Turmoil not over says Darfur adviser

By JASON MOTLAGH

J. Prendergast

WASHINGTON, Feb 07, 2005 (UPI) — A man who has spent two decades working on crisis issues in Africa says the fates of stalled civil conflicts in southern Sudan, the Darfur region and northern Uganda are closely interlinked — and unless strong measures are taken to restrict the Sudanese government, the region will be in even greater turmoil.

“So long as anyone of the three regions is left burning, the rest of the territories…probably will catch fire,” John Prendergast said. “If we continue to deal with the situation in a piecemeal way, it will never be over.” He spoke Monday to a standing room crowd at the Woodrow Wilson Center in a lecture titled “Darfur, Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda: The Quest for a Comprehensive Peace.”

Prendergast is special adviser to the president of the International Crisis Group, an independent non-profit organization that works to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. During the Clinton administration he was special adviser to the State Department from 1999-2001 and director of African affairs for the National Security Council from 1996-1999.

In his lecture, he was highly critical of the Sudanese government he has come to know well during 20 years of crisis management in Africa. He contended the international community would be foolish to put faith in the peace agreement signed between Khartoum and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army last month to end 21 years of conflict in southern Sudan, calling it a “deal to diffuse international pressure from atrocities in Darfur.”

“The ethnic cleansing is now largely over and the government is now in its mop-up phase…They seek to confuse outsiders and diffuse criticism,” he said. “They have used the window of reduced international pressure to increase attacks in Darfur and throughout the country.”

A preliminary peace agreement was signed Jan. 16 between the Sudanese government and the chief umbrella group of the opposition, the National Democratic Alliance.

This group includes the SPLA, Sudan’s largest rebel force, which has been holding talks with the government since July 2002 to finally end the rebellion in the impoverished south.

Despite pronouncements from Vice President Ali Osman Taha of the regime’s “total” commitment to a full ceasefire, Sudan’s air force reportedly bombed a town in the Darfur region on Jan. 26 that killed 100 people, most of which were women and children.

There are also reports of a subsequent raid by government-linked militias in the western village of Hamada in which an additional 100 civilians were slain.

Khartoum continues to deny accusations of support for the attacks, instead projecting the blame upon rebel forces.

None of this comes as a surprise to Prendergast, who said the agreed upon six-year transitional period leading up to a referendum in Sudan is “ripe for spoiling during the interim period.”

“The strategy has always been to drain the water and catch the fish,” he said.

Apart from the recent spate of attacks in violation of the ceasefire, he highlighted a number of trends in evidence of a deteriorating situation. These included continued government support for the Janjaweed “to do its dirty work,” increased abductions of local humanitarian staff to cut off aid, stagnant peace talks that lack international leverage, and the failure of the UN to demand Sudan’s disarmament as it buys still more arms.

In a Jan. 4 interview with MotherJones.com, Prendergast said three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are heavily invested in Sudan’s oil sector. Data from government and non-governmental organization sites show those countries are China, Russia and France.

Prendergast in the Jan. 4 interview also said four of the five permanent members of the council are engaged in either sales to the regime or brokering deals to the government. Data from government and NGO sites show they are China, Russia, Britain and France.

“There is nothing more stunning than the fact that we have this international fiasco and there has never been an arms embargo proposed in the Security Council against Sudan,” Prendergast said Monday.

He also expressed doubts over the SPLA’s willingness to share power with smaller rebel factions, saying that “greed and grievances will bedevil the south in coming years.”

Prendergast said unrest in the south will vicariously undermine efforts to stabilize northern Uganda, where thousands have been killed and 1.6 million people have become refugees in a civil war that has raged for nearly as long as Sudan’s.

He said Uganda faced “its best chance for peace in years” but that it desperately needed U.S. support to facilitate its fragile peace process, a move he believed would be “decisive.”

Shifting his focus to Darfur, Prendergast named three priorities to effectively address the crisis. He said civilian protection was paramount, calling the number of African Union troops monitoring the region at present inadequate and demanding a much larger force.

“There are 2,000 troops in Darfur where there is a war, and 10,000 in southern Sudan which is nominally at peace,” he said.

Second, he voiced his support of targeted sanctions against the Sudanese government, such as a freeze on travel and state assets, which have proven to work in the past.

Last, he said senior U.S. officials must get intimately involved in the crisis and hold the Sudanese government accountable on the global stage for its crimes past and future.

The U.N. estimates more than 70,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million have been displaced from their homes in Darfur since February 2003. Refugees claim that pro-Arab Janjaweed militias, sponsored by the Sudanese government, have been conducting raids on horseback in southern Sudan, burning down villages, stealing, raping women and killing indiscriminately.

The White House has called the humanitarian crisis in Darfur a “genocide,” while a U.N. commission set up to investigate human rights violations said some officials in the Sudanese government may have committed “acts with genocidal intent,” but stopped short of declaring genocide.

A report just released by the commission concluded that “government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks” that included random killing, sexual violence and forced displacement, but that it has not “pursued a policy of genocide.”

The commission also found evidence that rebel forces may have committed acts that “may amount to war crimes.”

Article 2 of UN Resolution 260 defines genocide as any acts committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

The U.N. has proposed that the Darfur case be referred to the International Criminal Court, a move that Prendergast endorses. The United States, however, has insisted that a separate war crimes tribunal be held in Arusha, Tanzania to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur.