US Sudan Policy Goes from Rhetoric to Reality
By Georg-Sebastian Holzer for ISN
Following long and intense internal battles over the right approach, the Obama administration has finally come up with a new strategy for Sudan titled
Sudan: A Critical Moment, A Comprehensive Approach.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introduced the five-page document on 19 October to the media alongside Scott Gration, US special envoy to Sudan, who had been her main rival in formulating a new Sudan policy. Obama’s nomination of Gration as special envoy was clearly a step toward a policy of finding conclusive political solutions to move Sudan forward.
The new strategy does not constitute a fundamental change but an important clarification of the US policy toward Sudan that was at best contradictory. The realist approach of engagement with Khartoum represented by Gration now replaces the precious strategy of political isolation and an ineffective and short-sighted policy that was overly dominated by the Darfur conflict.
Critical timing
This new US strategy comes at a crucial time for Sudan, which will face two momentous events in the next 15 months.
First is the general election, the first multi-party nationwide election in Sudan’s history. The multi-party elections in the 1960s and 1980s did not include war-affected areas in the south, thereby dooming the resulting governments. Second is the referendum on self-determination in Southern Sudan, which, based on the current mood in the region, will lead to a decisive vote for secession.
For now, international partners are focused first and foremost on the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and a path toward a 2011 referendum. However, far too little attention has been given to what will happen afterwards.
The new and clarified US Sudan policy removes one of the major obstacles in US-Sudan relations, namely the perpetual second guessing about Washington’s effective position toward Sudan. It also clarifies who is the prime counterpart talking to Khartoum.
The new strategy includes the conflict in Darfur but also acknowledges that the conflict in Sudan’s Eastern Province is improving and the decade-old North-South conflict (and connected conflicts like Abyei and Blue Nile) is heating up dangerously. At the same time, US security interests, circumscribed as “ensur[ing] that Sudan does not provide a safe haven for international terrorists,” are openly put on the table.
Overcoming the Darfur ‘obsession’
In order to understand the new US policy toward Sudan it is particularly important to take a closer look at domestic US politics and the influence of organized constituencies.
When George W Bush took office in early 2001, evangelical lobby groups successfully managed to put Sudan high up on the agenda. According to their understanding, the main conflict in Sudan was religious, between a Muslim north and a Christian and animist south. In the end, their concern yielded positive results. Bush nominated John Danforth, a former senator and Episcopal priest, as special envoy for peace in Sudan and invested some political capital that led to the signing of the CPA in 2005. The promises made on the normalization of US-Sudan relations thereafter were largely not undertaken due to the flaming up of the Darfur conflict.
From that moment on, Darfur became the prime focus of official US-Sudan politics and domestic discourse, effectively neglecting the North-South conflict and the CPA.
Yet, the whole debate was a semantic one. At its center stood the question of whether the slaughter in Darfur should be labelled ‘genocide.’ In late 2004, former secretary of state Collin Powell did call the atrocities ‘genocide,’ however, no UN Charter measures followed this statement.
With ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration could not afford to militarily engage in another conflict where they would be perceived to fight against Muslims. Nevertheless, the US sought Sudan’s collaboration in intelligence and security matters in the context of the war on terror, while upholding sanctions and maintaining Sudan’s position on the state sponsorship of terrorism list.
On the other hand, one cannot deny that labelling Khartoum’s regime as genocidaire remained without serious consequences.
Mahmood Mamdani, director of Columbia University's Institute of African Studies, told ISN Security Watch: “If you brand a regime as genocidaire, it is very difficult to negotiate with that same regime.”
In fact, such a regime should be toppled and their protagonists brought to justice. Therefore, the language of ‘genocide’ became an obstacle to the development of a Darfur policy.
Some might see it as ironic that grassroot organizations lobbying for US engagement “to stop genocide in Darfur,” epitomized in the Safe Darfur Coalition and backed by the Congress' Sudan Caucus, were at their height of political influence with the run-up to the US presidential elections in 2008, although the slaughter in Darfur happened in 2003-2004.
For Alex DeWaal, program director of the Social Science Research Council in New York, all presidential candidates “pledged to be very tough on Sudan and end genocide in Darfur.”
This was a natural political reaction, as “there was a major constituency that had mobilized in the US, in particular young college voters. There was the need to take account of that,” he told ISN Security Watch.
