Obama’s Presidency, an opportunity for better US-South Sudan relations?

By Kuyok Abol Kuyok

November 24, 2008 — Barack Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States of America (USA) on Tuesday, the 3rd November was a historic with fewer parallels. Perhaps match only by the Abolishment of Slavery, the Independence of Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 that set South Africa on the road to freedom in 1994. Obama’s election has implications beyond America, particularly for Black people at home in Africa and in the Diaspora. However, what does it mean to the South Sudan and especially as she is approaching a critical period in its political history. In this personal contribution, I argue that the ascension of Barack Obama to the Oval Office presents the South Sudan with an important opening to strengthen its relations with America for the benefit of its people. Nonetheless, to become part of the American foreign policy priority the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) has to strategise.

An insight on the in-coming President and his approach to world’s affairs will be an integral part of this strategy.

DEMANDING WORLD EXPECTATIONS

President Shimon Peres of Israel in a recent interview with the CNN aptly described Barack Obama as ‘selected by the world and elected by America’. President Obama will assume the Oval Office in January 2009 in a midst of demanding domestic and global crises. Some of the challenges that are likely to absorb his administration attention include the current recession hitting the major world economies: the USA, European Union (EU) countries, Japan and China. Then there is the global climate change, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the omnipresent problem of the Middle East. There is an optimism encompassing the Middle East that America at last has an impartial President who might just be able to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict permanently. The expectations and challenges for the new occupant of the White House are essentially enormous.

AFRICA

Some leading Western commentators in the international relations matters, mainly in the US and the UK, however, lately discern that Africa, not Europe, might assume the centre stage in the new USA government’s foreign policy plan. Several factors underscore this proposition. First, some of these experts have noted that the new President is not some American president. Barack Obama is an African-American. Others would actually claim he’s an African. There is an element of truth in this. Barack Obama appears to be conscious about Africa and her historical and contemporary predicaments. His concerns about Africa led him to politics. Obama discovered his political skills in the 1980s while a college student activist in California; campaigning against the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa (it was therefore appropriate that Uncle Madiba (Nelson Mandela) was one of the first Africans to congratulate Obama).

Second, the commentators have also suggested that although the US foreign policy may witness some shifts to accommodate some pressing priorities, nonetheless, this adjustment will least affect Africa. They pointed out that the Africa is one of the main problems facing the world today. Some of the urgent contemporary problems in Africa are Darfur (Sudan), Congo and Zimbabwe. President Obama’s administration cannot afford to ignore these issues. In fact, Obama constantly raised the question of Darfur during the debates in the protracted Democratic presidential nomination campaign and the General Elections.

Thirdly, within the Obama’s cabinet, particularly his foreign and national security team, there might be space for Africanist (s). One of the people widely mentioned for a post in the cabinet, perhaps as a national security advisor or in the State Department is Dr Susan Elizabeth Rice (no relations to Dr Condoleezza Rice, the serving Secretary of State). Dr Susan Elizabeth Rice has been a top adviser on foreign policy to Barack Obama, and has had extensive record in the field of international relations as academic (Brookings Institution), and previously experience in the national security agency and as an Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Affairs in Bill Clinton’s Administration. Dr Rice is an Africanist. Her DPhil thesis at Oxford University in 1991 was on the political resolution of the liberation of Zimbabwe.

Dr Rice wrote a report in 2000 on Omar Beshier’s regime destabilizing role in the region. She went on to outline how the USA government should deal with the Khartoum’s regime. I believe not a great deal has changed in the Sudan’s approach to international relations since Dr Rice’s report. And thus this document may provide an indication of the trajectory for the USA relations with Khartoum. It should be ‘a must read’ for anyone interested in knowing the direction of the next administration’s foreign policy towards Sudan.

SUDAN

It is true that South Sudan and the Sudan in general feature highly in the incumbent president’s foreign policy and his predecessor’s. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that was concluded between the Khartoum government and the SPLM/A in January 2005 came about largely because of the American involvement. The CPA is a considerable accomplishment and all peace loving Sudanese people should gratefully commend President George W Bush for that. However, the Islamist elements in the government have been working hard to undermine the accord.

In the summer Africa Confidential and others exposed a clandestine rapprochement between the government in Khartoum and the Bush Administration. The backdrop to this development is this. President Bush’s unfinished war on terror and particularly his pursuit of the terrorists led him to Khartoum. Many observers suspect that the Sudanese government or some elements within it have offered unlimited assistance to the Americans, on the basis that the terrorists were their former bedfellows. Some of President Bush’s advisers, according to the media reports, appeared to have found this proposition palatable and hence, the American government’s softening of its approach towards Khartoum.

