MuseumDESCRIPTION:
The International Crisis Group’s, John Prendergast discusses three categories of response for the situation in Darfur: civilian protection, accountability, and root causes. Prendergast shares his views on the progress of transitioning the African Union force to a United Nations peacekeeping force and the challenges the peace talks are facing in Abuja. He also talks about his recent trips around the country to promote activism and intervention on the part of the American people.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: Our guest today is John Prendergast, senior advisor at the International Crisis Group. His two decades of experience on African issues includes service during the 1990s as an advisor to the State Department and Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council. John, welcome to the program.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Thanks for having me Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: John, I caught you between planes; you just came in from Rhode Island, and you are on your way to Los Angeles. You are doing a lot of traveling around the country. What is your sense of interest in Darfur around the United States these days?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: It is very exciting to be part of something that I have not felt a part of since the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s and early 90s, with respect to trying to change the apartheid system in South Africa. What we have is the makings on an embryonic movement against the genocide that is unfolding in Darfur that encompasses communities from around the country, involving probably three constituency groups which have been student groups, Christian groups and Jewish American organizations. All three of these constituencies stood up and began to organize letter writing campaigns, demonstrations, and all kinds of different activities in opposition to the genocide unfolding in Sudan and in support of bolder action on the part of the United States to confront it.
JERRY FOWLER: As you are traveling around—we will get to the substance in just a second, and spend most of our time on that—what kind of advice are you giving to people in terms of what kind of activity and intervention on their part can make the most difference?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think we have sort of moved beyond the “shouldn’t you care, President Bush,” stage. In any kind of situation, whether it is crimes against humanity being committed in Eastern Congo or Liberia or Northern Uganda or wherever these crimes against humanity and war crimes are occurring, trying to get the attention of the Administration is usually your first priority. Well, Darfur has got the attention of the Administration, so now we have to get a little bit more specific. When a person is captivated by this issue and wants to do something, they have to be educated so I try to spend as much time as I can deepening that education as much as possible—not the history of Darfur from 1432, but rather, understanding why what is happening is happening now in Darfur and what really can be done about it, and trying to boil down two or three things that they can do or that they can ask their elected officials to do that might make a difference to the people of Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: That then raises the obvious question, what are the two or three things that you are suggesting?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think in every situation, when we look back at the genocides of the 20th century, and we look at the crises marked by the Commission of Mass Atrocities, I find that there are really three categories of action that always need to part of parcel, central to our response. Those three categories, three baskets of response, are protecting civilians, holding the perpetrators accountable and dealing with the root causes of the crisis. Let us talk very briefly about all three of them.
Civilian protection—that is really the biggest failure of the international community every time. Darfur is just the latest manifestation of our inability or unwillingness to do what it takes to protect civilians from this scourge of atrocities and the commission of these kinds of grave human rights abuses. The kinds of obstacles that we have in our way—indifference and apathy and sometimes institutional prerogatives that root our policy makers in the status quo rather than a more forward leaning response—opposing that or confronting that requires constituency building and movement building on the part of the American public. Our policy makers have to hear from the public that it matters to them that they respond. Civilian protection is the core of the response.
Then, secondly, accountability. I think that to give leverage to the external efforts to address these problems and to break the cycles of impunity that we always talk about that occur in these types of situations, the international community has to look at the tools that exist to really hold people accountable for those most culpable for committing these atrocious crimes. In the case of Darfur, and many others, there are two principal tools; the first one is targeted sanctions that the United Nations Security Council is primarily the repository for. Putting a scarlet letter on the shirt pocket of the main perpetrators of the crimes is really the objective. Some of them do not care, some of them do. In the case of Sudan, these guys do not want to be targeted, they do not want to be called out, spotlight shone upon them, so I think that doing that will have a very rapid impact on their calculations, and the second part of the accountability piece is the International Criminal Court which is such an important innovation during this last century of trying to address these kinds of crimes from Nuremberg on, that we finally now, instead of these ad hoc trials, we finally have an institution that can address these things systematically, and Sudan, the case of Darfur, has become the first case that has been referred by the United Nations Security Council to the International Criminal Court, so we need to be pressing the United States to support the efforts of the International Criminal Court, even if it does not support the International Criminal Court itself by sharing information. We could have a very rapid impact on accelerating the investigations of the International Criminal Court.
