March 11, 2004
House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Africa
Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee.
The timing of this hearing could not be more auspicious¯the question posed
in its title could not be more urgent. For there can be no mistaking that
this is Sudan's moment of historical truth.If a just and comprehensive
peace agreement is not reached in the very near term at talks in Naivasha
(Kenya), it will not be reached at all.
The main outstanding issue of Abyei¯one of three contested areas along the
historic north/south border¯is little more than a diplomatic place-holder
for Khartoum's National Islamic Front regime in these historic peace talks,
a device for stalling negotiations. This is hardly surprising, since such
stalling continues a pattern of diplomatic evasion, foot-dragging, and bad
faith that goes back many years¯certainly over the past decade of efforts
by the East African Intergovernmental Authority for Development to
negotiate an end to the Sudan's catastrophic civil war.
Khartoum knows full well that all historical and moral equities dictate
that the Ngok Dinka district of Abyei should be part of the south. Yet the
regime refuses to acknowledge these realities, preferring instead to use
the issue of Abyei as a means of retarding further progress on a
comprehensive peace agreement. For Khartoum also knows the critical
significance of Abyei to the southern cause, and the impossibly unjust
nature of an agreement that simply abandons Abyei to northern Sudan.
But why is Khartoum remaining so intransigent? Why with a peace agreement
so clearly within reach is the regime failing to take the last steps?
For an answer we must look to Darfur, in far western Sudan, where the
Regime is presently conducting a vast military campaign directed primarily
Against civilians among the African tribal groups of the region¯the Fur,
Zaghawa,Massaleit, and others. War in Darfur has escalated rapidly over
the last year,and especially the last four months. Militarily, Khartoum
has been badly surprised and only now feels that it is making progress. The
present pursuit of a military solution has come even as the regime has
repeatedly refused to entertain the possibility of a negotiated political
settlement to what are finally longstanding political problems, and has
refused meaningful international auspices for the negotiation of a
humanitarian cease-fire.
Believing that the international community will not respond with
Appropriate force or urgency to the catastrophe in Darfur so long as an
agreement in Naivasha can be made to seem "imminent," Khartoum now hopes to
resolve the crisis in Darfur militarily prior to any final peace agreement
with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army. Tragically, the
international community has given Khartoum all too much reason to believe
That the costs of an intrasigent pursuit of military victory in Darfur.
Will not be excessive. This is so despite reports from many UN officials,
human rights organizations,and journalists¯reports clearly suggesting that
what is occurring in Darfur is genocide, that the military actions of
Khartoum and its Arab militia allies (the “janjawid”) amount to the
destruction of these various African peoples because
of who they are¯"as such," to borrow the key phrase from the 1948 UN
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The current phrase of choice among diplomats and UN officials is "ethnic
cleansing"; but given the nature and scale of human destruction, and the
Clear racism animating attacks systematically directed against civilians
from the African tribal groups, the appropriate term is genocide. Amnesty
International has recently reported authoritatively on this ghastly
Reality. Among the many chillingly similar interviews from persons
displaced from Darfur into Chad, we hear:
"A refugee farmer from the village of Kishkish reported * the words used by
the militia: 'You are Black and you are opponents. You are our slaves, the
Dar Fur region is in our hands and you are our herders.'"(Amnesty
International Report, page 28)
"A civilian from Jafal confirmed [he was] told by the Janjawid: 'You are
opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are Black, you are like
slaves. Then all the Darfur region will be in our hands. The government
Is on our side. The government plane is on our side to give us ammunition
and food.'"
