AMERICA'S SUDAN POLICY:

The Sudan Issues and Topics in the Refugee Field - Internally Displaced Persons Issues and Topics in the Refugee Field - Women and Children

News

Government of Sudan Denies Access to Operation Lifeline Sudan (March, 2001) Sudan Bombing Chronology 2001 Sudan Bombing Chronology 2000 Sudan's Military Continues Aerial Bombing of Civilian Sites; International Community Stays Mute (March, 2001) Photo Journal: Sudan (January, 2001) Sudan Series (January, 2001)

I commend the House Subcommittee on Africa for convening today's hearing on policy options for the United States on the catastrophic situation in Sudan.  The involvement of the Subcommittee is desperately needed.  Eighteen years of virtually non-stop civil war and harsh Sudanese government repression have produced in Sudan the world's worst human rights and humanitarian disaster.  Yet the world has largely ignored the situation.  Sudan merits the attention of this and every other body that is concerned about human rights in today's world.

I hope that the interest in Sudan displayed today by the Subcommittee will be sustained in the months to come.  The members of this panel can provide impetus for a deeper commitment to the emergency in Sudan by Congress, the Administration, and the United Nations.  Some members of Congress already are heroically involved.  I urge you all to play a leading role in helping to strengthen U.S. policy toward Sudan.

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Role of U.S. Committee for Refugees

The U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) is a non-governmental, non-profit agency dedicated to defending the rights of uprooted peoples worldwide.

During the past 20 years, USCR has been deeply involved in documenting, reporting, analyzing, and advocating on human rights and humanitarian issues in Sudan.  USCR has conducted more than 30 site visits to Sudan over the years.  I personally have conducted assessment trips to Sudan on behalf of USCR every year since 1988, including three last year and, most recently, in January of this year.  USCR readily shares its analysis and recommendations with Congress.  This is the fourteenth time that USCR has formally testified about Sudan to a Congressional panel since 1989, and we remain in regular contact with appropriate Congressional staff as human rights abuses and humanitarian suffering in Sudan continue unabated.

USCR published two major reports on Sudan in recent years:  Follow the Women and the Cows:  Personal Stories of Sudan's Uprooted People; and a groundbreaking study entitled, A Working Document II:  Quantifying Genocide in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains 1983-1998.  USCR continually publishes updates on the humanitarian situation in Sudan and is working with sources on the ground in the region to document aerial bombings of civilian and humanitarian sites by the Sudanese government.  A USCR statement about Khartoum government bombings in 2001 is attached.

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Measurements of Sudan's Crisis

By virtually any measurement, the human rights and humanitarian situation in Sudan is cataclysmic:

• Sudan is suffering the longest uninterrupted civil war in the world.

• The current conflict has persisted for 18 years.  The country has been embroiled in civil war for 34 of the past 45 years, since independence in 1956.  People all over Sudan are suffering as a consequence.  The south is in extremis.

• More than 2 million Sudanese are estimated to have died of causes directly or indirectly linked to war and repressive Sudanese government policies.

• An average of more than 300 people per day die because of war-related causes in Sudan, according to the best available estimates.  Sudan's death toll is larger than the combined fatalities suffered in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria.  Twice as many Sudanese have perished in the past 18 years than all the war-related deaths suffered by Americans in the past 200 years.

• More Sudanese are uprooted than any other population in the world.

• More than 4 million Sudanese are internally displaced, and nearly a half-million are refugees outside the country.  One of every nine uprooted people on the face of the earth is Sudanese.

• A largely man-made famine killed tens of thousands of people in southern Sudan during 1998.   There is a major threat of famine in 2001.

• Sudan's 1998 famine affected an estimated 2.5 million  people.  The government in Khartoum denied humanitarian agencies access to the famine zone for the number of months needed to assure widespread suffering and loss of life.  Civilians were caught in a starvation trap.  There is a need to guard against such action by the Sudan government this year.

• Slavery exists in Sudan.

• Annual slave raids by government-allied militia have pressed uncounted tens of thousands of southern Sudanese children and women into slavery.

• Most of southern Sudan's 5 million people have absolutely no access to schools or reliable health care.

• The impoverishment of southern Sudan's population—the region of the country that has endured the brunt of Sudan's long civil war—is virtually unprecedented in today's world.  Eighteen years of violence and deliberate population displacement by the government have reduced much of southern Sudan – an area the size of Texas – to virtual medieval conditions.

• Sudan is the only place in the world where the government routinely bombs civilian targets—hospitals, schools, relief centers, market places—and the world stands by mutely.

