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Sudan analyst Eric Reeves, author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide, returns to Voices on Genocide Prevention to give his perspective on the current situation in Darfur.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Eric Reeves, a Sudan researcher and analyst and author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide and of course a past guest on “Voices on Genocide Prevention.” Eric, welcome to the program.
ERIC REEVES: Good to be with you, Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: Well, Eric, two big topics continue to dominate discussions about Darfur. The first is the fact that the UN has authorized and Khartoum has ostensibly agreed to the deployment of a hybrid UN African Union peacekeeping force and the second is that peace talks are scheduled for later this month in Tripoli, Libya. And I wanted to start actually with the peace talks. Can you give us an assessment of what we can look for when these peace talks convene?
ERIC REEVES: The big question is who shows up. Khartoum will be there. They’re the ones who chose the venue. Ban Ki-moon was given very explicate advice by NGOs, non-governmental organizations, in New York before he left – those in touch with the situation on the ground and with the various factions – that disastrous . . . that the choice of Libya would be a disastrous choice.
JERRY FOWLER: Why would it be a disastrous choice?
ERIC REEVES: Well Libya, there’s no country that’s had a greater record of instigating violence on both sides of the Chad/Darfur border going back three decades now. Libya’s interests are not always savory and at other times they’re simply inscrutable. Muammar Khaddafi was throwing around money in the Abuja peace process, the Abuja, Nigeria peace process in 2006. This is not a guy we want hosting these talks if we want the talks to be productive. But even more significant will be which of the rebel factions show up. There’s almost certainly-- there will almost certainly be no presence by Abdul Wahid al Nur, the founder of the SLA/SLM, a Fur with enormous popularity and following in the camps for failing- for refusing to sign the Abuja peace agreement. That support is beginning to diminish significantly, as it should. Abdul Wahid is too much a spoiler at this point. People in the camps themselves want to be represented in these talks. There are very few of them who would have adequate diplomatic preparation, although their voices certainly should be there and efforts should be made to ensure that there is significant civilian representation, not just a representation of men with guns. But we don’t know at this point who will be showing up on October 27th.
JERRY FOWLER: Well do you know – are there efforts underway to secure civilian representation apart from the various rebel groups?
ERIC REEVES: There are. It’s not clear that Salim Salim, and Jan Elliasson, the African Union and UN special envoys for the peace process, are engaged in a meaningful way. They have been, it seems to me, extraordinarily incompetent in preparing for these talks and that’s the other thing I think we should bear in mind in looking to October 27th. Not nearly enough preparation has been made for these talks. That’s true whether we’re talking about the unification of the rebel groups – to the extent they can be unified – or rebel factions, to the extent that civilians can be represented, to the extent that the starting negotiation position can be clarified. Right now, Khartoum is insisting that the Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006 signed in Abuja be the starting point, with only minor modifications. The rebel groups are now demanding something much closer to the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement, something that would undermine Khartoum’s – the Nationalist Islamic Front, the National Congress’s – monopoly on national wealth and power. And that’s something that Khartoum will resist strenuously.
JERRY FOWLER: But to an outside observer – even one who would believe that Khartoum was primarily responsible for this enormous violence, for this genocide that we’ve seen over the past couple of years – where things stand now is Khartoum seems perfectly willing to talk and they don’t have an interlocutor, they don’t have someone on the other side. How can that dynamic be fixed?
ERIC REEVES: Well, first of all, it’s important to remember that Khartoum is perfectly willing to talk precisely because there is no interlocutor. I think if there were a strong unified rebel voice they’d be much less willing to talk. They have nothing to lose now by professing a willingness to talk without any threat of somebody to talk to. I’m not sure how we unify the rebels. They’re-- the release of Suliman Jamous, the humanitarian coordinator for the SLA, is one important movement. He’s in N’Djamena, Chad, now, working very, very hard I think to bring about some unity. But the rebel groups – one of the great disasters of the Abuja agreement was that it set in motion this fracturing of the rebel movement, and that process has proceeded pretty much unimpeded for the last year-in-a-half so that the divisions along ethnic lines, along political policy lines, even along personal and personality lines, have deepened during this time. The rush to get the Abuja agreement, the egregious shortcomings of the Abuja agreement are all now haunting us as we try and restart talks in Libya. We paid an enormous price for the shortcomings of the Abuja peace agreement and I see no quick fix to overcoming those shortcomings.