After the Obama administration assumed office, a policy shift toward Sudan became obvious. Mamdani told ISN Security Watch that this shift was based on “the recognition that a policy cast in mainly ideological terms [genocide] was too inflexible to deal with a rapidly changing situation, one marked by significant improvement on the ground in Darfur and a worsening situation in the South.”
While domestic US pressure groups are still calling for “an end to genocide in Darfur,” both DeWaal and Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a senior research fellow at the University of Westminster, are talking about putting an end to “the obsession with Darfur” and getting real.
Their arguments are based on crude facts: From 2005 onward, the average level of monthly mortality amongst civilians killed through violence has been less than 200. In September, UNAMID reported 102 killings, mostly in inter-tribal fighting and banditry. In fact, the UN itself called Darfur “ external pagea low intensity conflict” in April this year.
The US is apparently not able to change its rhetoric and still uses the term genocide when referring to the Darfur conflict. However, Gration appears to be more interested in finding a conclusive political solution that could put a “definitive end” to genocide and help move Sudan forward. Still, he has been external pagecriticized as naïve for his outreach to Khartoum.
Mamdani also sees splits in the pressure groups opposing engagement with Sudan. He points out that “the membership base of Save Darfur has significantly demobilized over this year. The leadership is divided between those with a predominantly Darfur focus and those concerned mainly with the south. It is the former that is alienated.”
He is sure that the new US policy “is a significant reversal for Safe Darfur [and that] the tensions will increase if the policy succeeds and carrots replace sanctions.”
Mamdani also points out that evangelical pressure groups still have some influence on the US Sudan policy, and “they have been worried that the administration's Sudan policy has been too Darfur driven.”
US leverage
With the introduction of the new US-Sudan policy, another crucial question haunts policymakers: How much leverage can the US actually have on Sudan and what could they achieve?
For DeWaal, the US definitely “cannot own the problems of Sudan, [as] advocacy groups in the US are calling for. It is for the citizens of [Sudan] to own it and come to their own conclusion.”
He advocates for the new policy, based on solutions rather than rhetoric, thereby allowing the Sudanese to solve their own problems. He warns however, that “if the Obama administration were to somehow find itself giving guarantees of outcomes that it cannot deliver upon, [this] would not only be a disaster for the Sudanese people but also […] for the Obama administration and its huge foreign policy agenda that it has taken on.”
Douglas Johnson, an independent scholar and author of The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, told ISN Security Watch that the US did indeed “have some leverage whether the Sudan goes back to war over Southern Sudanese independence.
"First, they do have some influence over the GOSS [government of South Sudan]. [T]hey can make it quite clear to GOSS that a unilateral declaration of independence will not receive widespread international recognition, whereas independence achieved through an internationally monitored referendum will bring with it that recognition, which Southern Sudan will need if it is to be a viable state," Johnson said.
"Secondly, it can provide an independent GOSS with defensive military hardware which would neutralize Khartoum's current superiority in airpower and mechanized armor so that all-out warfare might be deterred.”
In this context, El-Affendi draws attention to internal politics of GOSS and the danger of the outbreak of open conflict after a referendum. “What is more important is the Sudan People Liberation Army’s (SPLA) capacity to deal with internal dissent. Up to now, it has been much harsher with its critics than the NCP is with its opponents. In the north, either outcome would lead to more stability, as the north-south conflict has been a major destabilising factor.”
The National Congress Party (NCP), which leads the government in Khartoum with its president, Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague is, however, an obstacle in engaging with Khartoum.
But, Johnson tells ISN Security Watch, no direct contact with Bashir is planned within the new US strategy. Instead, the plan is to work with other leaders, like Ali Osman Mohammed Taha, Sudan's second vice president, or Salva Kiir Mayardit, the GOSS president. Generally, Doughlas says, “there are some [NCP] factions immune to US pressure and others that would like to bring Sudan's pariah status to an end. There may come a time when the majority of the NCP leadership - or a powerful faction within it - decides that their own personal survival and future will best be secured by abandoning Bashir and his closest allies.”
There seems to be a consensus that the 2010 national elections and the 2011 referendum will have a better chance of being peaceful and accepted as genuine expressions of popular will if there is as strong international monitoring presence.
According to El-Affendi, the main challenge however “is what happens after the elections or referendum. If the results are contested, as is expected, or the independent south descends into chaos, adequate precautions need to be taken to deal with the problem.”
