Darfur crisis resists simple solutions
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug 8, 2004 — Less than a year ago, the Bush administration was so hopeful about ending the civil war in Sudan that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell invited Sudanese leaders to sign a peace accord at the White House.
Now the administration is working feverishly with European, African and Arab countries to avert further suffering in Darfur, in western Sudan, where attacks by Arab militias backed by the Muslim-led government on black residents who are also Muslims have led to tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of perhaps a million people.
Haunted by memories of past American failures in Rwanda and other parts of Africa, administration officials say their complex diplomatic efforts have huge implications, not only for American ties with Muslims and Africans, but also for the effort to curb terrorism and the need to repair relations with Europe and the United Nations.
“It’s a classic coalition-building problem,” said a State Department official. “We’re the ones with the biggest sense of urgency, because as many 300,000 people can die if we don’t get this moving. What worries me is that we may not have enough time.”
Mr. Powell, echoing the view at the United Nations, said Thursday that the United States had worked hard with European and United Nations officials to get a strong United Nations Security Council resolution that threatened Sudan with sanctions, though not explicitly.
That resolution, he said, had produced some willingness by the Sudanese government to disarm its militias in the west and to permit African troops to help secure the delivery of aid to the refugees. He and others say that an overly aggressive approach with the Sudanese government in Khartoum may backfire.
“We have to calibrate the pressure that we apply on the Sudanese government to make sure we get the results we need, and we don’t create a more difficult situation for us and for the people of Darfur,” Mr. Powell said at a national convention of minority journalists in Washington.
Generally, the administration has won credit among diplomats. But while the United States helped achieve progress last year in one of Sudan’s civil conflicts – between the government and Christians in the south – there is also criticism that American officials were slow in recognizing the depth of the problem in Darfur, in the west, where there was also a rebel movement.
Mr. Powell traveled to Lake Naivasha, in Kenya, last October to nudge the north-south talks along, expressing confidence that the issues of power-sharing and religious rights could be resolved quickly. That was when he invited Sudanese and Christian rebel leaders to Washington.
But some experts say that concentrating on the north-south conflict, as urged by some American Christian groups, may have encouraged rebellions elsewhere. At the same time, the government cracked down on the rebels, thinking that it could get away with its actions, these experts say.
“When the secretary was in Naivasha, and a major problem was getting worse in Darfur, everyone agreed to deal with the southern problem first and with Darfur later,” said John Prendergast, a former African affairs director at the National Security Council under President Clinton. “That was a monumental diplomatic error.”
Administration officials dispute the criticism, saying that if anything, the American pressure to resolve the north-south conflict – including President Bush’s appointment of former Senator John C. Danforth as a special envoy – earned the administration the credit in Africa to work on Darfur now.
Mr. Danforth is now the United States ambassador to the United Nations, where he has recently assailed the government in Khartoum for not moving quickly enough to comply with Security Council demands to ease the Darfur crisis.
“We wouldn’t be where we are now on Darfur if we hadn’t walked down the path to get a just peace in the south,” said a State Department official.
Administration officials say that American interests in Sudan had many dimensions. Not only is there domestic political pressure in the United States to end the widespread suffering among Christians in the south, but there is also pressure in the Muslim world to keep Sudan’s government on the friendly side.
In the 1990’s, Sudan was considered by Washington to be a haven for terrorists, including Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden operated out of Sudan in that period. Recently, Sudan has been more cooperative on terrorism.
Under American pressure, Egypt has taken the lead in working with the Arab League to persuade Sudan to comply with United Nations demands, particularly the disarming of the militias that have been attacking civilians in Darfur.
Experts say Sudan turned to the militias because many in its own army are from the west and are perceived as being ineffective against the rebels there, or sympathetic to their cause.
“The Sudanese government may have miscalculated earlier this year in thinking that because this was Muslim-to-Muslim violence, and not Muslim to Christian, we would not react,” said a State Department official. “But we’ve said from the beginning that the situation in Darfur needed to be resolved along with the north-south conflict.”
American and United Nations officials have also urged the United States to recognize that part of the problem is that rebels in the west, who may have tried to take advantage of the world’s focus on southern Sudan, need to stand down and negotiate a political accord themselves.
Meanwhile, the American effort to get the United Nations to exert pressure on Sudan has run into problems reminiscent of the American difficulties in getting support for a resolution backing the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq last year.
China, European countries and others import oil from Sudan or have investments there that they do not want to suffer if sanctions are imposed, American officials say.
“Like everything else at the United Nations, everyone operates on two levels,” said a State Department official. “It’s not quite fair to say it’s all driven by the dollars.”
The Security Council has given Sudan until Aug. 30 to make progress in improving conditions, allowing relief supplies to come to Darfur. American officials say that a Darfur breakthrough could eventually be folded into the north-south peace plan that seemed close to fruition last year.