Understanding Sudan: Commentary

Al-Jazeera - Sudan referendum... featuring John Ryle

2011-01-09T22:01:00.001-08:00

Great speech by John Garang... yashiil min al 70% al-haggahum...

2010-05-25T20:05:00.001-07:00

Road pessimism or optimism....

2010-01-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

New evidence on African exports - "While improvements in ports and customs and less bureaucracy will help exporters, the impact of improved inland transit is roughly five times greater."

I have not had time to read the paper by Freund and Rocha, but the quoted line intrigues me... I can't believe that the meaning is "the impact of a dollar spent is five times greater." A quick glance at the working paper suggests it means "a decrease in transit time" has an impact five times greater. But is that the relevant question? If it costs $100 million to reduce the transit time by a day by building and maintaining a road, and it costs $10 million to reduce border time by implementing computerized vehicle registration (can't they take snapshot of license plate on iphone and load it straight to Google's African vehicle registration database?) and then the road increases the daily flow of trade by $50 million while the customs improvements increase the daily flow of trade by $10 million, the choice is to go with customs improvements ($1 increase in trade for $1 investment) rather than roads ($.5 increase in trade for $1 investment).

Department of yikes!

2009-12-31T14:14:00.000-08:00

Our brains have some kind of process for deciding how many deaths is a lot... abstract from a paper by Olivola and Sagara, "Distributions of observed death tolls govern sensitivity to human fatalities":

How we react to humanitarian crises, epidemics, and other tragic events involving the loss of human lives depends largely on the extent to which we are moved by the size of their associated death tolls. Many studies have demonstrated that people generally exhibit a diminishing sensitivity to the number of human fatalities and, equivalently, a preference for risky (vs. sure) alternatives in decisions under risk involving human losses. However, the reason for this tendency remains unknown. Here we show that the distributions of event-related death tolls that people observe govern their evaluations of, and risk preferences concerning, human fatalities. In particular, we show that our diminishing sensitivity to human fatalities follows from the fact that these death tolls are approximately power-law distributed. We further show that, by manipulating the distribution of mortality-related events that people observe, we can alter their risk preferences in decisions involving fatalities. Finally, we show that the tendency to be risk-seeking in mortality-related decisions is lower in countries in which high-mortality events are more frequently observed. Our results support a model of magnitude evaluation based on memory sampling and relative judgment. This model departs from the utility-based approaches typically encountered in psychology and economics in that it does not rely on stable, underlying value representations to explain valuation and choice, or on choice behavior to derive value functions. Instead, preferences concerning human fatalities emerge spontaneously from the distributions of sampled events and the relative nature of the evaluation process.

Pissing off the Rwandans...

2009-12-07T04:15:00.000-08:00

So now it will be Mr. al-Bashir against the powerful forces of two small African countries, Botswana *and* Rwanda, and Sadiq al-Mahdi, he of the hennaed beard, and Save Darfur, and Eris Reeves. Let's call them the SPLA back banch.

And over here in West Africa, Burkina Faso suddenly realizes that international diplomacy is a big stretch, with Gbagbo still smiling, Moussa Dadis in hospital, Darfur more complicated than ever...

Al-Bashir's very bad scenario...

2009-12-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

SPLM and Sadiq al-Mahdi work out a deal for al-Mahdi to stand (and possibly win) as President, guaranteeing peaceful secession and creating two states that actually work together to solve common problems... and one of them will be ICC indictment... oops!

And for people who might say that Sudanese "national pride" will never accept to be humiliated by a foreign court judging a past president (who took power in a coup), I say: Sudanese "national pride" took a holiday with the execution of Mah. Mohhamed Taha... cooperating by having a serious "truth mechanism" through the ICC seems like a perfect way to start restoring some dignity. Because, BTW, I think al-Bashir can mount a vigorous defense, and the whole sorry establishment will be exposed for what it really is and everyone knows it to be, and that is the first step of the twelve-step program back to "national pride".... along with making some more postage stamps with John Garang on them, for crying out loud.

Meaningful macroeconomic analysis of Sudan.... the skeptical note

2009-11-27T00:11:00.000-08:00

I am reviewing applicants in macroeconomics for the position we have open here at Santa Clara University.... a couple hundred at latest count, and all with really interesting macroeconomic papers... lots of DSGE models etc. But what suddenly struck me is how this whole revolution in modeling macro is completely useless for a country like Sudan, where probably 2/3 of the economy marches on with no data, and the data for the 1/3 of the economy around Khartoum is seriously mismeasured (especially the government sector!). Macro modeling seems like a rather silly enterprise in that kind of setting. Better to just to use the DSCRPTV model for macroeconomic analysis ;-)

Though there is a dictum, attributable to T.N. Srinivasan, I think: "Bad data? Need better econometric tools."

If you can't get the arm things..

2009-11-22T00:32:00.000-08:00

Essential reading for when I have time

2009-11-16T12:43:00.001-08:00

No Way Out? The Question of Unilateral Withdrawals of Referrals to the ICC and Other Human Rights Courts
Michael P. Scharf and Patrick Dowd
9 Chi J Intl L 573 (2009)

Breaking Up Doesn’t Have to Be So Hard: Default Rules for Partition and Secession
Nathan Richardson
9 Chi J Intl L 685 (2009)

Let the bluffing begin

2009-11-15T16:04:00.000-08:00

At some point in the next year, the Sudanese public and the world community will be presented with a "deal", and every person concerned will have to ask whether the deal is an attempt to hoodwink the most marginalized and preserve the positions of power and wealth enjoyed by the few.

Who are the few?
- the NCP regime insiders comfortable with power
- the Southern Sudanese elites in the SPLM
- the oil company execs who have staked themselves on Sudan in intra-company competitions
- the government oil deciders who have made bets, and derive gains, from ensuring that current oil companies are able to stay in position
- the arms manufacturers and dealers who are happy to continue supplying current elites
- the lobbyists to the two regimes, north and south
- the diplomats who get feathers in their caps

The argument of the elites will be the same as usual:
- "This is the last chance. If this deal is not accepted, the future will be far worse."
- "This is the only deal possible. Either this deal is accepted or there will be no deal."
- "This deal is a reasonable compromise, good enough for everyone."

The broad spectrum of actors in the Sudanese public should be skeptical of these claims. The Sudanese public should be very worried that the elites involved would be very comfortable with turning Sudan into Nigeria. Pretty soon "Operation Sweep Away Indiscipline" will be announced, and lonely voices at the periphery will be hanged. (Wait, that's already been happening for 30 years... can it get worse with the "deal"? You bet.)

So I only have one piece of advice for that Sudanese public. Get some of those arm things that are used by civil disobedience demonstrators everywhere in the world. Store them at Lubna Hussein's house, and break them out when the "deal" is announced and it doesnt contain four things:
1- Robust demobilization of NCP/SAF armed proxies in Darfur, permitting IDPs to return in security or stay in camps in security.
2- Stiff sanctions against NCP for violations of normal press freedoms and freedom of assembly.
3- Very aggressive international monitoring of elections, voter registration and referendum, enabling international backup if processes are tampered with.
4- Oil revenues into a transparent account, and out of the hands of military

A couple more... right?

Cabelly indicted

2009-11-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

From the Dept. of Justice. Wonder who's next? The revolving door of Africa "hands" out of the Dept. of State straight into the arms of the multi-million dollar Africa lobbying and "scheming" business needs much tighter oversight by newspapers and bloggers. This kind of avarice is not what Adam Smith had in mind.

D.C. Lobbyist Indicted for Conspiring to Violate Sudanese Sanctions and to Act as Illegal Agent of Sudan
Robert J. Cabelly, 61, of Washington, D.C., has been indicted in the District of Columbia in an eight-count indictment charging him with conspiracy to violate the Sudanese sanctions regulations and to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign power, four counts of violating the Sudanese sanctions regulations, as well as one count apiece of money laundering, passport fraud and making false statements.

Cabelly, who was the principal and managing director of a Washington, D.C. consulting firm and a former State Department employee, is scheduled to appear in federal court today in the District of Columbia at 1:30 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. If convicted, he faces up 20 years in prison on each of the substantive Sudanese Sanctions Regulations counts, 20 years for the money laundering count, 10 years for the passport fraud, and five years each for the conspiracy and false statement counts.

According to the indictment, between early 2005 and mid-2007, Cabelly performed work on behalf of the Republic of Sudan, a country currently on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list, without the approval of the U.S. government as is required by law under the Sudanese sanctions regulations. In an effort to make money, Cabelly brokered business contracts and transactions benefiting Sudan. He also provided Sudan with U.S. government information that was sensitive and controlled. All the while, Cabelly affirmatively misrepresented to U.S. officials the nature of his relationship with Sudan, as well as his relationship with the foreign entities doing business in Sudan.

Among other acts alleged in the indictment, Cabelly engaged in illicit contractual relationships with the oil industry in Sudan, operating as an intermediary between Sudanese government officials and oil company executives and a foreign oil company, and sought additional investors on behalf of that foreign oil company so that it could do business in the Sudan. He also allegedly provided strategic advice and counsel to Sudanese officials, including in the areas of economic development and trade, especially as it pertained to the development of the country’s petroleum natural resource and its government controlled airline industry.

According to the indictment, Cabelly was paid for these services by Sudanese government officials as well as by a foreign oil company. Cabelly allegedly directed a foreign oil company to deposit over $180,000 of the fees he received in an offshore account he maintained in the Cook Islands, an account he used to launder the funds in order to conceal the fact that it was proceeds obtained in violation of the sanctions. Cabelly also concealed his travel to the Sudan from U.S. authorities by misusing U.S. passports.

Two graphs of rainfall and temperature in Darfur

2009-11-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

I've been fooling around with the Willmott-Matsuura global climate data, partly at the prompting of some readers of my paper (with Leslie Gray) on rainfall in Darfur before the war, who kindly suggested looking at temperature data also. At the time we didn't have the temperature data available. These rainfall and temp averages are unweighted averages of the raw data which is on.5x.5 lat-long grid. The slow and steady upwards climb in temperature of the hottest month (the annual average temperature seems a similar increase), about two degrees centigrade over 58 years, is very disturbing.

That said, I don't think the Willmott-Matsuura data is that useful for small-scale regional analysis. Notice that the four quadrants of Darfur are very correlated- about .95- suggesting to me that probably they are coming from a single source and are then being adjusted by being smoothed with other sources further away. There is, after all, a large mountain complex at the intersection of the quadrants so presumably the temperatures would not be so very closely correlated in the "real" world.

Natsios blast from the past reminder

2009-10-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

Just to remember where he is coming from, since he is such a prominent commentator. From an article he wrote for Yale Journal Of International Affairs in summer/fall issue of 2005:

We know that resolving the situation in Darfur is essential to a sustainable transition in Sudan. We know that there will be setbacks. But we also know that dramatic and lasting change can happen, as it has in Iraq and Afghanistan, when there is a concerted commitment to change, bold and forward-looking leadership, and a sustained effort.

Like the leadership provided by George W. Bush...I guess he was careful though in using "change" rather than "improvement"... plus ça change...

Where U.S. Sudan/Darfur policy is really made...

2009-10-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Why, over at Sojourner's of course, by people who write things like this:

Cautious Optimism on Obama’s New Sudan Policy
by Elizabeth Palmberg 10-23-2009

Activists greeted the Obama administration’s new Sudan policy with cautious optimism this week. If — and only if — it is fleshed out and put into vigorous action, the new policy could be the first step in course of putting concerted economic and other pressure on Khartoum. That would be a desperately needed change from the disastrously wrong-headed course of appeasement which Special Envoy Scott Gration has unfortunately adopted since his appointment — when a government is guilty of genocide and other war crimes, you just can’t operate on the theory that, as Gration has put it, “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” Nor should the regime in Sudan be allowed to hire U.S. lobbyists to plead its murderous cause; the only place Khartoum officials should be allowed to plead is in the International Criminal Court.

There is no time to waste, especially given the likelihood that the NCP, the ruling party in Khartoum, is behind the current rash of village burnings in Sudan’s south — and as the clock is ticking for the all-Sudan national elections that are supposed to be held next year, and the south’s referendum on secession in 2011.

In a couple of weeks, look for John Predergast and Maggie Fick’s commentary, laying out non-military ways to pressure Khartoum, in the forthcoming issue of Sojourners. But don’t wait that long to get involved in the issue. The people of Darfur and southern Sudan need your advocacy help now.

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
Categories: Global Issues, Human Rights, War & Peace

      Truth2Power 12 hours ago
      It's very troubling to hear of the current rash of village burnings in Sudan’s south.

      I'm confident, though, that the Christain peacemaking Teams will be there shortly to confornt the forces of tyranny and restore justice. The last thing the people of Sudan need is another US military incursion.

      irish_annie 3 hours ago
      i don't necessarily agree or disagree with obama's policy. what i wonder about is why we who claim to trust in God can only be optimistic when the kingdoms of this world behave as we think they 'should'.

      Jesdisciple 9 minutes ago
      Good point... However, I do think there's a difference between "optimistic about" and just "optimistic." One implies happiness and the other joy. I don't think a joyful person should never feel happiness as a result of circumstances.

Glad to see irish_annie isn't waiting, no, she's going straight to wondering...

Criminal justice for crimes against humanity

2009-10-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

From Le Monde.fr. Always instructive to think about the parallels between Argentina and Sudan.

Le général argentin à la retraite Jorge Olivera Rovere a été condamné vendredi 23 octobre à la prison à perpétuité pour des crimes contre l'humanité commis pendant la dictature argentine, dont les assassinats des parlementaires uruguayens Zelmar Michelini et Hector Gutierrez Ruiz, rapporte le site du quotidien Clarin. La lecture du jugement du tribunal fédéral numéro 5 a été retransmise en direct par les chaînes de télévision d'information du câble argentin.

Olivera Rovere, 82 ans, était accusé de quatre homicides et de cent sept séquestrations et disparitions, dont celles de l'écrivain argentin Haroldo Conti et des Uruguayens Michelini et Gutierrez Ruiz, qui avaient eu un fort retentissement. Le militaire était l'adjoint de l'ancien général décédé Guillermo Suarez Mason, un des chefs militaires de la dictature, surnommé "le boucher d'Olimpo" du nom du centre de détention et de torture qu'il dirigeait pendant la dictature (1976-1983).

Michelini, ancien sénateur et un des fondateurs de la coalition de gauche du Frente Amplio ("Front élargi") et Gutierrez Ruiz, ancien président de la chambre des députés de l'Uruguay, avaient été enlevés le 18 mai 1976 dans la capitale argentine. Leurs corps avaient été retrouvés trois jours après à l'intérieur d'un véhicule dans la périphérie de Buenos Aire.

From a CSIS commentary on the new Obama policy....

2009-10-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

Morrison and Cooke write:

Lack of consensus within the administration has confused potential partners who have for some time seen the United States policy as hostage to zealous domestic pressures.

I feel the need to resist this narrative of U.S. policy, although I note that Morrison and Cook are careful not to say that the policy actually is hostage, but rather than it is "seen" to be hostage. I find it very hard to think of a single real policy action (other than words) of either Bush or Obama administration that was "zealous." There was plenty of inaction and nonaction, but that's not really what I think of when I think of zealous. Was there any single positive policy action pushed by Save Darfur that was actually implemented? I can't think of anything more disingenuous than saying that my exaggerated characterization of the "policy":

Calling what happened in Darfur genocide, but being very clear this had absolutely no "real" policy implications other than insisting that Pakistani troops mount firewood patrols.

is an example of what it means to be captured by zealous hardliners. If that is the correct characterization, then Iran, North Korea, etc. policy have all been captured by zealous hardliners (i.e. the Save Baha'i movement and the save Placard-Holding Brainwashed North Koreans movement).

It seems to me pretty clear that when dealing with what Morrison and Cook call "intractable" regimes, the only policy possible is one that swings from engagement to hardline back to engagement and so on, and that is exactly what the U.S. policy review says the administration will do, swing from harder line to engagement and if nothing happens go back to hard line. Did Save Darfur "cause" that?

A quick look at the largely agreed upon timeline:

1989 Coup. NIF takes power illegitimately, kills good number of upper military brass, hard crackdown on domestic opposition.
1990-1996 Escalation of war against SPLA, scorched earth in oilfields areas and Nuba Mountains, lots of arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings in Darfur etc. Assassination attempt against Hosni Mubarak, support for LRA. Riek Machar and John Garang split, SPLA seriously weakened, horrific SPLA in-fighting,
1996-1998 Intra-regime drift as oil fields look like will start producing; U.S. attacks al Shifa with cruise missiles. (still waiting for Clinton to fully explain), Massive famine in Bahr al-Ghazal, regime cares not a whit. Regime uses Operation Lifeline for own purposes.
1999 Regime splits, al-Turabi imprisoned, abandon international Islamist agenda, try to use oil and weapons to win war in South.
2001 After 9/11 and failure to win war in South, al-Bashir decides to do to Garang what did to Riek... settle for a peace and hope that SPLA would split apart in internecine disarray.
2003 Outline of CPA agreed upon. Gosh, the same thing that SPLA wanted, basically, in 1989. 14 years of useless war.
2004 Displacement of 2.5 million in Darfur in order to defeat small disorganized rebel militia... tactic: deliberate attacks on civilian populations.
2005-08 Regime dithers over CPA, brooks little domestic opposition, works hard to obstruct assistance and repatriation of IDPs in Darfur, over-shares problems with Chad while trying to oust Deby.
2009 Regime says, "We're doing all we can, honestly, the problem is those shifty southerners and Darfuris who can't get their act together. You should forgive the debt, really, so we won't have to divert oil money to purchasing more helicopter gunships."

