MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Just back from Northern Uganda and Eastern Congo, John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, returns to the program to talk with Jerry Fowler about his trip, the new ENOUGH campaign, his upcoming book, and the ongoing Darfur peace talks in Tripoli.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is John Prendergast, Special Advisor to the International Crisis Group. He has just returned from a trip to Africa. John, welcome back to the United States, and welcome back to Voices on Genocide Prevention.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Thanks Jerry; thanks for having me.
JERRY FOWLER: Tell me about your trip. You went to Northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. First, Northern Uganda; where do things stand there in terms of resolving the conflict between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: It has been twenty years now that this thing has raged on, and we have yet to see a really effective peace process develop in those two decades. The process that has unfolded over the last six months, based in Juba, in Southern Sudan is on the brink of collapse over the issue of venue, as the sort of approximate cause for the collapse.
JERRY FOWLER: Venue of where they are going to do the negotiations?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Yes.
JERRY FOWLER: Isn’t that sort of like collapsing over the size of the table? Or the shape of the table?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: It is one step above the size of the table, but the rebels—the Lord’s Resistance Army—of course, have very significant reasons that they are presenting as to why they want to get out of Juba, and the government of Uganda is saying no and that they will not go any other place but Juba, so they are at loggerheads there. The Lord’s Resistance Army, their indications, radio intercepts, and other things, that the Lord’s Resistance Army is getting ready to go back to war, so we are at one of those moments where it is very possible that they will start launching attacks again and the ceasefire—the one success that the Juba process has brought is a cessation of hostilities agreement that expires on February 28th, so that is going to be the big day. Who knows whether they will be able to hobble together an extension of that cessation of hostilities or whether the rebels will plunge the region back to war.
JERRY FOWLER: What is the main issue that the rebels have? It seemed like several months ago, things appeared very close to coming to some type of agreement.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Appearances were very deceiving. I think the process that Juba has unleashed is one that contains the seeds of its own demise. It has a delegation representing the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group that is largely composed of elements of the Diaspora of Northern Ugandans and people who do not really have any connection to the Lord’s Resistance Army and the military guys in the field. They are putting forth all manner of issues, loading down the agenda with things that the Lord’s Resistance Army as an entity never fought for, and does not represent the people of Northern Uganda on it. It has created an impossible scenario, and the government of Uganda says, “No, we are not going to negotiate on any of that stuff. We just want a pure deal directly with Kony.” They are not the right people representing the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the issues are not the right issues to try to attend the immediate threat that is posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army. I think the venue is basically what created a crisis in the talks that leads to an examination of much deeper problems that if not fixed with fairly dramatic new inputs will ensure that this thing slowly, surely deteriorates and disappears as yet another failed, half-hearted initiative to try to resolve this war.
JERRY FOWLER: The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants quite some time ago for Joseph Kony and other top leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Has that had any affect on the dynamics?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: I think it pushed and shoved the Lord’s Resistance Army to this process, this Juba process. It is not the Lord’s Resistance Army’s fault that a lot of things have gone wrong in Uganda. It is not the Lord’s Resistance Army’s fault, really, that the process itself is so deeply flawed. I think that the International Criminal Court indictments certainly brought the Lord’s Resistance Army to the table. That leverage has not since been utilized effectively to get them to the next step of, or at least going down the path of, getting a deal that has a legitimate possibility of being signed and implemented. It is very tantalizing and very frustrating because there are not very difficult issues at stake here. Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been quite clear in the meetings he has had privately about what needs to be on the table regarding his personal security and the security of the other guys that were indicted by the International Criminal Court and the livelihoods and opportunities in case these guys all come out of the bush for where they go after rebellion. If a credible mediator was shuttling back and forth between Kony and Museveni, I think we could get a deal pretty quickly, but instead we have gone this diversionary route, through Juba, loaded down by these crazy agenda items and a delegation that simply does not represent the Lord’s Resistance Army. It is highly unlikely that anything positive will come out of this unless it is dramatically altered.
JERRY FOWLER: Is Joseph Kony even someone who can be negotiated with? He has been fighting for twenty years, and in some ways it is open to question whether the Lord’s Resistance Army actually even has a political agenda. Isn’t the movement kind of based on his idea that he is going to institute law based on the Ten Commandments?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: It is true; we have all kinds of evidence from people who have spent a lot of time with him who are all very divided. Some people think he is schizophrenic, messianic, and others say the guy just puts on a big act to scare people, and he has a very keen sense of his rational options, and that if he were presented with a set of options that either go through Door A, which provides you sanctuary and an end to this whole thing, or B, face united international community, increased military threats, etc., etc., that he would take the rational choice and go through Door A, but he has never been presented with that in a systematic way. I think that we do not really know frankly; the guy’s record is very uneven and spotty, and we do not know much about ultimately, his psychological profile and whether he is stable enough and whether his core interests could be appealed to, survival interests could be appealed to, through a very well thought through peace deal proposal that deals with his central issues: his personal security and livelihood guarantees.
