Meeting On Sudan: Before turning to the…
Meeting On Sudan:
Before turning to the situation in the Republic of Sudan, let me mention the situation in South Sudan. It is a situation inextricably linked to events north of its border and where there is violence and division the hand of Khartoum can always be seen. The humanitarian consequences in the south – exacerbated by the flow of refugees – has been disasterous.
Earlier today (Wednesday 2nd April) Monsignor Mgr Roko Taban, Administrator of the Catholic diocese of Malakal (which covers Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states), sent me the following message via CAN. He said:
“So far on the ground, there is no sign of improvement. We have all had to leave our homes and there is no possibility of going back at the moment. South Sudan Government troops are now holding the town of Malakal itself but there is still sporadic fighting and unless this stops people will not have the confidence to return. They have already witnessed so much suffering and so they are afraid to go back.
“What the international community can do is to engage the two warring parties in a very sincere negotiation towards a peaceful settlement. The international community’s concern will act as a reminder to the warring parties that the country will collapse if things go on and it will encourage them towards negotiation. We need a friendly concern for the peaceful settlement for the good of the citizens who are so unhappy.
“Large numbers of people – in Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity States – are displaced to many distant places and lacking what they need. As a result, many hundreds of thousands of people face the question of starvation; indeed many may be facing it as we speak. They urgently need help.”
These events in the South have their origins and genesis in the civil war in Sudan in which Khartoum claimed the lives of 2 million people in the South of the country; they have their origin in the cultivation of lawlessness and corruption which are the hallmarks of Khartoum; they bear the fingerprints of men who are indicted by the ICC; and they have been a very convenient distraction for Khartoum as they try to turn away the gaze of a largely indifferent world from events in Blue Nile, Kordofan and Darfur.
My first visit to South Sudan was 16 years ago during the civil war and, in 2004, I went to Darfur and saw first hand a conflict which had claimed between 200,000 and 300,000 lives. While the world looked on, 90% of Darfur’s villages were razed to the ground. At the time, I published a report entitled, If This Isn’t Genocide, What Is? Throughout 2011 and 2012, I tabled questions and spoke in the House about the new genocide unravelling, in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and which was described by Dr Mukesh Kapila CBE, a former high-ranking British and United Nations official- he was UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, as,
“the second genocide of the 21st century”— Darfur being the first.
With more than 1 million affected as a ? Government kills its own people he re minded us of the folly of seeking to appease the regime in Khartoum: “Don’t be fooled by the government of Sudan. Despite many promises on humanitarian access and civilian protection, Al Bashir’s regime has never adhered to one single agreement that it has signed.”?
Those who unleashed this torrent of unconscionable violence on their own people are undoubtedly mass murderers and fugitives from justice, having been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. In South Kordofan and Blue Nile the perpetrators are attempting to repeat what happened in Darfur, but this time by closing borders and refusing access, a genocide without witnesses.
In 2011 Ministers told me that they were urgently seeking access to the affected areas:
“Reports of such atrocities will be investigated and, if they prove true, those responsible will need to be brought to account”.—[Official Report, 21/6/11; col. WA 294.]
Three months later, Ministers said that,
“we continue … to seek urgent access to those most affected by the conflict”.—[Official Report, 9/11/11; col. WA 66.]
However, three years later we have lamentably failed to do either, failing both systematically to collect evidence from fleeing refugees and to gain access to the areas on which bombs have been raining down. I called on the Government to downgrade our diplomatic relations, to freeze assets and to impose travel and other sanctions.
Either the second genocide of the twenty first century is unfolding or it is not; either those responsible for the first are now responsible for the second, or they are not. Either they are indicted by the ICC, or they are not. Either it’s business as usual, or it’s not.
The only time the FCO has any impact in negotiating with dubious foreign regimes is when it does so as part of a multilateral group.
The last time the FCO achieved anything diplomatic by itself was Lord Carrington in the case of what was then Rhodesia.
This would lead us to conclude we need to stiffen the resolve of our tripartite partners (USA & Norway), the EU and the UN in the way we deal with Bashir’s regime. Having clear goals would help. The stated goals of encouraging peace, stability and development in Sudan are too vague at a moment when Khartoum is oppressing its own people so brazenly, be they students in Khartoum or Arab Muslim citizens in the east, or the Nuba or the people of Darfur. Khartoum couldn’t have made it clearer that they have no interest in the development of their nation, nor its peace or security. At what point does the FCO acknowledge that Khartoum’s only priority is to preserve its own power
Am I alone in being incredulous when I hear the Foreign and Commonwealth Office tell us they are avoiding negotiating with indicted war criminals, preferring to talk to others within the NCP, as if they are somehow less tainted.
The entire NCP system in Khartoum is the problem. The NCP controls a web of commercial firms and banks; and it stays in power by sharing its wealth with just enough people in the Khartoum area, including, crucially, military officers.
Sudanese civilians are at the mercy of a kleptomaniac state which has centralised power in Khartoum, leading to the marginalisation of the regions and minorities who live within its borders. And it is a regime which is intent on leading us on a merry dance while it annihilates vast numbers of its own citizens and seeks to destabilise its southern neighbour, having bombed part of its sovereign territory and acted as quartermaster to militias like Joseph Kony’s LRA.