Save Darfur served a useful purpose for presidents and Secretaries of State and Special Envoys who really didn't want to deal with Sudan. They could say reasonably, to themselves, "I can't do anything or I'll get clobbered by a bunch of 18 year olds who are the new Cuba lobby."

The thing to ask is how Sudan policy is different from Congo policy, exactly? In other words, what are the measures of difference: aid? meetings? sanctions? investment? public sentiment? And if we think of US/Europe as a block, shouldn't "policy" be thought of as a block rather than one half in isolation of the other half? If Europe does not have sanctions in one place, and U.S. does not in the other place, is that then the same "policy"? Would ordinary Sudanese in the south or Darfur be better off with a Congo policy instead of the existing Sudan policy? Would the U.S. be better off? Any differences, please attribute to Save Darfur?

There is one point in which I am full agreement with the so-called realists, and that is that the problems will evolve according to local dynamics, since everyone knows there is no real prospect of a big push/intervention from the outside in any of the likely scenarios. But the realists interpret that to mean the outside powers may as well be constructive, and I interpret that to mean exactly what it means, that constructive or hardline, causality will not run from U.S. policy to Sudan outcomes.

More NYT commentary on Gration

2009-10-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Further down in the same article...
"“I think Gration’s understanding of the situation is pretty sound, but he has a way of appearing less smart than he is,” said Alex DeWaal, a leading scholar on Sudan at the Social Science Research Council. “He has a folksy way that makes him seem to trivialize things, and does him a disservice. But he’s not naïve.”"
Funny, that would describe George W. "Heckuva job" Bush to a T. I wonder about people who after years and years of public service can't learn that their "folksy ways" are indeed "trivializing things"... I guess they are like people who after years and years of Internet commentary can't learn that snarky irony "trivializes things" ;-)

Can't let it pass without comment....

2009-10-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

From today's NYT:
"“Military officers are realists,” said Andrew Natsios, an envoy to Sudan during the Bush administration. General Gration “didn’t come to this crisis with the emotional baggage of so many people whose education about Darfur comes from the activists, or the media,” he said. “He’s not on some holy crusade.”"
Natsios. Him again? The guy who said reconstruction of Iraq would be $2 billion tops? Loyal Bushie? The guy who waits until after 100,000 people have died to criticise the way Iraq policy was going? He's qualified to distinguish realists from holy crusaders?

‘Brothers’ or Others: Propriety and gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt, by Anita H. Fábos

2009-10-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

‘Brothers’ or Others: Propriety and gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt, by Anita H. Fábos
New York, NY and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008

Enjoyed the overview of ethnicity construction of northern Sudanese living in Cairo. The most important observation is one she rightly highlights, which is how a tiny minority of 'strangers' end up with a set of discussions of identity determinants (adab, in the case) that the larger population is almost unconcerned with.

Initial thoughts on the US Sudan policy

2009-10-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

I wish I could have deep profound disagreements with the newly released Sudan policy summary (I don't see any link to the full document, guess the incentives are a secret (oatmeal raisin cookies or snickerdoodles?)). But the document is a "satisfy most" document and so largely unobjectionable. If you disagree it's largely because you have some constituency that disagrees, and as a lone academic I have no constituency, so I can't disagree with perfectly reasonable policy document.

But... Foreign policy as business strategy.... ugh.

"Each quarter, the interagency at senior levels will assess a variety of indicators of progress or of deepening crisis, and that assessment will include calibrated steps to bolster support for positive change and to discourage backsliding. Progress toward achievement of the strategic objectives will trigger steps designed to strengthen the hands of those implementing the changes. Failure to improve conditions will trigger increased pressure on recalcitrant actors."

Why does this read like something my colleagues in the management department (the strategy people) would put together.... sounds like Google Labs....

And viability police APB:

"Strategic Objective II: Implementation of the CPA that results in a peaceful post-2011 Sudan or an orderly transition to two separate and viable states at peace with each other."

Then the word viability is never mentioned, so maybe I'm paranoid but did Gration insist on inserting it there just to tweak my nose? Or is there a lengthy discussion of how to measure viability in the secret document? Maybe Jeremy Weinstein has been working on that?

"Calling all English teachers, calling all English teachers..."

2009-10-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with this statement? And no low hanging fruit please... we already know that when you do something that the other person wants you to do, and they reward you for doing that, the reward is only an incentive if you were told about it in advance.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
___________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release October 19, 2009
Statement of President Barack Obama on Sudan Strategy
Today, my Administration is releasing a comprehensive strategy to confront the serious and urgent situation in Sudan.
For years, the people of Sudan have faced enormous and unacceptable hardship. The genocide in Darfur has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and left millions more displaced. Conflict in the region has wrought more suffering, posing dangers beyond Sudan’s borders and blocking the potential of this important part of Africa. Sudan is now poised to fall further into chaos if swift action is not taken.
Our conscience and our interests in peace and security call upon the United States and the international community to act with a sense of urgency and purpose. First, we must seek a definitive end to conflict, gross human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur. Second, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and South in Sudan must be implemented to create the possibility of long-term peace. These two goals must both be pursued simultaneously with urgency. Achieving them requires the commitment of the United States, as well as the active participation of international partners. Concurrently, we will work aggressively to ensure that Sudan does not provide a safe-haven for international terrorists.
The United States Special Envoy has worked actively and effectively to engage all of the parties involved, and he will continue to pursue engagement that saves lives and achieves results. Later this week, I will renew the declaration of a National Emergency with respect to Sudan, which will continue tough sanctions on the Sudanese Government. If the Government of Sudan acts to improve the situation on the ground and to advance peace, there will be incentives; if it does not, then there will be increased pressure imposed by the United States and the international community. As the United States and our international partners meet our responsibility to act, the Government of Sudan must meet its responsibilities to take concrete steps in a new direction.
Over the last several years, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individuals, and from around the world have taken action to address the situation in Sudan, and to end the genocide in Darfur. Going forward, all of our efforts must be measured by the lives that are led by the people of Sudan. After so much suffering, they deserve a future that allows them to live with greater dignity, security, and opportunity. It will not be easy, and there are no simple answers to the extraordinary challenges that confront this part of the world. But now is the time for all of us to come together, and to make a strong and sustained effort on behalf of a better future for the people of Sudan.

Good news is grounds for optimism....

2009-10-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

The agreement on the referendum (50%+1) simple majority of 60% turnout of all eligible (people in south plus southerners in north) is reasonable, and to have it have been brokered by Ali Osman Taha (back from somewhere... someday the insiders will tell what happened).

U.S. policy sounds like middle of the road continuous engagement by Gration, the same kind of continuous engagement that helped broker CPA. (Doesn't mean I can't keep making fun of his platitudes...)

Aid worker hostages released. Maybe a good sign that there won't be a spiral of hostage taking for use as bargaining chips if relations got more acrimonious.

Salva Kiir and Riek Machar seem to be fully engaged in managing the transition at the national level. To me that is a good sign for SPLA political leadership capabilities. And a plus for people deciding to vote for SPLA in the north. Imagine a situation where the southern leadership is viewed as more "competent" than the NCP leadership!

Caveats: I'm just observing this fom afar, reading news reports without special insider knowledge.... so margin for error is huge!

Nothing like a Friday announcement... U.S. to Engage Sudan Leaders

2009-10-16T22:15:00.001-07:00

From the NY Times, ...

In an interview on Friday, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, retired, said the policy, to be announced Monday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would make use of a mix of “incentives and pressure” to seek an end to the human rights abuses that have left millions of people dead or displaced while burning Darfur into the American conscience. General Gration said the administration would set strict time lines for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan to fulfill the conditions of a 2005 peace agreement that his government signed with rebels in southern Sudan.

“There has not been any transformation or reform at the center"

2009-10-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

Sudan Tribune often jumps the gun on stories, but if true this is pretty important public break. Full story here...

October 14, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — The First Vice President of Sudan and president of South Sudan Salva Kiir sent a letter to US president Barack Obama asking him to keep pressure on the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), the Washington Post reported.
The letter seen by newspaper comes as US special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration is seeking a relaxation of some sanctions imposed on the East African nations and giving out some “cookies” to Khartoum as he described it.
Furthermore, Gration’s contacts with prospective lobbyists for Sudan has added to fury of Sudan advocacy groups who accused the US official of being “naïve” in dealing with Khartoum.
It appears that special envoy’s approach has also worried South Sudan’s ex-rebels.
The Washington Post said that Kiir wrote to Obama last month, saying that Bashir continues to foment violence in the region in an apparent reference to rising tribal violence in the South which he has accused Khartoum of standing behind it.
“There has not been any transformation or reform at the center," Mayardit wrote, referring to Khartoum. “The status quo prevails. . . . Significant change in policy in relation to Sudan should only come when there is change in the reality of Sudan” Kiir said in the letter.

De Waal "no sense" on Making Sense of Darfur

2009-10-15T15:53:00.000-07:00

A discussion of debt relief for NCP regime provokes a response by Kevin Jon Heller, to which de Waal responds with this:

Is the international community “propping up” the Sudan government? I don’t think so. International players are relatively marginal in the overall Sudanese political scene. The Sudan government relies overwhelmingly on its internal base, which is a mixture of its financial/patronage power, and its security institutions, enormously assisted by the weakness and disarray of its adversaries. (And one reason, in my view, why the internal opposition is so weak is its tendency to look outside for its support.) The second point has nothing to do with blackmail. It’s not as though the Sudan government, or any other government, is a mega-version of an individual, controlled by a single will. As it happens, this government has never used this threat MK: turn to terrorism] and I don’t believe that it would do so. But what happens when the government is cut off from western and relatively transparent sources of funds? Inevitably, its institutions turn to different ways of obtaining funds. Another source, much more accessible and attractive at the moment, is Asia. (Recall that the late 1990s campaign to get Talisman Energy to withdraw from Sudan was successful, and Asian companies filled the gap.) As for “even more violent”: with the levels of violent fatalities in Darfur hovering around the 100/month mark, those of us who have seen wars rather more violent than this, are indeed worried that these are in prospect.

My comments would be that the response to Kevin makes no sense. First de Waal says that the regime relies little on official transparent assistance, and then he says that if they are "cut off" from that assistance they may turn to Asia (is the implication that this will make them more terroristic? Who cares if they "turn to Asia"?) and violence... huh?

More importantly, for someone to argument that human development in Sudan (i.e. the well being of people in Darfur, Kordofan, and southern Sudan, outside of the Khartoum megalopilis) is dependent on unilateral creditor debt forgiveness, as the country continues to export several billion dollars a year of oil and spend (both sides) a big chunk of that on military-security apparatus and deny many basic freedoms and rights... well... I guess there is always room for wishful thinking. Gee, maybe people in Nigeria will get ponies too.

Finally, irresistible snarky aside, classic De Waal..."those of us who have seen wars rather more violent than this, are indeed worried that these are in prospect"... IN YOUR FACE readers... how many wars have YOU seen? Oh yeah, alright... Let's count... still waiting... NONE? Come on readers... come on... have you seen maybe a little tiny lightly violent war? No? Heard gunfire? SHUT UP then!

I am curious in a serious way about why Gration and de Waal always seem to insist that it is the national government that needs cookies and carrot, and rarely argue with any vigor that more cookies and carrots for ordinary southern Sudanese and Darfuris are important. Oh wait, I just remembered... if they did that, they'd have to be *angry* at Khartoum for expelling agencies doing precisely that in the IDP camps!!!! But... not unless those IDP camp enablers were making poor people in Sudan worse off by making them lazy and dependent. You see, debt relief doesn't do that, instead, it allows Coca Cola and Pepsico to invest in more bottling facilities in Khartoum, to sell more soft drinks, so that people will work harder to earn money to buy soft drinks. And maybe by importing more "large equipment" from Caterpillar the Military industrial Corporation can make a bigger tank facility too.

Urbanization in Sudan.... reflections from Burkina Faso

2009-10-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading a nice article by Ernest Harsch, in African Affairs, 2009, Vol 108, "Urban Protest in Burkina Faso." Since the press liberalized over the latter part of the 1990s, it became possible for someone to do a count of all the urban protest events in the major Burkinabe cities and towns. Obviously there are some biases in the reporting and publication, but it is a really useful exercise, and I am glad someone has done it. What do we learn from the exercise? Something that is common sense, but important to raise in tems of salience, and espcially relevant for Sudan. Urbanization is proceeding quickly in Burkina, Sudan, and other African countries. The skills of managing large urban centers are very different from those of managing rural hinterlands. Indirect rule through tribal chiefs just isn't possible, and instead a political leader has to manage an enormous bureaucracy, a bureacracy prone to commiting many acts of commision (bulldozing a residential area for "improvement") and omission (letting a marketplace become a chaotic fire hazard).

The political leader becomes responsible for all of these flashpoints that generate urban protest movements that have the capacity to snowball. Burkina's experience offers a good lesson for dictators like al-Bashir.... get on the decentralization bandwagon quickly and effectively. What Harsch seems to suggest is that a lot of the urban protests are local- they are directed indeed at the local municipal officials. The national government then gets to play the role of mediator/fixer, which adds to its legitimacy. That's a good place to be for a regime with little legitimacy.

Why doesn't every dictator do this? Presumably because the more decentralization, the more a city official might become a threat to the President's clique. Here's where another paper I've been reading Lindsay Whitfield "‘Change for a Better Ghana’: Party Competition, Institutionalization and Alternation in Ghana’s 2008 Elections", also in African Affairs 2009 "(detecting a pattern here?) comes in... She discusses the successful national election in Ghana in 2008, and attributes the largely peaceful alternance that has greatly strengthened Ghanaian institutional legitimacy as due to an ever-stronger coalescing around a two-party system that cuts across ethnic, regional and class lines.

So the right thing for a national dictator to do seems to me to replicate as much as possible two-party competition at the city and town level, so that city politicians have to keep their eyes on working for the city, and it becomes harder for them to challenge the president- the distraction of national politics will cause them to lose the next city election.

Side note: Maybe there is more democracy in English-speaking Africa because the word change is so easy to use in English, and bores deep into the brains of English speakers, while in French the word alternance is a plate of soggy frites.... I mean freedom fries....

Why do young men go fight....

2009-10-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

The two important questions for Sudan...

1) What makes leaders decide to fight... to escalate...?
2) What makes young men follow leaders who are likely to fire the first shot.?

These questions have different answers in the beginnings of wartime, and different answers once war is full-on. Sudan right now back in the "beginnings" stage... there is no military commander making tactical decisions on the battlefield, which creates a dynamic of its own (i.e. Obama and McChrystal and Taliban commanders are in a different logic now than they were three years ago). So the decisions of political leaders are whether to initiate or escalate a battle. Or to create the conditions where a spark (an accidental rifle discharge, a deliberate attack by provocateurs) will result in a battle and full-on war.

What would make Salva Kiir order SPLA to take the offensive against SAF? What would make Omar al-Bashir order SAF to take offensive against SPLA?

These questions were prompted by reading Cherry Leonardi's 2007 article in African Affairs, "‘Liberation’ or capture: Youth in between ‘hakuma’, and ‘home’ during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan" which deals with the other question of what makes young men fight when there is an ongoing conflict, namely the conflict in southern Sudan through the 1990s and early 2000s.

She nicely makes the distinction that young men in southern Sudan (she is careful not to overgeneralize, and treat her interpretation of numerous interviews and narratives of events as preliminary and tentative) are not gong to fight because their are angry at their oppressive parents (the generational conflict hypothesis) but in some sense quite the opposite- they are scared of being "abducted" into the SPLA, or they want to join in order to protect their parents and families. In Leonardi's interpretation, joining the SPLA is like a diversification strategy of the family, to acquire a foothold into the hakuma world. The treatment of home versus hakuma mirrors the old "two publics" interpretation of Peter Ekeh, and of course is subject to many of the same critiques... reifying hakuma, etc. But still, it is a worthwhile distinction, I think, and gives considerable nuance to the question of why young men were joining.

A line at the end of the article (p. 412) echoes some of the survey work on demobilized youth done by others in other conflict areas: "Despite the negative depictions being made of traumatized young generations, the many years of war have not eradicated, and have perhaps contributed to, a moral continuity as evidenced in the deeper aspirations of many youth to become 'responsible'."

Getting fractionalized rebel groups to agree

2009-10-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an op-ed by Robert Frank on how to deal with violent crime, suggesting police view the problem as a dynamic game, where if they announce and credibly target one gang for crackdown, they can quickly achieve success, and then move on to the next gang, all the while credibly threatening to revert to the first gang if they act up, and thus quickly bring about a general reduction in crime as long as the "order" is public knowledge... turtles all the way down kind of thing. And then over in The New Yorker Jon Anderson deals with a similar problem- ethnographic understanding of the favela gang lords in Rio de Janeiro.

And this reading about warlords and gangsters got me thinking about the opposite problem, which is Special Envoy Gration's problem, of how to sequentially get a bunch of small fractured rebel groups to agree to something. Of course, the something that they have to agree to is one thing, and then how to get them to agree is the other thing. Suppose we knew what the something was; say it was that they would publicly announce a chain of command and a structure of allegiances... i.e., who is to be king, and who sub-king, and so on. Moreover, simultaneously, the king would announce what the conditions were for serious negotiations with Khartoum. Finally, the whole group would commit to some costly action to show their credibility (like abandoning their positions and massing in some area protected temporarily by UNAMID). So how to get the fractured groups to agree? Do you start with the largest group and then work down to smaller and smaller groups? Or start with the smaller groups, form a coalition, and then approach the larger groups.

