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Statement of Roger P. Winter
Former Special Representative on Sudan
of the Deputy Secretary of State

Before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
January 24, 2007

Two years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement(CPA) that ended Sudan's longest and most deadly war, the peace in the South is beginning to unravel. Reversion to open conflict is increasingly likely without serious and energetic attention from the Administration.

The CPA is the peace agreement which ended the twenty-one year war between the Government of Sudan, controlled since 1989 by the National Islamic Front(NIF), and the people of southern Sudan and their allies, represented by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement and Army(SPLM/A). The CPA was brokered largely by the United States. The war it ended resulted in more than two and a half million dead civilians and more than four million refugees and internally displaced people.

It is my view that the NIF, known more recently as the National Congress party, a radical Arab-Islamic cabal in control of all the levers of power in Sudan's national government, no longer sees it as "in its interests" to fully implement the CPA. If this assessment is accurate, it would mean that massive violence at the initiative of the Government of Sudan, currently manifest in the genocide in Darfur, could re-ignite in the South and the three conflict areas of Abyei, Southern Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains. As I see it, the NIF has taken clear steps to prepare for such an eventuality and that, by so doing, makes it more likely.

A fundamental flaw has, I believe, permeated U.S. and international policy on Sudan over the last two years, that is, the erroneous assumption that Sudan's NIF-controlled government, led by President Omar Bashir, actually wants to be a good government and can be successfully appealed to "do the right thing" on behalf of Sudan's marginalized peoples.

It's just not so.

Entreaties to the NIF do not work. Talk alone does not work. The NIF has an agenda for Sudan and, I believe, for the region. Only credible threats that can cripple their agenda or deprive them personally of their power and ill-gotten riches will work. The NIF has been at war with the majority of the people of Sudan every single day since it came to power by coup on June 30, 1989. It will not change now when all their acts of death and destruction have cost them nothing. In fact, it seems that President Bashir and the NIF, having seen the impotent reactions of the U.S., U.N. and EU, have even stopped pretending and have shown their true aggressively anti-Western colors. The charm offensive is over.

The CPA that was a solid win in Africa for the Sudanese people, for America and for President George W. Bush is, I say, increasingly at risk. This important part of the President's legacy is increasingly trending negative. It is not too late to change that trajectory.

It is firstly fair to say that a huge amount of good has resulted from those aspects of the CPA that have been implemented. The biggest benefit is that the war, with its widespread mayhem by the NIF against civilians in SPLM territory, has largely ended. Aerial bombardment of civilian and humanitarian targets in the South has ended, at least for now. Some of the deadly NIF-supported militias have been brought under control. Also, the Government of Southern Sudan, with a very active legislative assembly, has been established and is functioning. Some oil revenues are now going to other than the NIF. A peace dividend for some people in the war zone is beginning to be evident. Some refugees and internally displaced people are coming home. South Sudan, which, in my view after 25 years in international humanitarian work, was the most devastated place in the entire world, is starting to move forward.

It is what has not been done that is destabilizing. That is particularly the case when one begins to "connect the dots" of the NIF's CPA defaults. It is one thing if a lack of capacity or resources, or administrative ineptness prohibits or inhibits implementation of one CPA provision or another. It's quite another thing to have a series of critical elements not implemented by the choice of one party to the Agreement. That indicates a strategy at work.

This then is the picture:

DARFUR. The NIF remains desperate to overwhelm the people of Darfur as, despite its massive oil revenues and upgrading of its military capacity, the NIF does not want to risk a two-front war(in both Darfur and in the South). This is the reason that President Bashir stared down the United Nations Security Council for so long on the deployment of a large U.N.-managed force in Darfur. He still, to the shame of the U.N., the Security Council and the international community generally, has not agreed. Whenever there is an announcement that the NIF has made a meaningful concession, watch out! The landscape in Darfur is awash in Khartoum's broken promises, as well as bodies. And keep in mind that, to the extent the African Union is involved, President Bashir is scheduled to become the AU chairman for the next year beginning in a matter of days. Imagine the very leader of the Janjuweit forces also leading the organization(the AU) whose forces are supposed to be protecting those very civilians the Janjuweit are killing.

Bashir did not like at all the SPLM's public endorsement of the deployment of a large U.N. force to calm Darfur. One of his colleagues, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, the Deputy leader of the NIF, publicly made this unvarnished threat, "If invading forces enter Sudan(i.e. the UN force) and the SPLM, the partner in government, welcomes them, there will be no National Unity Government and the Naivasha agreement(i.e. the CPA) will cease to exist"(Sudan Tribune, October 8, 2006).

The inability of the U.S. and the world community generally to seriously confront genocide in Darfur has reinforced what I believe are Khartoum's intentions to scuttle the CPA at a time of their choosing.

