Brains Like a Shoe

First posted at Save Darfur’s blog…

Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Egypt on Sunday to begin an important weeklong trip to Africa. Before his departure from Washington, the Save Darfur Coalition sent Mr. Biden an urgent appeal to make the dangerous situations in Sudan a top priority during his scheduled meetings with Egyptian, Kenyan, and South African leaders.

These three African powerhouse countries all have a stake in the future of Sudan. As neighbors, Egypt and Kenya would feel the direct impact of increased instability throughout the country, and especially the renewal of the North/South war. Egypt’s primary concern is the free flow of the Nile, although like Kenya it also fears a flood of refugees that would flee any new conflict. On the other hand, in the event that the Southern Sudanese choose independence next January in the referendum, Cairo and Nairobi could also reap considerable benefits from a peaceful separation. Investors in both countries, for example, are eyeing attractive business opportunities in a newly sovereign South Sudan that will be built from the ground up.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Egypt and Kenya have long played a role in regional peacemaking efforts to resolve Sudan’s decades of conflict. As a leading country within the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (a seven-country regional development organization for East Africa), Kenya provided the chief mediator and critical political support to the negotiations that resulted in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 between the National Congress Party and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). During the North/South civil war, Egypt also attempted to broker talks and allowed both the SPLA/M and northern opposition to meet regularly in Cairo. As a continental diplomatic powerhouse, South Africa also consistently pressed both sides to end the war, and now South Africa chairs the AU Ministerial Committee on Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development in the Sudan (PCRD) and former South African President Thabo Mbeki now leads the African Union’s High Level Implementation Panel on Sudan.

While all three countries have sought to help Sudanese handle their recurring crises at different times in the past, not all of their contributions have been positive, nor coordinated. Most recently, Egypt has allegedly obstructed progress in the Darfur peace talks in Doha out of envy that the Qataris were taking the lead in the negotiations. With a declared preference for unity rather than separation, Egyptian officials have also sent mixed signals about whether they will recognize the results of the referendum. The situation of tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees living in Egypt has also grown more precarious as Egyptian security have at times arbitrarily harassed, detained and threatened refugees with illegal deportation.

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First posted at Save Darfur’s blog…

Over the last two days, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have led a U.S. delegation to Beijing for the second joint meeting of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The meetings focused on a range of economic and political issues of mutual concern for the two countries. As Secretary Clinton remarked on Sunday, “Few global problems can be solved by the United States or China acting alone. And few can be solved without the United States and China working together.”

How the international community deals with the interlocking crises in Sudan is no exception. Therefore, I was pleased to hear that Sudan was on the formal agenda of the two days of talks. It reportedly was one of only two non-regional issues that will be discussed. With that said, it’s unclear whether the discussions are making any progress on Sudan as the issue went unmentioned in the State Department’s recently released statement on outcomes from the dialogue.

Last fall, during President Barack Obama’s trip to China, I wrote on the close relations between Khartoum and Beijingand how the U.S. should appeal to Chinese national interests on the issue:

From the outside, it sure looks like [Premier] Hu has a convenient excuse not to take any dramatic steps to challenge Khartoum’s deadly policies in Darfur, failure to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and enact true political reforms. Yet, this is the very reason why Save Darfur has urged President Obama not only to use moral suasion with the Chinese but appeal directly to their own national interests: keeping oil freely flowing (something impossible, for example, if war erupts again between the North and South).  This type of realist case for tying incentives for the NCP directly to sustainable peace in Sudan has the real potential to influence even Khartoum’s closest supporters…

More recent reports include a story at The Wall Street Journal that points out that Sudan is a key part of China National Petroleum’s $60 billion international push aimed at increasing its overseas oil production. The article states:

China National Petroleum has been selling assets to PetroChina that aren’t already part of the listed unit, but it keeps assets in politically sensitive countries like Iran and Sudan out of PetroChina to avoid backlash from international shareholders.

For those interested, Global Witness has produced very valuable reports on the need for transparency in Sudan’s oil industry to avoid a return to conflict between the North and the South. The organization, furthermore, urges China to use its significant influence in Sudan to implement key recommendations from the report.

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It has not been a good week in Darfur or for the critics of the Sudanese government in Khartoum.  Check out a piece that I just wrote at the human rights section of Change.org.

Sudan’s Dangerous Trajectory

A new military offensive in Darfur, the arrest of political leaders, and the shutting down of newspapers in Khartoum: election season must be over in Sudan. Emboldened by electoral “success,” Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and his National Congress Party (NCP) are sending troubling signals about their philosophy that will guide post-election governance.

The push last Friday by the Sudanese Armed Forces to regain control over a stronghold of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in West Darfur kicked off seven days of violence and repression. The army reported that it killed 108 JEM fighters in the assault. Elsewhere in Darfur, JEM allegedly attacked a tanker truck killing 20 Sudanese police officers. Continued clashes between nomadic tribes and the kidnapping of humanitarian aid workers – including an American – have only heightened tensions throughout Darfur.

Commenting yesterday on these recent developments before the United Nations Security Council, the Joint Special Representative for the United Nations/African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) stated that continued fighting in Darfur has “caused substantial civilian casualties, the displacement of communities, and hampered the delivery of humanitarian assistance.” The U.S. State Department earlier in the week also condemned the “recent offensive actions in Darfur” and “urged both the Government of Sudan and the Darfur rebel movements to refrain from any further actions that would undermine the Darfur peace process or endanger civilians.”

