[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
SUDAN: U.S. POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PEACE
AGREEMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA AND GLOBAL HEALTH
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 29, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-71
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California, Chairman
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
Samoa DAN BURTON, Indiana
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California
BRAD SHERMAN, California DANA ROHRABACHER, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts RON PAUL, Texas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
DIANE E. WATSON, California MIKE PENCE, Indiana
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York CONNIE MACK, Florida
JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
GENE GREEN, Texas MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, California TED POE, Texas
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
BARBARA LEE, California GUS BILIRAKIS, Florida
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia
JIM COSTA, California
KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona
RON KLEIN, Florida
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Yleem Poblete, Republican Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey, Chairman
DIANE E. WATSON, California CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
BARBARA LEE, California JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
LYNN WOOLSEY, CaliforniaAs
of 3/18/09 deg.
Noelle Lusane, Subcommittee Staff Director
Sheri Rickert, Republican Professional Staff Member
Antonina King, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Roger P. Winter (former United States Special Representative
on Sudan to Deputy Secretary of State)......................... 6
The Honorable Richard S. Williamson, Partner, Winston & Strawn
LLP (former Special Envoy to Sudan and Ambassador to the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights).................................... 13
Mr. John Prendergast, Co-founder, Enough Project................. 27
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Mr. Roger P. Winter: Prepared statement.......................... 10
The Honorable Richard S. Williamson: Prepared statement.......... 16
Mr. John Prendergast: Prepared statement......................... 30
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 56
Hearing minutes.................................................. 57
The Honorable Diane E. Watson, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California: Statement............................. 58
SUDAN: U.S. POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PEACE
AGREEMENT
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 6:20 p.m., in
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Donald Payne
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Payne. Let me first of all express my appreciation for
all of you who have so patiently waited. It shows how important
and how much interest there is in Sudan and the United States
policy implementations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,
which is the subject for this hearing today.
As you know, there was a chemical situation in the
Longworth Building and, therefore, not allowing you to go in.
So we fortunately were able to get here, but we don't have
everything that we would normally have.
However, we will move forward. Let me first of all, welcome
all of you here to this very important and timely hearing on
Sudan. Let me also express my deep appreciation to the
witnesses, who are certainly among the most knowledgeable
people on Sudan. Friends of Sudan, this coming Friday marks the
fourth anniversary of the untimely death our good friend, the
late der John Garang.
Let us also remember a number of other good friends who
died on that crash, including a Commander Ali.
Despite the many efforts made over the years to bring about
a just and lasting peace in Sudan, the people of Sudan continue
to suffer under the brutal dictatorship of the NCP government.
The people of Sudan and the international community sincerely
hoped that the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
would bring about the much desired goal of peace and security.
The hope and expectations of the Sudanese have been crushed
repeatedly by a regime at war with its own people. It was just
1 year ago that the NCP militia burned the town of Abyei.
For some observers and U.S. policy critics, the U.S. policy
is too focused on punitive measures they say. The fact of the
matter is if one looks closely at our policy over the past two
decades, the U.S. has never disengaged in its activities. That
is why we have had more special envoys appointed to Sudan than
any other country in Africa. In the last 5 years alone we have
had five different special envoys to Sudan.
For those who pushed for a policy of appeasement, believing
that there are some moderates within the NIF government, it has
been proven wrong many times. It is important that we don't
confuse a policy of appeasement with that of engagement.
Moreover, a policy of engagement without pressure will not
work.
During the 21-year civil war in South Sudan, the United
States provided humanitarian assistance but also maintained a
relationship with successive governments in Sudan. We are
helping the people of Darfur, yet we have failed to end their
suffering. We continue to push for a peace agreement in Darfur,
yet we have ignored the plight of the 2 million displaced. In
fact, the United Nations officials and some U.S. officials are
saying that, since fewer people are being killed now,
conditions have improved; there is no longer genocide.
In Rwanda, an estimated 1 million people died in less than
100 days, 15 years ago. We did not even want to call that
genocide by its rightful name, let alone intervene to end it.
And we all remember that and those of us--Mr. Smith and others
that were on the committee--agonized during that period. I said
a few years ago, if Rwanda was a black mark on our conscious,
Darfur is a cancer that will destroy the moral fiber of our
society.
