Public pressure drives US push on Sudan crisis
By Saul Hudson
WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) – Jewish, Christian and black activist groups are driving U.S. Sudan policy but Washington may fail to end what Congress calls genocide because it refuses to back the use of troops, analysts said on Wednesday.
In an election-year response to an unusual alliance of the three powerful constituencies, the Bush administration has led international efforts to halt Arab militia attacks on black Africans in Sudan’s arid Darfur region.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was the first major figure to visit Darfur and demand Sudan end a conflict that affects 2 million people. Now, Washington is urging the United Nations to threaten Africa’s largest nation with sanctions.
The United States has complained for weeks that Sudan has done too little about the crisis. So far, it has relied on diplomatic pressure and dismissed as premature British, Australian and African nations’ offers to possibly send troops.
“Very soon it will be clear to these three important constituencies that the administration’s policy is grossly inadequate,” said John Prendergast of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “The State Department has given the government time, but that time is deadly because people are dying.”
Sudan responded to a rebellion last year by backing Janjaweed nomads killing, raping and pillaging in non-Arab villages in a conflict that has possibly killed tens of thousands and driven more than 1 million people from their homes, the United States says.
Khartoum says the charges are false and motivated by pandering to U.S. voters. It has vowed to resist any intervention.
BUILDING PRESSURE
The Bush administration has resisted cries from “core constituents” for troops and is prepared to spend time building international support to make its pressure on Sudan count, said Charles Snyder, a senior State Department diplomat.
The American public is “putting the pressure on the (U.S.) government and our basic problem is not to do something to make us feel good, but to do something that is effective,” said Snyder, who frequently visits Sudan.
“You have to bring the world with you to do it most effectively,” he added in an interview.
The Bush administration has not called the violence genocide because it has not yet collected enough evidence to show there is an “intent” to wipe out the non-Arab villagers, a key criteria for such a label, Snyder said.
This month, following Powell’s trip and a Darfur visit by U.N. chief Kofi Annan, the media has increasingly spotlighted refugee camps where thin women and children live on meager rations with little more than a few sticks for shelter.
A decade after the international community reacted too late to stop genocide in Rwanda, those images may have galvanized American voters.
The lobbying has increased this month “in leaps and bounds,” Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who visited Darfur in recent weeks, wrote in a statement to Reuters.
Christian conservatives — a key support base for certain members of Congress and President George W. Bush — have focused on Sudan for years because of a separate conflict between the Islamic government and Christians in the south.
Last week, with African-American churchgoers sending letters to legislators, the Congressional Black Caucus was also key to helping pass a resolution declaring the violence genocide and pressing Bush to seek foreign troops.
And this week, the Jewish community, sensitive to such violence because of its own history, added its pressure when the U.S. Holocaust Museum warned of a “genocide emergency.”
“This is an issue that cannot be defined by party or ideology … given the diverse constituencies that have become involved, from the Congressional Black Caucus to Jewish and Christian groups,” Brownback said.