JERRY FOWLER: In addition to Northern Uganda on this trip, you went to the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and earlier this year there were elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo to create a new government. What situation did you find on the ground in the East?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: It is such a study in contrast. The amazing success of holding one of the most complicated set of elections, literally, in the history of the universe and doing it fairly successfully, without much violence, defying all of the predictions of chaos that preceded the election, but we still have the conditions in the eastern third of the country that have led to what are probably the highest mortality rates in the world today as a result of simmering conflict, the continuous cycles of displacement, and the illnesses, and the malnutrition that results from this, even in this lush environment of the Congo where anything can grow and anyone can grow it. People are on the brink of survival. We have the figure that has not really been challenged of about one thousand people dying everyday because of war related causes, whether it is illness or malnutrition, and there still remain a number of militia groups, armed groups, that are attacking civilian populations and literally preying upon them like vultures. You see it; we traveled to displaced persons camps all over the East and it is just amazing how quickly tens of thousands of people can be displaced from their homes when violence erupts overnight between some of these armed groups. I think that is the big challenge now, the big challenge after the elections; it is to figure out a strategy for dealing with the recalcitrant armed groups, the groups that have not joined the transition and to neutralize their ability to do such tremendous damage to the people of the Congo.
JERRY FOWLER: There is a United Nations force that is on the ground, often called MONUC, the United Nations Mission for Congo, as well as a nation Congolese Army that has incorporated some ex-rebel groups. To what extent are they, either singularly or together, able to provide security?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: MONUC, the United Nations Mission, really focuses on, of course, observing the ceasefire, and their mandate has only occasionally been interpreted to go protect people, and in the northeastern part of the country, they have probably pushed the envelope as far as anywhere else—not only in Congo, but across the continent of Africa—where they have actually attacked militia groups that were undermining peace and security there, that were themselves attacking civilian populations. The United Nations Mission has at times moved fairly aggressively to try to stabilize the situation in some of the harder areas, but they have mandate limitations as well, and ultimately the money and mandate are decided in New York, not in Eastern Congo, but at the Security Council, and diplomats do not want to put their soldiers in harms way, so they have largely stayed out of the civilian protection business. That is in the northeast part of the country. In the eastern part of the country, there is almost no real effort to try to reign in these militias.
As far as the government army is concerned—one of the largest on the continent now—it is probably the primary abuser of human rights in the Congo today —raping and pillaging—because these soldiers remain usually unpaid or paid so little that they feel compelled to go on these predatory missions to steal and loot whatever they can from the Congolese people, and they are the biggest source of insecurity in Eastern Congo; it is the Army itself. Army reform—they call it security sector reform—is the crying, screaming priority in the Congo today; it is how do you start to reign these forces in and deal with them, as moving them away from their predatory state to one of protector.
JERRY FOWLER: We heard similar reports from guests that we had on last year, so getting on nine months ago. Has there been any progress in that time in the security sector reform?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Not a lot; superficially, there were large numbers of soldiers that were demobilized, but a lot of these people do not receive the support they are supposed to receive, programs are corrupt and they have been abandoned, and so they just drift back into militia activity, into militia membership. I think we are very far away from having a top to bottom review of how the military should look—what its size should look like, its function—and then creating a rational plan to get there. That does not exist now; there is no real road map. There are hopes and visions, but no real road map. Into that breach step, a number of nongovernmental armed groups, which are wreaking havoc in Eastern Congo and creating some of the horrible civil displacement and suffering that we hear about.
JERRY FOWLER: You just launched a new initiative that you are one of the principles in, called ENOUGH, which as I understand it is going to deal with Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur as well. Give us an overview of what ENOUGH is all about.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: We just got frustrated with how little, after all the efforts that have been generated, how little political cost there is to not responding to genocide and crimes against humanity. Though there has been quite a significant effort and citizen mobilization on Darfur—thanks in part to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and other entities like it throughout the country—despite their efforts, the best efforts, we still have not been able to make much of a dent in the policy making process in the United States and elsewhere in response to the Darfur crisis. Part of what we want to do is to help jump in and make the advocacy effort, the effort to build a movement on these issues of responding to genocide and crimes against humanity, just make them smarter and more focused on real policy change. We will combine; we will have people in the field, in the three countries, and we will combine that field analysis with high level advocacy in capitols, with grassroots mobilization strategies where we will work very closely with other groups that are already doing it, feed into their efforts, and try to build some consensus around some of the fundamental things that have to happen to actually bring an end to genocide and war crimes as we know them.
