Bush Diplomats Gain in Sudan
White House Targets Terrorism
Without Using Military
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 22, 2003 — The Bush Administration may well score its biggest success in taming a terrorist state without firing a shot.
In a sharp departure from the invasions he launched into Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush turned diplomats loose on Sudan , whose Islamic fundamentalist regime is suspected of providing sanctuary to terrorists. Mr. Bush’s diplomatic boost to Kenyan-led mediation efforts could help end a civil war that has raged intermittently for 47 years between Sudan’s government in the largely Arab and Muslim north and Christian and animist rebels in the south. The administration hopes a peace deal would temper Khartoum’s support for Muslim extremist groups, which Washington officials think already is waning.
Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to meet negotiators from the warring parties Wednesday in Kenya. There’s a small chance a preliminary peace deal will be done in time for the meeting. More likely he’ll give a public push to talks that have repeatedly bogged down but are now going well. Either way, the administration will be able to claim credit for trying to be peacemakers at a time when the president’s war-making is generating criticism at home and abroad.
The U.S. approach to Sudan long has been decidedly hostile. The Clinton administration levied economic sanctions on the country, which was home to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, and attacked it with cruise missiles in retaliation for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The American strategy shifted toward negotiation after Mr. Bush took office — under persistent urging from the president’s allies in the Christian Right.
“This is, perhaps, the Bush administration’s signal diplomatic effort since taking office,” said Jennifer G. Cooke, deputy director of the African program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., think tank. “It’s a real example of where engagement — versus isolation and sanctions — makes a difference.”
Negotiators representing the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement still have potentially significant hurdles to overcome to end a war that has claimed at least two million lives in two decades, through combat, famine and disease. It’s not clear how the two sides will share the nation’s untapped oil wealth, how the north will make its strict Islamic laws palatable to non-Muslims from the south or even who will get to be president when.
“We’re going to invest all we can … with respect to our diplomatic involvement, our political involvement,” Mr. Powell said en route to Kenya Tuesday. Sudan watchers warn that military strongman Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir or his successors may, in the end, prove unwilling to allow the south to secede in six years, a right spelled out in the current draft treaty. The south has been fighting a separatist war for most of the time since Sudan won independence from Britain in 1956.
“I really am apprehensive,” said New Jersey Democratic Rep. Donald Payne, who for years has pressed for harsher sanctions on Khartoum. “I think the [Sudanese] government is just trying to gain more time, get more oil wealth and then determine that they have such an overwhelming military presence that they can defeat” the rebels.
Still, the country appears to have made more progress toward peace than it has in decades, and the administration is dangling carrots. If the parties reach an overall settlement and Khartoum takes further steps to combat terrorism — in particular, expelling Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants — the U.S. would consider removing Sudan from its list of terrorist sponsors, lifting economic sanctions and, perhaps, providing aid. The administration also is holding out the possibility of a White House peace-accord signing ceremony.
The drive for peace has been multinational: Neighboring countries, especially Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda, have led regional negotiations for a decade, and Britain and Norway have pushed the Sudanese to the table. But even his critics acknowledge that Mr. Bush gets part of the credit.
Evangelical Christians and congressional conservatives, in particular, lobbied the president and Congress, incensed by reports of Christians being taken as slaves by Muslims from the north, and by the subjection of non-Muslims to Islam-inspired Shariah law, which dictates amputations and other harsh punishments.
“The issue of Sudan has been an issue of the faith community predominantly,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), who, along with Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), has been a key voice reminding Congress of Sudan’s suffering.
Two days before the 2000 presidential election, Rev. Franklin Graham, and his televangelist father, Rev. Billy Graham, ran into candidate George W. Bush at a hotel in Jacksonville, Fla. The three men ate breakfast together, and the younger Mr. Graham asked Mr. Bush to make Sudan a priority. Mr. Graham’s relief group, Samaritan’s Purse, ran a hospital in Lui, in southern Sudan , and government warplanes had repeatedly bombed the facility.
A few months later, the younger Mr. Graham performed the benediction at Mr. Bush’s inauguration, and, at every opportunity, he has prodded the president for help. It hasn’t hurt his cause that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R., Tenn.), a physician, has performed volunteer surgery at the Lui hospital on several occasions.
Mr. Bush responded to the entreaties days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, appointing former Republican Sen. John C. Danforth of Missouri as special envoy for Sudan and making the country a State Department priority. Mr. Danforth set up a series of tests to see if the Sudanese were serious about peace.
“We have tried very hard to solve the problem, and we are getting closer,” Mr. Powell said.
The Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan seemed to accelerate the process and to make Khartoum more compliant. Sudanese authorities provided the U.S. with intelligence on al Qaeda, which had used the country as a base. “The people of Sudan are smart enough to see what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they have come to the bargaining table,” said Mr. Graham.
The Sudan Peace Act of 2002 threatened deeper sanctions against the north if talks failed. The negotiations gained momentum last month when rebel leader John Garang and Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha met in Naivasha, Kenya, and agreed on how to position their armies during the six-year lead-up to a possible independence vote. “This is really a now-or-never kind of peace accord,” said Ms. Cooke.
WAR TORN
Civil war between Sudan’s Muslim governments in the north and Christian rebels in the south has ravaged the country for more than 40 years.
-? 1956: Sudan gains independence from Britain, civil war begins
-? 1958: First in a series of military coups overthrows civilian-elected government
-? 1972: Addis Ababa accords end fighting, make the south a self-governing region
-? 1978: Oil is discovered in the south
-? 1983: Islamic government installs Shariah law, war begins again
-? 2001: Bush names Sen. Danforth as special envoy to Sudan ; rebels agree to demobilize 2,500 children soldiers
-? 2002: Machakos Protocol outlines steps necessary to achieving peace
-? 2003: Negotiators reach agreement on security issues, paving way for an official end to war that has killed more than 2 million since 1983
Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies