Will Envoy Natsios break the bilateral chain? (2)
By Mahgoub El-Tigani
“We have met with the American Envoy… somehow, there is a middle way,” said the Sudanese foreign ministry spokesperson in interview with the Jazeera Channel (14 October 2006).
October 14, 2006 — The foreign ministry statement came about almost at the same time the news informed about a generous $800 m grant the US Government allocated to the Government of South Sudan (GOSS) to rehabilitate infrastructure of the region. And yet, an American “rod” toughened the US pressure on the Sudanese regime with penal congressional legislation.
Obviously then, there is not any “middle way” to follow; rather, a path of rough politics seems to be enforceable between the two sides since President Bashir’s visit to the UN General Assembly in New York via Cuba. Both parties, however, are urged to realize the need to ensure normal relations to strengthen the Sudanese national decision making, without discrimination or partisan application, as the sole most important priority to end the Sudan’s Crisis:
As Interim President of the Sudanese Transitional Rule to electoral presidency and the South Sudan determining referendum for the country’s optional unity, President Bashir failed miserably to execute his national and global duties: Sudanese Interim President should have been the last leader on earth to develop stifling conflicts with the Sudan’s Effective Peace Friends, especially the US Government and the UN Security Council.
A year since the Sudan’s Effective Peace Friends pulled the Bashir’s isolationist regime to an internationally recognized upper-hand partner with the SPLM and the other wrongfully excluded parties of the Sudanese popular democratic opposition, the Interim President should have been actively laying the best political and economic grounds, not only wanted counter-terrorism deals, to lead his yearning people graciously to enjoy stable and flourishing relations with the world’s most superpower and the other Sudan’s Effective Peace Friends.
At this point, it is expedient to recall the NDA democratic opposition was the first entity in the whole world to alert the International Community since the early 1990s about the NIF dangerous involvement in multi-faceted national, regional and global terrorism by direct authoritative abuses of the Sudanese State, treasury, and international partnership.
Regrettably, the concerned parties never paid necessary attention to the NDA’s clear commitment to clear out the Sudanese soil from all forms of terrorism based on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Sudan’s Crisis. After a failing cycle of partisan politics, the world is strongly urged once again to consider seriously the NDA option.
Were the Natsios-Sudanese Foreign Ministry talks totally confined to the crisis in Darfur, it would appear that the Khartoum’s spokesperson statement was slightly hopeful. The bare fact, however, indicates that, it is too early to envisage possibilities of normal relations with the United States, even if “a middle way” may be possibly imaginable in the heights of a Sudanese-American conflict that is experiencing mounting tensions and deep disagreements over key strategic issues.
The unresolved conflict on the UN 1706 about the situation of Darfur is certainly a problem. The political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions of the CPA’s emphasis on the permanent peace and sustainable development, however, constituted the major impetus of the Sudanese national and international support of the CPA, in the first place.
The list of tensions between GOS and the US centers on the CPA performance that failed to reflect in any satisfactory level the targeted democratization of Sudan by the new century’s most promising conflict-resolution treaty.
Earlier, an overwhelming public support by the Sudanese influential democratic forces (the NDA, including SPLM, and the Umma) coupled with an auspicious spirit by the IGAD negotiating teams at Naivasha (2005), regardless of distasteful occasional abstentions by the Sudan’s military junta and its supportive Brotherhood, motivated the Sudan’s Effective Peace Friend’s to work hand-in-hand with the IGAD to bring to the table the GOS-SPLM signing persona.
Not only that; but the US Congress and the US President supported the final proceedings of the CPA’s approval by direct contacts with the late SPLM/A Leader, Dr. John Garang de Mabior, and the GOS leaders. The US distinguished effort to help ending the South-North civil war remains a historical landmark in the relations of the two countries.
Unfortunately, a prompt resetting of the US-Sudanese agenda placed security cooperation to combat international terrorism above the sensitive need of incorporating all opposition forces (as clearly stipulated by CPA) to carry out principled implementation of the agreement. The re-structured agenda, however, provided the anti-democratic leaderships of the ruling regime with a golden chance to re-arrange their own priorities vis-à-vis the CPA.
This re-structured agenda allowed GOS to remove its treaty commitment to the CPA as it failed to keep pace with the SPLM, peace-loving parties, and civil society groups’ unmatched enthusiasm to make true the CPA.
Added to the painful frustration of the Sudanese, in general, and the South Sudan government’s and people’s increasing grievances, in particular, from the GOS systematic pre-emptying of the peace agreements, the disappointment of the CPA’s international guarantors was equally significant; repeatedly mentioned in the UN Secretary General’s reports to the Security General, as well as serious reports by the other UN, US, EU, AU, and AL senior officials.
The Sudanese nation and the international community are wholeheartedly committed to the CPA democratization concerns. Unfortunately, this principled politics is non-existent in the government’s codes.
Of all difficulties and hardships of dealing with the Darfur Crisis, which indeed is the Sudan’s magnifying crisis, however, the most difficult obstacle that Danforth Report perhaps deliberately skipped was the NIF/NCP deceptive nature and double standards.
Addressing public issues with simultaneous contradictory statements is a technique consistently applied by the Brotherhood’s ruling party – even before seizure of political power by the NIF military coup. Reserving “necessary margins” for a “profitable deal” by the Brotherhood ideologues in the national or international affairs is a matter of attaining goals with no consideration, whatever, to political obligations or ethical concerns.
THE NIF/NCP DOUBLE STANDARDS
This peculiar brand of hypocritical dualism has been adopted by the GOS ruling party to enjoy a broad margin of political maneuvers in the face of the pressing claims by people for power and wealth sharing, as well as the escalated pressure by the International Community to help establish more enduring peace and social tranquility for the victimized populations of Sudan.
Ignoring the dangerous impact of sidelining Sudanese political forces, the CPA was virtually the biggest hit that granted a new political cycle for the Brotherhood regime to carry out earlier plans that monopolized political power with a few calculated offerings to circumvent the opposition’s legitimate right to participate effectively in the national decision making.
The most recently signed East Sudan/GOS agreement is a renewed example of the non-principled dualism of the Brotherhood’s non-principled profiteering strategy.
Emphasizing selective ethno-tribal interests with due respect to the NCP partisan politics of granting presidential entourage, ministerial and provincial jobs, the agreement falls short of addressing the national need to ensure fair representation of the regions by the demographic, economic, and the other electoral criteria.
Thus, the Gedarif rich agro-business region, among other aggrieved entities, complained loudly from the agreement’s imbalanced formula with respect to the demographic representation of the inhabitants.
Similar to the governance conflict in both Darfur and South Sudan, the Sudanese East should enjoy regional unity on the broadest democratic representation politics, instead of a new regional fragmentation policy by the Asmara Peace Agreement that serves the NIF/NCP thirst for partisan politics in administrative and political terms way above popular agenda. This tricky situation is an illegitimate replication of partisan politics, which has been met with increasing popular protest the more that the NIF/NCP upper-hand margin comes into play.
Notwithstanding urging diplomatic measures upon the government by the United Nations Security Council and the Human Rights Commission, besides the AU, EU, and AL member states, the ruling junta implemented an intolerant iron-clad policy, still pragmatically reconcilable, as needs be, to achieve the NIF/NCP targeted goals at expense of the national agenda and international concerns.
The experiences of the Sudanese opposition with the Brotherhood junta are quite evident: the new regime was able to avert some of the immense pressures on it to comply with CPA provisions by occasional assertive promises without any real effort to put the CPA to task, convene the all-Sudanese conflict resolution conference, and stop the genocidal war it continues to wage against the unprotected citizens in Darfur.
Regardless of the strong condemnations of the regime for the heinous crimes it never ceased to commit against humanity in different regions of the country, the NIF/NCP managed to stay on top of the world news, maneuvering, and planning for partisan gain by all possible deals and appeals, including shameless preempting practices of the CPA.
‘Business and diplomacy go hand in hand,’ the GOS military and civilian bureaucrats must have kept the Brotherhood’s lessons by heart. Offering contradictory stands by top officials of the government as a “normal, acceptable, diplomatic skill” continues to siphon off the national and international pressures inasmuch as the NIF/NCP CPA-based upper-hand politics allow!