Unfortunately, we have some people ready to embrace the
same criminals and killers who committed these atrocities in
Darfur, South Sudan and other parts of the country. In fact, a
man who led the NCP delegation to the CPA conference here in
Washington last month is the same man who was not allowed to
enter the United States for many years for security reasons. He
is also the same man who engaged and helped transport the
terrorists who were engaged in the assassination attempt of
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He had the privilege to come
to the United States last month.
The current regime only responds to real pressure. The
Clinton and Bush administrations imposed comprehensive economic
and trade sanctions over the past decade. The impact of these
sanctions are mixed. But the Government of Sudan has survived
years of sanctions imposed by the United States and the United
Nations.
However, this does not mean the sanctions did not yield
positive results. I strongly believe that the NCP is incapable
of changing its ideology and behavior. A regime change in
Khartoum could bring a swift end to the crisis in Darfur, help
implement the North-South Agreement and then the regime support
to extremist terrorist groups.
Another important measure we should take is the
strengthening of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, the
SPLA. The Government of South Sudan is a staunch ally of the
United States. The SPLA is a formidable force. Strengthening
the SPLA could serve as a guarantor for peace in Sudan and the
region. The SPLA is strong but requires support, an air defense
system, and air power.
Moreover, we should help and strengthen other democratic
forces in Sudan. Most important, we must not ignore the
importance of accountability to a just and lasting peace.
Without justice, there is no peace.
I welcome our distinguished panel, Roger Winter, Richard
Williamson, John Prendergast and Pa'gan Amum Okiech, and thank
them for joining us today, especially Mr. Okeich for travelling
all the way from Sudan to be at this hearing.
I will dispense from reading of the bios because of time,
and secondly, they are not here. They are at the other site.
So, with that, I will now turn it over to our ranking member,
Mr. Smith, for an opening statement.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this very
important hearing on the critical and timely issue of the Sudan
Comprehensive Peace Agreement. We are again at a very sensitive
period in the implementation of this agreement of peace. Not
only in the north and south of the country, but also in Darfur
and throughout the region depends on this success. The stakes
in having a clear and coordinated U.S. policy with respect to
Sudan could not be higher.
We are dealing with a regime that has been in power
following a coup d'etat in Khartoum now for 20 years. And we
are threatened with the possible unraveling of the CPA signed
in 2005 in a war in which some 2 million Sudanese were brutally
killed and 4 million displaced in the south.
Following that aggression, General Omar Hassan Bashir
turned his wrath on the innocent people of Darfur and has
inflicted some 300,000 to 450,000 deaths and displaced another
3 million from their homes. Just last evening, I am happy to
say, the House unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the
5th year since the declaration by the United States Congress of
genocide in Darfur. And, of course, it was bipartisan, and it
was unanimous.
Mr. Chairman, as you know, I met with President Bashir
personally in Khartoum. His attitude was incredibly cold,
harsh, and calculating. And his only concern, only concern in
an almost 2-hour meeting, was in pressuring the United States
to lift the sanctions.
I asked him, Mr. President, when was the last time--let me
correct that--when was the first time you visited the camps in
Darfur and saw the unspeakable suffering that people were
enduring as a result of your enabling of the Janjaweed?
I have also met the deeply grieved refugees in Mukjar and
Kalma camps. And they desperately need the United States to
play a leadership role in rescuing them from their tragic
situation. Therefore, we urgently need an informed coherent
strategy to motivate the parties to honor their respective
obligations and to implement the CPA. That strategy must be in
the context of a border policy with respect to increasing the
capacity of the Government of South Sudan in anticipation of
the 2011 referendum.
I and others here in Congress are actually awaiting that
strategy from the administration, and hopefully soon they will
be here to testify in open meeting to give us that information.
It is also apparent that we cannot resolve the complex
situation of the Sudan alone. China is recognized as the only
government capable of exerting meaningful influence over the
regime in Khartoum. Beijing has invested more than $10 billion
in Sudan and imports between 60 and 70 percent of Sudan's total
oil production, is engaging oil exploration in Sudan, and is
Sudan's most prominent and most important economic trading
power. And yet China has failed to use its economic and
diplomatic leverage with Sudan to compel the regime to abandon
its genocidal policy in Darfur or to take meaningful steps to
implement the CPA.
As a matter of fact, it has been complicit; it has been the
enabler in chief of genocide. And this week, I am sorry to say,
at least it was in public if they did, as U.S. officials met
with the Beijing representatives discussing monetary issues and
economic issues, where was the discussion on Darfur and what
China ought to be doing and could be doing, even this late in
the game, if it wanted to mitigate some of the misery that they
have had a hand in fomenting?