In these kinds of problems, it is usually "garbage in, garbage out" style theorizing, in that certain assumptions will get you one direction and other assumptions will get you the other direction, largely because in strategic situations like this modeling the outcome depends on what you assume about the behavior of the actors, and for sure the assumption that they are "rational" present-discounted risk-averting calculators with infinite horizons blah blah is not a good assumption, but that means that there is little basis to choose from alternative assumptions. But I still wonder whether they might not be some robust (i.e., unable to argue with the logic) result out there. Or some codification of common sense- maybe something like, "there is no robust algorithm, so just keep experimenting patiently with various formulas until you hit paydirt."

Aftermath of fighting couple months ago in Malakal

2009-10-02T23:42:00.001-07:00

From UNMIS video... they could do better job of adding context to their videos, but don;t let perfection be the enemy of the good- post more videos!

Brilliant blog on Sudan

2009-09-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

De Waal sends readers to Rebecca Hamilton, whose "investigation" of Darfur policy will be a wonderfully entertaining read, given what is already on the blog.

The straighttalk "get over it" express did come into the station...

2009-09-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

And it's name was Scott Gration... and now he left the station... where to!?!?! Another IDP camp? "Time to look to the future, guys!" Ironically the whole thing is a great rebuttal to Collier's "greed vs. grievance" because here are the finest minds of U.S. diplomacy telling the rebels and the IDPs, "There's more satisfaction of greed in peace".... and yet they keep insisting on not following them down the path to peace... so they are dastardly clever or grievance-deluded... must be latter, hence the "psychological stuff"...

If I get a cookie I'll start blogging again. Honest.

2009-09-30T22:28:00.001-07:00

No difference? What do Lubna Hussein and Alan Turing have in common?

2009-09-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

And there things might have remained, an appalling story of injustice rapidly fading into the depths of the past. Might have, except John Graham-Cummings, a programmer of some repute, decided to mount a petition to try and get the British government to apologize for its treatment of Turing. He did not expect to succeed in this obscure and perhaps quixotic quest, but he pushed hard at publicizing the petition, and last week, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, called him:
A few minutes later the phone rang and a soft Scottish voice said: “Hello John. It’s Gordon Brown. I think you know why I am calling you”. And then he went on to tell me why. He thanked me for starting the campaign, spoke about a “wrong that he been left unrighted too long”, said he thought I was “brave” (not sure why) and spoke about the terrible consequences of homophobic laws and all the people affected by them.
That same day, the PM released a statement of apology

"Roads, roads, roads."

2009-09-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

That is what John Garang famously (or apocryphally) answered when asked about development priorities for South Sudan. I've always been a skeptic... of course roads are good, but the question really is the opportunity cost of paved roads. Driving around Burkina Faso, I'm more than ever convinced of the low value of paved roads. The NGO I direct here in Burkina Faso, Friends of African Village Libraries (http://www.favl.org/), has a library in the village of Sara, and the village is now at the midway point of a new 300km paved road between the regional towns of Bobo-Dioulasso and Dedougou. During our two hour visit to the library, no cars came down the road. When asked, everyone jokes: "One bus leaves each town in the morning, they cross near Sara, then they drive back in the evening." It's an exaggeration, but makes the point. The road isn't changing anybody's life.

Driving this weekend to Ghana, on the paved road from Ouagadougou to Po and then Bolgatanga, again, very little traffic. In fact, what I really noticed once again was the massive pileup of trucks at the border, all sitting idly while the customs men went about their Byzantine work. it struck me that here was the real opportunity cost of paved roads: what if instead of paving the road, it had been left as an improved graded gravel road, and the money for the asphalt had gone to build up the border infrastructure to expedite customs and enable trucks to get through in an hour. The time savings (and heck, maybe even the maintenance on the trucks- a rolling stone gathers no moss?) could easily be greater than the time savings by driving on a gravel road. And the gravel road might then be better maintained, and be made wider, so there would be fewer accidents than on the narrow paved and potholed roads (though the Burkina's credit, every year I see improvement in road maintenance).

And if it is this way for Burkina, how is it for South Sudan, clearly 20 years behind in terms of truck commerce? No, I say, a six-lane border crossing with transparent customs for a paved road! Or at least some more cost-benefit analysis along those lines.

Are there two Mr. Platitudes in the house?

2009-09-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

I am having a hard time keeping up with the blog while in Burkina Faso... too many meetings and places to be. Plus playing tennis with my Burkinabè tennis buddy! But there's always time for some gentle poking fun at Alex de Waal, whose latest blog entry over at Making Sense of Darfur is a recap of a "press conference" with Thabo Mbeki who is leading a panel of AU eminient persons, writing a report on Darfur after their listening tour... the summary statement is almost as interesting as a Scott Gration press conference. Are they trying to outdo each other with the platitudes? Come on... this is hardly worth posting on a blog. It's like the fawning sycophantic stuff on official state television... the dueling gilded armchairs... that leads people to tell each other the obscene jokes that Achille Mbembe writes about... the banality of power. One example paragraph:

General elections are scheduled for April 2010. The position of the Panel is that in any national elections, such as those of next year, the population of Darfur should be able to participate. The elections must be free and fair. So the necessary conditions will need to be created for that to be achieved.

Gosh I'm glad that is clarified. For a nanosecond I thought he might have read Paul Collier's new book and was going to say it would be better to have a quick fradulent election victory of al-Bashir which would be more conducive to political stability... President Mbeki's STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS BRINGS GET OVER IT TO DARFUR. Would be more interesting.

Latrines here, latrines there, latrines everywhere

2009-08-31T05:17:00.000-07:00

I am in Burkina Faso for a month, preparing for our study abroad program here, Reading West Africa. I went over the weekend down to the village of Bereba, where Leslie and I have a house. Not much has changed (since last year, or even in 15 years since we first starting having a residence in the village)... except.... the first public latrines were build, just outside the market. They are going to be for pay... next visit I'll learn more. The interesting thing is that latrines have really taken off, but only over these past 15 years. When we first came to Bereba in the mid-1990s, even though the village is pretty developed and a small administrative center, many people still used a corner of the compound and some straw as latrine. By contrast, when I was in Sudan and in mid-1980s, UNICEF and other NGOs had been promoting latrines for some time. Interestingly, in one of the libraries we sponsor through FAVL (www.favl.org) the team had build two latrines, one for girls and one for boys. The did not have roofs, though. There was a vent however. I asked why there was a vent if there was no roof. "To let the gases escape from the pit." "But there is no roof, so the gases can just come through the hole." "Hmmmm." Then my village didact self took over, explaining about putting a roof on and flies coming into the pit and going up the vent and being trapped in the vent by a mesh, just the way villagers in Sudan had explained it to me 20 years ago. So the knowledge came full circle, from some development expert to a villager to a development expert and back to a villager. Sweet.

Article on latrines in south sudan.

And since we have to prove everything by a randomized trial....

Role of flies and provision of latrines in trachoma control: cluster-randomised controlled trial.

Lancet. 2004 Apr 3;363(9415):1093-8.

Emerson PM, Lindsay SW, Alexander N, Bah M, Dibba SM, Faal HB, Lowe KO, McAdam KP, Ratcliffe AA, Walraven GE, Bailey RL.

Medical Research Council Laboratories, PO Box 273, Banjul, The Gambia. p.m.emerson@durham.ac.uk

BACKGROUND: Eye-seeking flies have received much attention as possible trachoma vectors, but this remains unproved. We aimed to assess the role of eye-seeking flies as vectors of trachoma and to test provision of simple pit latrines, without additional health education, as a sustainable method of fly control. METHODS: In a community-based, cluster-randomised controlled trial, we recruited seven sets of three village clusters and randomly assigned them to either an intervention group that received regular insecticide spraying or provision of pit latrines (without additional health education) to each household, or to a control group with no intervention. Our primary outcomes were fly-eye contact and prevalence of active trachoma. Frequency of child fly-eye contact was monitored fortnightly. Whole communities were screened for clinical signs of trachoma at baseline and after 6 months. Analysis was per protocol. FINDINGS: Of 7080 people recruited, 6087 (86%) were screened at follow-up. Baseline community prevalence of active trachoma was 6%. The number of Musca sorbens flies caught from children's eyes was reduced by 88% (95% CI 64-100; p<0.0001) p="0.04)" n="14)" p="0.01)" p="0.210)">

He may be Mr. Platitude in public, but he's getting the work done

2009-08-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Sudan Envoy Gration is in Sudan now, and seems to be getting parties to keep rolling towards the referendum, getting them fully engaged in compromising. The details are fascinating for the political science junkies I suppose- should southerners in Khartoum vote in the referendum? What if they are Khartoum residents but come down to the South for the vote? How does one tell who is or is not a resident of the South? Is a northerner who is in the south during the vote eligible to vote in the referendum?

In some sense it would have been preferable for the referendum to have take place at the same time as legislative elections... that way most people would have had to decide whether moving to vote for the South outweighed staying and voting for local affairs. I'll be curious how the cross-border vote issue gets settled.

Sensible commentary

2009-08-15T22:41:00.001-07:00

Very sensible commentary from the Justice and Human Rights Domain of the Hauser Center for Nonprofits at Harvard Kennedy School... A Fresh Perspective on the Aid Industry in Africa, Justice, and the Gacaca Court System in Rwanda

My one small quibble with Amaka Megwalu's commentary is at the end of the commentary I think she leaves a slight mis-impression of the ICC, which isn't really an institution designed to bring about local justice and trust, but is designed precisely for those situations where local justice and accountability are nigh impossible, and is designed really with the "big fish" in mind, who almost by definition are above "local justice" considerations. Omar al-Bashir and Ahmed Haroun are not "local" people and they didn't commit any acts themselves. What they did was order, or fail in their command responsibility, thereby being chargeable with war crimes and crimes against humanity. if a national court in Sudan, every bit as remote as The Hague, could try them, then the ICC would have no need for issuing arrest warrants.

Shared via AddThis

"This I Believe": Partially lift sanctions on northern Sudan so large equipment can roll through to southern Sudan

2009-08-13T08:25:00.001-07:00

Gration's "This I Believe"... That large equipment trucked and barged in from Port Sudan instead of Mombasa is the key to development in South Sudan. Because we've seen how easy it has been for Darfur to develop since they've always had a clear route to the sea for "large equipment"...

He's hard not to satirize: the earnestness "We all have to work together and to be on the same team", the non-sequitors (Darfur is most important, CPA is equally important, and lifting sanctions on heavy equipment is the right action at this time), the coded language, "I believe that we cannot hope to achieve these results and a lasting peace if we only engage with those we already agree with."... (you know who you are).

I'm totally in favor of making sure sanctions on Sudan are not sanctions against South Sudan. But Gration seems so awkward in how he is trying to bring this about. Surely there is a better way. Why not ask the people at exportlawblog?

Paul Collier remains stuck on the Möbius strip

2009-08-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

Reports are coming in that Paul Collier remains stuck on the Möbius strip that Sudan is in the bottom billion because of civil wars caused by greedy grievance-posing rebels supported by G-8 governments who read The Bottom Billion and decided to strategically intervene to promote transparency and accountability by the regional government of the grievance-posing rebels who are waging civil war against the national government that G-8 governments who have read The Bottom Billion are punishing for lack of transparency and accountability while oppressing grievance-posing rebels.... argghhhh

Viability police patrol has a busy night

2009-08-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Former Ambassador (to a bunch of places) David Shinn gets nabbed in a viability dragnet:

A balkanized Sudan would increase the number of relatively poor, land-locked countries that have a highly questionable economic future. They would still lack truly meaningful boundaries because ethnic groups do not live in clearly demarcated areas and a pastoral lifestyle is common. The existence of oil, although providing badly needed revenue for some, would exacerbate tension among the new political entities. In the worst case scenario, this means more conflict, internally displaced persons, refugees and requirements for emergency assistance.

The night judge asked Mr. Shinn to explain how his worst case scenario differed from the previous fifty years (1955-2005), with violence on and off throughout South Sudan, hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of IDPs and refugees, and the largest relief operation ever mounted (at the time), Operation Lifeline, all caused by the other region of the "unity". Mr. Shinn mumbled "my worst case scenario by definition is worse than the historical 'regrettable' reality." As he was dragged off to viability detox he was heard to be yelling, "Eritrea-Ethiopia! Eritrea-Ethiopia! Won't you people learn from history! For the love of humanity, keep al-Bashir in charge of the South!"

Kevin Jon Heller on South Africa and the ICC

2009-08-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

South Africa Will Enforce the Warrant for Bashir

by Kevin Jon Heller

Excellent news — and a major blow to the AU’s promise of impunity for Bashir, given the symbolic and practical importance of South Africa for the continent generally...Ntstaluba’s statement illustrates how important it is for states to incorporate the Rome Statute into their domestic law, an issue I blogged about (briefly) here. Kudos to the NGOs who were willing to press the South African government to fulfill its international and domestic legislations.
PS. It is also worth noting that 135 African civil-society groups have just issued an “appeal to African ICC States Parties to reaffirm their support for the ICC and their commitment to abide by their obligations under the Rome Statute, particularly in relation to the arrest and transfer of the President of Sudan to the ICC.” The list is below the jump…

"Hi, glad to meet you, my name is Mr. Platitude..., er General Gration"

2009-08-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

From a transcript of General Gration's comments comes this gem:

Past peace negotiations have faltered, and we have learned from these experiences. We are collaborating with the African Union and United Nations joint chief mediator, Djibrill Bassolé, to ensure that the peace process is inclusive and that it adequately addresses the grievances of the people of Darfur. We are engaging with the fragmented movements in Darfur to help them unite and to bring them to the peace table with one voice. We are working with Libya and Egypt to end the proxy war between Chad and Sudan that has ignited further conflict. We are supporting the full deployment of the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as a critical mechanism for protecting Darfuri civilians. We are determined to work toward a peaceful Darfur where displaced families can resettle and reestablish their homes. We must act without delay—innocent Darfuris have suffered for too long. [emphasis added]

Hmmm. What learning is embodied in these platitudes? The peace negotiations have always been a collaboration with the AU and UN and international partners. From the AU website is this description of the 23 August 2004 meetings...

The Sudanese Peace Talks resumed today, in Abuja, Nigeria, under the auspices of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Current Chairman of the African Union (AU), President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and in the presence of President Alpha Omar Konaré, the Chairperson of the AU Commission. Also present were President Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Chair of ECCAS, President Idriss Deby of Chad, and the representatives of the Governments of Libya, Uganda, Ghana and Eritrea, as well as the Secretary General of the Arab League, and the representatives of the UN Secretary General, EU, US, France and the UK.

The DPA talks included both SLA and JEM and even at times other fragmentary forces. The U.S. has never supported one movement over the others, at least not to my knowledge. Was there a time when the U.S. as a matter of policy did not pretend to work with Libya and Egypt to end the Chad-Sudan proxy wars? Was it U.S. policy to obstruct UNAMID deployment? Was the U.S. previously against working towards a peaceful Darfur? I'm so glad we have learned from the "faltered" peace negotiations. Yes, it is possible to imagine a U.S. policy very different from these platitudes, but if there is no change in policy why can't Gration just say "I am happy to tell you that none of our usual platitudes have changed, nor has there been any change in substance, but if you care to look carefully, you may detect slight changes in wording that indicate that if something good happens in the near future we will attribute it to our change in wording."

And then, I love it, the viable word enters the transcript:

Our strategy seeks to help the South improve its security capacity to defend against external and internal threats while striving to ensure a potentially independent Southern Sudan is politically and economically viable.

He must not be reading my blog. And, why should he! But I'd love to know what his criterion is for deciding whether a country is viable. I admit I can't really even imagine what these people have in mind. Would Los Angeles be a viable country? How about the Navajo Nation? Would Iowa be viable? I wonder if Burma is viable. And what makes Puntland viable? "Calling Mr. Platitude, Mr. Platitude to the white telephone please." The presumption is that there is some kind of threshold of viability that can be ensured through some kinds of strivings. Probably what he means is some kind of statistical likelihood of declining. But probably he has no conception of the counterfactual against which to measure that decline. Would a non-viable country be a viable region? Boggles the mind!

And then the "have it both ways plus some weirdness" department:

We also seek an end to Sudan’s efforts to weaken or marginalize opponents abroad or align with negative state and non-state actors.

But publicly Gration says that Sudan is a model cooperator in anti-terrorism, so what are these "efforts" to "align with negative state...actors." And WTF could a "negative state actor be"? I'm obviously behind on my jargon. Nattering nabob of negativism indeed.

The he concludes:

As you can see, we are aiming high, thinking big, and expecting much. We do so because we believe innovative concepts and ideas, coupled with detailed planning and sufficient resources, are the only way to achieve big results.

And it would be funny, because there is no evidence in the prepared testimony of any of that... just evidence of decent platitudes. But it's not funny... just disappointing.

In the spirit of constructive criticism, how about instead of the platitudes some measurable goals:
1) Pilot program of internationally monitored and assisted return of 100,000 IDPs, with Sudan government guarantees and verification of demobilization of local janjawid, internationally monitored resolution of Arab squatter claims to Masalit/Fur/Zaghawa homesteads, compensation (paid by government of Sudan) of some reasonable resettlement sum (say $200 per person), etc.
2) Six months of normal press freedom and freedom of association, where no newspapers are confiscated, no editors harassed, no fines handed down, no opposition rallies disrupted, etc.
3) President al-Bashir publicly present, before a panel of human rights lawyers and the multi-partisan subcommittee of the National Assembly, in a respectful and sober environment, his defense against specific accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that are contained in the ICC arrest warrant application, and also present his administration's "official" history of the 2003-2005 Darfur conflict, the 1990s Nuba Mountains cleansing campaign, and the 1998 Bahr al-Ghazal famine. Wouldn't this be a clear indication of the regime's willingness to "turn the page" on the secrecy and belligerence that have characterized the past two decades? Isn't that what it means to "make unity attractive"... to at least pretend to tell the truth (in detail, not platitudes) about what happened that resulted in the deaths of so many?

