Initial thoughts on the US Sudan policy

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..."

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....

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

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"

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

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

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....

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

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

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

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...

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.

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

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

Read more....

"Roads, roads, roads."

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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"

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?

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!