I have regularly asked the Government “ What is being done to assist the ICC in enforcing arrest warrants in those cases?”. The reply is a deafening silence.
This meeting organised by HART is taking place against the backdrop of the continued bombing of men women and children in the living hell of South Kordofan – many of them will be sheltering with their children in the caves of the Nuba Mountains. Pitifully they are foraging for what remains of their food supplies and as bombs and missiles rain down from the Government of Sudan’s Russian-made Antonov bombers.
Samira Zaka’s story is illustrative of their plight and was recorded by a brave journalist, Nicholas Kristof, from The New York Times, who made it into South Kordofan.
He described their terror as “an Antonov bomber buzzed above us, and Samira and her children rose from their torpor. They rushed into caves, and we all cowered deep in the rocks as the plane passed overhead. The Antonov went on to drop a bomb to the south.”
Although, that time, Samira survived, others were not so fortunate: four women were injured – one with a shrapnel wound that ripped open her chest and exposed her lungs. Kristof described Samira’s malnourished son who had been reduced to gnawing on a piece of wood
Dr Kapila – who, incidentally, today despairs of both his former employers – also gave first hand evidence of the bombing campaign telling parliamentarians:
“We heard an Antonov above us. Women and children started running and going into the nooks and caves of a mountain, a small hill rather. … We saw a burned-out village. As we left the border there was burned place after burned place after burned place. There was hardly a person to be seen.”
Dr. Kapila told us that this normally food rich State faces starvation because the attacks have forced the people from their fields. To ward off hunger they are eating next season’s seeds.
And none of this horror is new, nor should come as a surprise.
Sixteen years ago I visited South Sudan during a civil war which killed two million people. I met children who brought up to learn the difference between the hum of the engines of the Antonov bombers and the UN food planes.
Like Dr.Kapila, I saw the same atrocities in Darfur – where the Arab Government targeted black tribes. 2 million people were displaced, 90% of villages were razed to the ground, and 300,000 people were killed.
And what has happened in Darfur? While the international cavalcade moves on to some other desperate situation which it seems equally incapable of resolving, 2.3 million people remain displaced, and reports suggest that the increased violence of the last year has led to more than 350,000 more people being displaced; with “1.3 million people are now in temporary camps”; that “aerial bombardment is a regular occurrence”; that “there is a climate of fear and terrorisation” and “a rapid downward trend in security”; and that “the situation is getting worse.”
There may be another 50,000 people displaced in Adela but no one, including a UNAMID force of more than 20,000 personnel, has access, so no one really knows. For INGOs, the situation is fraught with danger following the killing of two of World Vision’s staff. There is now virtually no humanitarian access to areas that are not held by the Government.
It is five years since DfID officials have been able to get beyond the state capitals in Darfur to visit projects run by NGOs. The Security Council resolutions banning military flights over Darfur are, we heard yesterday, regularly being broken and those who issue their genocidal orders do so with total impunity.
Now impunity is the order of the day in South Kordofan – where more than one million inhabitants are ruled over by the very same serial killers who were responsible for the blood-letting in Darfur. South Kordofan is South Sudan and Darfur all over again.
More than 1 million people are now affected by this new war; hundreds of thousands are internally displaced; tens of thousands more are refugees.
The region is being bombarded by the Antonov war planes but there are also credible reports of missiles, land mines, and cluster munitions. Villages have been burnt: homes, farms, churches and wells have been targeted.
And where are we in all of this?
Two years ago I asked the Government what action the UN was taking in South Kordofan, under Resolution 1590, and which requires “particular attention” to be given to the “protection of vulnerable groups including internally displaced persons” and to “take necessary action to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.”
The UN also has a doctrine called “the duty to protect”
In South Kordofan these resolutions and doctrines have proved utterly worthless – not worth the paper on which they are written.
I then I raised reports of aerial bombardment. The Government told me that,
“we continue … to seek urgent access to those … affected by the conflict”.-
Yet there has been no access and no referral of these depredations to the International Criminal Court. Those responsible, led by indicted war criminals for crimes against humanity, continue to enjoy full diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom.
And, meanwhile, the bombing campaign deepens and Khartoum’s scorched earth policy continues.
For the sake of mothers like Samira shouldn’t we be questioning Britain’s approach of “business as usual” – certainly not discussing debt relief while the regime continues to kill its own people; continuing to exclude Sudan from international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank; exposing the total impotence of the United Nations; and indignant that a new Sudanese genocide should be allowed to unfold with hardly a murmur of international protest.
The United Kingdom should be shining a light on the murderous events in South Kordofan; we should be co-ordinating the international community’s economic leverage; using our place on the UN SC and working with the AU to bring about reform – perhaps encouraging Sudanese reformers to consider the status of their marginalised minorities and regions and to study the German, Canadian or Swiss models of federal government – and working for a peace that has to be based on justice.
Ultimately, like the ICC’s welcome conviction of Thomas Lubanga, we must ensure that Field Marshall Omar Al Bashir and Ahmed Mohammed Haroun are brought to justice at the International Criminal Court and held to account for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity – and leave them in no doubt that there will be a day of reckoning for the terrible suffering which they have inflicted upon their own people.