I think everyone knows the al-Bashir regime will never agree to these benchmarks. It is useful to ask why not. Are they outlandish? Does anyone imagine a viable ;-) Sudan that doesn't at some point in time implement all three?

All the elements will be taken care of?

2009-08-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

People say strange things when they have been awake for a long time, or if they have decided beforehand to say weird things because being clear has no upside... a TNR blogger offered the following gem from the Gration testimony... I hope that a transcript becomes accessible soon... I was camping in the Sierras with family and friends for a few days and so missed the whole thing.

Nevertheless, at today's hearings, a committee member asked Gration how he defines genocide. Visibly irritated, Gration responded, "Well, the president has referred to the genocide that is taking place in Darfur--you can read that how you need to read it." Then, when asked if he had at least spoken to Rice about the disagreement, Gration ventured into strange territory: "This is a definitional issue and," he said, "I will tell you in public that Susan Rice is one of my dear friends. She is one of the few women in the world that I say, ‘I love you' to. We have a comprehensive and integrated approach to insure that all elements will be taken care of." I guess that settles it.

I'm trying to imagine what the downside (or lack of upside) is to not getting irritated and instead giving a thoughtful answer about the complexity of the genocide determination, while digressing into the ICC rejection of the charge while upholding the crimes against humanity and war crimes charges, and the arrest warrants for al-Bashir, Ahmed Haroun and Ali Kushayb, and the problem of vocabulary in characterizing a series of events that took place in 2003-05 that resulted today in 2.5 million displaced persons, with little progress being made towards resolving the conflict in a way favorable to those displaced persons, and ending with a somber note about the limits of U.S. power in Darfur and the need to work multilaterally. But maybe Gration had given that answer already a dozen times, and finally got pissed off. Have to wait to see the transcript. But I do love the "all the elements will be taken care of" part... almost reads like Sudanese Arabic translated into English. A nice flourish!

When to say, "Shut up, you're only revealing yourself to be an idiot."

2009-07-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Yes that's right, sometimes it is OK to be rude. I've said this before, but when people make the comment, "But will South Sudan be viable as a land-locked country with no port and the lowest literacy rate in the world...?" You have to say, Dear Sir or Madam, South Sudan already is a land-locked region with no port and the lowest literacy rate in the world, and it currently is part of one of the most messed up countries in the world, and so yes things can get worse, or things can get better, but whatever your completely bizarre notion* of viable wouldn't even stand up to thirty seconds of scrutiny... explain what you mean, in English, Arabic, Dinka or any other language, just not in a platitude!!!!!

*Usually it turns out to be something like: a new country that has a giant wall all around its borders and maybe even a moat with crocodiles thrown in for good measure...

The U.S. as guarantor and mediator of talks and processes for implementing CPA...

2009-07-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

The U.S. as guarantor and mediator of talks and processes for implementing CPA needs to help set an agenda that enables the north and south begin to resolve four points prior to end of 2009, on the presumption that the vote for independence has high likelihood to be favorable.

First, what attributes of southern sovereignty can be implemented right away in 2011, and which have to wait? South Sudan can take its seat at the United Nations, but maybe does not need to have dozens of waiting rooms at border crossings for the herders and farmers who straddle the north-south border.

Second, how are the assets and liabilities of Sudan to be divided? Separate sovereignty cannot accommodate the current deliberate ambiguity over responsibility for oil reserves,international debt (currently more than $20 billion), domestic government debt, infrastructure and public corporations (all concentrated in the north like the profitable Kenana sugar scheme and the giant dam near Merowe), and promises to compensate the 2.5 displaced of Darfur, who suffered war crimes committed by the Sudan Armed Forces and their irregular allies, the janjawid.

Third, how will Darfur be represented in the interim National Assembly of Sudan that will be the legislative body implementing the referendum during the period after elections in February 2010 and then agreeing to the decisions regardingthe first two questions? Elections are not possible in Darfur (at least Abdel Wahid Moh. Nuur was very clear on Radio Dabanga that he opposed elections until people feel safe enough to return, which seems highly unlikely before 2010 unless suddendly NCP completely changes tactics) because of the insecurity and the inability of the displaced to return to their homes. Some kind of temporary power-sharing arrangement has to be arrived at, then, to enhance legitimacy of southern referendum and subsequent separation.

Fourth, in lead up to 2010 elections and then referendum how can freedom of the press and freedom of association (holding meetings) be best enabled/guaranteed by international monitors, if NCP either does not want itself to guarantee that or NCP claims it is not in control of "rogue" security/militia/people's police type intimidation techniques. Applies to lesser scale in south, of course. Mobile networks ar turning out to be key flashpoints in this regard... will something like FrontlineSMS be deployable on a large scale and not interfered with?

The things people do!?!?! Kordofan and the life of Jesus...

2009-07-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Searching on Youtube for Kordofan, this totally weird comic book of Jesus's life told in Kordofan-style Arabic... weird! I loved the "fi al wakit da..."

Nice clip on southern Sudanese in the U.S.

2009-07-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

2009-07-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

Steve Paterno writing in SudanTribune...

Even though in its ruling the Court states that the ABC never exceeded its mandate, it goes on to also assert that the ABC did exceed its mandates in other instances. Therefore, the Tribunal then redraws a new map for Abyei. In the new map, the Court confirms Abyei boundaries to the north, at latitude 10º10’N. It however denies the Ngok Dinka their sharing rights to the land farther north at latitude 10º35. To the East, the court draws an intriguing line, purposely isolating the oil fields from Abyei area. To put this ruling in perspective and comparisons, the court new map reduces Abyei area to merely less than a half in size awarded by ABC—which is from 25,293 km²/9,765mi² awarded by ABC to only10, 460 km²/4,039mi² of the reduced size of the Tribunal Court.

This ruling can hardly be accepted for the facts that it grossly deprives South Sudan of its sovereignty and outlaws Ngok Dinka from the rights to their land. At the heart of this dispute and ruling is the natural resource of Abyei, the oil; the very reason NCP clings to the Abyei area. ... Perhaps the real showdown between the SPLM/A and NCP will come during the implementations of this ruling and demarcation of South-North boundaries. Salva Kiir, the chairman of SPLM/A and President of South Sudan at the press conference in awake of the ruling already hinted into this by claiming that he is very sure all the oil fields stolen by the NCP on behest of the Tribunal ruling will fall within South Sudan borders when the boundaries are demarcated. May be the new SPLM/A strategy to recover the already lost valuable land is during the demarcation of South-North boundaries, but how possible is that? In short, the dispute is never over.

I think Steve is wrong about the sovereignty... Abyei roadmap and agreement to abide by decision greatly strengthens South Sudan as sovereign entity. Exercising restraint is one of the key virtues of the sovereign- both parties exercised restraint and thus gained legitimacy, both domestically and internationally.

But the other point Steve Paterno brings up is really interesting, not just because the North-South border has to be fixed before the referendum (and the arbitration panel's precedent now is that straight lines are fine when they are acceptable compromises?) but maybe even more importantly with a vote for independence the North and South will have to negotiate a split of oil revenues again. So Heglig field maybe will get split 75-25 in that negotiation.... The ideal would be for *all* oil revenues to go to a Transparency Fund that would be monitored by... say.... anthropologists like Jane Guyer... wait... that was Chad ;-)

Saramogo's fiction was becoming reality... Mankien during the South Sudan civil war

2009-07-23T13:24:00.001-07:00

Research on blindness in Mankien in comparative perspective...

... Our study estimated the prevalence of blindness in Mankien at 4%, which Kuper and Gilbert describe as being “beyond the range” of the studies reviewed by Pascolini et al. The review did not include any studies from the ten states that compose southern Sudan. The nearest surveys reported were conducted in 1998 in Al-Ginena province of Southern Darfur—which is within the 16 northern states of Sudan governed from Khartoum, and was not directly affected by the war in the south. The Al-Ginena studies show a blindness prevalence of 3.2% in all ages. Yet despite the geographical proximity, two decades of civil war in the south were accompanied by the absence of a health infrastructure, and no preventive health services to speak of, which makes southern Sudan unique. Comparisons with other parts of Sudan or with other countries are probably not justified or meaningful.

Our survey was conducted in Mankien, which was anecdotally known to be endemic for severe blinding trachoma, and this was subsequently confirmed by our trachoma survey, which showed an overall prevalence of trichiasis and bilateral corneal opacity of 9.6% and 3.1%, respectively. The prevalence of blinding cataract in Mankien was consistent with expectation, and would presumably have been higher had there been a systematic over-sampling of the blind. It is the prevalence of blinding trachoma that sets the population apart from all others reported and reviewed by Pascolini et al. These survey data from Mankien are extremely valuable in that they demonstrate the way uncontrolled trachoma can ravage inaccessible and underserved communities who have, quite literally, been off the map until recently. The war affected the whole of southern Sudan, and extremely high levels of active trachoma and trichiasis have been observed in all the areas that we have managed to survey in recent years.. Although not generalizable to the ten southern states, these data from Mankien are probably indicative of the overall situation in southern Sudan.

The context is a very interesting discussion of survey sampling biases... Great for the field worker to think about.

This one however is a little too much common sense for my taste... however famished for theory I may be

2009-07-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

Famine Mortality, Rational Political Inactivity, and International Food Aid

Thomas Pluemper
University of Essex - Department of Government

Eric Neumayer
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

May 1, 2008

LSE PSPE Working Paper No. 2

Abstract:
Famine mortality is preventable by government action and yet some famines kill. We develop a political theory of famine mortality based on the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2002, 2003). We argue that it can be politically rational for a government, democratic or not, to remain inactive in the face of severe famine threat. We derive the testable hypotheses that famine mortality is possible in democracies, but likely to be lower than in autocracies. Moreover, a larger share of people being affected by famine relative to population size together with large quantities of international food aid being available will lower mortality in both regime types, but more so in democracies.

Dierdre McCloskey a long time ago had an article about the "it is possible" vein of theory in economic theorizing... She wasn't impressed.

While I'm idly speculating, I wonder which paper came first, the genocide one or the famine one... and did someone really think that a formal model was needed to "prove the possibility" of the intuition that all else constant if those affected by famine are less like you politically, and their famine doesn't affect your pocketbook, then you'll be less likely to care....

Quantitative research on the ICC....

2009-07-23T00:24:00.000-07:00

A New Moral Hazard? Military Intervention, Peacekeeping and the International Criminal Court

Eric Neumayer
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Journal of Peace Research, Forthcoming

Abstract:
The newly established International Criminal Court (ICC) promises justice to the victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Past offenders can be punished, while future potential offenders may be deterred by the prospect of punishment. Yet, justice is no substitute for intervention for the benefit of people at acute risk of being victimized. The Court may create a new moral hazard problem if the promise of ex post justice makes it easier for states to shy away from incurring the costs of intervention. This article indirectly tests for the relevance of this potential problem by estimating the determinants of ratification delay to the Rome Statute of the ICC. I find that countries, which in the past have been more willing to intervene in foreign civil wars and more willing to contribute troops to multinational peacekeeping missions are more likely to have ratified the Statute (early on). This suggests that the Court is a complement to, not a substitute for intervention.

Abyei decision... total victory of SPLA?

2009-07-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

That's the only way I can see it. What NCP got was some more oil money a little longer. SPLA would hardly have been improved by more money. What they have gotten now is more legitimacy and perhaps more focus. Imagine the reverse: tribunal decides to give NCP the territory (to the Messeriya!) and SPLA the money... now *that* would have been awful. Settling the border at 10.10 presumably also totally makes both referenda more likely to lead to southern independence and Abyei in the south.

And what is especially pleasing was to hear the top NCP leadership pledge to devote the entire proceeds of Heglig oil field to compensate and restitute IDPS in Darfur, enabling them to return to their homes with enough assets to start anew. Not!

Abyei decision...

2009-07-22T02:04:00.001-07:00

Looks like ABC commission partially vindicated, as by and large their boundary stands... northern boundary is 10.10. Let's see if NCP and Messeriya respect the rule of law. Underscore that exercise of traditional grazing rights is not changed at all by boundary decision.

Encourage Presidency to appoint survey team to demarcate area.

Morning now... can actually see map... excluded Heglig oil field from previous ABC boundary. Scathing dissent from one of the panelists. All available here.

Abyei arbitration...

2009-07-22T01:45:00.001-07:00

EXCEEDED MANDATE IN CERTAIN AREAS....

Failed to specify reasons... exceeded mandate with respect to some of their conclusions.

On northern boundary not an excess of mandate... lat 10.10 as northern limit of permanent habitation not incorrect

ACHHHHHH webcast failed!

Abyei arbitration...

2009-07-22T01:39:00.000-07:00

ABC experts adopted predominantly tribal interpretation of their mandate... requiring them to delimit the are of Ngok area of 1905. Government however had territorial interpretation. Tribunal concludes that tribal interpretation *is not* unreasonable. Wording of formula can be interpreted either way, so not unreasonable. Object and purpose of formula supports tribal interpretation. Interpretation had function within context of CPA. The Ngok people were intended to be beneficiaries of provision for referendum, so interpeting as tribal not unreasonable. Tribal interpretation reasonable in historical perspective: boundaries in 1905 were uncertain; there was limited administration in 1905; Cond. officials had limited knowledge of Ngok; 1905 transfer effectuated to pacify.

Tribunal not required or authorized which (territorial or tribal) was more correct.

ABC DID NOT EXCEED MANDATE.

Abyei arbitration...

2009-07-22T01:31:00.000-07:00

New review of evidence "if and only if" finding of exceeding mandate. If no finding of exceeding of mandate, then parties *did not* want tribunal to review evidence. Correctness of ABC decision is "beyond review" in determination if exceeded mandate.

How to know if exceeded mandate?
Reasonableness of ABC members interpretation of mandate, and ABC empowered to determine their own bounds and competencies... and principle of law is that if "primary decision maker" delegated this they should be respected. Is there "manifest breach".

Failure to state sufficient reasons for a conclusion may mean exceeding mandate. ABC included requirement to state reason. Were expected to operate within greater peace process. Supposed to be scientific, so should state reasons. They were required to explain. Insufficiency, incoherence, contradictory reasoning could mean excess of mandate.

Abyei arbitration...

2009-07-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

Making a big point of sequencing... did ABC exceed mandate? Then if yes, what is boundary.... Also noted there was dissenting opinion.

Some questions on the arrest warrants of the ICC

2009-07-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

Alex de Waal's blog had an interesting exchange between Christine Chung, Christian Palme, and de Waal and Julie Flint. It's a National Enquirer read for the most part, so I thought I would take the discussion back to the judicious language (and less gratuitous snark) that the blogosphere is well-known for ;-)

Alex and Julie,

In the spirit of continuing the substantive discussion, rather than the character discussion (which is tawdry, no?) I would like to ask you to re-state your objections to the indictment (arrest warrant) against al-Bashir. You say, "We do not oppose ICC justice in Darfur — only for the president, now." It would be nice also to leave aside in this discussion the issue of the genocide charges, since the consequences in terms of legal reasoning and precedent of having al-Bashir be tried for genocide for what happened in Darfur is I think not essential to what, as you have stated many times, are the quite significant enough crimes of war and crimes against humanity.

My understanding at the time (last March) was that you thought it would completely derail the peace process and possibly lead to enormous human suffering if al-Bashir "angrily" retaliated at the affront to his honor (I think that is how you characterized it). It seems neither has happened to the degree predicted. If anything, the peace processes (CPA and Darfur) are on better tracks than they were before the arrest warrant (we shall see tomorrow with Abyei), and even with the charade of expulsion and readmittance and non-readmittance of aid groups, the increase in suffering, while evidently quite real to those who suffer, has neither affected policymakers and media (chastened perhaps by the joint Mamdani-de Waal offensive) nor IDP community organizers (no large movements or protests seem to have emerged).

Since your objections to the arrest warrant were largely consequentialist, and those consequences have not emerged, have you rethought your position? I would be the first to say that the arrest warrant complicates the various processes, but a "non-arrest warrant" situation (held in reserve like a secret hammer?) would also have complicated things. So I am not sure there is much basis to make judgments on the action.

My own position is that the ICC as a quasi-independent judiciary once established has a logic that is certainly quirky, but not self-evidently negative, and hard to say how it could be improved upon given what the ICC actually is (a court established by a treaty, with lots of rules spelled out in the treaty), and the division among African countries (and I'll stand with Botswana any day on this, rather than Zimbabwe and Libya and all the others!) over ICC suggests that many people value the steps being taken towards an end to impunity, as complements to local/national struggles for establishment of robust, genuine, rule of law/human rights/civil freedoms etc.

I am not sure that there is any basis to have a great objection to the arrest warrant against al-Bashir "now". Sure one can object, but when objecting one should perhaps be clear that one is objecting because of a "gut" feeling rather than because one's status as an expert means one has some secret knowledge or insight that others cannot access, and so one's objection should have more standing than other's "embrace" of the arrest warrant "now".

Lastly, I take it that you think the arrest warrants against Ahmed Haroun and Ali Kushayb were good actions (otherwise do you mean something else when you say you "do not oppose ICC justice in Darfur"). When people ask you, "Why aren't they in jail?" I presume you give the reasonable person's explanation of the limits of the ICC, the power of the Khartoum regime to protect its own, the low likelihood of outside intervention, and hence the likelihood of delay, perhaps until after 2011... and the same reasoning applies to al-Bashir, no?

