MuseumDESCRIPTION:
John Prendergast, Special Advisor to the President of the International Crisis Group, returns to the program to talk about his recent trip to Eastern Chad and parts of Darfur. He discusses the spillover of violence into Chad, the opposition to the Darfur Peace Agreement and the consequences of this resistance, the attempts to overthrow Chad’s President, and the possibility of forced recruitment by the rebels in the refugee camps.
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 is John Prendergast, Special Advisor to the President of the International Crisis Group. He has just returned from a visit to Eastern Chad. John, welcome back to Voices on Genocide Prevention.
John Prendergast: Thanks Jerry.
Jerry Fowler: What did you see in Eastern Chad?
John Prendergast: We went into Eastern Chad and we crossed the border into rebel held areas of Darfur as well and both sides of the border, there is clearly an increasing tension as a result of cross border attacks by government of Sudan backed Janjaweed militias and government of Sudan backed Chadian rebels who are attacking across the border with the same kind of impunity, and in some cases the same kind of intention they did when attacking inside Darfur. We are seeing a sort of exporting some of the genocidal counterinsurgency strategies into Chad now, and that was one of the dominant themes. The other dominant theme was how uniformly the refugees and displaced people that we came across were unable to support the current peace agreement that has been signed between the government and one of the rebel factions in Darfur. There is an intense, palpable fear on the part of those who have been rendered homeless by this assault over the last three years, fear of the provision in the agreement that would leave the disarmament of the Janjaweed in the hands of the government of Sudan with no real international verification. In the absence of that, most people would have just said, “We cannot support this, and we have to keep the struggle alive until we get this fundamentally important provision into any kind of a text of an agreement.” It was quite eye opening to see, and people were not brain washed; they knew what was in the agreement and they just chose to say, “We do not want an incomplete peace because it will not bring peace,” and that was fairly uniform up and down the border, all over.
Jerry Fowler: When you say “refugees” and “displaced,” these were Darfurians who you encountered on both sides of the Chad border?
John Prendergast: Correct, yes, just for international legal purposes, when you cross the border you become a refugee, and if you are still inside Sudan, and still inside Darfur—the Darfurians who were rendered homeless—would just be technically called “displaced.”
Jerry Fowler: Or internally displaced peoples—IDPs. In terms of the people that you talked to, some reports have suggested that the attitude towards the agreement among the part of Darfuris is breaking down along ethnic lines. The rebel who signed it, Minni Minnawi, is from the Zaghawa group, and the most notable holdout, Abdul Wahid, is from the Fur group. Did you find that kind of ethnic split developing among the Darfurians?
John Prendergast: We very conscientiously went and visited with different groups of the three main ethnic groups of Sudan—the Masaalit, the Fur and the Zaghawa—and found that view of opposition to the current version of this peace agreement to be uniform, even those that were of the same ethnic group as Minni Minnawi, the guy who signed the agreement. Everyone we met; we did not meet one Zaghawa, displaced, or refugee person who was supportive of the agreement. They understood Minni’s signing, but did not support it and we were seeing, unfortunately, the fragmentation within the Zaghawa community and within Minni’s own faction. Since he signed, many of his commanders have left, splintered off, and said, “We do not agree with this signing. We do agree with the pressure that Minni was placed under to sign, and we just think that the agreement needs to be amended and improved before we can support it.” He is increasingly isolated in the sort of rebel ranks and does not have much popular support for it, as much as we can tell.
Jerry Fowler: On the other hand, we have seen at least in press reports that there have been other commanders associated with, in particular Abdul Wahid, who have signed in some kind of declaration of acceptance (I do not know what the term is that has been used). Is it going both ways?
John Prendergast: Yes, I think it is going both ways, but I think the force, the centrifugal force is out of—forgive my high school chemistry—
Jerry Fowler: I always forget centrifugal.