Responding to consistent pressures on the Sudanese State to democratize the ruling system in Darfur, in accordance with the CPA, GOS resorts to assertions showing willingness to make peace when, in fact, it would be obstructing peace negotiations with the non-complying opposition groups by all means possible; thus exhibiting a confusing non-comprehensible stand to the Sudanese national communities, in general, and the world powers, in particular.
In the most recent Sudanese-International crisis on the need to replace the poorly-prepared AU forces in Darfur by efficient UN troops, the Sudanese UN Mission in New York affirmed an “offensive” approach intimidating Member States not to cooperate with Security Council Resolution 1706. That offensive was quickly refuted by the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. In the meantime, the text of both contradictory statements was further confused by the Khartoum Minister of Defense who pledged to “fight until death any foreign invasion of Darfur!”
There are no limits for the confusing stands of the aging junta: President Bashir, as another example, asserted his government’s commitment to the Naivasha and the Abuja peace agreements in more than one occasion. The president’s assertions, nonetheless, were flatly contradicted by war-like threats by the NIF/NCP Deputy Chairperson to withdraw the regime’s obligations towards the CPA in response to the Government of South Sudan support of a UN effective presence in Darfur.
Regardless of the President’s written determination to collaborate with the UN Mission in correspondence with the UN Secretary General followed by affirming words from foreign affairs spokesperson to abide-by the UN Security Council resolutions, the President denounced his own commitments within a short period of time to rebuke the UN with shouting hostilities in a bid to cover his government’s failure to live up to the CPA treaty obligations.
The NIF/NCP double standards have apparently confused the President of Sudan in his handling of the UN Security Council resolutions: on one hand, the Brotherhood pressure on GOS to support Hamas government, Iran side in the Iranian-Security Council conflict, and the Hizb-Allah warring with Israel explain al-Bashir’s storming attack on “a role played by International Zionism in the Darfur Crisis.”
On the other hand, the NIF/NCP double standards motivated President Bashir to blame the United States Government frustrating his personal desire to move around the States, irrespective of claims of applying equalitarian measures by the Khartoum foreign affairs, or application of necessary security protocols by the host nation.
SUDANESE-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Of all GOS double standards, the reactions developed lately against the CPA influential guarantor, the United States Government, deserve a special note.
Following the signing of the CPA in Naivasha on January 2005, the Sudanese-American relations seemed prepared to enter a high level of mutual understanding. But the prospects of these normalizing tendencies were speedily favored to serve security concerns instead of a watchdog follow-up of the CPA democratization programs.
Both governments missed the opportunity to boost the peace and democratization processes of Sudan by an effective accommodation of the Sudanese democratic constituencies, namely the Umma, DUP, and the other political parties and civil society groups unto the CPA. The direction of change in the political conditions of the country in light of the Danforth Report testifies to the prevalence of this loss.
True, a few changes have taken place since the release of Danforth’s Report: the CPA brought “a halting peace” between the Khartoum rulers and the SPLM since January 2005; another “short-lived” bilateral agreement occurred between the same rulers and a section of the SLA in Darfur; and a third agreement was signed with the East Sudan rebel groups in Asmara.
And yet, the GOS/opposition agreements have been subjected to systematic preempting by the NIF/NCP double standards and preempting politics. The latest rejecting response to these deals has been most recently by the speaker of the Gedarif legislative Assembly: “If government deals are only fair with armed groups, we can also take arms.”
THE DIRECTION OF CHANGE
In 2002, the Danforth Report advised “It will be important to ensure that these various groupings have the ability to make their views known and to participate in decisions relating to peace and the political future of Sudan.” This clear advocacy of political solution to the Sudan’s crisis was a legitimate outcome of the Envoy’s righteous analysis of the Sudanese problem.
Mr. Andrew Natsios is an envoy with broad experiences in the million mail nation of Africa. It is expected he would utilize this knowledge of the country and its people to best advice the two governments on the most appropriate measures to bring peace and development to the war-trodden region of Darfur, and to strengthen the political stability of the country as a foremost step to implement the peace agreements effectively.