Michael

Insulting free thought...

2009-07-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

Those are Mahmoud Mohammed Taha's words at the end of his brief statement at his "trial" where he was sentenced to death.

Another reason to switch... to Burkina Faso!

2009-07-20T13:39:00.001-07:00

Tell me you recalcitrant Sudanists... does Sudan even have *any* music EVER that came close to this gem from Floby?!?!! Listen to the whole song, I guarantee you'll be humming it all day.

Dispatches from South Sudan

2009-07-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

This is one nice blog... Rovingbandit:

Central Equatoria State Police at it again
After a number of Sudanese girls were arrested and beaten in Khartoum earlier this week for their "provocative clothing", it seems the Juba authorities are not about to be outdone, despite Salva Kiir telling them to stop this nonsense the last time they tried it. Today a girl from my office was beaten for wearing trousers. Being a clued in government employee she went straight to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (central government, above the state government who run the police) to register a complaint. Hopefully someone will sort them out.

Singing for reconciliation in South Sudan...

2009-07-18T23:13:00.000-07:00

From Robin Denney writing in the blog World Mission Network. In some ways the posting is touchingly naive- she can "hear the hope" and "feel the change." I've got nothing against Christian proselytizing, but when someone is so triumphant (that's how the writing comes across) about the "witch doctor" casting off his "magic" when the Christian caravan comes through... you just want to say, "Gimmie a break." (With apologies to Jerry Drino, who's a great, and understated, guy.)

Dear Friends,

The convoy of three flat bed semi-trucks, half a dozen pick-ups and SUVs, and assorted government and police vehicles, thudded over potholes, fish-tailed through muddy slews, trundled over bumps and rocks, and occasionally zigzagged out into the bush or open plain searching for a passable route, all the while accompanied by the sound of drums and song coming from the 200 singing evangelists aboard the semi-trucks. In all we were, the Archbishop and his wife, three bishops, a hand full of staff, at least 30 pastors, government officials, soldiers, and the 200 strong marching choir. In a week and a half we traveled approximately 550 miles, averaging less than 20 miles per hour, through forest and plain and swamp, across territory plagued by cattle raiders and rogues, stopping at every village and town to greet the crowds who came to welcome us, preach about reconciliation, and pray for peace and justice. This was the Archbishop's peace, reconciliation, and evangelism tour of Jonglei state.

Read more...

Abyei countdown, T minus 5, "It is the transferred area."

2009-07-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

That's the final sentence of the NCP "memorial", or briefing, for the arbitration panel, in which the NCP asserts that the small part of Kordofan below the Bahr al-Arab river is the only part that was transferred to Kordofan in 1905. The reasoning of the government is simple: they assert that the evidence shows that everyone understood the boundary before 1905 to be the Bahr al-Arab, so nothing above the river was "transferred" and so cannot be part of the "new" Abyei... That area above the river is about 4 times the size of the area below, and sits on top of the oil reserves, and is what the ABC commission decided *was* part of the "9 Ngok kingdoms" transferred to Kordofan in 1905.

The SPLA "memorial", on the other hand, argues that in 1905 the occupiers had little idea where the boundary was, and had little capacity to fix a boundary, regarding the region as basically unexplored, and moreover they were confused about which river actually was the Bahr al-Arab, some mistakenly thinking it was a more northerly river (the Ragaba al Zarga). So instead the emphasis should be on what the territory controlled by the Ngok paramount chief actually was, at the time, and the SPLA thus argues it was considerably north of the Bahr al Arab.

Abyei countdown, T minus 6, "Perceptions of doom"

2009-07-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

The line is from commentator Sara Pantaliano, from an excellent Al-Jazeera report from earlier this year.

Bleg! Negotiate with the most powerful or with everyone

2009-07-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've never done a bleg before... a bloggers begging for more information... but I'm in the dark here about whether political science/IR has any received wisdom (or empirical results) on whether peace negotiations (let's leave it a durable cease-fire for now) are more likely achieved through negotiations between the two main parties or among larger numbers of actors at the table. On the one hand it is intuitive to think that admitting more parties to the JEM-NCP talks, knowing that some of them (say) hate JEM's guts, will make it more difficult to negotiate a real cease-fire between JEM and NCP, and so NCP can say they were negotiating in good faith and the other parties could not agree. On the other hand, such intuition rarely holds up to game theory, which is driven by the modeling assumptions. The various impossibility results suggest that maybe it is pointless to think about theory; there just cannot be good predictions about preference aggregation in the absence of lots of structure about how the parties interact, which by definition is not possible in a negotiation where everyone can walk away. So if you were increasing the number of parties, and knew that differences among the parties were high but unlikely to lead to conflict (are JEM and SLA really going to fight each other in serious battles? Doubtful.), but yes likely to lead to fruitless negotiations (what NCP wants, perhaps?) then how do you structure talks to minimize the bad outcome (from mediator's point of view).... I'm not looking for common sense (I could sit here for hours doing the "on the one hand" thing... I'm an economist after all)... I'm looking for any established results.

Flash point coming up... July 22

2009-07-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration has fixed July 22 as the date of the announcement of the Abyei boundary... this is potentially huge... fighting between SAF and SPLA already had broken out in May 2008 and the town was destroyed... rarely does a flash point come so definitively announced in advance.

Final Award of the Tribunal

The Arbitral Tribunal will render its Final Award in the case at the Peace Palace on July 22, 2009, 10:00 a.m. For further details, please refer to this press release.
The ceremony will be webcast live on this website beginning at approximately 10:00 a.m. (CET; GMT +2), July 22, 2009.

I don't know enough about boundary law to know what they are going to decide. If they want to punt they will say there were irregularities in ABC commission (it "exceeded its mandate"), and so its report is invalid, and then throw the ball back to the two parties. But the people of Abyei, Messeriya and Dinka, will presumably decide at that point to take matters into their own hands. The NCP government appointed indicted war criminal Ahmed Haroun (he of Darfur janjawid coordination) to be governor of South Kordofan... but was it preparation for armed resolution of the "problem" or a firm hand to keep the Messeirya from bringing the country back to war? Hard to know.

Some useful Sudan links

2009-07-14T11:14:00.001-07:00

Last night I gave a talk before a great audience at St. Vincent de Paul in San Francisco. During the question period someone asked about "what to do next", and I rattled off a couple suggestions. I thought I would put them here for other budding Sudanists and activists and humanitarians.

First, I would heartily recommend the very readable What is the What, a kind of novelized autobiography of Valentine Deng as written by Dave Eggers. Great prose, and great weaving of the story of one person, and his friends, an innocent victim of a brutal civil war, with the larger story of what that war is about, and the aftermath of war, as people put together new lives in entirely transformed circumstances. After reading that, I recommend Deborah Scroggins' Emma's War, Francis Deng's War of Visions, and Katherine Applegate's lovely Home of the Brave.

That covers the south. For Darfur, although I disagree with many of his policy points, there is no better initial reading than Alex de Waal's (and Julie Flint) A New History of a Long War.

For charitable work, there is The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation working in South Sudan, and Sister Marilyn Lacey's Mercy Without Borders (whose website and Facebook page seems to be down... not the best sign!). The Darfur Peace and Development Program seems to be recommended, though I have never looked carefully at their activities.

Obama policy towards Sudan in his Accra speech

2009-07-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

It is a commonplace that the best foreign policy for a superpower when dealing with an asymmetric conflict, like the U.S. versus National Congress Party regime in Sudan, is to make sure "they" have no real idea what "you" really want. Like bargaining at a garage sale, you get them down to the lowest price, and then say, "Well, my wife will kill me if I buy it, so that's OK, I'll pass for now, I think maybe I'll talk to her and come back later... what time are you wrapping up?"

Or is it? Truth be told, I don't think "experts" on foreign policy have any real idea what the best set of policies is or is not... they/me probably have a good notion of what bad approaches are, but since there is a lot of randomness and complexity in intergroup dynamics sometimes the really bad "never recommend" approaches may turn out to be best... "Let's build a giant missile defense shield in space... call it Star Wars."

So what to make of the ambiguity on display in the nascent Obama administration Sudan policy, with Special Envoy Scott Gration saying he's not interested in the question of a "remnants of" Darfur genocide, while President Obama makes clear that at the rhetorical level he will not let it pass by unremarked? Sending multiple signals as best policy? Administration not clear who is setting Sudan policy? Mutually agreeable strategy of distinguishing rhetoric from action? Someday the insiders will tell us outsiders.

In the meantime, it is perhaps worth asking whether the non-Darfur related content (i.e. parsed platitudes) of President Obama's speech had any significant relevance for Sudan.

But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants. In my father's life, it was partly tribalism and patronage and nepotism in an independent Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is still a daily fact of life for far too many.

I wish along with the general disclaimer of responsibility for everything bad in Africa, had come a more open admission of specific things (esp. Mobutu and Doe, but more Sudan-related would have been Clinton's al-Shifa cruise missile strike of 1998, an egregious example of WTF) that are direct responsibilities.

Development depends on good governance....history offers a clear verdict: Governments that respect the will of their own people, that govern by consent and not coercion, are more prosperous, they are more stable and more successful than governments that do not....This is about more than just holding elections. It's also about what happens between elections. Repression can take many forms, and too many nations, even those that have elections, are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves ... That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.

Pretty clear indictment of NCP rule... but the question that Obama does not pose let alone answer, and is of course the pertinent question, is how to engage with exactly one of these distasteful corrupt and repressive regimes in order to secure some other set of policy goals? My own view? Partner with Mo Ibrahim and spend $5,000,000 more on Sudan-related no-strings-attached civil society prizes (better to reward after the fact success than to "compromise" a program with direct funding of its activities.)

...what America will do is increase assistance for responsible individuals and responsible institutions, with a focus on supporting good governance -- on parliaments, which check abuses of power and ensure that opposition voices are heard ... on the rule of law, which ensures the equal administration of justice; on civic participation, so that young people get involved; and on concrete solutions to corruption like forensic accounting and automating services ... strengthening hot lines, protecting whistle-blowers to advance transparency and accountability. I have directed my administration to give greater attention to corruption in our human rights reports.

So no Millenium Challenge Corporation money anytime soon for either North or South, I guess. But a strong warning call (unless ends up just rhetoric) that South especially needs to have greater transparency in order to ensure continued flow of aid. Riek Machar, Rebecca Garang, Salva Kiir... is everyone listening? I honestly had a silent bellylaugh the other day listening to someone involved in small-scale NGO aid in South Sudan explain, "I know that they aren't *able* to keep records or receipts or anything, because it is so backwards..." There's a good middle ground between that and bogus U.N.-style over-reporting!

...our $3.5 billion food security initiative is focused on new methods and technologies for farmers

I don't think USDA has a single thing to offer South Sudan, though I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised. Bad idea. Just do small-scale cash transfers. Or give everyone a bicycle voucher.

Together, we can partner on behalf of our planet and prosperity and help countries increase access to power while skipping -- leapfrogging the dirtier phase of development. Think about it: Across Africa, there is bountiful wind and solar power; geothermal energy and biofuels.

Really weird... he didn't mention dams. The Merowe dam is one of the world's largest new dam projects, built by the Chinese. Not working too well, apparently, as kinks are worked out. Huge relocation issues. Probably will be an ecological disaster (even more people living in Khartoum). The whole paragraph actually is sad- tells you there is no new chapter... if there was a new chapter he would have talked about oil industry transparency and perhaps even announced an initiative with the Europeans and Chinese and Russians to bully the oil companies into publishing in easily digestible and accessible form their accounts esp. moneys transferred to African government accounts.

America has a responsibility to work with you as a partner to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there's a genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems -- they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response....And that's why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy and technical assistance and logistical support, and we will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable.

Ouch for NCP. Radio Dabanga said the NCP government was "burned" by this! But who knows what the administration's real strategy is (see above). I'm not aware of any cooperation with the ICC by part of administration. Maybe they could actually join?

And let me be clear: Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world.

So maybe Kristofian air strikes are back on the table? [Caution, gratuitous swipe ahead...] Won't Mamdani be awfully peeved to know that there is no focus on a foothold. Wonder how long the speechcrafters took to come up with that one? "I know, let's call it 'not a foothold.'"

The world will be what you make of it. You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people.

I'm sure Suliman Baldo is re-energized...

Thanks, Chris Blattman, for getting everyone organized on commenting on the speech.

Obama in Accra...

2009-07-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

"We must bear witness to the value of every child in Darfur and the dignity of every woman in Congo. No faith or culture should condone the outrages against them. All of us must strive for the peace and security necessary for progress... America has a responsibility to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there is genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems – they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response. That is why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy, technical assistance, and logistical support, and will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable. And let me be clear: our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world."

I guess Obama hasn't read Mamdani or Funk and Fake... In fact, he sounds just like a Save Darfur advertisement. Samantha Power at work perhaps? But probably he's really controlled by Cheney, who "we" think is no longer vice-president, but "they" know that his forces linger in the "remnants" of the genocide.

Sanctions on the Sudan: What do economists and political scientists have to say on the subject?

2009-07-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

I wrote this one week before 9/11/01.... thought I would repost...

The United Nations has limited sanctions on the Sudan, and the United States very substantial sanctions. The House and Senate of the U.S. recently considered legislation to deny access to capital markets to companies that do business in the Sudan by prohibiting the issuance or trading of shares on U.S. stock exchanges (legislation passed in the House). I was curious about the received wisdom concerning economic sanctions, so decided to do a quick review of the literature. Do sanctions work? What kinds of sanctions work best? Here is what I found, along with a good dose of my own opinions.

Sanctions in general
If you want to answer the question of whether sanctions work, you have to start with the comprehensive work of Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott (1990 and since updated on IIE website), from the Institute for International Economics, a centrist policy think-tank in Washington. They have created a database of the 170 or so international sanctions applied (by any country, on any country) since World War I. (So it averages to about 2 sanctions per year). The U.S. is a big sanctioner, but many other countries also implement sanctions. Russia currently has lots of sanctions on former republics of the U.S.S.R. The United Nations often coordinates sanctions. By their own criteria of “success” (was the stated objective of the sanction achieved; e.g. turning over of suspects; signing of cease-fire; restitution of assets; restoration of democratic rule), sanctions have been successful between 25-50% of the time. So it is about what you might expect. Do sanctions work? Yes, some of the time, and no, the rest of the time. Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott do have some more pointed things to say about what to do to make sanctions effective: work with allies; have a very modest goal (i.e. sanctions to overturn a regime will rarely be effective, the impoverishment of the population seems to forestall regime change) but have large effect on the country ‘receiving the sanction; target a country that is much smaller; and the targeted country is actual ‘friends’ with the sanctioner (i.e. sanctions from trade disputes between U.S. and Europe or Japan usually end up in a settlement).

Here is how Eaton and Engers summarize the theory behind success or failure of sanctions: “Success is more likely when the threatened measure costs the sender relatively little relative to the gain from modifying the targets behavior, while the damage to the target is large relative to his cost of complying with the sender’s will.”

Sanctions on the Sudan
By the above theory, we have no clear ability to predict the effects of sanctions on the Sudan. Clearly the cost to the U.S. of implementing sanctions is very low. Even an embargo on gum arabic would be small, when the resulting price increase from non-Sudanese supplies are spread out over the entire U.S. economy, and given the large stockpiles accumulated, the incentives and ease of smuggling, and likelihood of innovation for substitutes. On the other hand, there seems to be little willingness of European allies to go along with sanctions, and certainly Sudan’s major trading partners in Africa and the Middle East (not to speak of China and Malaysia) are unlikely to go along with sanctions. Moreover, there are no clear “modest” objectives that have been enunciated by U.S. policymakers other than the original goal of the 1997 sanctions, now apparently realized of withdrawal of support for terrorist groups. Achieving a peace in the civil war, now in its 56th year (since 1955), hardly seems a “modest” goal. Operation Lifeline already had corridors open for relief to the South. High-powered sanctions are thus unlikely to have any consequentialist justification in the absence of some compelling modest goal.

There are two other concerns, however. First, to the extent that policymakers view the present military regime, and its control over the population of northern Sudan, as a clear and present threat to other interests, then keeping the regime as poor as possible may be warranted, even if the population suffers. The supposed tradeoff then is not between the U.S. population (hardly hurt by the sanctions) and the
Sudanese population (majorly affected), but rather the tradeoff between the Sudanese population and the Eritrean or Ugandan or Southern Sudanese population (now made more tricky by the large presence of southern Sudanese in northern Sudan). If this were to be the major justification for sanctions, then they should certainly be coordinated with the regimes that border the Sudan. Thus another problem arises; most of these regimes are non-democratic or even non-existent. Second, sanctions need not necessarily has any consequentialist justification.

There may be a legitimate moral obligation to not conduct trade with entities that violate basic rights and liberties. Sanctions are public displays of moral opprobrium. Here, for moral opprobrium to ring true, and be legitimate, the sanctioner must not bear responsibility for the situation, or carry out itself similar kinds of violations. This is the problem then the United States faces because of the mistaken unilateral cruise missile bombing of the al-Shifa factory, and pretty much unconditional support for an earlier dictator, Jaafar Nimieri. Until a clear and unequivocal policy of “laundry-airing, fact-finding, apologizing and stated intent to bring restitution to those damaged (through reasonable mechanisms)” is put in place, there can be no moral high ground. So, U.S. policymakers, starting with Senator John Danforth, the new U.S. envoy to Sudan, have to think hard about what they want to achieve. Blind imposition of high-powered sanctions seem like the wrong basis, at this moment in time, for moving forward. This does not condone the actions of the military regime, but only says that effective action must be thoughtfully considered.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, second edition, revised, 2 vols. (Washington, Institute for International Economics, December 1990).

