Obama betrayed his campaign pledges on Sudan, says former U.S. envoy

November 11, 2010 (WASHINGTON) – The former U.S. special envoy to Sudan under President Bush today assailed the Obama administration saying they had allowed Khartoum to get off the hook despite numerous violations it has committed in the South and Darfur.

“In May 2008, candidate Obama joined in a statement in which he demanded that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end and that the CPA be fully implemented. He went further to condemn the Sudanese government’s consistent efforts to undermine peace and security, including its repeated attacks against its own people. He pledged to “pursue these goals with unstinting resolve,” said former U.S. special envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson in an Op-ed he wrote in ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine on Thursday.

Williamson made reference to pre-election remarks by senators Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in which they criticized Bush’s engagement with Khartoum and their calls for imposing a no-fly zone over Darfur along with other punitive measures.

“I am not so cynical as to believe this tough language was just “politics as usual” without any conviction. I am sure they were sincere in their prescriptions and promises at the time. But those have not been pledges redeemed. They have been betrayed,” he added.

The ex-envoy’s unprecedented attack on Obama’s policies comes few days after it was revealed that the U.S. administration offered to remove Sudan from the list of states that sponsor terrorism as early as July 2011 should it facilitate the self-determination votes in Abyei and the South and recognize their outcome.

The offer was carried by chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry who began a visit to Khartoum last week and met with senior officials there including 2nd Vice President Ali Osman Taha.

“[N]ow, through a combination of northern belligerence and the naiveté of U.S. President Barack Obama and his advisors, we are once again staring into the abyss — as the administration’s desperate appeal to Khartoum for forbearance in exchange for its removal from the state sponsors of terrorism list makes clear,” Williamson wrote.

“The six-year cooling-off period between the [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] CPA and the referendum was intended to give the north the opportunity to make unity an attractive alternative to southern independence in 2011. Instead, the North continues to marginalize the south, denying full political participation and perpetuating economic and other forms of discrimination,” he added.

“The north has failed repeatedly to meet deadlines to arbitrate issues related to the referendum such as citizenship, freedom of movement, and treaties. It was slow to form the referendum commission and failed to set up the machinery to hold the referendum on time. Many observers believe current talks on these issues are part of a well-established pattern by northern leaders of setting up elaborate and complicated forums for discussing, deliberating, and eventually denying commitments they never intended to honor in the first place. Meanwhile, their leverage grows,”.

Williamson also took aim at his successor Scott Gration for downplaying the situation in Sudan’s west region of Darfur.

“On March 4, 2009, after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Obama did not even go before the cameras to applaud this step to end impunity. Instead, the White House made only a perfunctory statement. Just under a month later, the president’s special envoy to Sudan, J. Scott Gration, got off a plane in Khartoum and said, “I love Sudan.” He returned from his first trip to Darfur and proclaimed that it wasn’t as bad as he had expected,” he said.

The former U.S. diplomat said he has visited Darfur IDP camps to witness ” the horrific overcrowded conditions where, for as far as you can see, people live under torn plastic sheets; where from time to time the government turns off the electricity so wells do not work and people go without clean water; where there is disease and hunger; and where women are beaten and raped when they go out to gather firewood. It’s a living hell where suffering Sudanese survive in desperate conditions and have no hope of ever returning home”.

“I know the Sudanese government took comfort in Gration’s words and was emboldened to continue its genocide in slow motion,” Williamson said.

He however, lauded beefed up U.S. presence in Sudan through its diplomats and USAID but expressed concern over the stalemate regarding post-referendum issues such as border demarcation, wealth sharing, water, citizenship and national debt.

“But other key issues have gone unaddressed. There is no evidence of any progress on the decisive issue of oil-revenue sharing, for instance. Without some acceptable resolution of this thorny issue, war cannot be ruled out,” Williamson said.

He emphasized that the oil revenue sharing is the most sensitive to the North.

“In the end, the oil issue is about money, which makes it solvable. The South can agree to pay a “carrying fee” for oil to be transported over pipelines in the north and loaded onto oil tankers in Port Sudan. There should be room to work out a revenue-sharing deal acceptable (if not preferable) to both sides, with appropriate guarantees and an acceptable lifespan,” the former envoy said.

He warned that this is an issue that could cause a return of war between North and South.

“Obama must make it crystal clear that if war reignites, there will be serious consequences. The United States must make a credible threat that it will employ retaliatory actions against those who ignite renewed war, perhaps even using missiles to take out strategic targets,” Williamson said.

“That may sound extreme, but consider the consequences of inaction. Both sides are engaged in dangerous brinkmanship, and the horrific consequences of renewed war would be a tragedy for innocent Sudanese. Ethnic strife would deepen divisions and dangerously fracture the fabric of Southern Sudan’s society. And it would further destabilize a fragile region of East Africa stretching in a belt from Somalia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately, the recent history of human tragedy, failure, and betrayal has left Sudan with an unresolved puzzle where war is all too likely”.

Preparations for the key votes in South Sudan and Abyei have proceeded haltingly amid political and logistical obstacles, and the southerners have accused the northerners of stalling, warning of violence if the referendum is delayed. ?

Furthermore, it is all but certain that the Abyei referendum will be delayed as the commission to oversee it has not been established yet. Northern officials have publicly asserted that the disputed border area will not have its vote held as scheduled as issues of border demarcation and eligibility of voters have yet to be resolved.

The South Sudan referendum commission (SSRC) is reportedly in disarray over the “autocratic” leadership style of its chairman Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil. Last week the spokesperson for the commission resigned citing disagreement with Khalil and called for delaying the vote. Furthermore, the SSRC’s Secretary General Al- Nijoumi who also shares similar grudges against the chairman has sought to quit as well but was convinced to stay.

Also last Sunday, the head of the training unit at the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB) in Juba told Sudan Tribune he resigned over what he described as a ” poor working relationship” between the members Chan Reec Madut who heads the bureau.

The voter registration of Southerners is scheduled to begin next week with some observers fear it could be a chaotic process.

(ST)