Imperfect peace in Sudan
By James Smith
September 23, 2010 — On 24 September Foreign Ministers will meet in New York to discuss the dangers of renewed conflict in Africa’s largest country. They have reason to be downbeat, because Sudan is complicated.
The plea of complexity is one reason Governments fail to prevent the world’s worst atrocities, according the former UN Chief in Sudan, Dr Mukesh Kapila. He should know. Early in 2004, at the height of mass atrocities in Darfur, he sounded the alarm – which was met with a catalogue of excuses for inaction.
Having witnessed genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica, Kapila believed he could recognize the difference between conflict and state organized slaughter when he saw it. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed Kapila’s view in July 2010, with an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President on charges of genocide. ICC arrest warrants had already been issued against Sudanese officials Ali Kushayb and Ahmed Harun for crimes against humanity; but more on Harun later.
When in 2004 Kapila banged on the doors of power in New York, London, Paris and Washington, the crisis in Darfur was just too awkward to fit in to the priority agenda, focused on ending a different, though related, war between North and South in Sudan.
For over 20 years the Islamist Government in Khartoum had been engaged in a bloody civil war with animists and Christians in the South, at a cost of some two million Sudanese lives. A peace deal was brokered in 2005; the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which guaranteed the people of Southern Sudan a referendum on possible independence from the North.
Six years later, much is at stake. Many Southerners look forward to a ‘promised land’ following the referendum, but the future looks far from a paradise. The nub of the problem is that the North finds it hard to relinquish control of the oil beneath Southern Sudan. So border disputes remain unresolved. Preparations for the referendum are not in place, either mentally or logistically.
Should the referendum go ahead and the South split off, there is a risk of renewed war between North and South. There is also high chance that internal law and order will break down. Southerners are restless. They can’t understand the pitiful lack of development despite rich oil revenues. South Sudan has virtually no roads, hardly any schools, and the one in ten children die before their fifth birthday.
Their complaints won’t be expressed with petitions, but by organized militias. The region is awash with small arms, which the Southern leadership believe are being supplied by the North to destabilise the South before the expected new state has chance to take its first breath. Western nations are reluctant to pre-empt the referendum, yet if they don’t ramp up assistance to the Government of South Sudan to achieve development in far-flung regions, strengthen rule of law and run conciliation programmes, South Sudan could be born a failed state. That would come at great human and financial cost to the Sudanese, and indeed to the World.
With all that at stake, it’s hardly surprising there is little room on the agenda for Darfur this week. In the minds of many, that other regional crisis has quietly gone away. However, over two million people live in camps, too afraid to return to their homes. Ethnic cleansing is consolidating with the passage of time.
It is understandable that Governments try to address one Sudanese issue at a time, but the high-level representatives in New York this week should reflect on a recent complex conflict in Europe.
Back in 1995 a deal was hammered out in Dayton to end the dreadful mass killings in the former Yugoslavia. The Serb leader, Milosevic, was a partner in that peace. At the time, the province of Kosovo didn’t fit neatly into the peace agreement framework, despite unrest pointing to serious troubles ahead. Again, it was just too complicated, so the province fell off the radar for a few years. Then Milosevic, encouraged that he was insulated politically, launched an attack on Kosovo Albanians. Aside from the human cost (which I witnessed first-hand as a doctor with the International Medical Corps), responding to the crisis and rebuilding Kosovo ran up a bill of some US$50 billion over the subsequent decade. It was easier, it seems, for politicians to spend $50 billion reacting to a crisis than focusing minds, getting tough and averting a disaster.
Dayton was imperative. But it was equally necessary to find a solution for Kosovo. Peace in the South of Sudan is imperative, and urgent. But it is equally necessary to find a solution for Darfur.
Diplomats should not lose sight of the thread running through all the crises in Sudan; a pattern in which the ruling National Congress Party governs by committing atrocities against its own civilians, behaviour encouraged by impunity for past crimes. Violence in or between the North and South could well spark rebellious marginalized groups to pursue violence themselves to achieve a degree of political and economic equality, not least in Darfur, East Sudan and South Kordofan. This latter state borders the South and is already a place of high tension, with hotly disputed borders and a rich oil field. In May 2008 the border town of Abyei was razed.
It is to the powder keg of South Kordofan that Ahmed Harun has been appointed Governor by the President of Sudan. Harun honed his craft there previously and earned the nickname the Butcher of Nuba in the 1990’s. He then took his experience to Darfur for which he is wanted by the ICC for orchestrating crimes against humanity.
Diplomats don’t like talk of justice when negotiating sensitive peace deals with the perpetrators of international crimes. Sometimes, it is argued, justice needs to give way for peace. However, in Sudan, impunity for crimes during the Southern war set a precedent for atrocities during the Darfur crisis. If a line is not drawn in the sand, the scene will be set for crimes in the next conflict. While border and oil issues must be resolved if there is to be sustainable peace, Ministers should also make it clear that appointing someone with Ahmed Harun’s history of mass atrocity to govern Sudan’s most volatile state is not acceptable.
The good news is that President Obama will attend the Sudan meeting in New York this Friday, a signal that the U.S. understands time is running out for Sudan. No small responsibility rests on the shoulders of the delegates. Such meetings can go down in history as turning points on the road to much-needed peace, or they can be noted as yet another missed opportunity save millions of people from the misery of brutal violence.
The author is the Chief Executive, Aegis Trust