"Sanctions" Jonathan Eaton and Maxim Engers, Journal of Political Economy, 1992

Michael Kevane
Dept. of Economics
Santa Clara University
September 4, 2001

What is the latest from Darfur?

2009-07-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

The AU panel seems to have come and gone with no breakthrough or even process for going forward. Scott Gration got the NCP and SPLA to Washington, but again without anything public about what is happening going forward. The presidential elections were again postponed to April 2010 (or maybe not!). It's been a bad week for "untied" Sudan watchers (the kind like me who aren't tied into the network of people who know). So in lieu of making fun of the pronouncements of the people who know, which these days seem to mostly consist of bland exhortations to stay on track, I thought I would take a little time examining some online sources to find out what the latest is from Darfur.

First stop, Radio Dabanga, a Dutch sponsored station run by Darfuri refugees, but they seem to be having a slow news day. There's a few cases of cholera, some IDP's saying they are afraid to go back to their homes despite NCP saying it is safe, some IDPs beaten with whips by unknown assailants in military uniforms, some IDPs suffering from torrential rains and no aid organizations to assis 9since they were kicked out)... and about 50 university students from Darfur still languishing in jails for their political activism.

Next stop, Radio Miraya FM, the UN supported radio station. but they too have nothing new. Over at the fountain, the course, the voice, the throat... I mean of course UNMIS itself... nothing... just some slow news day stories.

So then I got to the wonderful UNMIS daily media summary. For July 7 nothing terribly interesting. Salva Kiir apparently says the independence referendum should be held in January 2011. i had always been figuring that it would be July 2011. There is a nice extract of a speech by al-Bashir on the occasion of the opening of the two-seater propeller plane factory...

"Sudan has its own military industry. It makes tanks, missiles and many types of guns, all made by Sudanese hands," Bashir told hundreds of supporters outside the plant in Wadi Sayidina military area, north of the capital. "Today, Sudan has entered a new industry -- aviation," he added. Bashir did not mention the global court directly, or the Western governments he says are supporting the legal case. But he told the crowd in local dialect "What we are doing will enrage our enemies," adding "sanctions cannot stop development." He added: "They conspired; they supported rebellions, and created rebellions. They pushed neighbouring countries, they imposed economic, diplomatic and political sanctions and what was the result? Everyday, thanks to God, his strength and power, we are moving forward."

I'd love to see whether al-Bashir ever gets up in one of those planes. Curious that two of al-Bashir's vice presidents of Sudan have died in air crashes. John Garang and al-Zubeir Mohammed Saleh.

I liked this small gem, but the lack of details! "Al-Sahafa reports local authorities in the town of Sudari, northern Kordofan, yesterday detainedthree SPLM leading figures accused of distributing statement on the food gap in the state.SPLM issued statement confirming detention of its members." What on earth could that be about?

An earlier short story is more troubling, "Al-Sudani reports that South Darfur Governor Ali Mohamoud has revealed that the committee charged by the Interior Ministry to investigate inter-tribal clashes between the Misseriya and Rizeigat has finished investigations and would submit its final report to the minister. He said the police are deployed along the 150km common border strip between Southern Kordofan and South Darfur. Meanwhile, authorities in South Darfur have released 19 people representing the native administration of the Fallata and Habbaniya tribes after the two sides pledged not to provoke sedition in the area."

So, all in all, very slow news over the past couple weeks. That's good!

From the BBC...

2009-06-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

Sudan to execute diplomat killers

John Granville was killed while driving home on New Year's Day

Four men in Sudan have been sentenced to death for the killing of a US diplomat and his driver last year.

John Granville and driver Abdel Rahman Abbas died after gunmen opened fire on their car early on New Year's Day.

"We sentence the first four defendants to death by hanging," Reuters news agency quoted Judge Sayed Ahmed al-Badri as saying.

Earlier, the US embassy in Khartoum urged its citizens to keep a low profile if there was a guilty verdict.

A fifth man, who had provided the men with the weapon but did not participate in the murder, was sentenced to two years in prison at the court in the capital, Khartoum.

Human rights in Europe, 1584

2009-06-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

How the assassin of William the Silent (Father of The Netherlands) was killed, from Wikipedia:

Gérard was caught before he could flee Delft, and imprisoned. He was tortured before his trial on 13 July, where he was sentenced to be brutally — even by the standards of that time — killed. The magistrates sentenced that the right hand of Gérard should be burned off with a red-hot iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, that he should be quartered and disemboweled alive, that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and that, finally, his head should be cut off.

Kristof's suggestions for "what to do"

2009-06-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

From his review of Mamdani in NY Review of Books:
• Bring together members of Darfuri civil societydoctors, educators, leaders, and businesspeople among themto form a common negotiating platform, so that there can be constructive peace talks (since the most plausible path to a solution is a negotiated peace agreement). A prominent Sudanese tycoon and philanthropist, Mo Ibrahim, is now pushing this approach in a project called Mandate Darfur. Sudan's government blocked the Mandate Darfur peace talks this spring, with barely a murmur of protest from around the world, and it's crucial that international pressure be focused on Khartoum to allow this initiative to proceed. This may be Sudan's best hope.

• Apply pressure on the Sudanese government to make concessions so that such a negotiated deal is more likely, while also putting pressure on Abdel Wahid and the rebels. One of the basic problems is that the international community hasn't applied credible sticks or carrots to Khartoum. Carrots are difficult politically, but we can do more with sanctions (especially, going after the wealth of the Sudanese leaders in foreign banks), with international pressure from Arab countries (here Qatar has been helpful), and with military measures.

• These military measures can include a no-fly zone. This doesn't mean shooting any planes out of the air. Rather, when a Sudanese military aircraft bombs civilians in defiance of the UN ban on offensive military flights, Western forces can destroy a Sudanese fighter plane or helicopter gunship on the ground a few days later. For this purpose, the US could use aircraft from its military base in Djibouti, and France could use aircraft at its base in Abeché, in Chad. In a classified memo to the White House last year, the special envoy for Sudan, Ambassador Richard Williamson, also outlined other possible military measures, including jamming all telephones, radio signals, and television signals in Khartoum.

• Nudge China into suspending arms deliveries to Sudan. This would terrify the Khartoum regime, at a time when it is arming for renewed war with the south, for China is its main arms supplier and trainer of its military pilots. China won't suspend its oil purchases from Sudan, but it is conceivable that China would suspend military sales (which yield modest sums for China relative to the cost to its image).

• Encourage some elements in the official Sudanese leadership to overthrow President Bashir, by suggesting that if this happens and they take steps to end the violence in Darfur, the US will normalize relations with Sudan. The other leaders will not be indicted by the ICC, so if they remove Bashir they can remove the albatross from Sudan's neck. These other leaders also have blood on their hands, but they are far better than Bashir.

• Give a signal that the US has no objection to its allies selling anti-aircraft missiles to south Sudan (that is easier than providing the missiles ourselves). This would deny Khartoum air control over the south, and thus reduce the chance that the north will attack the south and revive the north–south civil war.

What does "high theory" have to say about Sudan?

2009-06-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

Although the CPA established a putative GONU, it is clear that NCP is firmly in control of policy of GOS (e.g. continued military operations by SAF in Darfur, expulsion of aid organizations in Darfur, refusal to cooperate with ICC, refusal to abide by Abyei arbitration). The NCP is the descendant organization of the NIF-military alliance of 1989-1999 which assumed power through overthrow of parliamentary democracy. The NCP maintains rule through control of major media, harassment and imprisonment of opposition figures, corruption, irregular militia forces in rural areas, and elections that are neither free nor fair. After an initial phase of using violence against domestic opposition, the regime has reduced the risks of coups and popular uprisings through multiple patronage networks including privatized state companies, loyal units in the civil service, separate command and control structures for military organizations (army, militias, special armed units), and a complex and shifting array of entangling alliances with neighbors, both states and rebel groups (Eritrea, LRA, Qatar, Iran, Libya, etc.). The regime does not need to resort to massive repression because oil revenues and liberal economic policy have enabled improving economic outcomes for large segments of the population. In particular, urban areas have seen an increasingly prosperous middle class that wants to see continued growth and is unwilling to risk upheaval through political action.

A number of very recent papers on political economy provide the opportunity for some speculative thinking on the likely complex interrelated process of political and economic transformation. Robinson and Torvik (2009), for example, develop a model of an autocracy that can choose to reward voters through patronage and also punish voters through violence. In their model, voters who are less ideologically committed to the regime or its opposition, that is, swing voters, are under many conditions more likely to be the victims of violence. The reasoning is simple: by virtue of being swing voters, they are relatively more expensive to secure to the ruling regime, and so the regime may find it more effective to use violence to exclude the swing voters from the electoral process. A recent working paper by Kasara (2009) finds evidence very much consistent with the model: the post-electoral violence in

Kenya

, as measured by the outbreaks of fires detected through satellite imagery, was more concentrated in contestable electoral districts, where voters wavered between the ruling party and the opposition. Thinking this through to Sudan, the implications are commonsensical but are worth highlighting. The ruling authorities might decide to use violence not against overt opposition supporters, but rather against marginal and “swing” coalition supporters. The paradox of strategies of violence of the NCP, then, is that they might be more directed against northern opposition voters, in attempts to disenfranchise them, than against the real opposition of the SPLM. Recognizing this, Umma and DUP may hasten to form alliances with NCP rather than with SPLM, to forestall electoral violence against their constituents.

A related model by Brender and Drazen (2009) examines the tradeoff between generating mass support for democracy versus buying off elites who are potential spoilers of a democratic transition. In Sudan, one might think of factions or blocs such as those of Riek Machar and Paulino Matiep in the South, and Khalil Ibrahim, Abdel-Wahid Moh. Nuur, and Hasan al-Turabi in the North, to say nothing of various NCP regime insiders who stand to lose from greater political liberalization and concomitant transparency. The model suggests that greater attention to mass support for democracy increases the likely cost to elite factions of spoiling the democratic transition. Two implications follow directly. The first is that in complementing efforts to consolidate power-sharing “deals” with leaders of elite groups, donors have a role to play in strongly shaping mass expectations of positive results from democracy (i.e. fair elections and then political liberalization). The investments in mass preferences are good on their own, but they have the extra benefit of reducing the inefficient reallocation of rents to buy off elite spoilers. The second is that donors might not look so unfavorably on large increases in public spending leading up to elections. Brender and Drazen suggest that the evidence finds little confirmation that such spending helped incumbents much, while it does likely increase the ordinary persons perception that democracy is redistributive and hence worth defending.

Acemoglu, Egorov and Sonin (2009) offer some modeling results on the very knotty question of the likely dynamics of coalitational authoritarianism, which is especially relevant to Sudan. The NCP ruling coalition suffered one large ejection (of the Hasan al-Turabi faction), and this momentarily increased the perception that the coalition might unravel. The ouster did not however lead to unraveling, contra earlier political science wisdom that coalitional authoritarianism was unsustainable; the view that “juntas always end up as one-person dictatorships.” Acemoglu, Egorov and Sonin show that on the contrary, juntas may be very stable, because attempts by stronger parties to oust weaker parties undermine the subsequent likelihood of stability. Anticipating unraveling, coalition partners try their best to get along. The logical extension of the model would be to ask what happens when one coalition member becomes severely damaged, i.e. as with the ICC arrest warrant against president al-Bashir.

Acemoglu, Daron, Georgy Egorov, and Konstantin Sonin, “Do Juntas Lead to Personal Rule?” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 2009, 99:2, 298–303.

Brender, Adi, and Allan Drazen. 2009. "Consolidation of New Democracy, Mass Attitudes, and Clientelism." American Economic Review, 99(2): 304–09.

Robinson , James and Ragnar Torvik, 2009. "The Real Swing Voter's Curse," forthcoming in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, and NBER Working Papers 14799, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Fuel efficient stoves projects in Darfur

2009-06-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

I was involved in this USAID study... the complete report is available here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Darfur, the westernmost region of Sudan, has been embroiled since 2003 in violent conflict that has resulted in the internal displacement of over 2 million people, many of whom are living in temporary camps. USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) has been one of the key US Government entities providing funding for humanitarian organizations working in Darfur. One component of humanitarian relief for the region’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) has been the introduction and promotion of fuel-efficient stove (FES) programs. An increasing number of humanitarian organizations are requesting funds to implement these programs throughout Darfur.

FES can deliver numerous benefits to end-user households, including fuel and time savings, reduced exposure to smoke, and lessened risks of fires and burns. Programs promoting FES therefore seem well-suited to IDP settings, where such multi-sectoral benefits typically are urgently needed but difficult to achieve given staff and resource constraints and difficult logistical conditions.

To better understand FES program drivers and outcomes, the USAID evaluation in Darfur examined four types of FES being promoted by three different non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to ascertain whether the stoves were indeed reducing fuel consumption. In addition, the evaluation team sought to identify behavioral and programmatic factors that influenced the likelihood that the FES programs would meet their fuel savings and other goals. The evaluation revealed a considerable range in stove performance and implementation strategies. Given the small sample set, the data should not be considered definitive, but rather as indicators of areas where improvements can be made.

Key findings of the evaluation include:
•Darfur is one of the world’s most challenging places to undertake humanitarian assistance. Field staff work in dangerous conditions, turnover is high, logistics are challenging, and access to the camps can be difficult to obtain. Despite these obstacles, all of the NGOs whose programs were reviewed had succeeded in disseminating stoves to large numbers of camp residents.
•Stove performance tests conducted by the evaluation team revealed that one stove seemed consistently to consume significantly less fuel than the traditional three-stone fire; several performed slightly better or worse than the three-stone fire; and one stove consistently consumed more fuel than the three-stone fire. Fuel efficiency did not increase proportionately with the cost/design sophistication of the stoves tested.
•The NGO programs reviewed did not incorporate sufficient monitoring and evaluation systems to guide their performance or validate their results. When data was collected, it was not disseminated adequately throughout the organization or the surrounding community.
•Several of the NGOs had sought outside expertise to introduce new stove models and strengthen their FES programs. However, promotion/dissemination of multiple technologies stretched the management capacity of the programs.
•NGOs need to spend more time on end-user education, to ensure that behavior change messages are transmitted effectively and that beneficiaries know how to use their stoves to obtain maximum benefits.
•Beneficiaries typically were enthusiastic about their stoves. However, many stated that they experienced difficulty maintaining the stoves, particularly after donor support had ended.

Focus group discussions and one-on-one interviews revealed that IDPs in Darfur are very interested in new cooking technologies, and especially welcome benefits that improve their overall quality of life (such as reductions in the incidence of fires and burns). The evaluation team concluded that the promotion of FES remains a valid intervention for humanitarian assistance programs, but recommends that donors and implementers strive for realistic, consistently attainable fuel efficiency performance.

This will require the following steps:
•Stronger monitoring and evaluation protocols that will need to be implemented throughout the life of the program (not just at the beginning and end). The monitoring and evaluation criteria should incorporate a variety of both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods, in order to identify and address discrepancies between end-user feedback and stove performance tests.
•Workshop-centered production utilizing paid specialists, in order to improve quality control and maintain stove design parameters.
•Regular training for beneficiaries on how to maintain their stoves (particularly mudstoves, which crack with time), along with safe access to materials needed for repair.
In addition, the introduction of market-based principles into the stove production and distribution process should be explored. For instance, charging a minimal amount for each stove might help improve the quality of the stoves (and the sustainability of the programs) by giving end-users a vested interest in their stoves’ performance and creating mini-markets for various stove services (i.e., repairs). This can be achieved, however, only if all NGOs working in a given area adopt the same strategy, which will require greater planning and coordination at the camp level.

More Small Arms Survey summaries

2009-06-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

Jerome Tubiana's "Echo Effects: Chadian instability and the Darfur conflict" is a masterful summary of players and events in Chad as they relate to Darfur. A must-read for understanding the history of shifting alliances that make credible commitment impossible. But how to resolve the security dilemma when commitment is locally impossible? For Tubiana, "a concerted and comprehensive diplomatic initiative is needed" that involves the Chadian opposition and issues relating to democratic governance. But is there really any basis for this? The report contains virtually no mention of the role played by the Chadian opposition (presumably he means the opposition political forces in N'Djamena). The Machakos/Naivasha initiative leading to the CPA deliberately excluded this paralell opposition in Sudan, and was very successful (at least fours years into the interim period). Why should one recommend a different process for Chad?

The other recommendation is to bring pressure on Deby to desist from supporting his proxy militias. But this advice is at odds with the recommendation of the South Sudan disarmament briefings (to be reviewed tomorrow) which suggest that "unilateral" disarmament is likely a bad idea, generating a vicious circle of neighboring militias taking advantage of local power vacuums, creating incentives for rearmament after killings, and compounding the problem of local distrust.

Finally, Tubiana recommends more local development assistance, specifically mentioning "nomadic Arabs" to maintain their way of lives. Some specificity would have been useful: I am curious what exactly he has in mind other than the usual provision of veterinary services. I've always wondered whether development organizations have *anything* to offer to pastoralists. They just know so much more than any development expert. Of course, he may just mean the usual social services of regular markets, education, and health.

Small Arms Survey papers on conflict in Sudan

2009-06-08T03:51:00.000-07:00

On the flight to Paris to attend a workshop on the future of Sudan up to the referendum of 2011 and beyond, I took the opportunity to read a bunch of the excellent field reports by the Human Security Baseline Assessment's Small Arms Survey. (Seems like they could have come up with a more self-explanatory name for themselves.)