Other countries and China in particular must receive a
clear signal from the United States, however, that peace in
Sudan is a priority. And again, I think we missed an
opportunity again this week to clearly and unambiguously lay
that before them.
The views of our distinguished witnesses with us today, and
they are truly distinguished witnesses, all of whom who know
intimately the problems and have very viable solutions to
recommend; they hopefully will be listened to not just by this
committee but also by State Department and all players as they
are involved with this important issue.
So I thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I join you in
apologizing to our distinguished panel and all here for this
delay, but delay is not denial in this hearing, and I thank for
your leadership, and we will go on.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
Because of the lateness of the hour, I would ask other
members who have opening statements if they would submit it for
the record, without objection.
And because of the lateness of the hour, we could then move
into our first witness, who we would ask if, under the Rules of
the House, foreign participants in many instances or
representatives of another government or U.N. technically are
briefing us. So the only difference is that this is--we are
being briefed so that we are in the Rules of the House.
Everything else will be the same.
So at this time, I would ask our first witness, Pa'gan Amum
Okiech if he would come forward and we will hear his testimony.
Mr. Okiech, I get better as the meeting goes on.[Discussion
off record.]
Mr. Payne. Now the hearing will officially come to order.
Remember, that was a briefing, just for the record again.
And we will call the witnesses, please: Mr. Roger Winter,
Mr. John Prendergast, and Mr. Ambassador Williamson.
As they come forward, and they are taking their seats, I
will just give you a little background about each one.
Our first witness will be Mr. Roger Winter. Mr. Winter
began work in Sudan in 1981. He served as a special
representative on Sudan. He was a Deputy Secretary of State
negotiator in Abuja on the failed Darfur peace agreement. He
did work hard on that, though.
Mr. Winter is also former assistant administrator of USAID,
where he was a negotiator on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
For over 20 years, Mr. Winter served as an executive director
of the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugee Work in Sudan. And
Mr. Winter certainly was one of the most renowned and admired
experts on work with refugees. And the work that he did with
the NGOs for those 20 years helped save the lives of many, many
people even before he entered the government.
So we appreciate you and all that you have done.
Our second witness will be Ambassador Richard S.
Williamson, who is a partner in the international law firm of
Winston & Strawn LLP. Ambassador Williamson has a wide range of
government experience. He recently completed an assignment as
the President's special envoy to Sudan. Earlier, he served in
the Reagan White House as a special assistant to the President
and deputy to the chief of staff and then on the White House
senior staff as assistant to the President for
intergovernmental affairs.
His many diplomatic posts have included serving as
Ambassador to the United Nations office in Vienna, Assistant
Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs,
Ambassador to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs,
and Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights.
Ambassador Williamson received his B.A. cum laude from
Princeton University and his JD from the University of Virginia
School of Law.
And, finally, we will have as our witness Mr. John
Prendergast. Mr. Prendergast is co-founder of the Enough
Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against
humanity. During the Clinton administration, Mr. Prendergast
was involved in a number of peace processes in Africa, while he
directed African Affairs at the National Security Council and
special envoy at the Department of State.
He has authored eight books on Africa, including ``Not on
My Watch,'' a New York Times bestseller that he co-authored
with Don Cheadle. The co-authored work was named the NAACP
nonfiction book of the year.
With NBA stars Tracy McGrady and Derek Fisher, he co-
founded the Darfur Dream Team Sisters Schools Program, which
connects schools in the United States with schools in Darfur
and refugee camps. And these NBA stars are the prime movers of
that movement.
He also helped create the Raise Hope for Congo campaign
aimed at ending violence against women and girls in the Congo.
Mr. Prendergast travels regularly to African war zones on
fact-finding missions, peace-making initiatives, and awareness-
raising trips. And he has been in Vogue--what was that
magazine? Vanity Fair. But will soon be seen, I believe, on
``60 Minutes,'' is it, Mr. Prendergast? Doing a ``60 Minutes,''
which will--he might mention to us when it will air.
So he certainly is a person that we have a lot of respect
for. He has done fantastic work involving high-profile people
to help to raise awareness, which is always very helpful in
issues like this.
Mr. Winter?
STATEMENT OF MR. ROGER P. WINTER (FORMER UNITED STATES SPECIAL
REPRESENTATIVE ON SUDAN TO DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE)
Mr. Winter. Yes, sir. Thank you both for having me here
today. Since the statement has been submitted for the record, I
won't go through it all. I would like to make about five
points, primarily about the South.