He points out that “time is now practically running out, and unless a massive and immediate effort of engagement is launched, which looks unlikely, not much can be achieved, and the processes will run on autopilot.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introduced the five-page document on 19 October to the media alongside Scott Gration, US special envoy to Sudan, who had been her main rival in formulating a new Sudan policy. Obama’s nomination of Gration as special envoy was clearly a step toward a policy of finding conclusive political solutions to move Sudan forward.
The new strategy does not constitute a fundamental change but an important clarification of the US policy toward Sudan that was at best contradictory. The realist approach of engagement with Khartoum represented by Gration now replaces the precious strategy of political isolation and an ineffective and short-sighted policy that was overly dominated by the Darfur conflict.
Critical timing
This new US strategy comes at a crucial time for Sudan, which will face two momentous events in the next 15 months.
First is the general election, the first multi-party nationwide election in Sudan’s history. The multi-party elections in the 1960s and 1980s did not include war-affected areas in the south, thereby dooming the resulting governments. Second is the referendum on self-determination in Southern Sudan, which, based on the current mood in the region, will lead to a decisive vote for secession.
For now, international partners are focused first and foremost on the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and a path toward a 2011 referendum. However, far too little attention has been given to what will happen afterwards.
The new and clarified US Sudan policy removes one of the major obstacles in US-Sudan relations, namely the perpetual second guessing about Washington’s effective position toward Sudan. It also clarifies who is the prime counterpart talking to Khartoum.
The new strategy includes the conflict in Darfur but also acknowledges that the conflict in Sudan’s Eastern Province is improving and the decade-old North-South conflict (and connected conflicts like Abyei and Blue Nile) is heating up dangerously. At the same time, US security interests, circumscribed as “ensur[ing] that Sudan does not provide a safe haven for international terrorists,” are openly put on the table.
Overcoming the Darfur ‘obsession’
In order to understand the new US policy toward Sudan it is particularly important to take a closer look at domestic US politics and the influence of organized constituencies.
When George W Bush took office in early 2001, evangelical lobby groups successfully managed to put Sudan high up on the agenda. According to their understanding, the main conflict in Sudan was religious, between a Muslim north and a Christian and animist south. In the end, their concern yielded positive results. Bush nominated John Danforth, a former senator and Episcopal priest, as special envoy for peace in Sudan and invested some political capital that led to the signing of the CPA in 2005. The promises made on the normalization of US-Sudan relations thereafter were largely not undertaken due to the flaming up of the Darfur conflict.
From that moment on, Darfur became the prime focus of official US-Sudan politics and domestic discourse, effectively neglecting the North-South conflict and the CPA.
Yet, the whole debate was a semantic one. At its center stood the question of whether the slaughter in Darfur should be labelled ‘genocide.’ In late 2004, former secretary of state Collin Powell did call the atrocities ‘genocide,’ however, no UN Charter measures followed this statement.
With ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration could not afford to militarily engage in another conflict where they would be perceived to fight against Muslims. Nevertheless, the US sought Sudan’s collaboration in intelligence and security matters in the context of the war on terror, while upholding sanctions and maintaining Sudan’s position on the state sponsorship of terrorism list.
On the other hand, one cannot deny that labelling Khartoum’s regime as genocidaire remained without serious consequences.
Mahmood Mamdani, director of Columbia University's Institute of African Studies, told ISN Security Watch: “If you brand a regime as genocidaire, it is very difficult to negotiate with that same regime.”
In fact, such a regime should be toppled and their protagonists brought to justice. Therefore, the language of ‘genocide’ became an obstacle to the development of a Darfur policy.
Some might see it as ironic that grassroot organizations lobbying for US engagement “to stop genocide in Darfur,” epitomized in the Safe Darfur Coalition and backed by the Congress' Sudan Caucus, were at their height of political influence with the run-up to the US presidential elections in 2008, although the slaughter in Darfur happened in 2003-2004.
For Alex DeWaal, program director of the Social Science Research Council in New York, all presidential candidates “pledged to be very tough on Sudan and end genocide in Darfur.”
This was a natural political reaction, as “there was a major constituency that had mobilized in the US, in particular young college voters. There was the need to take account of that,” he told ISN Security Watch.
After the Obama administration assumed office, a policy shift toward Sudan became obvious. Mamdani told ISN Security Watch that this shift was based on “the recognition that a policy cast in mainly ideological terms [genocide] was too inflexible to deal with a rapidly changing situation, one marked by significant improvement on the ground in Darfur and a worsening situation in the South.”