John Prendergast: The one that is sort of splintering, as opposed to the one that is cohering, certainly is predominant now. I think, particularly in light of this most recent series of meetings in Asmara, which brought together a number of rebel commanders and politicians, which formed a coalition of everybody basically but Abdul Wahid who is in the opposition, and they have already started launching strikes inside of Sudan. Then you have Abdul Wahid who has definitely lost some support amongst those that are not of his ethnic group of the Fur, but he has maintained it amongst the Fur. The dynamic new element is, of course, the Chadian government is starting to provide new resources to these non-signatory rebel groups, mostly because Chad needs them to defend physicians within Chad against some of the attacks by the Chadian rebels, supported by the government of Sudan. The government of Sudan, of course, wants to overthrow the government of Chad and overthrow President Deby to install a more friendly Arab regime in Chad. I think that these guys are going to be increasingly empowered, the Sudanese rebels that did not sign, and that will easily allow them to recruit people who are part of the faction that did sign.
Jerry Fowler: What is going to be the consequences of that because the conventional wisdom was that a peace agreement was a prerequisite for the United Nations approving a United Nations force to take over from the African Union? If the peace agreement falls apart, does that leave efforts to create a United Nations force in disarray? In more disarray than they already are?
John Prendergast: It is hard to imagine it getting worse, but it is, and I think yes, at some point you just have to say, “The strategy was wrong. The United States invested heavily for a minute by sending Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick—who I think is finished today; it is his last day in office—he went and spent a few days out there, got at least enough of a concession out of the government of Sudan to get one of the rebel factions on board, and then we basically walked away, and he has now resigned of course, and there is nobody that has taken his place as sort of the lead element of the United States, and the United States is so important diplomatically in the Sudanese context, so the vacuum that leaves means that the entire diplomatic strategy with respect to support for the peace deal has been wandering, meandering since then. How do you rescue it? Well, the United Nation Secretary General’s Special Representative said the other day that there needs to be some type of amendment to this, improvements to this peace agreement, otherwise pretty much everyone in Darfur has a problem with the fact that the Janjaweed are not going to be disarmed, so there has to be some enhancement to the agreement, and then you can start to build a process, getting the concessions, but it is almost unimaginable right now Jerry because within the absence of any United States role, who can bring leverage on Khartoum to get them to extract the concession necessary to allow for more external verification of the Janjaweed? Without that kind of support, then you are not going to have enough for consensual position within the country to allow for a United Nations force. We are far away from a situation which would allow for the implementation of this agreement and allow for the deployment of a United Nations force. We are really far away, and the red alert has been sounding now for quite some time, and I think people are finally hearing it.
Jerry Fowler: There has been a fair amount of discussion about the terms of the Darfur Peace Agreement, and in fact, there was kind of a remarkable statement made by the African Union—it was about a week or ten days ago; it was a little while ago—specifically criticizing the Crisis Group for the criticisms that the Crisis Group, and presumably you, were making about the Darfur Peace Agreement, and claiming that it overlooked some of the actual provisions of the agreement.
John Prendergast: It is a very complicated agreement. There is no question that there was a lot of work done. I think that the fact that the government of Sudan jumped as high as it did and as far as it did the day that they laid down that agreement in support of it tells you everything you need to know. It is a complicated agreement, but it is definitely one that is so tilted towards the government that one wonders how anyone could possibly sign up to it. The bottom line that we just kept hearing in this last visit with Darfurians in Chad and in rebel held zones in Darfur is that this one issue—I mean, there is a lot of noise about compensation, there is a lot of noise about political representation and all of these other things that the politicians are making—but the people on the ground have one concern, and that is security. They are not going to go home in the current context of this agreement. They are not going to go home because they do not believe the Janjaweed is going to be disarmed; therefore, they cannot support the agreement. Unless the United Nations deploys a force that is involved directly in that disarmament, there will not be support lended to it. Yes, we can talk about all the great causes that exist in that agreement, but the linchpin, the pin that holds the entire construct together is simply missing, and we do not have it. Until we have it, there is not going to peace in Darfur.
