s stead.  Were these recent invitations from countries like Uganda and Nigeria in good faith?  Or have there been pre-arranged deals cut that a public invitation would be extended with the understanding that Bashir would not accept them?

Last week provides the most recent example of a possibly well-choreographed diplomatic dance.  On Thursday, Amnesty International broke the news that the African Union had invited Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to participate in the AU Peace and Security Council meetings on Darfur in Abuja, Nigeria.  They urged the AU to rescind the invitation and, if Bashir made the visit, the Nigerian government “to arrest President Omar al Bashir and hand him over to the ICC.”  After a day of headlines and ambivalent statements from Nigerian and AU officials about their commitments to fulfill obligations under international law, the Sudanese government announced on Friday that Second Vice President Ali Osman Taha would lead Sudan’s delegation to the AU meetings.

But it’s not just international or Western human rights groups that are offended by the invitations issued by African capitals.  Last week, an uproar on the matter occurred for the second time this year in Uganda before Bashir turned down an invitation to attend the Special Summit of Heads of State and Government on Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa.  The Sudanese government eventually sent only two junior officials in a pattern of events that closely mirrored another Ugandan invitation in July.  At that time, a senior Ugandan foreign affairs official told Reuters:

“The invitation still stands … (but) we will handle it through diplomatic channels to avoid embarrassment and inconvenience to anybody…It’s a codeword for an agreement that President Bashir delegates another senior cabinet-ranked person. That was agreed.”

Likewise, the Nigerian based NEXT online news portal quoted “reliable diplomatic sources” in Abuja as saying that the government does not want to break ranks with the AU yet seeks to fulfill international obligation:

“My reasoning is that [the] government is merely inviting Sudan as a country with a veiled message that someone higher in the Sudanese government but not Bashir would be the welcomed guest,” said the source.

What would be the motivations behind such deals? By extending the invitations to Bashir, these governments can play to a vociferous current in pan-African politics that rejects the ICC proceedings on Darfur and case against Bashir.  In July, the AU approved a resolution to abstain from cooperation with the ICC over extraditing Bashir.  Many at the time complained that such a resolution was pushed unfairly by Libyan leader Colonel Muamar Gaddafi. Yet by going along with the resolution, many African leaders have placed themselves in a position where in order to reflect African solidarity and preserve the legitimacy of an AU decision purportedly made on behalf of the entire continent, they must make decisions regarding Bashir that may lack support amongst their own constituencies. By reaching pre-arranged deals with Bashir that he will not take up their invitations, these countries could be craftily avoiding the full weight of international pressure calling for their enforcement of international law.

In the cases of Uganda and Nigeria, what is ‘good’ for the AU does not seem to translate necessarily into what is in the national interest, as expressed by local civil society and media.  For instance, Nigerian human rights groups have said that they would protest any visit by Bashir. “The invitation is an insensitive display by the president of Nigeria,” said Innocent Chukwuma, head of the CLEEN Foundation.

As for President Bashir and the National Congress Party (NCP), the invitations from other African heads of state send the public message that the Sudanese president still retains legitimacy in the eyes of his continental counterparts.  It helps, furthermore, Bashir and the NCP make the case domestically that the president can still carry out the full function of his responsibilities – a matter questioned by some within the NCP since the issuance of the arrest warrants.  In fact, Bashir and the party’s chief interlocutor with the international community, Ghazi Salah Al-Deen, in a moment of honesty acknowledged last month that the court’s decision is “limiting the movement of the president…He has to study of course any particular (travel plan) on its own merits.”

All of this diplomacy is testing whether a head of state can effectively perform his functions while wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant. Are these countries really ignoring the decision of the ICC, or are they diplomatically circumventing it in order to avoid acting in what may be their own national interest?  Countries are parties to the ICC because they have determined, independently of the AU, that its presence serves a warranted and legitimate role in the promotion and protection of international law. Some, including Uganda, have openly acknowledged the potential role of the Court in addressing their own crises.