JERRY FOWLER: Along the same lines with regard to the rebels, just within the last week or so there was a very dramatic attack, major attack, apparently by rebels against the African Union, those monitoring forces on the ground, at a place called Haskanita. And ten African Union personnel were killed; there are many more missing. Apparently they were captured by the rebels. First, is there any clear idea of who undertook this attack? But even more important, why did they do it and what are going to be the consequences for both the existence of the AU force and the deployment of the hybrid force?
ERIC REEVES: The intelligence I received from a range of sources in the region suggests that the attack was carried out by one faction of the Justice and Equality Movement, the Islamist group within the rebel constellation, a faction that had been based in the Haskanita area that had been engaging with Khartoum, it’s regular forces and it’s Janjaweed militia allies for some weeks beforehand, as well as rogue elements of the Sudan Liberation Army, Unity faction. It takes quite a glossary and roadmap to figure out where all these groups are and who they are, but it does appear that one element of the Justice and Equality Movement and some rogue commanders from the largest of the SLA elements, the SLA Unity, were involved in this attack. Their motives are unclear. They had been engaged in a series of encounters, military encounters with Khartoum’s forces But the reason for attacking the African Union base are quite unclear. It could be that because Khartoum was using its aerial military assets, its Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships in violation of UN Security Counsel resolution 1591 on a regular basis, and the African Union was doing so little to report this, that the rebels were simply overwhelmed by anger. But this was a thousand-man force. This is more than just resentment. There are also rumors that the rebels felt that the African Union was coordinating with the aerial forces of Khartoum in bombing attacks. There does seem to be some evidence that the African Union was saying to Khartoum’s military commanders, “Don’t send your bombers so close to our base.” But one can imagine that a Nigerian speaking Arabic perhaps imperfectly, a radio transmission intercepted, this might have been misconstrued as – in a deadly misconstrual – of what was going on. But the attack is completely unjustified, completely unjustified. It was an atrocity crime, there’s no justification, and the larger effect will certainly be to make it more difficult to unify the rebels. It will make deployment of the UNAMID force – the hybrid UN-AU force – all the more difficult. It was a disaster all the way around.
JERRY FOWLER: Now you mentioned the UNAMID, the hybrid UN-African Union force that has been authorized. And Khartoum has ostensibly given agreement for it to come in, and it is in the process of being organized. I guess the first question then is: Countries have started to volunteer units, where does that stand and will it be affected by the prospect that the force when it’s on the ground could be attacked in the way that these troops in Haskanita were?
ERIC REEVES: I certainly think that rules of engagement and the nature of the outposts that are established and such -- Haskanita is in a very remote part of eastern North Darfur. I think remote outposts will be much more robust and will have also the use of tactical aircraft which the African Union force does not. For example the deployment of just a couple helicopter gunships could easily have dispersed the thousand men attacking this African Union force. So there will need to be tactical aircraft, helicopter gunships were to have deployed as part of the so-called “heavy support package,” which was and still is suppose to precede deployment of UNAMID. I think we gain some sense of how likely it is that UNAMID will be very, very slow in deploying not simply because of the difficulty, the logistical difficulty of assembling and deploying the force, but there has to be preparation for a force this large. It has a very large footprint. The requirements for water, fuel, housing are enormous and the heavy support package was designed to be the preparatory force for UNAMID. It is not making nearly enough progress. Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte last week spoke about an April 2008 deployment. I don’t know whether that was a slip of the tongue or . . . I doubt it was a slip of the tongue. It was an unaccountable moment of honesty from the Bush administration.
JERRY FOWLER: You’re talking about April 2008 deployment of the heavy support package?
ERIC REEVES: No, of the UNAMID force. Now that’s a long, long time from now. And if you look at the security on the ground, particularly that threatening the camps, that’s too long to wait. What we’re seeing, in effect, are the consequences of the international community’s failure to implement resolution 1706. UNAMID is authorized by resolution 1769. 1706 was passed on August 31st, 2006, at a time when rebel fragmentation was much, much less than it is now. The force authorized would have had a more robust mandate, could have done much to staunch the flow of violence into Chad and Central African Republic. But Khartoum objected, and the international community blinked. And we began this obscenely deferential diplomatic process that only about a year later led to passage of the resolution that would authorize UNAMID with Khartoum’s approval. But during that time security has deteriorated very, very badly particularly for humanitarians. And the civilians in the camps and in many rural areas are completely dependent upon these humanitarians for their survival. The exit by humanitarian groups could prompt the greatest loss of life in a genocidal counter-insurgency war that’s already claimed several hundred thousand lives.