Yet, blithely ignoring the deteriorating conditions in Darfur, an NCP leader told Darfuri students this week that his party was seeking to deepen peace and foster a culture of national unity (article in Arabic). Most people in Darfur instead fear that the faltering peace process, government offensive, and continuing crisis in Jebel Marra proffer a new post-election reality.

Critics and opposition leaders in Khartoum share such concerns…

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Also, two nights ago I spoke with WSCOC-TV out of Charlotte, North Carolina about the kidnapping of three aid workers – one of them American – in Darfur with the organization Samaritan’s Purse which is based in Boone, NC. Today, I heard that the two Sudanese men kidnapped were released, but the American woman remains held hostage.

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First posted at Save Darfur’s blog…

On Wednesday, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the challenges facing the forty million people of Sudan. General Gration gave a sobering and honest assessment of the post-election situation in Darfur, where violence has been on the rise, and of the potential roadblocks to a peaceful and transparent referenda process early next year.

The Senators pressed General Gration on the administration’s plans and available resources to respond effectively to “all possible scenarios.” As Senator John Kerry noted, the international community is in a rare position to have “a map of the fault-lines” of a crisis. While General Gration seemed to be surprisingly comfortable with the current resources at his own disposal within the State Department, he acknowledged the magnitude of the challenge. For example, General Gration agreed with the recent assessment by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that South Sudan is currently the area of the world most at-risk for mass killing or genocide. He also highlighted the key issues that could be triggers for conflict during the referendum period – most notably the demarcation of borders and oil sharing.

On Darfur, General Gration stressed for the first time in unequivocal language that general insecurity and lawlessness remains his chief concern.  Rather than once again touting gains from the protracted peace talks in Doha or the diplomatic rapprochement between Sudan and Chad, he stated bluntly that such progress on the strategic level “has not changed the lives of people on the ground…[who] don’t have a way out.” Specifically, he noted as unacceptable the continuing offensive in Jebel Marra, the continued aerial bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces, and the breakdown in the ceasefire between the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese government.  His frank acknowledgement of the unfilled gaps in services for victims of gender-based violence since the expulsion of 13 humanitarian aid organizations in March 2009 was also particularly noteworthy.

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The Christmas shoe-bomber brought two weeks of furious media attention to Yemen that has now largely receded back to pre-holiday levels – except, of course, for the occasional story about Al Qaeda and the radical American cleric who has allegedly joined the terrorist group. So if you read one news story this week about Yemen, it’s likely to be: Al Qaeda in Yemen issues new warning against the United States.

So what else happened in Yemen last week? A lot – and it’s quite troubling for the Yemeni people as well as American foreign policy objectives in this Arabian peninsular state and the region.

To begin, new clashes between Yemeni soldiers and the Houthi rebels in the north – the most recent evidence that a truce signed between the two parties in February may be fraying. As part of this military jockeying, both sides are seizing schools in the Sa’ada region – parts of which remain inaccessible to the United Nations and humanitarian organizations. These worrying reports come as the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that hundreds of thousands of people continue to suffer from the effects of the last round of fighting.

Moving to the south, political tensions continue to fester. On Thursday, Yemen’s deputy prime minister for internal affairs escaped an assassination attempt, after an exchange of gunfire between his guards and armed militants. Two people also died when the military intervened to end a dispute over water rights. As this Reuters story points out, the incident underscores how a looming water crisis – Sana’a could be the world’s first capital to run dry because of a chronic shortage of ground water – could exacerbate existing and unresolved political grievances.  

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I will be blogging about the African Union Panel for Darfur’s report and recommendations as soon as I have time.  For now though, I want to point everyone to a new post by Jerry Fowler, the president of the Save Darfur Coalition, at Huffington Post.

Its his thoughts about current U.S. policy toward Sudan now that the official Sudan Policy Review has been completed.  He also gives a shout-out to my blog from last week on the necessity of immediate implementation.

While the new administration policy has many of the right elements, there are concerns, many of which were recently raised on the Save Darfur blog. The biggest strategic level concern is that those elements of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) focused on opening up political space in Sudan not be traded away for conflict resolution in Darfur or conflict prevention in southern Sudan.

The most important long-term need facing Sudan is the creation of a political space in which Sudanese can resolve the country’s issues without the use of extreme violence. The CPA presents a framework for creating that space, but the CPA elements crucial to that framework are the ones whose implementation is most seriously lacking. Now, elections are six months away and there have been no meaningful steps toward permitting freedom of the press, freedom of association, and freedom of movement or curbing the arbitrary powers of the security services. Judging from the travesty of the census, the ruling NCP does not intend to fulfill its CPA obligation to open up political space. This is a status quo that must be changed if peace is to be promoted.

Tactically, the biggest concern is how much of a priority Sudan is for President Obama. He said all the right things while he was in the Senate and during the campaign, including pledging to bring “unstinting resolve” to Sudan policy if elected.

For the new policy to work, General Gration can’t go it alone. The President must lead in creating a real coalition of key heads of state to support the strategy laid out last week and push for concrete and lasting change in Sudan. Now is the time for him to show the resolve he promised.