Thirdly#151;now we have talked about civilian protection and accountability—the third arena is dealing with the root causes, and that is to address, through peace process the fundamental issues that divide people, that allow people to be used to commit these kinds of crimes. The United States has demonstrated that in the past, when it engages at a high level and at a sustained level, we can make a difference in Africa. Time and again, when we have partnered with African institutions to do conflict resolution we have succeeded, and I think that we have not made that commitment yet in full to the Darfur case. We need to do with the Special Envoy of the President which is what is needed urgently right now to press the case forward and move towards a peace agreement in Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: Let’s probe a little bit deeper on each of those three issues that you have raised and talk first about civilian protection. I think that most of our audience is probably aware that there is an African Union force that is on the ground, that is providing some, little, amount of protection. All the talk has been about re-hatting that, so to speak, giving it a United Nations blue berets and augmenting it with United Nations forces, but just recently the African Union’s Peace and Security Commission met and passed a resolution that seemed very ambiguous. Where do things stand in terms of the process of moving towards a United Nations force?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think we had some very good momentum about a month ago heading towards the important transition you are talking about, a transition from the African Union to the United Nations which would give a much firmer financial foundation, it would allow for a stronger mandate and it would allow for many more troops, but about three weeks ago, the regime in Khartoum began a concerted public relations campaign focused on spreading through fear tactics the idea that if the United Nations or NATO were to set foot in Darfur that Darfur would be turned into, in their words, a graveyard, that Al Qaeda would return and that all manner of uncertainties and disasters would befall such a peacekeeping force. This really spooked the African Union. It spooked the United Nations in many ways so we have gone backwards terribly over the past couple weeks. The African Union made a decision that was very ambiguous about what would trigger a transition to the United Nations. The government of Sudan is claiming that the trigger is a peace agreement, otherwise, if there is no peace agreement, there will be no United Nations force, thus giving the Khartoum government all of the leverage and power to delay the peace deals so it delays the deployment of a United Nations force. We are in a very bad situation now, and it is going to require United States leadership to get out of it, and the United States leadership that is needed along with the European Union and other African states that care about this issue is to go to the Sudanese regime, soften their opposition, go back to the African Union, clarify its position so it is clear that it is turning the mission over to the United Nations, and then work in the Security Council to accelerate planning, prepare for a United Nations takeover, and actually push for the advanced deployment of a larger, quick reaction force that can begin to deal with the protection of civilian life now. If we wait and wait and dither which is exactly what the Khartoum regime wants everyone to do, we are going to see months and months more of this diplomatic dialogue that goes nowhere, that does not put any more troops on the ground, that does not protect any civilians out there in Darfur, and so the United States has to call it as it is and say, this is our objective, and then work with the carrots and sticks that we have as a government to ensure the widest possible buy in to that strategy.
JERRY FOWLER: One view of the last couple of months is that the United States really has stepped up its public profile. The President has spoken publicly about Darfur using language that he really had not used before. He has made some public calls, or at least publicized calls, to the Secretary General of NATO. It is not clear what effect that has had. Some sense that NATO seems to be a little bit skittish about the possibility of getting more involved, and also the prospect of NATO involvement seems to be part of what you say has spooked the African Union.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think that certainly President Bush’s comment a couple of weeks ago in Florida in a Q & A was not a scripted statement. He really, I think, does care about this issue as his handlers are quick to remind us all of the time and that he does in fact want to do more on Sudan. He said he wanted NATO leadership, he wanted a United Nations force and he wanted double the number of troops. So far he has none of those. The diplomacy that the United States has waged on behalf of these objectives has been very clumsy, led by John Bolton in New York who has alienated everyone up there on this issue and alienated, importantly, the African Union who believe that we are strong arming them and pushing them rather than working with them to a joint conclusion.
I think it has a lot to do with the style. It is a style that is replicated in many issues, so it is not like this is an isolated incident; we should not have expected it to be any different, but it certainly has hamstrung the ability of the United States to lead on this issue—on a moral issue—because of the way they have conducted the diplomatic effort, but it is never too late. It depends on how much leverage the United States is willing to expend, which is a question of political will, which then again goes back to the issue of how much citizens are going to stand up in support of this and demand that the United States take the leading role that is needed to make a difference.