Even if these countries know that Bashir will pass on their invitations, Nigeria and Uganda degrade the force of public condemnation and isolation that the ICC arrest warrants have had on President Bashir and the NCP.  Of course, the stances of these countries are better than non-ICC members like Egypt, Ethiopia and Eritrea that have welcomed and hosted Bashir.  Yet these countries should be clear about their commitments to fulfill international law and follow the lead of South Africa and Botswana. If it turns out that they are intentionally playing such a shell game with Bashir, they must realize that they are directly weakening the efforts of those within Sudan fighting to make Bashir’s arrest warrant – and inability to perform his position – an important issue in the upcoming national elections.

In an interesting development yesterday, all the major political groups in Sudan showed a moment of “rare unity in welcoming [the] US policy.” The Save Darfur Coalition and other groups also welcomed the administration’s emphasis on a balance of incentives and disincentives for peacemaking in Sudan – but stressed that implementation would be critical to the policy’s success.

This unusual moment of cohesion demonstrates why effective implementation of the American plan will be paramount in achieving the objectives set out in the policy review. When all sides praise your plan, despite having contradictory interests and motives, you must realize that your work has only just begun.  What will shape these actors long-term interpretation of the Obama administration’s policy are not the principles or strategies found in the review, but the very next steps in the engagement process.

For instance, Sudanese presidential adviser Ghazi Salah Al-Deen told the Sudanese news agency that the lack of any reference to military intervention “is important” and that the plan constitutes a “new spirit” for the Obama administration.  At the same time though, he criticized the administration’s description of Darfur as a “genocide” and said that the Sudanese government would not respond to a “policy of pressure” which it considers disrespectful and reflects “old mindsets” that found their way into the policy review (article in Arabic).  The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) deputy secretary-general Anne Itto remarked simply: “The policy is in line with the SPLM position.”

As for the Darfuri rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Abdel Wahid Al-Nur hailed the affirmation of the “genocide” label for the Darfur conflict and said that the administration’s calls for “conflict suspension and providing security to civilians” were completely in line with the SLM position.  However, he then criticized the efforts of Gration thus far stating that the special envoy had turned these principles “upside down” by making “genocide legitimate” (presumably by engaging with Sudanese officials) and “creating new [rebel] groups.”  A spokesperson for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) also said the policy “show[s] a good direction to resolve the conflict,” but then urged Washington to realize that Khartoum only want to buy time and lacks “the will to achieve peace.”  The spokesperson concluded: “The US must press Khartoum to respond positively to genuine international will looking to bring peace.”

Of course, Gration and the administration will make critical decisions soon that upend this consensus about the tone and substance of American policy toward Sudan.  All parties have expressed a desire for U.S. leadership, but they have different expectations and fears regarding what American engagement actually means.  From the first day of implementation (today!), Gration and others in the administration must remain clear about their intentions and objectives – as well as their expectations for Sudan’s leaders.

Such an approach will mean that the United States immediately:

• Holds the Sudanese government accountable for ongoing human rights abuses in Darfur – such as its refusal to acknowledge the widespread incidences of rape, its obstruction of the provision of humanitarian assistance and the full unhindered deployment of UNAMID, and the use of disproportionate force by the Sudanese Armed Forces
• Pressures the National Congress Party to create an atmosphere suitable to holding free and fair elections, and then make public the measures by which the administration will judge the credibility of elections
• Pushes the National Congress Party to pass critical pieces of legislation pertaining to the national security laws, freedom of press, freedom of association, and the 2011 referendum
• Condemns the Sudanese government’s ongoing harassment of Sudanese human rights defenders
• Urges the Government of South Sudan to tackle potentially explosive corruption issues and to coordinate with UNMIS to enhance police and SPLA capacity to ensure civilian protection
• Encourages the Darfuri rebel movements to adopt a unified negotiating stance for upcoming talks that includes a role for civil society representatives, including women

Emergencies and crises will arise in the next few months that will fully test the administration’s commitment to its stated policies of resolving Darfur and implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.  By taking the above steps now, the U.S. can assure all sides of the seriousness and substance of its policy – and, equally important, it can clearly demonstrate what is expected of Sudan’s leaders as the country and its people wrestle with the significant challenges before it.