The conditions of Sudan in the year 2006 are not different in any logical sense from the situation of the country the Danforth Report elaborately covered in 2002:
1. Aside from the formalistic procession of governmental tools by CPA provisions, the direction of change has not yet manifested in the desirable construction of democratic structures at length in the Central Government or in the Government of South Sudan (GOSS).
2. The post-CPA Era produced a better Interim Constitution than the NIF coup decrees and the succeeding NIF/NCP constitution. But the CPA performance failed to enhance construction of the bridges of confidence between the peace partners, in particular, and the people of Sudan at large.
3. The process of democratizing the country has been lingering behind in practical terms with respect to democratic functioning in the administrative, legislative, and judicial domains. As Southerners bitterly complain (see updated statements in the Sudan Tribune), the NIF/NCP partisan politics has actually inhibited any principled implementation of the agreement.
4. GOSS had to rely on its own contacts and external relations to assert its development responsibilities. Still, the GOSS political process and the SPLM transformation to a national party have been effectively handicapped by the NIF/NCP anti-democratic plans and uncompromising stands.
5. As a consequence of these shortcomings, the governance bodies of the country failed to establish greater compliance with the international human rights, or even the minimum standards of these norms as stipulated in the Interim Constitution.
6. The exclusion of large democratic constituencies from active participation in national decision making continued unabated, which generated mounting tensions between people and the governing systems.
7. The double standards’ hypocritical politics of the NIF/NCP military junta frustrated the UN intervention decisions to salvage the people of Darfur from the genocidal scourge they still suffer.
8. The hegemonic status of the terrorizing security apparatus of the regime inhibited the civil society roles in the process of peace and national building.
9. The failures of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the NIF/NCP PDF, Janjawed and other unlawful militias continue to force military solutions on the Darfur rebels; thus offending enduring resistance from the part of the natives and devastating the region with crimes against humanity for which top officials and the other perpetrators must be apprehended and put to trial before the ICC.
10. The reluctance of the NIF/NCP to share political power with the democratic opposition of Sudan by abandoning all partisan monopolies will lead the country to a new series of violence, including renewable civil wars, to the detriment of the whole Region.
The peace strategies so far adopted and the steps accordingly encouraged would attain more success if the International Community and the Superpower recognize the NDA/Umma as the biggest unified body of the Sudanese democratic groups, and then act energetically to support the opposition participation in the peace process together with the civil society groups, instead of concentrating only on government/armed forces to solve the crystallizing complexity of the Darfur/Sudan crises.
The Danforth report might have delineated the need to acknowledge this fact, even though the report never mentioned the NDA opposition in name.
The NDA is advised to perfect its homework a step forward with popular support to occupy the position it deserves as a most promising player in the Sudanese contemporary affairs.
For that purpose, the Umma and the SPLM/A should be encouraged to cooperate closely with the NDA; and the democratic parties, unions, and professional groups that have not yet acquired NDA membership should be wholeheartedly welcomed in the struggle for peace via a revised version of the CPA to accommodate fully the Comprehensive Political Solution.
The American Foreign Service has clearly proven its effectiveness in the CPA legacy. To rely on the double standards and dual assertions of the NCP ruling party or its presidential staff, nonetheless, will not suffice to achieve the Sudanese-American democratization agenda or normal relations.
For Envoy Natsios’ mission to succeed there is not any “middle way” to follow:
– GOS is equally responsible to facilitate the Envoy’s role to meet with all chiefs, native administrators, and government officials in Darfur.
– The Envoy’s mission should be equally facilitated with free meetings with all opposition groups, especially the Umma Party, the DUP, the Communists, workers’ and farmers’ federations, professional associations, and the human rights organizations and civil society groups.
– Sudanese civil society organizations abroad should have a fair chance to meet with the Envoy, as well.
– An all-Sudanese conference under the auspices of the UN and the active presence of the AU, US, EU, and AL will certainly lend support to the ongoing efforts to end the crisis.
Clearly then, Envoy Andrew Natsios has no option but to adopt Sudanic-Americana strategies to break the Sudan’s Effective Friend’s Naivasha-based chain of bilateral agreements in order to bring the Sudanese-American relations into a vibrant era of sustainable development.
* The author is a member of the Sudanese Writers’ Union. He can be reached at [email protected].