Khartoum Reads and Reacts

The Sudanese government's recent "expectation" that the United States change its policy toward Darfur, expressed by Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq, should not come as a surprise given the recent public wavering by US government officials, not the least of which was newly appointed Special Envoy Andrew Natsios. With just one statement, Natsios completely undermined any perception that the US intended to actively pursue UN Security Council resolution 1706's stipulation for a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur (though the extent to which the US was ever actually committed to this goal - and willing to take bold and concrete steps to begin preparations for it, such as raising funds and urging member states to contribute troops - is highly doubtful, indicated simply by the fact that over two months have elapsed with nothing but rabid GoS protestations and hasty conciliatory remarks from US and international actors). Natsios, in abandoning the prospects of following through with the unambiguous requirements of resolution 1706, effectively capitulates to what has been a very aggressive campaign by the Sudanese government to renege on its pre-DPA vocal openness to allowing a UN peacekeeping force and slam the door on any force competent enough to endanger their genocidal war by vehemently insisting that any mission in Darfur remain in "African" hands. The AMIS force in Darfur long ago became worse than merely ineffective; the testimonies of Darfurians who see the AU as biased and contributing to the aims of the signatories of the DPA, the brutal Minni Minnawi faction of the SLA and the even more heinously brutal instigator of the genocide, the Sudanese government, suffice to taint AMIS with a shade of perceived complicity that not only makes their mundane filing of reports even more maddening to suffering Darfurian civilians, but also dangerously casts their actions in a confrontational schema and thus renders the mission definitively detrimental to the peace process. Regardless of the intentions of the African commanders and soldiers - many of whom come from Rwanda and have experienced the terror and isolation of genocide firsthand - which are likely benign or even commendable (a simpler frame in which to look at members of AMIS is of employees simply doing their job - one restricted by mandate, poor infrastructure, a lack of basic supplies, confusion in the chain of command, and, most frustratingly salient to these individuals, a severe backlog on the payment of their salaries), it is the perception of Darfurians that is important here. If they interpret AU monitors as, at worst, colluders with the Sudanese regime, or even, at best, unable or unwilling to protect them from the marauding government-backed Janjaweed militias that terrorize them, then their mission has at once become counterproductive. It is very difficult to go back across that line and earn the trust of people who have seen AU soldiers only in the context of filing paperwork after a village has been destroyed. Moreover, the perceptions of Darfurians on the ground, which must form the basis of any provision for their security, which will otherwise veer dangerously close to a paternalistic imposition in conflict with the actual needs and desires of the people, are no mere conjured-up fantasy. The AU has shown a despicable record in standing up to the Khartoum regime; this goes beyond failure to engage the foot soldiers of Sudan's genocide militarily, which AMIS is of course proscribed by its mandate to do, for the lack of confrontation extends to the highest diplomatic levels (forming an exasperating parallel with the international relations between foreign countries and Khartoum). By accepting and working under the aegis of the DPA, a document that has become little more than a divisive tool that Khartoum has wielded - both in international circles and on the ground - with painful efficiency, AMIS has essentially already positioned itself outside the vast majority of Darfurians who have rejected the DPA. Its timid response (or lack thereof) to Khartoum's violations of this pact, notably its silence to the Government of Sudan's persistent illegal disguising of military vehicles in the white AMIS color, simply enhances the notion that it cannot act as a meaningful arbiter, let alone peacekeeper or peacemaker, in this conflict. Finally, the recent deaths of Darfurians protesting against AU inefficiency, a crowd of whom was fired upon by the AU, only cements what is already reality on the ground: the AU is seen as an impediment, not a guarantor, of peace and security.