• Sudanese government planes bombed civilian targets at least 167 times last year and no fewer than 20 times so far this year, according to data compiled by USCR from reports of relief workers in the field.  That is an average of more than three bombings per week.

• This is a conservative total—scores of additional bombings went unreported and uncounted.  A day-by-day list of most known bombings during the past 15 months is attached.  USCR also can provide the Subcommittee with a recent five-minute video depicting the effects of a deadly bombing attack.

• The Sudanese government's aerial bombs deliberately kill and maim innocent people and force massive numbers to flee their homes and their fields, adding to the country's vicious cycle of food shortages and impoverishment.           

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Policy Considerations and Options

All policy approaches to the conflict in Sudan will ultimately founder if they deal only with symptoms and not causation.  A comprehensive strategy must include both. The following are or relate to elements of an effective approach to Sudan.

1.   The principal goal of U.S. policy on Sudan should not be merely peace at any cost, but rather a just peace.

A peace of the cemetery is unacceptable.  So too is one that leaves the south gutted and depopulated, or that leaves the Khartoum regime's northern political opposition in chains or in exile.  To achieve a just peace requires either genuine change on the part of the National Islamic Front (NIF) government, or its demise.

2.   The NIF is the obstacle to a just peace.

The NIF staged its coup in 1989 specifically to abort peace.  An accord had been reached between the then-democratically elected government, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, and the other major parties such as the Democratic Unionist Party.  The accord dealt adequately with southern political aspirations and the separation of religion and state.  The NIF, as an extremist group, regarded that formula as unacceptable and killed it.  The bulk of the more than 2 million deaths in Sudan's conflict, as a result, are the fruit of NIF actions.

Since taking power, the NIF government has purged social institutions that might present challenges to its power, voluntarily opened its borders to agents of international terrorism, adopted a genocidal pattern of uprooting, dispersing, destroying, and assimilating what it views as “enemy” civilians, and has been the recalcitrant party to the IGAD peace negotiations.  The NIF has regularly manipulated the UN's Operation Lifeline Sudan to curtail humanitarian aid deliveries to needy civilians when such manipulation is convenient for the regime's military purposes.  The NIF has established a marked pattern of refusing to live up to its commitments.

3.   The NIF appears to believe it can win and is winning the war, with the help of international oil development.  The Khartoum regime thus has no incentive to negotiate a just peace.

The NIF has made a public commitment, now backed by official figures, to increase its war-making capabilities dramatically and to insulate itself from international pressure.  The Sudanese government has made a major commitment to create an internal arms industry.

The impact of these efforts is already visible on the ground.  In January, I visited northern Bahr-El Ghazal Province near the oil fields.  I saw for the first time huge bomb craters—much larger than any I have seen before; and new patterns of bombing designed to destroy or push from the oil fields the southern civilians who have lived there all their lives.  I also saw the maimed bodies of people severely wounded by helicopter gunships that the Sudanese government increasingly unleashes on villages to depopulate oil-producing areas.                        

The oil concessions granted to foreign oil companies cover a vast percentage of the territory of south Sudan and, consequently, the homes of a huge portion of the south's population.  The NIF has found that conducting its campaign to conquer the south in conjunction with foreign oil development mutes much international criticism.

If this "cleansing" of civilians is successfully carried out "to secure the oil fields," only a shell of an inhabitable south will be left.

4.   In order for real peace negotiations to begin, international policy makers should disabuse the NIF of its belief that the world will continue to stand by passively and allow it to win the war through terror, starvation, and the mass elimination of the civilian population of southern Sudan. 

The world community, led by the United States, should help create an environment for successful negotiations by leveling the negotiating playing field; it should, for the first time, intervene politically to force the NIF to negotiate seriously for a just peace.

If the UN is politically incapable of protecting the civilian victims of this conflict (and China and others are likely to render the UN so), and if the bulk of the developed West (Canada and most of Europe), normally prime defenders of human rights, are for their own economic interests prepared to stand by while the south is liquidated just as the people of the Nuba Mountains virtually already have been, the United States either should itself provide for that needed protection (my preference) or enable the NIF's Sudanese opposition (the NDA, including the SPLA) to do so.  They have the will and should not be denied the right to defend their families if no one else will.

While the Sudanese opposition has its flaws, it is far superior morally to the NIF.  Neutrality, or inaction, in the face of what is occurring in Sudan, would be thoroughly immoral.

5.   A strategy that threatens Sudan's oil development can quickly have a strong impact on Khartoum and can bring the NIF to the negotiating table for serious discussions.

Foreign oil companies operating in southern Sudan have no commitment to the NIF; they seek the oil and the profits.  In doing so they choose to ignore or obscure the political and humanitarian costs.  If U.S. policy toward Sudan threatens the oil and the profits that the oil firms covet, I believe the foreign oil companies themselves will begin to press the NIF to negotiate seriously for a just peace in the south.  Khartoum's oil allies, through this approach, can be transformed into advocates for a just peace.

6.   The strategy proposed in the recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies seeks to lure the NIF into serious concessions through a strategy front-loaded with "carrots."  This is a misdiagnosis of the problem.  All inducements to the NIF should be linked to demonstrable progress by the NIF in an agreed-upon peace process.

Bilateral sanctions are one of the few points of leverage the U.S. government still has on the NIF.  Full normalization of diplomatic relations between Washington and Khartoum at this time would be viewed worldwide—and in Khartoum itself—as a “win” for the NIF and its extremist policies.  The Sudanese victims of the NIF would regard full diplomatic normalization as abandonment by the United States.  To assume that commitments made by the NIF will be fulfilled in good faith is to be ignorant of the last dozen years of NIF performance.

This is not to suggest that the U.S. government should do nothing positive toward the NIF.  Rather, overtures to Khartoum should occur only after the NIF has taken clear, defined steps that indicate a moderation of its policies.

7.   The NIF should be required to take several concrete steps as evidence that it is genuinely willing to engage in a serious peace process.

a.   The NIF's continued aerial bombardments of civilian targets must end.  The bombardment of hospitals, relief centers, schools, and markets is clear evidence of the NIF's commitment to total military victory and ruthlessness against its own people.  If the bombings continue, the United States should pursue an entirely punitive approach.  The U.S. government should regard each bombing as a violation of international humanitarian law.  U.S. officials should pressure or embarrass the UN Security Council into appropriate action. 

b.   The NIF must end its policy of denying humanitarian access to needy civilians in the Nuba Mountains region, and must cease its routine denial of humanitarian access to locations in southern Sudan that fit its military strategy.

The NIF has consistently utilized food as a weapon, with virtual impunity.  The international community, led by the United States, should negotiate or impose an entirely new approach to Operation Lifeline Sudan.  Support should be increased for humanitarian agencies working in southern and central Sudan independently of OLS.

Relief workers warn that substantial food problems will likely escalate this year.  The clear NIF record of deliberately denying food to vulnerable civilians leaves us all with no excuse for inaction.

8.   A U.S. Special Envoy on Sudan could be useful, if the right person is chosen and given the right mandate.

The State Department has been seriously divided on U.S. policy toward the NIF for years.  As a result, the State Department's effectiveness toward Sudan has been compromised, and previous U.S. Special Envoys have failed.

President Bush should appoint as Special Envoy a person of great and impeccable stature in a public ceremony, and should equip the Special Envoy with a strong mandate to achieve a just peace in Sudan.  Treating the appointment of a U.S. Special Envoy as a major foreign policy priority for the first time would dramatically change and energize the international dynamic on Sudan.

My suggested candidate would be former Senator Sam Nunn.  Appointment of both a Special Envoy and an Ambassador to Sudan would guarantee confusion.

9.   European governments cannot lead on international policy toward Sudan.  The United States alone is positioned to do so.

The political will of European governments on Sudan has always been weak, with few exceptions such as Norway.  The craven dash to Sudan by European oil companies has further compromised European governments' abilities in this regard.

This contrasts with the United States, where a strong bipartisan constituency exists in Congress on Sudan.  Moreover, a large and energetic grassroots constituency that cares passionately about the suffering in Sudan has emerged in the United States.  The New York Times recently mischaracterized that constituency as “the religious right."  In fact, the American constituency on Sudan is much broader and diverse, joining Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, other non-churched individuals, college students, African Americans in growing numbers, Sudanese in America in all their variety, and many others.  The American public would support a strong U.S. policy in support of a just peace in Sudan.

Finally, the United States is the only country that can guarantee a just peace after one is negotiated.  This country is the only one able to create the environment in which a just peace can be negotiated.

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These, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, are my thoughts about Sudan's conflict, which is much more than a conflict.

I remember the excuses the UN, the U.S. government including President Clinton, and the bulk of European governments made to cover up their reluctance to get involved and their ultimate failure to confront genocide in Rwanda in 1994.  President Clinton even said he didn't know.

No one will be able to use those excuses in the case of Sudan.

Thank you.