First, I want to point out, although I think both of you
know, who it is we are negotiating with when we negotiate with
this National Congress Party team.
All of these men have worked for Bashir since the coup in
1989. All of them have had dealings with American special
envoys, however many that total of envoys has been. They know
us very well. They are used to getting away with murder,
because they have been able to do it with us over a long period
of time.
The team that was coming here was going to be led by Salah
Gosh, at one point. And then it was decided that he is too much
of a character, problematic, and he was set aside. The next one
that was going to lead the team was Nafie Ali Nafie. Nafie Ali
Nafie was the intelligence and security chief for the
government in Khartoum at the time that Osama bin Laden got his
start in Sudan. And we know what the consequences of that are.
Well, they set him aside, and he didn't come as the leader of
that team.
So we wound up with Ghazi, Ghazi Saladeen. Now, Ghazi
Saladeen is a very slick character. I know him quite well
because we dealt with him a great deal during the Nivasha
negotiations. He has a terrible record that wasn't sufficient
to bounce him from leading the team that came here.
I want to tell you just a quick story of my personal
experience with him. When we were, at the behest of former
Senator Jack Danforth, who was then the special envoy, in the
fall of 2001 I was, in October and November and December, along
with another gentleman from the State Department, left behind
to work out the beginnings of what was going to be the process
the U.S. engaged in that became the CPA. And, at a certain
point, we got reports about a substantial number of killings
within the Nuba Mountains in which we had negotiated a cease-
fire agreement.
So the two of us Americans went to see Ghazi, because he
was the point person for President Bashir at the time. We went
to Ghazi and we explained to him that we had reports that 22
men had been executed in the Nuba Mountains because of
suspected sympathies with the SPLM.
We presented the information we had to Ghazi. He sat there
for a moment. He stroked his beard. And he said, ``It is not a
problem.'' We said, ``What do you mean it is not a problem?
There are 22 dead men.'' He said, ``It is not a problem. We
have agreed with the Americans that we will have a cease-fire
with the SPLA in the Nuba Mountains. That hasn't changed. What
has been killed are 22 civilians. So it is not a problem.''
This is the kind of splitting and misuse of words that
these guys engage in with regularity. I say they are used to
getting away with murder, and they continue to do so.
The point I want to make is, with the kind of track record
of people that the NCP has in its leadership, it is important
to keep in mind that nobody in Pa'gan Amum's SPLM has such a
track record. There is no track record of killing people like
that, executing people like that. There have been things that
have happened during the war, but that is not the kind of thing
that the SPLM leadership tolerates or agrees with in any way,
shape, or form.
Now, the problem I think we all see right now with the
process that is going on under our special envoy is not
engagement per se. We have to engage with Khartoum. It is the
only way to at least try to make progress. The problem is we
seem to be making love to Khartoum. That is the problem.
What we see is an uneven process, an unequal process, in
which we focus most of our attention on the National Congress
Party. And there are very short times in which we actually
engage with the SPLM or the Government of Southern Sudan in
Juba. And so it is a very unequal thing.
And the problem is that we seem to have a proliferation of
carrots and potential carrots that we are prepared to offer to
Khartoum, but where are the sticks? Where are the sticks?
What we know and what you have heard a little earlier in
this testimony is my belief that I can document that the
National Congress Party, since this whole peace process began,
has a perfect record: They have violated consistently 100
percent of the time the agreements that they have agreed to.
And so, carrots are fine when there is proof of actual
change of behavior. But sticks are also called for when they
make an agreement with us or they make an agreement with the
SPLM or any other reputable party and then they violate it. If
there are no sticks, there will be no successful peace process.
And I think that is a flaw that we are seeing in the process as
it is moving forward right now.
It is also the case that the way that the process is moving
forward, it is under wraps. It is almost secretive. We don't
actually know clearly what is happening, what agreements are
being made. It is not in the public view.
And so, I think these are the kinds of problems that I see
with the process right now.
Now, there is a lot of talk about what the future of South
Sudan would be. And there is, in the CPA itself, the issue of
unity and the issue of possible separation. I think it is
totally clear that there is no possibility any longer for unity
if, in fact, the people of South Sudan actually get their
choice, as they have been promised.