While domestic US pressure groups are still calling for “an end to genocide in Darfur,” both DeWaal and Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a senior research fellow at the University of Westminster, are talking about putting an end to “the obsession with Darfur” and getting real.
Their arguments are based on crude facts: From 2005 onward, the average level of monthly mortality amongst civilians killed through violence has been less than 200. In September, UNAMID reported 102 killings, mostly in inter-tribal fighting and banditry. In fact, the UN itself called Darfur “ external pagea low intensity conflict” in April this year.
The US is apparently not able to change its rhetoric and still uses the term genocide when referring to the Darfur conflict. However, Gration appears to be more interested in finding a conclusive political solution that could put a “definitive end” to genocide and help move Sudan forward. Still, he has been external pagecriticized as naïve for his outreach to Khartoum.
Mamdani also sees splits in the pressure groups opposing engagement with Sudan. He points out that “the membership base of Save Darfur has significantly demobilized over this year. The leadership is divided between those with a predominantly Darfur focus and those concerned mainly with the south. It is the former that is alienated.”
He is sure that the new US policy “is a significant reversal for Safe Darfur [and that] the tensions will increase if the policy succeeds and carrots replace sanctions.”
Mamdani also points out that evangelical pressure groups still have some influence on the US Sudan policy, and “they have been worried that the administration's Sudan policy has been too Darfur driven.”
US leverage
With the introduction of the new US-Sudan policy, another crucial question haunts policymakers: How much leverage can the US actually have on Sudan and what could they achieve?
For DeWaal, the US definitely “cannot own the problems of Sudan, [as] advocacy groups in the US are calling for. It is for the citizens of [Sudan] to own it and come to their own conclusion.”
He advocates for the new policy, based on solutions rather than rhetoric, thereby allowing the Sudanese to solve their own problems. He warns however, that “if the Obama administration were to somehow find itself giving guarantees of outcomes that it cannot deliver upon, [this] would not only be a disaster for the Sudanese people but also […] for the Obama administration and its huge foreign policy agenda that it has taken on.”
Douglas Johnson, an independent scholar and author of The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, told ISN Security Watch that the US did indeed “have some leverage whether the Sudan goes back to war over Southern Sudanese independence.
"First, they do have some influence over the GOSS [government of South Sudan]. [T]hey can make it quite clear to GOSS that a unilateral declaration of independence will not receive widespread international recognition, whereas independence achieved through an internationally monitored referendum will bring with it that recognition, which Southern Sudan will need if it is to be a viable state," Johnson said.
"Secondly, it can provide an independent GOSS with defensive military hardware which would neutralize Khartoum's current superiority in airpower and mechanized armor so that all-out warfare might be deterred.”
In this context, El-Affendi draws attention to internal politics of GOSS and the danger of the outbreak of open conflict after a referendum. “What is more important is the Sudan People Liberation Army’s (SPLA) capacity to deal with internal dissent. Up to now, it has been much harsher with its critics than the NCP is with its opponents. In the north, either outcome would lead to more stability, as the north-south conflict has been a major destabilising factor.”
The National Congress Party (NCP), which leads the government in Khartoum with its president, Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague is, however, an obstacle in engaging with Khartoum.
But, Johnson tells ISN Security Watch, no direct contact with Bashir is planned within the new US strategy. Instead, the plan is to work with other leaders, like Ali Osman Mohammed Taha, Sudan's second vice president, or Salva Kiir Mayardit, the GOSS president. Generally, Doughlas says, “there are some [NCP] factions immune to US pressure and others that would like to bring Sudan's pariah status to an end. There may come a time when the majority of the NCP leadership - or a powerful faction within it - decides that their own personal survival and future will best be secured by abandoning Bashir and his closest allies.”
There seems to be a consensus that the 2010 national elections and the 2011 referendum will have a better chance of being peaceful and accepted as genuine expressions of popular will if there is as strong international monitoring presence.
According to El-Affendi, the main challenge however “is what happens after the elections or referendum. If the results are contested, as is expected, or the independent south descends into chaos, adequate precautions need to be taken to deal with the problem.”
He points out that “time is now practically running out, and unless a massive and immediate effort of engagement is launched, which looks unlikely, not much can be achieved, and the processes will run on autopilot.