The Sudanese regime has also learned that promoting a stopgap African-led force can provide effective cover, and is essentially a diplomatic euphemism, for maintaining the unhindered genocidal status quo in Darfur. This, not the inflated bluster about neo-colonialism, is the actual motivation behind GoS support for the AU and its insistence that any intervention be solely in African hands. Government decision-makers have astutely picked up on the international sensitivity to arguments in favor of the AU (and the naïve blindness to the sadistic motivations underlying these professions of support) and have proceeded to ram this rhetoric down the throat of the West. They are only able to do so, however, because Western leaders have failed to recognize the barren reality underlying any solution that begins and ends focused on the AU, the African institution on its first legs that international government actors are wary to condemn and which receives the support - with the familiar slogan of "African solutions for African problems" - of African leaders from Qaddafi to Mubarak to Mbeki and, the most disgustingly hypocritical, Kagame, who, in the same breath that he condemns Western indifference to Darfur as paralleling that toward Rwanda 12 years ago, defensively asserts that "Africa should take the lead in handling these problems," (AP, "Crisis in Darfur has parallels with Rwanda - Kagame," 6 December 2006) Khartoum readily picks up the scent of weakness of the entirely unforced concessions such as Natsios' recent shelving of the UN plans of 1706 and abdication of the will to see to it that a UN force is deployed: “Our real interest here is not what it is called or what it looks like in terms of its helmet, but how robust and how efficient it is. If it is in a United Nations helmet and it is not robust and efficient, then it is not particularly useful. If it does not have a United Nations helmet, but it is very competent and very aggressive, then we have fulfilled our intention.” What Natsios neglects to account for is that the AU mission - and that is presumably all he is conceiving of in opposition to the UN option, for NATO is certainly not on his mind - is, by its very definition in the minds and experiences of the persectured Darfurians, irremediably ineffective and cannot be described as, nor, at this stage, is it at all likely that it can become, anything resembling "competent and very aggressive," which is in fact the very antithesis of AMIS right now.
Natsios' egregious blunder here greatly resembles the same fatally conciliatory remarks of recently expelled UN envoy Jan Pronk, whose series of damning errors and lack of judgment Eric Reeves has outlined in great detail. As early as late September, Pronk's completely underhanded and unofficial assertion that Sudan would never accept an AU force and that "the international community should instead push for the African Union's mission to be prolonged and reinforced" - a statement for which he was "berated" by UN officials, in Reeves' words, “essentially signaled to Khartoum that the UN had abandoned efforts to press aggressively for deployment of the UN force.” (Reeves, "Paralysis in Darfur: Khartoum Achieves a Final Diplomatic Success," 9 October 2006) Pronk's arrogant ability to undermine UN resolve follows a pattern of ill-informed and costly (probably in terms of human lives) decisions. In August 2004, Pronk used his position of authority to ensure that he received Khartoum's word on creating "safe areas" - Pronk's own plan, which the UN "quietly" dropped a month later after it did no more than excuse the buildup of Sudan's military offensive. What was lost in Pronk's negotiating fervor was any meaningfulness attached to Security Council resolution 1556's "demand" for GoS to disarm the Janjaweed, which Pronk apparently deemed unimportant enough to sacrifice to create "safe areas" that proved no safer than their Bosnian counterparts in the 90's. Finally, this past summer, Pronk lined himself up squarely on the side of the genocidaires by standing by the "good text" of the Darfur Peace Agreement and attributing any problems to a issues of implementation and the failure of certain groups to sign on to it (which is, interestingly enough, the same reasoning promulgated by the Government of Sudan). It thus seems fittingly ironic that Pronk's ridiculously groundless expulsion from Sudan came as a result of Khartoum's discontent with something printed by the man who so often naïvely proclaimed exactly what the genocidal regime would have liked him to say.