There are two ways to read the reports. One is if you were some action-oriented person tasked with doing something in a region covered by some of the reports. They would be invaluable for giving you an idea of the recent situation and nature of armed groups in the area. Like a briefing. Probably better than George Bush was getting on Iraq. Reading them gives you an idea of what questions to ask. Did the "White Army" disband or get some command structure? They almost cry out for a table with assistants pushing armies around on a large map... the generals with their whiskeys receiving telegrams. One wonders whether the real commanders on the ground find them useful, or naive?

A second way to read the reports is to say they confirm that a general state of armed mobilization exists in much of peripheral Sudan, and armed entities of 1000+ men are readily available to spoil the CPA. So the situation is very dangerous for everyone. of course, any close observer of the region knows this, and does not need to be convinced of the powderkeg. But then... what? Do the reports contain specific suggestions for policy innovation beyond the standard invocation to do more and do better? Here the reports are less inspiring. But perhaps the problem lies with those needing policy inspiration, hoping to complex problems of war with a clever insight. Unhappy the land that need heroes, and all that.

But on to the specific suggestions of the authors.

Julie Flint and collaborators, in "The drift back to war: Insecurity and militarization in the Nuba Mountains", describe the apparent proliferation of new armed groups in the area, the deep dissatisfaction of much of the population with the interim period, and the absence of any joint effort by the SPLA and NCP to establish a process leading towards peace. It is great reporting, thorough and balanced. But their first suggestion is for "UNMIS to reorient and refocus " on the transitional areas of Abyei and South Kordofan. Do more, do better. The second suggestion is for an "internationally-sponsored plan", but the briefing catalogs the failure of the quite detailed CPA implementation plan (especially the Joint Integrated Forces) as applied to the Nuba Mountains. So what should the new plan contain that the old one did not?

I'll permit myself a snarky aside. Flint (presumably) towards the end blames, among others, "an international community distracted by Darfur", and yet she, with Alex de Waal, is co-author of probably the major book-length treatment of that war. If the international community spent 10 hours each reading that book, we're talking thousands of hours of distraction. Glass house and stones, Ms. Flint, don't mix.

Returning to the issue, what should the new plan contain that the old one did not, I feel honest in admitting to be stumped, though of course this has never been my area of expertise. But somehow I imagine that the experts too are stumped, in which case more humility may be in order. But I can think outside the box. (1) How about regularly publishing satellite imagery to both sides and the public showing structures of encampments etc., ground-truthed with UNMIS commentary? perhaps this is already being done though it does not seem to be easily accessible. (2) How about working with both sides to "uniform" their irregular militias. In my limited experience, irregulars love uniforms, and that may be a big step to reducing conflict, because they don't like their uniforms being shot full of holes. (3) How about a "joint-fly" zone that says for every flying sorty that the SAF has the UNMIS will provide and offer a comparable flying sorty to SPLA for the same duration. Bomb for bomb, I mean. They can outfit a special plane with large buffalo horns so that it will be clear it is not a relief flight. We usually don't think of the third-party "peacemakers" as escalating, but sometimes the threat of escalation can achieve deescalation, no?

Hoisted from Blattman, just for the comments...

2009-06-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

From Chris Blattman's blog:
24 April 2008
A new approach to Darfur: Shake hands with the devil

Andrew Natsios, a former U.S. special representative to the Sudan, argues in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs for a more pragmatic approach towards Darfur and peace in Sudan.

In brief: We’ve tried the stick, he says, and it ended in failure. So we need to think about the carrot.

What few successes the international community has helped to create—the signing of the peace agreement between north and south, for instance—were the result of conciliation and diplomacy, not of hard-line actions and words. Coming from Natsios, a former hard-liner, this is powerful stuff.

Natsios also takes a wary and critical view of the "save Darfur" crusaders:

The [ruling party’s] leaders are worried that U.S. policy might change to their disadvantage under the next U.S. President and that they have only until the end of 2008 to improve relations with Washington—a point I have reinforced in all of my conversations with them.

Unfortunately, rapprochement may face substantial resistance in the United States because the erroneous impression that tens of thousands of civilians continue to be slaughtered in Darfur is driving both a confrontational advocacy campaign and aggressive congressional action.

(Timely related article: Matt Damon leads the star-studded protests on Darfur day of action)

What I like best about Natsios' article is his ability to communicate the complexity of the situation and the nuances of different polies and events, without losing the reader in the innumerable details of ethnic groups, locations, and armed group leaders. I don’t know enough about Darfur to fully endorse his view, but his is one of the best (short) synopses of the situation I have read.

Also worth reading is Alex de Waal's short book on Darfur.

Also interesting in this issue of Foreign Affairs: Michael Ross on the coming oil conflicts, and Séverine Autesserre on what the international community is doing wrong in DRC.

Posted by Chris Blattman

Labels: conflict, Darfur, foreign policy, United States

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Commentary on Natsios
Paragraph 1:
“the Janjaweed militias, an Arab supremacist movement,” is probably not the right way to label the very irregular militias. There is very little evidence to suggest they are a “movement” in the way readers of Foreign Affairs would understand the word.

Right in the very first paragraph Natsios reverts to very problematic language of Arab versus African, and even worse, goes right back to using “tribe” with no sociological nuance.

In the next line, the 250,000 dead are “Sudanese”… what happened to the “African tribes”?

The same line elides the distinction between “internally displaced persons” and refugees. Of all people, Natsios knows the distinction- but hey, the insurgents in Iraq are all al-Qaeda backed by Iran, right?

“Both the Democratic and the Republican candidates for president have put Darfur on their foreign policy agendas.” Pretty laughable, that.

Paragraph 2:
Simplification started in previous paragraph carries over and will be developed throughout: the problem in Sudan is of various tribes (the Arabs here, the Africans there, the animist and Christians down below) who do not get along. Natsios writes, “new strains in these groups' relations nearly broke out into a full-scale war”… here we all thought the strains were between named and organized political groupings that represent or claim to represent certain segments of the varied population- the National Congress Party and the SPLM….

Natsios starts wearing the reader down: only two possibilities are allowed: “either the country holds free and fair multiparty elections and ends two decades of autocratic rule or it disintegrates, plunging this volatile region into its most severe crisis yet.” Only the Darfur advocates want the plunging disintegration, everyone else wants elections and peace.
You can almost hear the police horn, “Good people of the United States, go back inside, nothing to see here, go back inside please.”

Paragraph 3
“The Bush administration can still help avert such a disaster.” Surely unwitting, but the implication lingers- nobody else really can help avert this disaster. Certainly not the Darfur activists.

“Washington spends a disproportionate amount of its staffing and budgetary resources on resolving the crisis in Darfur rather than on supporting the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.” Meaning, all the Darfur activists take up a lot of our valuable time. It is a strange implication too: the two parties signed a peace agreement, and peace returned. Meanwhile there is an active war zone, with 2 million displaced. But this war zone and those displaced, and the threat continued war poses to the peace, should not receive “disproportionate” attention.

“...peace cannot be achieved in Darfur if it is not secured between the north and the south. “ One could just as easily have written, “...peace cannot be achieved between the north and the south if it is not secured in Darfur.” Natsios frames again as an absolute, a fact, when of course this is an opinion. “In my opinion, peace, etc.”

“The best way for Washington to proceed, moreover, is not by confronting Khartoum but by engaging it, even in the face of likely objections from the Darfur advocacy community.”
Again, the basic gist of the article is to frame the problem in Darfur as a problem exacerbated by the Darfur activists… if they would just go away, the “practical policies” could take care of the situation, just as they did (you surely recall) during the period 2003-2005 leading up the the CPA. Oh, right, but nevermind, the "practical policies" didn't actually do much in the previous 20 years of civil war 1983-2003(sparked you recall by the U.S. ally Jaafar Nimeiri’s government in a power play to secure oil revenues for the north… Chevron, Bechtel, conspiracy theories, all you crazies out there… get to work!)

More later.

Eustil Elive
3:07 AM
Anonymous said...

More on Natsios... how much credibility to give to his opinion?
How about the following quote from 2003 when he was administrator of USAID planning reconstruction of Iraq, interviewed on Nightline:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/iraq/koppel.htm
ANDREW NATSIOS
Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it's up and running and there's a new government that's been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They're going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.

Eustil Elive

Weirded out by de Waal again....

2009-06-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago on his blog he had this rant about too many international visitors to Sudan taking up all the time of Sudanese government officials who needed to be "working" on peace (that's right, they are never involved in coordinating helicopter gunship attacks or suppressing newspaper editors or bad things like that, honest). But then, like a week later, we get this report of his from Darfur, where he's visiting and .... having meetings. With no trace of irony, he posts a picture of a big school "ceremony" with him (presumably taking the picture) and Julie Flint in northern Darfur (I think) and hundreds of kids and teachers standing at attention in the sun. Good thing the kids and teachers don't have important "work" to do, so they have time for a meeting with important international visitors.

Honestly, it seems never to have occurred to de Waal that the purpose of all the visits is precisely to make government officials stop doing bad things, because when you do bad things you have to answer questions all the time from lots of foreign officials! Reminds me of how after the Iraq war they found the hundreds of thousands of letters written by Amnesty folks about political prisoners, unopened. Maybe there should have been more international visitors and fewer letters? De Waal seems to imply an email would be fine:

"Dear Mr. President,
It has come to my attention that 2.5 million persons continue living in IDP camps in Darfur because of continued insecurity due in large part to your unwillingness to enter into genuine cease-fires with a number of small rebel groups in the region. I was thinking of a high profile visit to Khartoum and perhaps even Darfur to express my fervent desire that you and your government do more to enable these 2.5 million persons to return to their homes. But after some thought, I decided that most likely this was of course what you were already doing, 24/7. So my visit would just have been a distraction. In fact, as I think about it, I have decided not to send this email, because I know you would then have to spend some of your valuable time drafting a response.
Yours sincerely if I had sent the email,
Barry Obama"

Who was that evil man (oops, not supposed to use that word)...

2009-06-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

I always wondered and now will never know the truth (not that he would have said) why the Nimeiri commemorative stamp where Nimeiri is "brown skinned" was withdrawn and replaced with Nimeiri as "white skinned".... here is the re-issued stamp.... hey, and look at all the southerners standing in solidarity with Nimeiri! And the gender ratio- four to one! Masha'allah!

How to do development well...

2009-05-31T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Multi-Donor Trust Fund for Northern Sudan recently released a set of consultancy reports on the capacity of local administrative offices in northern Sudan to successfully participate in a community development fund (I guess they used to be called social investment funds). These are basically the microfinance approach to public expenditure, giving small grants to localities for public projects, and conditioning future grants on successful metrics of previous grants. is there anything not to like? Even if corruption is high, do we not want local people to get a bigger share of corruption than central people?

The reports are interesting in that northern Sudan comes across looking very much like the poor African developing country that it is- and not the gleaming modern Dubai-financed Khartoum skyline the regime wants to become. The local administrative capacity is almost pathetically weak. I imagine many other African countries doing far better.

But the reports are very competently written and provide a good base for verification of improvement of procedures in localities. Also, the synthesis report lays out very clearly the (mistake of the) CPA's abrogation of the previous local government acts and replacement with each state constitution having their own local government structures.

World Bank/LICUS "Assessment of Localities' Compliance with Minimum Qualifying Criteria and
Identification of their Capacity Needs in Northern Sudan: Synthesis Report (Final)" January 2007

Wealth Sharing Beyond 2011: Economic Issues in Sudan’s North-South Peace Process by Achim Wennmann

2009-05-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

This paper by Achim Wennmann is the product of the Centre of Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), a Swiss think-tank, as they attempt to learn some lessons about conflict resolution.

An important point in the brief review of the process leading up to the CPA is that peace talks had been going on and off for 20 years, almost as soon at the second rebellion against the north started in 1983. So the parties were very familiar with each other, their strengths and their personalities, and what they stood for. The observation does not, however, lead to a generalizable conclusion; i.e., familiarity meant no quick resolution, if one thinks that 20 years is a very long time for a peace process to be resolved.

The author has an extremely good summary of the various factors that made a peace agreement possible in 2003-05. These factors included the likelihood that oil revenues would strengthen the northern army, so SPLA would never win the war, the changed international environment of 9/11, which meant that the U.S. might be prepared to inflict serious harm on a victorious but un-democratic north; considerable regional hostility to the north; internal divisions between northern regime members and smaller-level threats in east and Darfur; the growing realization in the north that a persisting low-level war could be very harmful to continued flows of international capital.

The author justly emphasizes the importance of separating ownership from management of the oil resources; the CPA explicitly did not resolve the ownership question. it would be interesting if political scientists could figure out whether mediation attempts in other civil conflicts where natural resources play a significant role could be similarly structured. On the other hand, delinking has been a strategy of many international agreements; one thinks of the Chad pipeline agreement where the Chadian government formally ceded part of its sovereignty over oil. Presumably this has also been a big recurrent issue in the Cyprus negotiations.

Wennmann reminds us of some interesting points in the wealth-sharing negotiations and agreement. the North was given 100% of oil located in the north. Chain apparently agreed to pay for oil in cash rather than through barter of consumer goods. Much oil revenues were already locked in through future sales- Wennmann does not give a number, which would have been interesting. My recollection of the CPA is that these sales agreed to in the past were not the subject of explicit discussion- were the proceeds split 50:50? Finally, apparently the issue of sharing of the $20+ billion debt-burden came up in the talks, but again my recollection of the CPA is that it is silent on this qyuestion in the event of secession.

One of the conclusions is something I strongly disagree with, and want to subject to critical commentary:

The declining deposits of high quality oil wells in the south pose a challenge to the future viability of an independent state of Southern Sudan. Efforts should therefore be placed on developing Southern Sudan’s non-oil economy and redefining Sudan’s centre-periphery relations. Postponing the referendum may be a pragmatic strategy to strengthening wealth sharing agreements and the multiple ongoing peace processes in Sudan beyond 2011.

I just don't understand people when they talk about "viability" of South Sudan. The Sudan (the larger state) has been in civil war pretty much its entire post-independence history, including two of the largest most awful humanitarian catastrophes of recent history, involving hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of persons displaced, and somehow that is supposed to be "more viable" than South Sudan? So please stop with the "viability" rhetoric. Any entity of the world is "viable" as a state. Any entity in the world can be a "successful" state. A political scientist who claims to know something more than common-sense about "viability" (a state composed of fragments one-square-kilometer blocks spread randomly around the globe will have a tough time) and "success" (a state created by international fiat and encompassing both parties to a very bloody conflict may not thrive) is not worth listening to. Otherwise, anything a political scientist can say is based on regression analysis with state outcomes as dependent variables and stata characteristics as explanatory variables, and more than likely all the state characteristics are endogenous, rendering the estimated coefficients pretty much meaningless. Correlations, not caustion. And correlation means that South Sudan becoming a state cannot be the object of meaningful inference.

One last thing. Wennmann has a throwaway line that, "It would be highly unlikely that Southern Sudan would get a better deal with the north on southern oil deposits if it was an independent state." I am not sure why that would be the case. Seems like they could easily get a better deal.

Commentary on a paper about the 2011 referendum...

2009-05-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

I've been reading an interesting paper, "Referendum, Response and Consequences for Sudan: The Game between Juba and Khartoum" by Ibrahim Elbadawi, Gary Milante and Costantino Pischedda, part of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. I'll call the authors EMP for short from now on.

EMP start by using a simple model of strategic interaction to model the likely unfolding of actions after the referendum. Juba (representing the elite of the SPLM, the "deciders" of how the South should vote) first decides whether to secede. If they secede, then Khartoum (representing the NCP regime) decides on war or peace. Obviously the payoffs are crucial here. EMP assume that "under unity the expected payoff to Khartoum is tax revenue plus oil less military expenditures ... and the expected payoff to Juba is tax revenue plus oil less military expenditures ... In the event of partition and peaceful response from Khartoum, the expected payoff is simply tax revenues for Khartoum less military expenditures ... and tax and oil revenues for Juba less military expenditures..." In the event Khartoum goes to war, captures some of the oil revenue, and both sides bear losses proportional to their pre-referndum investments in military capacity.

Oddly, EMP don't model the game as explicitly starting with military investment, which temporally occus before the referendum. They refer to those investments as talking place in a "pre-game" period. (EMP report various estimates of military expenditures and suggest that these were on the order of $1 billion for the north and $500 million of the south, in 2007; the north's army, SAF, is on the order of 100,000 troops, while the army of the south, the SPLA, is about 30,000 troops, and both sides have alliances with informal and rebel fighting groups of sizes difficult to estimate.)

The analysis of the game is largely common-sense: both sides will invest heavily in the military pre-referendum, and the outcome of the referendum then depends on Juba's assessment of its military capacity relative to Khartoum. We did not need a model to understand that.

EMP then move to some asymmetric information scenario, and reasonably conclude that more information (census, resolution of Abyei boundary dispute, oil revenue transparency, etc.) would reduce the likelihood of conflict because if conflict is valued less than partition then they will be less likely to go to war. Of course, the analysis compares moving from lack of information to complete information, whereas in reality the extra information means moving from a situation of lots of asymmetric information to one with less asymmetric information, and where information that is revealed updates prior probabilities about the world. If priors suggested that war would be unwinnable, and more information revealed that war was more likely to be winnable, then the greater information could paradoxically increase the chances of war. But EMP do not consider this possibility.

The more interesting part of the paper comes next, when they take issue with the Collier et al proposition that elections are bad for peace in transitions from conflict and repression to greater political openness. EMP argue that it is likely that the planned 2009 elections (now scheduled for 2010) can lend legitimact to Khartoum, enabling it to credibly commit to lower military expenditures and hence a peaceful outcome from the referendum, possibly even unity. EMP note that the marginal effects on well-being outcomes are likely to be high if military spending is diverted to anti-poverty programs.