JERRY FOWLER: Part of what you just described sounds very much like the mission of the International Crisis Group, having people out in the field, doing high level advocacy. Is ENOUGH, and I know ENOUGH is a partnership between the International Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress, but will ENOUGH be a separate entity that has its own people in the field and its own people doing grassroots organizing?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: The major missing element of the International Crisis Group’s agenda is this citizen mobilization and network, building a movement of people who are willing to commit themselves to saying never again and making it mean something. I think that that is really the difference, and I think that that is what I have felt missing here. So, yes, we will stay with the International Crisis Group, and Gayle Smith and others who are working with me will stay at the Center for American Progress, but it will be a marriage of the two entities, the two organizations, to marry up the very good mobilization that Center for American Progress has with the strengths that the International Crisis Group has. There will be some new staff and some use of existing staff, a mix of that; and I think the value added that each brings to the other will be quite substantial.
JERRY FOWLER: Is there a web site that people can go to to find out more about ENOUGH?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Almost; it is going to come out starting in about two weeks; something like www.enoughproject.org.
JERRY FOWLER: How can you launch without having your web site ready to go?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: We have not launched yet. We are in pre-launch hovering mode.
JERRY FOWLER: Ok, so Voices on Genocide Prevention is ahead of the curve on this?
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Yes, you are actually scooping the world.
JERRY FOWLER: Speaking of scooping, you also have a new book coming out at the end of April, as I understand it, that you wrote with Don Cheadle. Tell me about that.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: That was just a fun idea, just a little egg that was laid about a year or so ago when Don Cheadle and I had taken a couple trips to Africa and were doing a lot of events and stuff together, and we were just talking about what we could do that would, instead of just having a drop in the ocean here, and a drop in the ocean there, how we could make our joint efforts mean something more, and so this idea of a book was hatched from this little egg, and we looked at each other and said, “Who is going to write it?” It was a long process of dividing the labor and he turned out to be the best co-author, best colleague I could have possibly ever had. We wrote it relatively quickly—I think it took six months—and we got a good publisher and they are going to promote the heck out of it and get it out there. It really is basically a guide for citizen action. If you ever felt like you wanted to do something about these terrible atrocities, but you did not know what to do, or you felt like whatever you did would not make a difference, this is the handbook. It has all kinds of case studies that will hopefully empower people to see how they can make a difference. That is the objective of the book.
JERRY FOWLER: We are coming to the end of our time, but I do not want to let you go without talking about Darfur, at least a little bit. Things do not seem to be looking up there. One thing I wanted to focus on is that there seems to be some type of peace talks going on in Tripoli. On the one hand, there seems to be, from time to time, flurries of action, but on the other hand, it does not seem that since the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement last May, up to now, there has actually been any substantive progress on bringing peace to the region.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: In every peace process that I have been associated with, that I studied or looked at over the last twenty some years, there is always a period of time at the beginning where there is all kind of confusion and parallel initiatives in competition among punitive peacemakers. We are in one of those modes; it is shocking to me and I am sure it is to you Jerry, that four years after this genocidal counter-insurgency campaign was unleashed by the government of Sudan, we are still in that phase of confusing, competing peace initiatives. We do not have a clear approach to reconciling the various Darfurian rebel factions with the government around a core agenda of issues that will resolve the conflict, once and for all. This is just a legacy of failure that ranks right up there with the one hundred fateful days of 1994 in Rwanda where no one had any desire to intervene to stop it. We now have had four years in Darfur; not only have we not deployed an effective force to protect people, we have not even deployed an effective peacemaking entity to try to get a resolution to the conflict underlying the genocide. I am deeply disappointed in the United Nations and the Secretary Generals, both past and present, and in the United States government which was so central, of course, to resolving the war in Sudan between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, what is called the North-South War. We have not been able to exercise the same type of leadership to get a peace process, and thus a peace deal, for Darfur that makes a difference to the lives of the people in that region.
JERRY FOWLER: John Prendergast is the Special Advisor to the International Crisis Group. John, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: Thank you Jerry.