(Amnesty International Report, page 28)
There is a terrible prescience in comments made by an African tribal leader
to a UN news service several months ago:
"'I believe this is an elimination of the black race,' one tribal leader
told IRIN" (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, al-Geneina
[Darfur], December 11, 2003)
It is in this context that I would remind the subcommittee of a key finding
from Section 2 of the Sudan Peace Act, passed virtually unanimously by both
houses of Congress:
"The acts of the Government of Sudan*constitute genocide as defined by the
UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
(78 U.N.T.S 277)" (Sudan Peace Act, Section 2. Findings. Number 10. October
2002)
The Sudan Peace Act was of course signed into law several months before the
conflict in Darfur began to accelerate into the massive human catastrophe
that is now all too fully in view. But this only makes it more urgent that
we face the disturbing reality before us: the Khartoum regime, one of the
negotiating parties in the Naivasha peace talks, has already been condemned
for genocide in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and Southern Blue
Nile¯and now it stands clearly guilty of the same monstrous crime in
Darfur. We must assess, soberly and realistically, the value of a
signature from a regime guilty of such unspeakable crimes
We must also remember that Khartoum's actions in interfering with
humanitarian access to Darfur, actions that have been castigated by many
International humanitarian organizations¯most recently the International
Committee of the Red Cross¯contravene obligations spelled out in the Sudan
Peace Act. The Act requires the President to certify that "the Government
of Sudan*has not unreasonably interfered with humanitarian efforts"
(Section 6 [b]). Under present circumstances in Darfur, such certification
cannot possibly be made in good faith.
To be sure a formal peace agreement may well be right around the corner, if
Khartoum finds it expedient to reach such agreement. But even if we have a
signing ceremony tomorrow, we will still be far from seeing that such an
agreement is translated into a just and sustainable peace. Khartoum's
brutality and cynicism should make clear to all that the urgent planning
And deployment of an international peace support mission is far behind
schedule. Indeed, to date such planning seems to have been undertaken
without a clear understanding of how much will be required¯logistically,
materially, organizationally, and perhaps militarily.
Nor has the international community begun to respond to the urgent
task of funding the redeployment and demobilizing of Khartoum's military
Forces in southern Sudan¯a critical task if the terms of the breakthrough
agreement on security arrangements (September 25, 2003) are to be realized
in timely fashion.
On another critical front, there is no meaningful US funding commitment to
provide transitional aid following an agreement. The State Department
committed to a "large peace dividend" for Sudan following a peace
agreement; these critical resources were promised in testimony by then-
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner on May
13, 2003, in a hearing very much like this one. So far, the promise has
proved thoroughly empty.
There is nothing that begins to approach an adequate US commitment to the
urgently needed resources for emergency transitional aid in southern Sudan
following a peace agreement. Reliable estimates suggest, for example, that
as many as 1 million internally displaced persons will be attempting to
return to the war-ravaged south in the first six months following a peace
agreement.The consequences of such massive migration may well be
catastrophic, perhaps violent, and may even serve as a pretext for resumed
war, especially in the oil regions of Western Upper Nile. Additional
resources are also needed for further efforts at encouraging south/ south
dialogue and in providing incentives for armed militias of Upper Nile
to own the peace.
We must recognize that there is yet another major obstacle to a sustainable
peace. It is the same obstacle that has heretofore made securing peace so
difficult: the assertion, direct and implicit, that there is somehow a
“ moral equivalence" between the southern opposition in the form of the
Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and the Khartoum regime of the
National Islamic Front,both in conduct of war and in diplomatic commitment
To peace. Let us be decisively clear here: there is no equivalence. Yet
repeated suggestions to the contrary appeared in last April's woefully
inadequate State Department certification per the terms of the Sudan Peace
Act.Troublingly,even the most recent State Department interim report on the
Peace process (February 2004) suggests a continuation of this intellectual,
finally moral failure in assessing events. Though the SPLA has been guilty
of serious human rights abuses, including the diversion of food aid for
military use and forced conscription, there is nothing that compares with
the relentless, brutal, finally genocidal conduct of war by Khartoum.