JERRY FOWLER: Let’s shift to the diplomatic scene, and you among others have been in the forefront of calling attention to the role that China has played in supporting the government in Khartoum. And a fair amount of pressure now has been brought on China or attempted to be brought on China by linking to the 2008 Olympics. Is that starting to pay dividends? We see Special Envoy Natsios saying that they’re playing a constructive role and encouraging activists to back off of China. What’s your perspective on that?
ERIC REEVES: Andrew Natsios in my judgment is being wholly expedient here and disingenuous. China has not begun to play the role it can in pressuring Khartoum, hasn’t begun. China has unrivaled leverage with this regime. It has been over the last decade the primary supplier of weapons, even weapons introduced in violation of, again, resolution 1561 which imposes a total embargo on weapons delivery to Darfur even if Khartoum continues to ship in Chinese-made weapons. China’s been the primary commercial capital investor in Sudan, meaning the Khartoum-dominated economy. China is the dominant player in the two oil-producing exploration consortia in southern Sudan. And most significantly Beijing has provided Khartoum with unstinting diplomatic support at the United Nations, and that has continued. Resolution 1769 was much weaker than it should have been. China stripped out a provision that would have allowed for the disarming of combatants, including those combatants carrying weapons introduced into Darfur in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. China has made public its very, very strong stance against any threat of sanctions, even in the event of non-compliance with deployment of the UNAMID force by Khartoum. So China has a long way to go. And for Andrew Natsios to say that they’re a partner and they’ve done their part is really obscenely disingenuous. And what the Bush administration is seeking to do is trade out Darfur in the interest of a larger set of bilateral issues between the U.S. and China. It’s as crass and crassly “realpolitik” as that.
JERRY FOWLER: But if I could just push on that for a second, this goes back to what we were talking about before. Khartoum has agreed to the deployment of UNAMID, and it may or may not be cooperating as well as it should. It’s agreed to go to peace talks. The most obvious obstacle now to moving forward is not Khartoum at all but the rebels attacking the AU, not going to peace talks, not being unified. Couldn’t there be the argument that China has done what it can and that really the place to put pressure right now is other than on Khartoum?
ERIC REEVES: Well, certainly we need to put whatever pressure is possible on the rebel groups. From the standpoint of somebody who works in the advocacy world, it’s very, very difficult to bring pressure to bear on, for example, the breakaway Justice and Equality Movement operating in eastern North Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: Just getting their phone number’s a problem.
ERIC REEVES: Yeah. I have called Abdul Wahid al-Nur, the holdout leader, myself personally on a number of occasions. I had one extensive conversation trying to persuade him to at least figure out a way to engage in this peace process. I’m not alone. There are many, many people with contacts in the rebel movement who are doing everything we can. Suliman Jamous was released only because of advocacy pressure. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that advocacy efforts have focused only on Khartoum. I think there’ve been tremendous efforts, insofar as they are possible and practicable, to get the rebels to be more responsive and to have the interests of their people more directly in mind when they make such consequential decisions about the peace process. But make no mistake about it, when we get to that peace agreement, the peace negotiations, Khartoum will be obdurate, and there is no evidence yet that Khartoum has really accepted UNAMID. In fact there are a number of signs indicating that Khartoum is going to make it very, very difficult for UNAMID to deploy in effective fashion and that Khartoum will insist that all the forces be African. This is evident in statements by Alpha Oumar Konare, the African Union commissioner, who’s become completely, abjectly deferential to Khartoum on this issue. And I think we’re going to run into real problems – command and control, force composition, access to land – all sorts of ways in which Khartoum can obstruct this force which it hasn’t needed to because the force is so far from deploying. Again, the primary reason Khartoum is so fulsomely willing to engage in peace talks is because they know they have no interlocutor. Why not appear to be the good guy, the partner willing to talk peace when you risk nothing by doing so? But you’re quite right. If the rebels cannot be brought to a unified negotiating position, these talks have no chance.
JERRY FOWLER: Well, Eric Reeves is a Sudan researcher and analyst and author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. And Eric, I know you have some challenges coming up medically, many people are familiar with the struggle that you’ve been in, and so I just want to wish you the best of luck. And I know that all of the audience of “Voices on Genocide Prevention” wish you the same.
ERIC REEVES: Thank you very much, Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: Take care, Eric.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