Jerry Fowler: Let me turn back to the situation on the ground there in Eastern Chad and I guess, the parts of Darfur that you traveled through. First of all, you referred to, and we have seen press reports that there have been incursions across the border, partly by Chadian rebels who are supported by the Sudanese government, and presumably their aim is to rest control of Chad from the current government, but also attacks across the border from the Janjaweed. What is motivating their attacks? What is it that they are trying to achieve by expanding the violence into Chad?
John Prendergast: I think that the Janjaweed attacks are very opportunistic criminality; it gives a chance for expansion of territory for the Janjaweed and their kin to graze their animals in a larger and larger area. It gives them a chance to raid livestock; there are hundreds of thousands of dollars in asset transfers every time you have one of these attacks. It provides a political objective; it addresses a political objective the Sudanese government and the Chadian opposition which is to begin to soften up Eastern Chad for another attack by the Chadian rebels on the capital city of Chad. There is opportunism, there is expansion of land, and there is the political objective of preparations to overthrow the regime of President Deby in Chad. Those are, I think, the reasons why the Janjaweed has gotten mulled across the border.
Jerry Fowler: Were you also doing research on the stability of the Deby regime in Chad?
John Prendergast: He is getting hit from a political opposition which he can manage, but he is also beset by two major kind of rebellions which are actively recruiting and which have a great deal of support from Sudan, as well as Sanctuary. One of them is from his own ethnic group, the Zaghawa, and that is in the northern part of the border, between Chad and Sudan. The other group is a mostly Arab, collection of Arab groups, that want to see an overthrow to the entire system, whereas the Zaghawa simply want to replace Deby with another Zaghawa leader, so they are not working together very much, but they occasionally are coordinating the timing of their attacks to the extent to which they are working in concert. Definitely, cumulatively, the political opposition, the two rebellions represent a significant threat to the regime given particularly that they are supported externally by the government of Sudan.
Jerry Fowler: Chad, as I understand it, is quite ethnically diverse. As you said, Deby is from the Zaghawa group which is on both sides of the border, but constitutes a very, very small percentage of the population of Chad, so he kind of starts out with a fairly narrow base. If his government fell, what would be the consequences in terms of the situation in Chad? Would this lead to group violence, or would there be a natural replacement for him?
John Prendergast: With so many of these long serving quasi dictators, there is no succession plan and actively prevented or obstructed from having anything like that so that the head of state can appear to everyone to be indispensable. Certainly, President Deby has done that. There is a fear on the part of the diplomatic community and the capital city that if indeed Deby were to fall, if his regime were to fall, there would be a period of tense infighting, potentially chaotic conditions in the capital and different parts of Eastern Chad where the differences are the greatest. That conventional wisdom holds that the vacuum which would be created by Deby’s passing would actually have a very negative impact on stability in Chad. I think that it holds water and that it is a great concern to most countries, from even countries that do not agree with each other on their foreign policy, that do not want to see Deby’s regime overthrown because the prospect of the alternative may be worse.
Jerry Fowler: There is a significant French military presence in Chad, especially in Eastern Chad, and by all accounts, they played an important role in fighting off the rebel attack on the capital on N’Djamena that happened earlier this year. In your travels through Eastern Chad, did you get the sense that there actively patrolling and making an effort to stem these incursions from the rebels and the Janjaweed?
John Prendergast: Let’s see; I think that there was a great deal of effort by the French to provide information and real time intelligence to the Chadian government so that it could deploy its forces and maximize its limited manpower in defensive positions. I did not get the sense that the French were intervening directly on the ground military, although certainly at the height of the fighting in the capital, there are allegations that they were involved directly, but I think that most of their effort is geared to intelligence provision and support for command and control, in other words, war strategy, defensive strategy. They are helping the French decide where to deploy and how to defend, and so far, that has been sufficient for Deby to kind of ward off the worst attacks by the opposition.
Jerry Fowler: Did you visit the refugee camps in Chad on this visit?
John Prendergast: Yes.
Jerry Fowler: What is the security situation like there? Have they been subject to attacks directly?
