Sudan expels US CARE director
August 27, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan has expelled the top official in Sudan of the U.S.-based aid group CARE, the director said on Monday.
Country director Paul Barker told Reuters the Sudanese government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission had given him 72 hours to leave the country without giving reasons for the decision.
Barker is the third prominent foreigner expelled from Sudan in less than a week. On Thursday Sudan told diplomats from Canada and the European Union to leave but it later allowed the EU ambassador to stay until his term expires next month.
Officials were not available to comment at the commission, the government body that monitors humanitarian work. But copies of its 72-hour order to Barker were printed in local papers.
“I am in the process of being expelled. I’ll be here for another 12 hours,” said Barker, a U.S. citizen.
“This has come as a huge surprise to us. I am very disappointed with the government’s decision, which I believe was based on information that was taken out of context. I am still hopeful though, as there are appeals being made.”
Barker said the director of the Humanitarian Aid Commission called him in on Saturday. “He told me he had a letter from the highest levels of government saying that they could not renew my work permit and that I had to leave in 72 hours. He told me it was somebody in security but would not be more specific.”
Barker said the only explanation he could think of was that the government was unhappy with an internal e-mail which he had written to CARE staff in October and which was leaked to the Sudanese press earlier this year.
“It was an e-mail about the security of CARE staff, setting out various scenarios for what might happen in (the western region of) Darfur,” said Barker, 53, who comes from Oregon.
“It was a totally appropriate email for a country director to write. But the government saw it as political analysis that was inappropriate for an aid organisation to make,” he added.
Aid workers from other aid agencies who did not want to be named said the expulsion came at a time of growing tension between humanitarian officials and the government of Sudan.
In the cases of the two diplomats last week, state radio quoted the Sudanese Foreign Ministry as saying they had interfered in the internal affairs of the country.
Barker said CARE had spent more than $184 million on aid projects in Sudan since it arrived in the country in 1979. It has spent more than $60 million in the last three years, he added, mostly in the troubled Darfur region.
“We have been in Sudan through thick and thin, through some very difficult times. It is very important that this doesn’t impact on our work in Sudan,” he added.
Barker said he would be leaving for the Kenyan capital Nairobi with his wife as soon as he received an exit visa.
(Reuters)
David Mayen Deng
Sudan expels US CARE director
I would like to attempt relating the intervention of foreigners into our own affairs with the role we have played as Sudanese. Sovereignty is respected in nations that respect the rights of its own citizens. And even though I support very few of Khartoum’s actions towards reinforcing the sovereignty of Sudan, I do believe that it is still the seat of our government until we decide otherwise and change it – by all available means.
First, in this one of few instances, I commend the government of Khartoum on its firm stand on issues that touch on national sovereignty. Many of aid workers in Sudan, South and North, believe that they are in a lesser sovereign nation than their own. We are a country with a history that goes back for thousands of years, so we may feel the sense of sovereignty more than the citizens of nations whose lifespan go for a couple of hundred years. And even though I may, in contrast to the majority of Sudanese, prefer American and European foreign policies (with their different dimensions and implementers) to that of countries like China, I also believe that sometimes they overstep their boundaries; thereby destroying the motives driving such policies.
Mr. Barker, together with those diplomats from Canada and The European Union, will serve as deterring instances for those foreign aid workers (and government officials in some cases) who may contemplate overstepping the line between diplomatic propriety and indiscretion, which will make them rethink before their zeal for saving the world overwhelms their patience.
The very concept of sovereignty, which is not totally the creation of the west as they want us to believe, is a recognized reality of our today’s world. Such recognition has created the concept of the rights of nations to reinforcing certain restrictions and guidelines within their own boundaries-as far as aliens are concerned. So, even though some governments, like the one in Khartoum today, abuse such rights to sovereignty, insignificant reasons often created unwarranted foreign interventions.
Although I do believe what is happening in Darfur is indeed a continuation of Genocide against the pure African peoples of Sudan by our half-Arab cousins of the North, I also personally believe that every nation walks in a path it creates for itself. And even though we could have avoided unnecessary bloodshed in our beloved proud nation, The Sudan, we are still capable of creating a united New Sudan through our internal struggles. We, with our unique social settings and groupings, can be the link for a continental unity.
Also, as we emphasize our sovereignty, we need to recognize the same indignation people feel when outsiders intervene in their own affairs and try to appear as better positioned than natives for reinforcing rights and obligations, for this is the same feeling we have in Darfur, South Sudan, The Nuba Mountains and Angasana Hills, when our Arab brothers of the center (fellow citizens) allow their superiority complex blind their eyes from recognizing our rights to sovereignty – within the context of a unitary Sudan. It is the same my fellow Sudanese half-Arabs, it is the same.
Conversely, even though the marginalized pure Africans of Sudan may need some help from outside sympathizers, too much of it may saturate our revolutionary hot spirit for forcing change; thereby reducing our own energies for continuing the fight for pacifying our nation, and setting things right. Let foreign diplomats speak out for their countries within those specified boundaries, but humanitarian workers should respect the clear boundaries between humanitarianism and blatant political advocacy.
Lastly, if we Sudanese continued on the ground set by our late nationalist hero Dr.John, we would need little help from outside. Africans need to be able to open the eyes of fellow half-Arab citizens to the fact that we respect their rich cultural contribution to the identity of Sudan; but as well, Arabs need to respect our equally great contribution to the same cultural identity of the country. In our unity of purpose, half-Arabs and Africans, Sudan will benefit and will genuinely deserve to be sovereign.
David Mayen, the Center for International Human Rights Advocacy, The University of Denver – [email protected]