Revealing in Natsios' statement is his conclusion that after putting a suitable force on the ground - whatever that may look like - "we [will] have fulfilled our intention." One is left to wonder what exactly the "intention" of the United States is if it is unable to specify what sort of force would prove adequate in its mind, how or why it can expect GoS to pull and about-face and grant its consent for foreign intervention (discounting Jendayi Frazer's specious false assurance that "necessity and past history" provided sufficient reasons for the Americans' false - and strategic - optimism), what measures the US will pursue if Khartoum continues to flout the international community's weak urgings (the oft-cited and perfectly ambiguous "Plan B" and Tony Snow's blithe and belated conclusion that the US will have to "find some other way to protect the people of Darfur" are mere examples of the posturing that accompanies a genuine lack of any concrete plan whatsoever).
A definitive element of the US' policy of ad hoc flailing in lieu of an actual plan backed by sufficient political will is its unwillingness to take strong measures that it cannot rescind and which will the administration fears will propel it into an unstable territory that anti-American jihadis and hatemongering Islamists will flock to. Thus in rhetoric, only, which inevitably fades over time but provides an effective palliative for the present (think of President Bush's unfulfilled and disingenuous promise for "bold action" after Katrina), will the American government make any sort of stand. Yet even here do we fall well short of confrontation, or even of the willingness to issue a threat of punitive measures. Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Natsios, Tony Snow, and a host of other administration members or spokespeople have consistently eschewed the language of "threats," which have been painted as counterproductive in an attempt to glaze over the administration's timidity. Despite the recommendation of every influential human rights organization and even some government actors like Tony Blair, attempting to distinguish himself from the vapid President Bush, and in fact the supposed momentum of UN security council resolution 1672 (25 April 2006), which finally applied the sanctions called for in resolution 1591 (29 March 2005), albeit only on four individuals, three of whom were relatively innocuous, the US has recently backed down from even the concept of sanctions. One US diplomat, discussing the supposed "package" the administration was considering to produce a "peaceful settlement," elaborated that "[i] is not sanctions, it is not sticks," scolding manner-of-factly that "[y]ou don't just go in and wave sticks." (Reuters, "US works on international plan for Darfur," 1 November 2006) Anyone who doubts that the Khartoum regime seizes upon these kinds of vocal capitulations and flings them back at the international community with renewed vigor and defiance need only consult a sampling of GoS statements on the matter. Senior presidential advisor Nafie Ali Nafie (who, scholar Douglas Johnson recently informed me, is one of the old NIF elites brought in as "presidential advisor" to dilute the actual authority of the nominal First Vice President, the SPLA's Salva Kiir Mayardit, let alone the influence of the utterly isolated and meaningless position thrown to Minni Arco Minnawi) bluntly admitted that "We do not need the carrot, and would not be intimidated by the stick. ... We don't care…" and cryptically intoned that "the mouse in Khartoum cannot be caught by any cat in the world." (Reuters, “Sudan says ready for talks with Darfur’s NRF rebels,” 9 November 2006) Foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq countered potential renewal of punitive measures, perhaps spurred by Blair's vocal support for a no-fly zone, by stating that "[t]hreats of sanctions and military action, or the imposition of a no-flight zone will not help resolve the problem…This problem (Darfur) is a political one, and it should be remedied through political channels," (AP, “Sudan brushes off renewed threat of sanctions over Darfur,” 14 December 2006) and his boss, Lam Akol, reiterated that "threats, blockades and no-fly zones... would not solve the problem." (BBC, 14 December 2006) al-Sadiq's insistence that the problem is merely a political matter strikes a discomfiting sword with what has been Alex de Waal's mantra since the DPA - that only a political solution, irrespective of the numbers and mandate of a peacekeeping force, can stop the genocide in Darfur. The source of the emboldened proclamations of Sudanese officials and the impervious indifference to punitive threats comes straight from the proverbial horse's mouth, that of the Sudanese head of state, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, in playing Sudan's financial trump card: "Just when some countries gave us sanctions, God gave us oil." (AP, “Efforts to help Darfur again end in dead end,” 5 December 2006)
Far from "going in and waving sticks," US policy seems, on the contrary, to be one of sitting back passively as these sticks are contemptuously thrown back in its face.