The paper concludes with a wish list of lots of good things that could make things better (more northern opposition party involvement and deal-making to give NCP a soft-landing to encourage democratization, a third referendum option of confederation, more efforts to increase integration between north and south, etc.), and reads more like one of those "people of good will" documents than "analysis".

Did you know...? Secession to be implemented immediately after announcement of results

2009-05-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

That at least seems to be the implication of the Interim National Constitution, which in Part III, Chapter III, 69(2) says that the President, if from the South, "shall be deemed to have resigned" in the event that the vote for secession wins. Moreover, Part 17, clause 10, says that all parts of the Constitution dealing with the south "shall be deemed to have been duly repealed" if the referendum is favorable to secession. It seems then there is no interregnum, and all negotiations for secession would have to be completed in advance of the referendum, since once secession is voted for the two sides become sovereign immediately.

Resource based conflict or ethnic cleansing?

2009-05-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading a great working paper, "Ethnic cleansing or resource struggle in Darfur? An empirical analysis", by Ola Olsson and Eyerusalem Siba, both of University of Gothenburg, analyzing the patters of attacks in 2003-04 in Western Darfur. They use a dataset of all villages and nomadic settlements in the region, and find that there were many villages side by side, where one was attacked and one was not. The difference? the resource based conflict suggests the one attacked would be closer to water, etc, the ethnic cleansing one would suggest it would be a Fur/Masalit/Zaghawa village. The analysis of 530 villages, of which 327 were destroyed or abandoned, finds overwhelming evidence that the ethnic composition of the village mattered. Basically only the Fur/Masalit/Zaghawa villages were attacked and destroyed. Wow- great work by Olsson and Siba.

I did send to them one suggestion for further work. While the distance to nearest wadi is a good proxy for village resources, there are four others that might be relevant, and indeed might even be measurable with careful analysis of Google maps:
1) gum arabic gardens
2) tebeldi trees (baobab trees) - before boreholes these were important source of water, and many settlements sprang up and tended baobab for water storage; alternatively boreholes should be mappable, no?
3) wadi gardens with 10km of village (many anecdotes suggest that capturing villages where these fruit and vegetable gardens existed was a factor in pattern of assaults)
4) pasture - I wondered if merging the data with recent two decades of NDVI indicators might also prove fruitful in giving more nuance to patterns of attacks?

A report of wrongdoing...

2009-05-09T14:14:00.001-07:00

Back in 2005, the AU force in Darfur received a letter from a Sudanese Armed Forces officer. Team 2A was sent to investigate. The no-longer confidential report is available here. The amazing conclusion? Someone attacked the lorry and wounded some passengers. The recommendation? More should be done to ensure the safety of passengers. Ladies Home Detective Agency this was not. What is interesting is the bureaucracy of the AU mission. This little incident report seems to have required the signatures of 5 officers to sign the "investigation", and then 7 officers (colonels, no less) to sign off on the investigation report. Maybe it's part of that "sweat the small stuff" approach to problem-solving.

A real genuine interest in peace

2009-05-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

From the BBC:

The conference on Darfur that could now be cancelled was to bring together some 400 people from Darfur's diverse ethnic groups in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Pro-government groups as well as those close to Darfuri rebels were included.

Funded by Sudanese expatriate and telecoms entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, it also had the backing of the UN, the African Union and the Arab League.

But Mr Ibrahim told the BBC that the process is now being held up by the Sudanese authorities.

He said delegates were being harassed, their passports withdrawn and that some have been warned they were engaging in activities against the state.

Unless the Sudanese government gave its permission, the conference would have to be abandoned, he added.

When the divorce comes, how much should the South get?

2009-05-06T00:41:00.000-07:00

Damien Helly reminds me of a paper by Ali Abdel Gadir Ali written back before the CPA...:
On the basis of the MDG on poverty section (II) presents the proposed analytical framework.

In a nutshell the idea behind the framework is that of minimizing poverty in a two region economy (South and North) by allocating a given total of resources between the two regions. With poverty summarized by the head count ratio the resulting allocation formula depends on a number of poverty magnitudes such as the head count ratios for the two regions, the growth elasticity of poverty in each region and the elasticity of the per capita expenditure of the South to that of the North.

I am not enamored by this kind of overly utilitarian approach; if the North is very effective at reducing poverty (because more people are close to the poverty line, or because poor people are more accessible- after displacement they are living in shantytowns or IDP camps, or because of a legacy of more administrative capacity), is it right that the North gets more poverty-reduction funding? My ethics sense says no.

Ah, now we can relax after signing the peace deal

2009-05-05T09:59:00.001-07:00

Incursion de rebelles: Ndjamena accuse Khartoum

par RFI

RFI: Article publié le 05/05/2009 Dernière mise à jour le 05/05/2009 à 14:15 TU

Le gouvernement de Ndjamena a accusé, ce mardi, le Soudan d’avoir lancé « plusieurs colonnes armées, avec des centaines de véhicules » contre le Tchad, en violation des accords, signés dimanche dernier à Doha, qui devaient réconcilier les deux Etats voisins. En février 2008, Khartoum avait déjà été accusée d’avoir appuyé les rebelles qui avaient déclenché une importante offensive en direction de Ndjamena dans le but de renverser le président Idriss Déby Itno. Dans une déclaration à la radio d’Etat, mardi matin, le ministre tchadien de la Communication, Mahamat Hissène, a souligné que le régime soudanais « en déclenchant cette agression programmée vient de renier la signature qu’il a apposé à Doha ». Pour sa part, le Soudan a affirmé qu’il n’a « aucun lien » avec cette offensive qui, selon Khartoum, concerne uniquement « l’armée tchadienne et les rebelles tchadiens ». Selon plusieurs sources au Tchad, les combats n’ont pas encore commencé.

More Mamdani: Big, Powerful, Save Darfur Imperialism, the Prototype

2009-05-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

A Writer’s Violent End, and His Activist Legacy
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: May 4, 2009
The New York Times

“I had a surprising call this week,” the author Richard North Patterson told the audience that had gathered last weekend as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. It was former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Patterson’s new novel, “Eclipse,” is based on the case of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Mr. Clinton spoke of a phone call he had made 14 years ago to Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, asking him to spare Mr. Saro-Wiwa from the hangman.

Mr. Clinton said General Abacha “was very polite,” but “he was cold,” Mr. Patterson related. “Clinton took away from that, among other things, that oil and the need for oil on behalf of the West and other places made Abacha, in his mind, impervious.”

The event’s moderator, the Nigerian novelist Okey Ndibe, added an unexpected epilogue. A friend in the Abacha cabinet said the general later boasted: “All these pro-democracy activists run to America and expect America to save them. But the U.S. president himself is calling me ‘sir.’ He is scared of me.”

Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim is running for president of Sudan... al-Bashir: be afraid, very afraid!

2009-05-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

I don't think Abdullahi stands a chance (I know him only very distantly, but have enjoyed his presence at various SSA meetings). But it's great to see him setting the example (see this fine profile). A Joseph Ki-Zerbo for Sudan? The quote at the end of the profile referring to Sankara though... a trifle ironic... Sankara immediately moved to squash Ki-Zerbo, who fled to Paris and spent a decade in exile!

Arbitration hearing... set for blast-off

2009-05-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

Oral arguments are over, and very very soon the arbitration panel will render a decision on Abyei. You can hear the oral arguments, and read the legalese, at the Abyei website of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Should U.S. sanctions on Sudan be lifted?

2009-05-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

This question is presumably something that the new administration is considering. The sanctions imposed in 1997 by President Clinton are very comprehensive in terms of limiting commercial involvement. Obviously humaitarian and development assistance have continued unabated. Al-bashir's expulsion of 13 large humanitarian organizations suggests that "entangling commercial alliances" create little leverage over Khartoum policy-making. These organizations had a large middle-class Sudanese professional staff, had wealthy Sudanese landlords for their headquarters in Khartoum, brought in tons of foreign exchange, etc. etc. Wishful thinking that commercial activity with "sweeten" the regime then should be dismissed.

So the relevant questions would be: (1) how much do sanctions hurt ordinary people; (2) what short-term benefit to the U.S. or its interests can be obtained with the carrot of lifting sanctions; (3) how can the deal be structured to be credible (i.e. Khartoum won't just walk away from the deal's commitments once the sanctions are lifted.

If current sanctions have little impact on ordinary people (because few other countries have qualms about commercial activity in Sudan), and in negotiations Khartoum offers nothing for the lifting of sanctions (because they are better negotiators and have no internal constituents pressing for the lifting), and our negotiators can't figure out a way to make an agreement credible (i.e. in the old days each side gave up a "hostage" to the other to make the agreement credible), then the lifting of sanctions is pure symbolism/spin. I hope it will be spun correctly.

But what if Khartoum really values the lifting of sanctions, either because some investors want to franchise McDonalds or Starbucks and make tons of money (America still sells very well, even after Abu Ghraib)? What should the U.S. ask for? Unfortunately so far I have no sense of U.S. administration policy towards Africa. So I'll venture three suggestions relevant to implementation of CPA. The U.S. was a guarantor of CPA, so the linking is relevant.
1) Formal, legal, big-deal acceptance of an Abyei boundary. This issue has to be resolved for a referendum to take place in 2011.
2) Availability online of census and electoral commission registries. Burkina Faso has online the voter rolls for the entire country, along with electoral outcomes. There is no reason Sudan could not do this. Electoral transparency is going to be key for peaceful transition in 2011.
3) Oil deals transparency. All oil deals should be made transparent and available online. The privacy concerns of the oil companies can be easily "purchased" by making future oil access conditional on current transparency. Paul Collier's team at Oxford should be able to figure out a way to implement this in short order. Again, how can a peaceful transition post-2011 happen if the division of the oil wealth is not transparent to the two sides and to outside mediators, let alone the general public?

Stop going after the easy targets, guys

2009-05-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

Mamdani and de Waal's frontal attack on Darfur advocacy seems (correct me if I'm wrong) to treat the media's telegenic fave power friend Samantha Power with kid gloves. Mamdani has one dismissive sentence about Power in his book. De Waal also slammed her once on his blog, back in October 2008. But that seems to be it, in 2 years of blogging about Darfur. Interesting that they don't seem to think she merits attention, given that her single opinion right now is probably worth more in terms of action than Save Darfur's $48m budget.

More Mamdani obfuscation

2009-05-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

This guy is too much. In an article in the Mail & Guardian from last month he summarizes his argument. A central part is a defense of al-Bashir agains the ICC.

The prosecutor's case
The prosecutor's application charged President al-Bashir with (a) polarising Darfuri tribes into two races (Arab and Zurga or Black), (b) waging a violent conflict (2003-2005) leading to the ethnic cleansing of Zurga ethnic groups from their traditional tribal lands, and (c) and planning the malnutrition, rape and torture of internally displaced persons (IDPs) so as to "slow death" in the camps -- a process that the prosecutor claimed went on from 2003 to the time the application was submitted in 2008.

But this was only one-third of the prosecutor's case, the genocide charge. The other two-thirds were the charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Mamdani acts as if those didn't even exist- he completely ignores them, even though at the time of writing he is well aware that those were the charges that the judges approved. So just to get it straight: his idea of a good opinion piece about the ICC is to problematize the charges that were dropped, and ignore the charges that were actually made! I sincerely hope al-Bashir defense team hires him to provide expert background for his case. Make it more likely he loses.

Aw, please tell us the name of the new country...

2009-04-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

Great little report from Mey Welsh of al-Jazeera... Khalil Ibrahim says he's happy to secede is South secedes in 2011... I'm guessing the new country would be called Labashir, or maybe AbadanTaha, or maybe Sifirnif...

Loren Landau on longer-term effects of humanitarian support in Tanzania

2009-04-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was just reading a short review of Loren Landau's book, The Humanitarian hangover, which apparently does a nice job of exploring some of the less-noticed aspects of longer-term humanitarian support of refugees and displaced persons. In particular he remarks upon changes in political preferences, and in the salience of vocabulary of national identity, and then also the emerge of lynch-mobs as camp residents are "othered" by local residents, who then see the increased crime in the area as responsibility of the others, and redress of crime the responsibility of the locals, since government refuses to engage. Sounds very similar to processes that are hinted at in the Darfur and also on the Congo and Kenya border zones.

Is GOS a dictatorship or a patrimonial state?

2009-04-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

Obviously one doesn't have to choose; a state can be both. But how would we know whether a state tilted towards one end rather than the other? What are the defining or key characteristics of each? Tow recent articles in the African Studies Review help illuminate the idea of a "patrimonial state".

Anne Pitcher, Mary Moran and Michael Johnston, in "Rethinking Patrimonialism and Neopatrimonialism in Africa" (ASR, April 2009) take issue with the overuse of patrimonialism, and the need to distinguish between patrimonialism as a mechanism for creating and sustaining authority in a variety of political regimes (from democracies to dictatorships). They note that Botswana, arguable the "best" country on the continent, and a democratic regime, easily meets the Weberian notion of patrimonialism as a source of authority for politicians. In concluding, they suggest "scholars might be better served by calling them [African states] what they are: authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, or democracies with adjectives."

Aaron deGrassi, likewise, in "'Neopatrimonialism' and Agricultural Development in Africa" (ASR, Dec 2008) chides scholars on the empty and overused phrase. His is more a survey of the literature, indicating heavy users and noting how meaningless the use of the word usually is.

It occurs to me that this issue of the relative importance of sources of political authority/legitimacy are terribly relevant for Darfur. There are multiple rebel groups, and they have double authority issues. Within Darfur, are some rebel hierarchies going to emerge with more command and control authority, and will that authority be based on identity, fear, cash, expectation of cash, ideology, charisma, emotional evocation through semiotic texts, etc.? All are possible. Then, as the Darfur rebels negotiatiate with GOS, the authority of GOS itself, and of mediators, will come into play. Authority is easily conflated with power in places like Darfur and Sudan more generally, where legitimacy has been eroded in the North, and so it is no wonder that al-Bashir exercises power (expulsion of aid groups) as a mechanism to enhance authority ("next time they will do what I say").

Understanding Sudan: Commentary

Al-Jazeera - Sudan referendum... featuring John Ryle

Great speech by John Garang... yashiil min al 70% al-haggahum...

Road pessimism or optimism....

Department of yikes!

Pissing off the Rwandans...

Al-Bashir's very bad scenario...

Meaningful macroeconomic analysis of Sudan.... the skeptical note

If you can't get the arm things..

Essential reading for when I have time

Let the bluffing begin

Cabelly indicted

Two graphs of rainfall and temperature in Darfur

Natsios blast from the past reminder

Where U.S. Sudan/Darfur policy is *really* made...

Criminal justice for crimes against humanity

From a CSIS commentary on the new Obama policy....

More NYT commentary on Gration

Can't let it pass without comment....

‘Brothers’ or Others: Propriety and gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt, by Anita H. Fábos

Initial thoughts on the US Sudan policy

"Calling all English teachers, calling all English teachers..."

Good news is grounds for optimism....

Nothing like a Friday announcement... U.S. to Engage Sudan Leaders

“There has not been any transformation or reform at the center"

De Waal "no sense" on Making Sense of Darfur

Urbanization in Sudan.... reflections from Burkina Faso

Why do young men go fight....

Getting fractionalized rebel groups to agree

Aftermath of fighting couple months ago in Malakal

Brilliant blog on Sudan

The straighttalk "get over it" express did come into the station...

If I get a cookie I'll start blogging again. Honest.

No difference? What do Lubna Hussein and Alan Turing have in common?

"Roads, roads, roads."

Are there two Mr. Platitudes in the house?

Latrines here, latrines there, latrines everywhere

He may be Mr. Platitude in public, but he's getting the work done

Sensible commentary

"This I Believe": Partially lift sanctions on northern Sudan so large equipment can roll through to southern Sudan

Paul Collier remains stuck on the Möbius strip

Viability police patrol has a busy night

Kevin Jon Heller on South Africa and the ICC

"Hi, glad to meet you, my name is Mr. Platitude..., er General Gration"

All the elements will be taken care of?

When to say, "Shut up, you're only revealing yourself to be an idiot."

The U.S. as guarantor and mediator of talks and processes for implementing CPA...

The things people do!?!?! Kordofan and the life of Jesus...

Nice clip on southern Sudanese in the U.S.

Saramogo's fiction was becoming reality... Mankien during the South Sudan civil war

This one however is a little too much common sense for my taste... however famished for theory I may be

Quantitative research on the ICC....

Abyei decision... total victory of SPLA?

Abyei decision...

Abyei arbitration...

Abyei arbitration...

Abyei arbitration...

Abyei arbitration...

Some questions on the arrest warrants of the ICC

Insulting free thought...

Another reason to switch... to Burkina Faso!

Dispatches from South Sudan

Singing for reconciliation in South Sudan...

Abyei countdown, T minus 5, "It is the transferred area."

Abyei countdown, T minus 6, "Perceptions of doom"

Bleg! Negotiate with the most powerful or with everyone

Flash point coming up... July 22

Some useful Sudan links

Obama policy towards Sudan in his Accra speech

Obama in Accra...

Sanctions on the Sudan: What do economists and political scientists have to say on the subject?

What is the latest from Darfur?

From the BBC...

Sudan to execute diplomat killers

Human rights in Europe, 1584

Kristof's suggestions for "what to do"

What does "high theory" have to say about Sudan?

Fuel efficient stoves projects in Darfur

More Small Arms Survey summaries

Small Arms Survey papers on conflict in Sudan

Where U.S. Sudan/Darfur policy is really made...