However, most alarmingly the regime might also be working in a subtle way. On the 28th May 2008, Dr Alex de Waal, ‘an expert on Sudan’, delivered a lecture for the Africa Royal Society, at the University of London’s School of Oriental and Africa Studies (SOAS), titled Can Sudan Survive? The audience for this lecture was largely made up of British academics, members of parliament, students and foreign diplomats. I was one of the several Sudanese in the hall.

The lecture depicted the Sudanese political scenery as ‘a marketplace’, and the struggle of the marginalised people of the Sudan in Darfur and South Sudan as commodity being offered for the highest bidder within the northern Sudanese clique. This marketization process, according to Dr Alex de Waal, had been going on since the Turkish Egyptian rule in the 19th century. In other words he was warning his British audience to leave the Sudanese alone. In the lecture, Dr de Waal (He is a fellow of an American Think-tank) singled out Obama’s position on the Sudan as unhelpful. It was not surprising that the spokesman of the Sudanese embassy in London in his remarks praised and concurred with Dr de Waal.

Dr Alex de Waal was referring to Barack Obama’s stance on Darfur and the CPA, published on Gurtong Trust’s website (http://www.gurtong.org/). In April 2008 Barack Obama released a statement in which he condemned in strong terms the Bush’s administration attempt to normalise relations with Khartoum:

I am deeply concerned by reports that the Bush Administration is negotiating a normalization of relations with the Government of Sudan that would include removing it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. This would reportedly be in exchange for Khartoum’s agreement to allow Thai and Nepalese troops to participate in the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur.

In the same statement Barack Obama essentially warn the US administration in explicit terms about its obligations to ensure that Khartoum fully implements the CPA and conduct free and fair elections:

[H] olding Sudan accountable for failing to implement significant aspects of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), imperilling the prospects for scheduled multiparty elections in 2009.

These examples testaments are indicative to President Obama’s commitment to Sudan and South Sudan. This may partly explain why Khartoum was the only government in the world, I know of, which was unenthusiastic about the Barack Obama’s election victory.

THE DINKAS

As mentioned above, unlike most US president, Barack Obama is an intellectually informed on Africa. It is true that he draws on the insight of his army of advisers, but I think this is partly to do about the man’s identity. As a teenager Obama widely read about Africa and he also learned a lot on has stay in Kenya with the Obama’s clan and meetings with Africans. These experiences seemed to shape his outlook. While reading his autobiography (Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance: Canongate: Edinburgh, 2007), I found this paragraph poignant. In the book he refers to a conversation with a Briton who had worked in Sudan and reminiscent about his encounters with the Dinkas, who Obama describes, as his cousins:

“Usually, after a month or two, you make contact,” he said. “Even where you don’t speak the language, there’s smile or a joke, you know-some semblance of recognition. But at the end of a year with the Di[n]k[a], they remained utterly alien to me. They laughed at the things that drove me to despair. What I thought was funny seemed to leave them stone cold”. I had spared him the information that the Di[n] k[a] were Nilotes, distant cousins of mine”. (p.124).

How many American politicians would consider the Nilotics of Sudan as their kin? Obama is unique. However, there is no such thing as a gapping goal in international relations and politics. The GOSS must develop a strategy to enhance the relationships between the South Sudan and the new US government.

A STRATEGY TO FOSTER STRONGER RELATIONS WITH AMERICA

In international relations ancestry associations do not count much, what usually matters is the national interests of the concerned nations. Therefore, the key phrase in international relations discourse is ‘national interest’. First, at the heart of this process we need to define our utmost national interest. In the case of South Sudan, our immediate national interest is ‘the full implementation of the CPA’. It is widely known that the leadership of the NCP has no least intention of doing this. Instead their actions indicate that they want to wreck it as exemplified by their obstructive positions on Abeyi, South-North borders, and the oil revenues. Thus, I suspect that the South Sudan may get to 2011 the year of referendum without. The other prospect is that the referendum may take place, but the NCP may not honour its outcome and instead move its army in. Or occupy the oil fields and the northern Upper Nile. This suggests that our national interest is protection of peace in the Sudan. It is our own national survival as an entity. In circumstances where our own survival is under threat, a foreign policy that can win you friends is as important as having a building a strong army, or having first class health service combined. Israel’s endurance against the odds is founded not only on a presence of a formidable army, but also on an impressive foreign policy that can articulate their cause and won them friends internationally. Strong army alone without international friends could not save Biafra in 1971 or Colonel Mengistu’s Durge government in Ethiopia in 1991. South Sudan in 2011 could be like Israel in 1948.

Thus, South Sudan strategic importance lies not in the oil. Obama, unlike his predecessor, is an environmentalist who is committed to finding alternative source to oil and US dependency on foreign oil. Also, there is oil all over the world. Most importantly though in international politics, international relations precede international trade.

