US and UK megaphone diplomacy on Darfur?
By Wasil Ali
April 9, 2007 — In September 2006 Mark Malloch Brown the British United Nations’ deputy secretary general, decried what he called the “megaphone” diplomacy coming out of Washington and London on Darfur. Brown said that Bush and Blair know that they cannot back their threats to the government of Sudan by action so they might as well refrain from such strong rhetoric. The outgoing UN deputy secretary general made it clear that the regime in Khartoum is benefiting from these threats to portray themselves as the next victim of the Anglo-Saxon crusade after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Naturally the subjects of Brown’s criticisms were outraged by his remarks. The spokesman of the State department Sean McCormack sent a rather blunt advice to the top UN aide telling him that “Rather than focusing on what the U.S. or the UK or others might be doing, he [Brown] might apply himself to the task at hand rather than giving speeches”.
Personally I must say that at the time I was disappointed at Brown’s comments for a couple of reasons. First I firmly believe that if it wasn’t for the US and to a lesser extent UK, the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur would have never been the center of the world’s attention. Thus I expected a little more courtesy from a UN official towards two countries who had been the forerunners in helping the people of Darfur at a time when Arab, Muslim and even Africans nations turned the Darfur crisis into a purely political issue and went on to support Khartoum blindly. These same countries are either unable (African countries) or unwilling (Arab & Muslim countries) to financially support the humanitarian efforts or the African Union forces in Darfur. The Secretary of the Arab League Amr Moussa complained that the Arab nations have only fulfilled ten percent of their pledges they made to the AU troops in Darfur.
The second reason I wasn’t pleased with Brown’s remark is that in my opinion his remarks in this public manner would only help boost the Bashir’s regime in its propaganda and in its staunch opposition to the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Darfur. However I must admit today that I find some truth in Brown’s statements. To demonstrate this I will attempt to prove why I think this is the case.
To start off there are two unconfirmed stories I have came across in the last two years. The first is an article by a Sudanese Islamic scholar close to the circles of the Bashir regime, yet rarely in agreement with them, that the US had asked the Sudanese government during the Naivasha peace talks to move quickly and crush the uprising in Darfur so that it doesn’t spoil the North-South peace in Sudan. The second story I heard firsthand from a figure who was present in the Abuja peace talks between Khartoum and the Darfur rebel groups. One of the stumbling blocks was the issue of having a Darfurian as the Vice-President of Sudan. The rebel groups suggested that the Second Vice President post, occupied by Ali Osman Taha, be filled by someone from Darfur. That person told me that Robert Zoellick, the US deputy Secretary of State at the time, who was present at the talks stepped in and said that this will not happen because “Taha [Second Vice President of Sudan] is our man”. It was also Zoellick who tried to understate the death toll in Darfur to “between 60,000 to 160,000”. He also tried to avoid restating his government’s position that what is happening in Darfur is genocide.
Then in 2005 the Los Angeles Times revealed the most shocking piece of news for all Darfur advocates. The CIA sent a jet in April 2005 to Khartoum to ferry Salah Gosh, chief of Sudan’s intelligence agency, to Washington for meetings on nabbing terror suspects in East Africa. It is no secret to anyone, including the US administration, that Gosh has orchestrated the attacks in Darfur when it first broke out. It is also not clear how Sudan can be of any help to the CIA given the fact that it has kicked all terrorist figures out of the country years ago. Charles Snyder, the former U.S. State Department Senior Representative on Sudan, defended the administration by saying that its intelligence cooperation with Sudan has not precluded it from condemning the genocide in Sudan. Apparently the US could not withstand the outcry and criticisms from human rights groups from within so they refused to grant Gosh visa to visit the US subsequently for medical reasons. The alternative was to let the Britain host Gosh so they could meet with him along with UK officials as reported by the Observer in March 2006. The UK foreign office defended admitting Gosh by saying that he “has not been charged with any crime”. It is not clear if the foreign office expected the Sudanese judicial system to charge Gosh with crimes against humanity before it denied him a visa to Britain.
In April 2006 a list of names was being prepared by the UN Security Council to punish for obstructing peace in Darfur. A final list of eight names that included government officials was circulated among the UN Security Council members for approval and guess who objected to the list? It was the US. The Financial Times quoted unidentified British diplomats by saying that the US objected to adding senior Sudanese government officials to the list and only wanted a middle-ranking militiaman and one rebel. John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was obviously upset at the leakage and accused what he called “a small country” diplomats of false information. He went on to unconvincingly justify the US objections on the initial list submitted by saying that departments within the US administration have to look at the names and “come to the conclusion that the sanctions are warranted”. He went on to say that the US wants to make sure that they “can act simultaneously to put in place the necessary executive order that would create these sanctions as a matter of our domestic law”. One can only wonder what the UN Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1591 on Sudan is doing if the individual countries will ultimately be the ones conducting their own investigations on the individuals to be sanctioned.
The Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir said in his latest interview with NBC that the intelligence cooperation with the US will continue. A senior Sudanese government source also told NBC news that the cooperation is still “frequent and at the highest levels, with regular meetings between the Sudanese intelligence chief and the CIA.” The question that needs to be answered as to what is Khartoum is getting in return for that? It is inconceivable that the regime which once harbored terrorists from all around the globe would help the US in return for nothing. The Sudanese presidential adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail accused the US early this year of trying to topple his regime. Then why is Bashir still supplying a country trying to oust him from power with intelligence information? When resolution 1706 was adopted authorizing the deployment of a robust peacekeeping force in Darfur, US officials were overly confident that Sudan will accept it. At the time I thought hard as to why the US would be so certain that Sudan will agree to deploy UN peacekeepers in Darfur? I could only tell myself that they have received assurances from Khartoum through their own channels of communications that they will let UN peacekeepers in. This again brings to the spotlight the nature of the relationship between the US administration and the Bashir’s regime.
More recently, media reports coming from Khartoum that 40 containers belonging to the US embassy in Khartoum were admitted into the country. The Sudanese officials said that the Sudanese president made an exception and exempted the containers from custom fees contrary to the wishes of the Sudanese finance ministry. According to the same officials, the containers contained special equipment used to build what will be the biggest US embassy in Africa and a CIA operative’s center. Bashir also ordered that all US officials who wish to visit Sudan to be granted a visa valid for a year. Are all these developments consistent with the strong rhetoric coming out of Washington against Khartoum? Probably not.
This year the US has decided not to object to Sudan assuming the presidency of the African Union by saying that it is up to the member countries to “determine who would be the chairman or who would be an appropriate representative for them”. A year ago the US objected to Sudan’s presidency of the AU saying that “there are certain contradictions in the idea of Sudan holding the chair of the AU while there is an AU mission in Sudan designed to help protect Sudanese citizens, in part, from the Government of Sudan”. It is not clear what prompted the US to change its position this year given that the situation on the ground in Darfur has only worsened.
Domestic pressure by NGO’s and campaigns by lobby groups such as ‘Save Darfur’ coalition led the US administration to come up with a ‘Plan B’ for Sudan if it doesn’t allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur. The deadline was set as Jan 1st 2007, however it was extended when Sudan sent a very vague letter to the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan agreeing to deploying UN peacekeepers. The world kept waiting for yet another letter clarifying Sudan’s stance in more details. In the meanwhile the US kept threatening Sudan with the ‘Plan B’ almost like “The boy who cried wolf”. It was of no surprise that Sudan objected to each and every line of the AU-UN hybrid force proposal. It was clear from the start that Sudan will never allow a force with a mandate to protect civilians in Darfur or one that restricts the movements of its military in Darfur.
Following that, US officials told Reuters two weeks ago that they are moving ahead with Plan B within a few days. According to the Washington Post this was delayed until after Easter. Then Jackson Dahl from the Washington Post revealed that President Bush’s anger “rocked the Oval Office when aides presented him with a plan for sanctions against the Sudanese government” and that “raising his voice, he demanded that his special envoy for Darfur, Andrew Natsios, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley come up with something stronger”. The conclusion we can reach from this story is that the ‘Plan B’ was nothing but a minor inconvenience to the government of Sudan. Given the fact that this so called ‘Plan B’ was in the works for several months it turned out to be very fragile even to President Bush himself. This can explain why Andrew Natsios, President Bush’s special envoy to Sudan, would not reveal the details of the plan. Perhaps Natsios himself was not convinced that the public would buy such a plan which included sanctions against three individuals, two politicians accused of “atrocious acts” and a rebel leader who was “obstructionist” in peace talks. Without knowing the names it is clear to me that these individuals will probably be people that no one has ever heard of. My personal belief is that any sanctions that do not include the president Bashir himself who, is considered by US officials speaking to the Washington Post, “as one of the main roadblocks to ending the suffering in Darfur” will not be serious enough to force Khartoum to change its behavior.
It is understandable that the national interests of the US comes first but on the other hand it should not raise false hopes by making strong statements with no action. If it is in the interest of the US to maintain a working relationship with the Sudanese regime for the war on terrorism then they should be open about it. It is also possible that the US administration does not feel it has the ability to punish Khartoum effectively. The US envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios hinted to that in his testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Darfur last February by saying that “what the people don’t realize in the United States that we do not dominate the world economy the way we used to”. However, all the beforementioned facts lead me to believe that there is an internal struggle within the US administration on how to deal with Sudan. The question at the focus of this struggle is what should come first; the war on terrorism or human rights and the humanitarian disaster in Darfur? Only time will tell which one they picked and hopefully they will make the right choice for the people of Darfur.
* The author is Sudan Tribune journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]