John Prendergast:
Once, I think the government of Sudan wanted to send a message and they sent the Janjaweed and some of the Chadian rebel groups directly into one of the refugee camps in the South, the southern part of the border area.
Jerry Fowler: Gosh Beda.
John Prendergast: Yes, Gosh Beda. That is the one time they have actually hit them. They have attacked a number of times, settlements of displaced Chadians; people who have been displaced by the attacks, and hit those places as well. I think that there is a fear; the great fear is that you would get on the context of a larger scale invasion by these groups. You would get a lot of attacks against refugees because they are soft targets and because they have assets in terms of stored food and other commodities. I think that they would be at risk.
Jerry Fowler:
There have been some reports recently of rebel recruitment in the refugee camps. Did you see any evidence of that?
John Prendergast: Yes, there is no question. The only question is, is it voluntary or forced. I think it is quite obvious talking to refugees how few of them believe that there is any hope in the near term to go home. When you have a hopeless population, full of anger about what has happened, you are just going to get a lot of recruits, going down to a very young age. I have also heard of forcible recruitment, and the United Nations is tempted to—on several occasions—directly intervene against forcible recruitment, particularly of minors. That is something that has been ongoing in terms of advocating with the rebel groups to stop that. There has been some success with that. I think that probably the bulk of recruitment right now is voluntary.
Jerry Fowler: Looking forward, in terms of providing security, for most of last year the Crisis Group was calling for a NATO bridging force that would go in, in anticipation of United Nations force, and if I understand correctly now, the Crisis Group has backed off of that somewhat. What is realistically possible in the near term and the medium term to provide security for civilians in Darfur, and to that extent, in Eastern Chad?
John Prendergast: It is very unfortunate, but the Sudanese government has been able to maintain its dominance diplomatically, internationally, over the decision-making process for who gets deployed where and on what terms in Sudan. It is a sovereign government, and when it makes a decision about who comes in and who does not come in, so far, the challenge has not been strong enough to overcome their decision making process, so right now, we have the African Union, we and others were calling for NATO to come in, in a consensual fashion, but the government of Sudan was harshly opposed to that, and nobody pushed hard enough, using the leverage that we do have to gain the government’s assent to that deployment, so the default position is the United Nations having a robust enough force in the United Nations, but that also is not happening yet because the government of Sudan, through the President, has been outspoken and against such a force. What has to happen, of course, is that, the only way we are going to get the force on the ground in Darfur is if there much more pressure placed on the government of Sudan; that there is a cost to the government of Sudan for its obstruction. Right now, there is no cost. The costs, I think, are very specific. We can talk about, but there really have to be punitive measures placed on the government of Sudan, and then lifted once they allow the right things to happen, including the deployment of United Nations forces.
Jerry Fowler: Of course, very little cost has been imposed on them; in fact, I just recently saw that the Minister of the Interior, who has been implicated in the violence in Darfur is traveling to London to speak at a Conference. There are obviously some costs that can be imposed, but are there really costs that could get this regime’s attention or does the regime have to be done away with?
John Prendergast: I think that the costs; the most important costs are three fold: one, the International Criminal Court is looking at the case, it has already started investigating the case of Darfur, and I think that if the United States and others provided a lot of intelligence to the ICC—even though the United States does not support the ICC, we could accelerate the process of bringing indictments against some of the senior leadership of the government of Sudan. That is key. The second one is targeted sanctions. The Security Council of the United Nations authorized targeted sanctions in March of 2005, that is now fifteen, sixteen months, and we have only imposed the sanctions on one government official so far, so I think we need just to expand that list and start sanctioning the people who are responsible for obstructing the United Nations force, and responsible for some of the atrocities that have been committed. Then thirdly, I think that a tool that could get their attention is major support for the divestment effort, to try to shut down, or try to sway businesses from Europe, the United States and elsewhere to go and work in Sudan. I think that using those three things would bring sufficient leverage to the government of Sudan to go a different way.
Jerry Fowler:
John Prendergast is Special Advisor to the President of the International Crisis Group. John, thanks again for being with us.
John Prendergast: Thank you 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.