Our strength is in the geopolitical (the influences of South Sudan’s geography on the stability of the neighbouring countries) significance of South Sudan. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, in the 1990s advanced a cogent notion that ‘if you had peace in Sudan and Congo, you may have peace in Africa’. This viewpoint is premised on the geography of these two huge African countries. As we know war in Sudan or Congo may have disastrous repercussions across many countries on the continent. In the case of South Sudan we are surrounded by many countries that Britain and America are committed to their stability. This explains the British and the EU support for the GOSS’ peace proposal in Uganda led by Dr Riek Machar. Tony Blair’s theory holds today and South Sudan should emphasise this to the new President Obama.

Foreign policy is fundamentally based on mutual interests. The new USA foreign policy will be a foreign policy dedicated to reaching out for friends to achieve peace in the world. We need to be singing from the same hymn sheet with the new president of the USA. South Sudan needs to position itself within this international alliance of peace-loving peoples and countries. And that we would help to create peace around us. In the process we remind the Americans about the consequences of failure to fulfil the provisions of the CPA.

Secondly, and equally important, as a part of this strategy, GOSS makes foreign policy a priority at the highest level of government. I will tell you why. Since the Independence, Sudan’s two most successful foreign ministers were Mohammed Ahmed Mahjooub in the 1950s and 1960s (thus, he was able to blunt the Anya Nya Movement’s diplomacy in the neighbouring countries), and Dr Mansur Khalid in the 1970s. These Sudanese foreign ministers succeeded because they were personal envoys of the heads of government/state at the time. As a result during their tenure Sudan had many friends across Africa and the world. Foreign governments are more cordial and cooperative to their foreign ministers who are direct, personal envoys of the President of that country. Thus, in Khartoum although Deng Alor is the Minister for Foreign Affairs, President Beshier is more inclined to send Dr Mustafa Ismail, the former Minister for Foreign Affairs and his adviser on foreign missions. Therefore, when Deng Alor speaks to foreign heads of State or Government or even diplomats they know that the man does not speak for the President of the Republic. This anomalous situation sends conflicting signals to foreign countries and makes it less easy for the country to develop a coherent policy to win friends abroad.

In Juba, Dr Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the Minister responsible for internationals relations in the GOSS has no such problem. When he interacts with foreign heads of state or governments they would be confident that they are talking to President Salva Kiir Maryardit. However, the GOSS’s Ministry of Regional and International Relations (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and its offices abroad should build on its success develop a strategy to win some friends in the region and beyond who may also be influential with the new American government. At the heart of this approach is the ability and the inclination of the diplomats to promote their country’s interests to others. International relations is characteristically dynamic. It requires an understanding or the willingness to learn of host country’s socio-economic structures and values and systems. Professor Madeleine Albright while US the ambassador to the United Nations was said to use the public telephone booths outside the UN buildings to call foreign capitals asking their foreign ministers to instruct their respective ambassadors at the UN to vote for a particular position. Professor Albright actions were based on her knowledge of the structures in those countries and how they operate.

I have further two examples to substantiate this point. Abdalla Sureya (Juba), the Kuwait ambassador to Sudan in the 1980s and early 1990s. (He later died as ambassador of his country in Mauritania). He lived in South Sudan for 10 years as a diplomat in the Kuwait Consulate, in Juba before he became an ambassador in Khartoum. In his memoirs, 10 Years in the Southern Sudan (in Arabic language), is an account of how he immersed himself adapted to South Sudan’s norms and traditions. He went fishing and hunting, befriended intellectuals, chiefs, and as well as politicians of various political parties, and of course cooperated with the Government. In the process he won many accolades including being named after the city itself, the first Kuwaiti citizen stricken with malaria and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Juba. But most importantly to him, I think, he helped to foster friendly relationships between the peoples of South Sudan and Kuwait.

The second person whose diplomatic skills I rate highly is Donald Petterson. Mr Petterson served as the US ambassador to Khartoum (1992-1995). I was in Khartoum in 1992 and I vividly remember him on television participating in the Soba marathon. At the end of the race he stood in line waiting for his prize, a white man, in a sea of black faces. The marathon offered Ambassador Donald Petterson an opportunity to demonstrate to the Sudanese people that there was a new friend who loves them. The GOSS diplomats abroad may not have the resources Dr Abdalla Juba or Mr Petterson had. But they may possess some other advantages that they could deploy to further the cause of their people. We learned from Dr Abdalla Juba and Mr Petterson’s examples that the individual’s ability and willingness to engage and understand the common interests of the countries involved is at the heart of one’s success. This will require repositioning the strategic interests and needs of the South Sudan within the competing and demanding international relations arena. Remember, the road to the Obama’s White House or Hillary Clinton’s State Department may start in Accra, Abuja, Cape Town or Brussels.

The author is a university lecturer in England. His e-mail contact is ([email protected]).