ABYEI. This territory on the border between North and South is the single most volatile area covered by the CPA. It is a massive oil field. Because of Abyei's unfortunate history, the CPA provides the people of Abyei a referendum in 2011 simultaneous with the South's referendum on independence. The Abyei referendum enables Abyei to go with the South or stay in what is left of Sudan should the South chose independence. The CPA provides that an Abyei Boundaries Commission(ABC) will determine Abyei's legitimate boundaries. The ABC, chaired by an American former ambassador to Sudan, did its job. Its findings are final and binding. President Bashir rejected the Commission's findings although the CPA does not provide him that authority. He has refused to create the local Abyei transitional government required by the CPA. That means the oil revenues that are supposed to help meet the needs of Abyei's people cannot be used to provide needed services. And, too, the NIF government has refused to let function the UN force intended under the CPA to monitor the peace in ungoverned Abyei where the SPLA and NIF government forces now directly face each other in a very tense environment.

Abyei was ground zero in the war that was ended by the CPA. In my view it is in Abyei where war will begin if the CPA is not scrupulously implemented. The events cited above collectively have led the population of Abyei to expect war to re-ignite, deterring most of the area's displaced population from returning home. President Bashir has created a disaster waiting to happen.

Salva Kiir Mayardit, the First Vice President of Sudan and President of Southern Sudan, in his January 9, 2007 speech on the status of the CPA, publicly asked for assistance from the governments that helped give birth to the CPA to help remedy the Abyei deadlock. The U.S. was the sole architect of the CPA provisions on Abyei and it is very conspicuous by its silence. This is the clearest violation of the CPA by the NIF, which the U.S. is effectively rewarding by a policy of appeasement.

NORTH-SOUTH BOUNDARIES. As in the case of Abyei, the boundaries between North and South need to be officially delimited. The CPA provides for a Commission to achieve that objective. This is critical for several reasons. Two of the most important are the determination of how oil revenues are divided up, especially since most oil fields are in the border areas, and to define territory in preparation for the census which is supposed to precede the first national elections in 2008.

Regarding oil revenues, the NIF refused to allow the SPLM to choose the Minister of the petroleum ministry in the setting up of the Government of National Unity(GNU), created by the CPA. As one consequence, petroleum production figures are not shared with the SPLM or GOSS. The GOSS created its 2006 budget based on its reasonable estimates of its share of oil revenues. With no way for the GOSS to verify the reality of Khartoum's non-public calculations, the oil earnings for the GOSS turned out to be significantly lower than anticipated, inflaming distrust between the parties. This situation still pertains. It is also the case that the NIF has deployed a strong military force to "protect" the oil field in the border areas including Abyei, a signal it intends to hold the oil fields no matter who they belong to legally under the CPA.

Regarding the census, it is impossible to count people and ultimately determine who votes where without knowing where the legitimate boundaries are. Combined with the fact that the GNU has not provided its share of the funds necessary to conduct the census, Southerners fear the NIF will use the lack of a timely census and the consequent delays in setting up the election architecture to delay the national elections provided for in the CPA. The census is supposed to be done by July 2007(about six months from now) for elections to be timely, even though, for reasons set forth below, most refugees and IDPs who make up a large portion of the legitimate electorate, are intimidated from returning to their home places by the events being discussed herein.

CONTINUING ATTACKS. The NIF during the war against the SPLA in the South used, in addition to the Sudan Armed Forces(SAF), almost forty militias which it supplied and paid to kill and displace "enemy" civilians, much as it now uses the Janjuweit in Darfur. As a result, these so-called Other Armed Groups(OAGs) were required by the CPA to align with either SAF or the SPLA in order that every armed group in the South would be subject to a chain of command to one of the CPA signatories. After the CPA was signed, strong and successful efforts were made by the SPLM to fold many of the OAGs into its system or demobilize them. After SPLM leader Dr. John Garang died eighteen months ago, however, SAF military intelligence appears to have re-established connections with some of those groups and with splinter groupings of others. SAF military intelligence also seems to have done the same with the so-called Lord's Resistance Army(LRA) of Uganda. Attacks by these groups upon southern Sudanese civilians have resulted in many deaths, as pointed out in some detail by President of Southern Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit in his January 1 speech. In one recent incident, SAF forces in uniform attacked a civilian concentration a mile outside of Juba, capitol city of South Sudan. Fifteen SAF were captured. In early December, militia forces led by Gordon Kong and other commanders loyal to Khartoum caused a significant battle at Malakal between SAF and SPLA forces. This was the first major "shooting war" between the two CPA signatory parties since the agreement was signed; in it more than 130 people were killed. Other such groups are active violently in Wau, Raga, Renk and Equitoria. In fact, the NIF is creating new militia-type forces, e.g. the Petroleum Police Force in the south Sudan oil fields which Khartoum still controls, much as it moved thousands of Janjuweit in Darfur into the Popular Defense forces. The SPLA leadership estimates that SAF curently supports almost 20,000 men under arms in OAGs. I believe the NIF intends to use these groups to destabilize the South in order to justify postponement of national elections.