JERRY FOWLER: Let us turn to the second point you brought up, which was accountability. One of the things you said, that I think is very interesting, is you said that the figures in the regime in Khartoum do not want to be isolated. Then you referred to the calculations they are making. I think one thing that is not always clear to people when we are talking about violence of this scale in Darfur—we are talking about genocide—is the extent to which the perpetrators are making cost benefit calculations and getting benefits from the violence and assessing what it is costing them. How prone are the folks in Khartoum to making these kinds of cost benefit calculations?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: That is a very good question. This is not the Taliban. Bashir is not Suddam Hussein. They make outrageous statements for a particular audience but their actions are of a regime that wants to play ball internationally, that wants to be included. It does not want to be isolated. On a daily basis—literally—I think they are calibrating the extent to which their actions are alienating certain important segments of the international community that they want to maintain some element of cordiality with, some element of cooperation with, as they pursue their agenda domestically of destroying all of their opposition through force if necessary, through genocide. I think that they have tested the United States on a number of occasions over the last couple years to see how far they can go before the United States actually stands up and says, “No, that is too much.” They have found that pretty much they can do anything because so far, three years into this tragedy the United States—and you cannot expect anyone else if the United States does not lead—has not introduced one punitive measure on the parties that are culpable for this, the individuals in the regime or the regime itself. It is a rather remarkable record of capitulation on the part of the United States in the face of these kinds of criminal actions. Again, it is normal that the United States would not do anything in most of these kinds of crises, but because in Darfur they have talked such a big game about genocide, about accountability, about standing up, and then not actually done anything of any significance, it actually emboldens the officials in Khartoum to continue with their plan because there really is no cost. They can factor in and discount the rhetoric they are going to hear when the State Department issues some statement or when President Bush makes some comment off hand at some press conference, but they know generally speaking that there will be no repercussion for their actions, and thus continue to execute the counter-insurgency campaign the way they do.
JERRY FOWLER: Let us then go to the third thing you mentioned that was the root causes. The political process that is underway is being conducted in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, and is negotiation basically between the government of Sudan—which now includes elements from the southern rebels—and then on the other side are these rebel groups from Darfur. One of the points that was made by a recent guest, a Sudanese human rights activist named Dr. Mudawi Adam was that this is not inclusive enough, that this is not what is going to create peace in Darfur because the parties at the table do not represent the communities in Darfur, or the rebels just represent themselves and the government does not care about the communities in Darfur. Is there the need for a different political process or is there a need to expand Abuja?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think that there are gradations of serious problems in those peace talks, and that is probably grade two in terms of a serious challenge, which is as Mudawi is saying, that there needs to be a wider set of actors at the table, but I think the grade one problem is that the regime in Khartoum and the various rebels groups have no real interest in making forward progress in these peace talks. They have vested interests in trying to carry forth with their very extreme positions that have no real give in compromise and they are not receiving the kind of international pressure that is sufficient to change their calculations.
JERRY FOWLER: These are the rebels?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think both the government and the rebels. The government has been lucky because they have been able to sit back, not really be challenged to bring forth real proposals that might actually be enticing to the rebels because the rebels have been so divided that they have just not played ball at the table, and thus most of the international actors have blamed them for the lack of real progress, but knowing where this government has come from and what their strategy is—which is to divide the rebels and then sit back and watch it all unfold—I think it is really just an ideal scenario for them right now.
JERRY FOWLER: At the heart of this, and at the heart of the problem in the South, and at the heart of problems that are developing in eastern Sudan, it seems in some ways the fundamental intransigence of the folks who have traditionally had power in Khartoum; what is it going to take to change that?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I really think that the basic policy of the United States government has got it wrong. At the risk of dramatic over simplification, there are two strategies you can take with a rogue state—I just pulled that language out of the air—one strategy is constructive engagement, where you quietly engage a country and provide incentives for that government to change its behavior; and the other is a policy of pressure, where you bring to bear maximum sticks and deploy them, pressing and pushing a government to change its behavior or adapt itself to the current, or a different, reality. I think that the United States government—the Bush administration once they inherited the reigns from the Clinton team—their early proclivity was towards constructive engagement, and that has only deepened, ironically, in the years they have been in office. We have seen a culmination of that in the last year where the accommodation of senior regime officials is intensifying and they believe they can do business with this government but they cannot do it—or they do not feel they can do it—with the rebels. By default these guys have been able to ingratiate themselves with key people in the State Department. I think we have a policy that is very weak and ineffectual and allows these guys to get away, literally, with mass murder. Until we have a stronger policy focused on serious pressure as the basis to try to change their behavior or try to change the composition of the regime through these peace deals and through elections, then I think we are going to continue to see a very horrific death toll in Darfur and other places in Sudan as a result of this kind of weak strategy.
JERRY FOWLER: John, we are going to leave it at that for now, but thanks so much for being with us?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Thank you very much Jerry.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