Whether there is peace or war, an agreement in Naivasha or not, US policy
simply must not be guided by a premise of moral equivalence. For only one
party in Sudan's conflict has deliberately, relentlessly bombed civilian
and humanitarian targets in southern Sudan and other parts of Sudan for
many Many years party has deliberately, repeatedly, and precipitously
denied humanitarian access to many hundreds of thousand of civilians, with
many tens of thousands of attendant casualties; only one party has
conducted massive scorched-earth warfare in the oil regions of Upper Nile;
only one party has deployed as a barbaric weapon of of war the enslavement
of human beings.
We must keep all this in mind if talks at Naivasha fail. For failure will
surely have derived from Khartoum's intransigence¯from the deliberate
collapse of the peace process by means of a contrived and wholly
unjustified assertion of control over the Ngok Dinka district of
Abyei.Here, by way of explanation, we may speculate about
political divisions within the National Islamic Front, greed
for Abyei's oil reserves, or pressures coming from the Misseriya tribal
leaders in the larger Abyei area¯but we will know in any event where
responsibility for failure lies and we must respond accordingly. The first
opportunity for such response will come in April, with the next reporting
requirement stipulated by the Sudan Peace Act. There must be no assertion
of equivalent responsibility for the collapse of the Naivasha talks, should
this occur. For such equivalence is, in the minds of the National Islamic
Front regime, the necessary diplomatic victory.
Further, if there should be a final peace agreement, it is critically
victory that the immense tasks of construction/reconstruction and
peacekeeping in the south and the contested areas be shouldered
immediately. They are daunting in the extreme, and the danger of renewed
fighting will be present for years. Here again we must not succumb to the
fiction of moral equivalence: for it is the south that has endured
catastrophic human destruction and suffering over the south that has
endured war, indeed over the past half century of Sudanese independence
and central rule in Khartoum. This has been overwhelmingly the
Responsibility of successive governments in Khartoum¯and none bears greater
responsibility the present National Islamic Front regime. US policy toward
and assistance to Sudan should be informed by this fundamental asymmetry in
Responsibility for human suffering and destruction.
To this end, current US sanctions against the Government of Sudan should be
lifted gradually, and should be tied to clearly articulated benchmarks¯in
the implementing of a peace agreement, in expediting military
redeployments, in disarming allied militia, and in upholding provisions for
Revenue-and power-sharing. Thorough scrutiny of Khartoum's long record of
supporting terrorism should continue even if there is a decision later this
spring to remove the regime from the State Department list of supporters of
International terrorism. And finally, members of the Khartoum's National
Islamic Front regime must be held accountable for their actions over these
many years.
For history obliges us to keep clearly in mind the character of this
regime largely unchanged since it came to power by military coup in 1989
and deliberately aborted a nascent peace process. Khartoum has been
deeply complicit in international terrorism, indeed hosted Osama bin Laden
during the formative years for al-Qaeda, and continued to provide very
substantial support to al-Qaeda years after bin Laden left Khartoum in
1996. The regime is guilty of genocide, as the Sudan Peace Act has
unambiguously found.
The regime is now, every day, lying repeatedly, egregiously, shamelessly
about the realities of Darfur, about the nature of the military conflict,
and about the extremity of the humanitarian crisis.
This is so even as Khartoum's cynical assurances are fully confounded
by reports from Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, a wide
range of UN officials, Roger Winter of USAID, a recent European Union
assessment mission, and all too many horrific accounts from within Darfur
and along the Chad-Sudan border.
I believe that this latter crisis must be considered immediately, urgently,
and outside the context of negotiations at Naivasha. For we may be all too
certain that without an international willingness to begin the most urgent
Preparations for humanitarian intervention in Darfur, we will be forced to
witness helplessly a disastrous increase in what Doctors Without
Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres recently described (February 17, 2004
press release) as "catastrophic mortality rates" in Darfur.
Khartoum's ongoing, cynically cruel willingness to lie about so much human
suffering and destruction should remind us how difficult it will be to make
anything meaningful of the regime's signature on an agreement in
Naivasha.If a comprehensive agreement is indeed "around the corner," we
must fully accept that this marks only a beginning in the real job of
building a just and sustainable peace.
Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
413-585-3339 (fax)