I made a visit to Sudan last month to attempt to gauge the atmosphere and concerns of people and officials in the South about the current state of affairs. As noted earlier, many significant improvements are easily noted. One of the most visible is the significant improvement in roads and the improvement that has in turn generated in some local economies. Still, I left with the very clear understanding that the great bulk of the people of the South are convinced, both by its actions in Darfur and its deliberate choice to not implement a number of key CPA provisions, that the NIF has embarked on a war strategy. Recent professionally conducted focus group studies of the opinions of people of diverse backgrounds from all over the South confirm this.

I suggest the U.S. thoroughly review its approach to Sudan to take fully in to account today's realities in Sudan.

1. The U.S. needs to view each of the issues of Sudan as an aspect of the whole. In my view, it does not now. The genocide in Darfur and the war that the CPA ended in the South both have their origin in a common strategy emanating from a common problem: the Sudan Government in Khartoum, controlled by the NIF since 1989. The NIF has a long term agenda for Sudan(and the region). Unless the key conflict issues are viewed together, the NIF can pursue its agenda piecemeal while the U.S. and the "international community" are preoccupied with other legitimate aspects.

2. The U.S. needs to drop the policy fiction that it is still possible under the CPA to "make unity attractive". The NIF has killed that possibility by pursuing a war and genocide in Darfur that is essentially the same as the approach it pursued in the South, Abyei, Southern Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains. Every Southerner sees the NIF has not changed and understands the implications of that reality. Eliminating this policy chimera would inject a needed dose of realism into U.S. Sudan policy. South Sudan is a country moving toward birth. The U.S. needs to pursue a policy that helps prepare the South for the possibility of independence. It would be distinctly not in the interests of the American people for the U.S. to try to push the people of South Sudan towards an outcome other than one the people of the South will decide on democratically. It would likewise not be in America's interests for a newly independent state to founder, opening up to more mayhem in the region.

3. Therefore, the U.S. needs to comprehensively engage South Sudan on its owns terms, despite the NIF's frequent threats and outbursts. Tragically, the U.S. has largely liquidated the diplomatic and programmatic architecture serving the South that it had in place during the southern war. It had managed most of its political and humanitarian affairs relating to the South from Kenya. In simplistic trust that the CPA would be properly implemented by Khartoum and was going to lead to a more democratic and humane Sudan, the U.S. proceeded to consolidate almost all its diplomatic capacities in Khartoum. The U.S. maintains one very capable diplomat in Juba, the capitol of the South, but only one, contrasted with a large and growing capacity in Khartoum. It is my view that this gross imbalance of U.S. attention, which is paralleled in Washington, needs to change. While it is true that U.S. humanitarian and development personnel are working to upgrade the capacities of the GOSS as a government and the SPLM as a competitive political party country-wide, it is the population of the South that needs to see hope in their future. A serious up-scaling of the U.S. presence in the South and increased efforts to deliver development to all its disparate parts are necessary elements of bolstering the peace. The lack of development is overwhelmingly the single largest complaint of the people regarding CPA implementation.

4. It is in the U.S. interest to invest significantly in the conversion of the SPLM's military force, the SPLA, into a modern, well-trained and well- managed military. Unlike many situations in the developing world, the SPLM is a positive rebel political force that, despite many limitations and liabilities, was recognized by the U.S. as the key to creating a new, democratic Sudan. Similarly, with the SPLA, all the forces of Khartoum, formal and informal, collectively could not defeat the SPLA. In a very real sense, the very existence of a strong SPLA is the best guarantor of CPA implantation. Policy realism would, I believe, indicate that, of all the military forces in Sudan, only the SPLA has both the vested interest in seeing the CPA scrupulously implemented(i.e. so the Referendum is actually held) and, having fought off the NIF forces already, the capacity to protect the CPA without foreign military intervention. U.S. efforts in this regard are too limited and moving too slowly.

5. Time is of the essence. As is the case with the next U.S. elections, the first CPA mandated elections are only about two years away. Barring violence in Abyei, it is the approach of elections that will, I believe, most likely trigger NIF actions to break down CPA implementation. While in the case of the U.S., candidates for election two years from now are already announcing, in Sudan's case, there isn't a census or defined voting districts with which to move toward elections, not to mention the prospect of NIF-supported militias to destabilize an electoral environment. If the NIF uses the lack of preparation for elections, instability in key areas or any other reason to announce a postponement in elections, the CPA will have effectively been aborted. The consequences would be catastrophic. The South needs our aid to support its pursuit of democracy and development. Significant enough engagement to assure compliance with the CPA election schedule and the conducting of viable elections is critical.

A note to President Bush: Achieving peace in Sudan was a goal you set for your Administration at the very beginning of your tenure. Your initiative succeeded beyond expectations in the South. The CPA, your legacy to all of Sudan, was a solid win, but is now at risk. It needs your personal attention.

Note: These are my personal views and have no connection to my prior employment.