I think Bashir and the National Congress Party have killed
any possibility of unity. And the fact is, we only have perhaps
18 months left before the referendum, and there isn't time to
make up for the misbehavior that they have already engaged in.
So there are, in my view, only two options that are
acceptable to the people of South Sudan.
One is, by a free and fair referendum, they opt to become
an independent state. If Khartoum continues to obstruct, as,
for example, the National Congress Party in the national
legislature has done, saying they will not enact a referendum
law to empower and enable a referendum to actually happen, if
they continue to do that kind of obstruction, I think what we
are likely to see as the alternative to a free and fair
election is a unilateral declaration of independence by the
South.
I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope the process actually
works. But I don't think we have any reason to believe the NCP
will follow through on the referendum process.
I would like to speak to the issue of the problems that are
often cited and discussed in diplomatic circles, the problems
of the possibility that if, in fact, the South chooses, by
whatever means, for separation, that it will constitute a
failed state.
And that is put before us as a sort of threat, a reason to
not pursue with vigor a free and fair referendum. But who
really is the failed state? I want to talk about that for a
moment.
Now, in the case of the South, we have a government that
has existed Pa'gan said 4 years, I count 55 months or so. In
the 20 years I was the head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees,
I was involved in every human rights and humanitarian disaster
in the world. I did the same thing as the Humanitarian
Assistant Administrator for USAID.
There was, coming into 2004 and 2005, no more destroyed
place in the entire world, I am telling you--that is what my
job was for 25 years or so, is to know and understand--South
Sudan was the most destroyed place in the world. And what you
have in the South right now is terribly imperfect, but it is an
improvement drastically of services to people, health services,
education services, and a whole variety of things that they
desperately need to reconstruct Southern society.
So, if you have a government that genuinely intends to
develop its population, then it seems to me, when we look at
issues of weak governance, issues of corruption, issues of
civil violence, and we contrast that with 3 million dead
between the South and Darfur in war caused by Khartoum, we look
at the corruption that Khartoum itself has engaged in--it
controls virtually the entire economy in northern Sudan, at
this point. And if we look at the issue of civil violence and
recognize that much of the civil violence that occurs in the
South, as Pa'gan Amum has indicated, is actually fostered and
stimulated by Khartoum, then what, really, are we worrying
about in terms of the South being a failed state?
Yes, it has some corruption. Yes, it has some weaknesses in
governments. Yes, there is some civil violence. None of those
things are things that they desire. But the deaths of large
numbers of people are something Khartoum has done. The
corruption that has given them control of the economy of the
north--all of those kinds of things are the policy of the
National Congress Party.
So there is a major difference. There is no comparison
whatsoever between the weaknesses that there may exist in the
Government of Southern Sudan and the policy of destruction and
death that has been the way Khartoum has actually functioned.
That is very important.
They have come a long way in the South in 55 months from
being the most destroyed country in the world. So don't let
people sell you a bill of goods that this is a government and a
society that can't make it. It can, and it is already better
than the government that exists in Khartoum.
Lastly, I would like to say that the SPLM, the people of
the SPLM are democrats. I don't mean Democrats versus
Republicans. I mean democrats in the sense that they wish to
have a democratic country. They respect the kind of approach to
governance that is taken in the United States of America.
And so, the point I want to make is that the kind of
weaknesses that exist in the Government of South Sudan are
weaknesses that can be overcome. And, therefore, what I would
suggest--and I really suggest this Congress push on this--that,
in the 18 months remaining, that what we do is embrace the
South, we partner with them, we come alongside them, we help
them overcome the weaknesses that do exist in the government.
They want that to happen, and I am suggesting that we
should want to have that to happen, too. Because, ultimately,
fostering democracy and fostering the development of the civil
population are in our interests. That is what we should do, and
not worry too much about the phony stories that we hear about
with regularity.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Winter
follows:]Roger Winter deg.
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Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
Ambassador Williamson?
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD S. WILLIAMSON, PARTNER,
WINSTON & STRAWN LLP (FORMER SPECIAL ENVOY TO SUDAN AND
AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N. COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS)
Ambassador Williamson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the
other members of the committee. I also want to thank Chairman
Payne and Congressman Smith for your deep interest in this
issue and your support for me during my tenure as the special
envoy.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank Pa'gan Amum,
Roger, and John for what they have done; and note, since this
doesn't seem to be necessarily the view of the government at
all times, that during my tenure the fact that the advocacy
community, the human rights community, the humanitarian
community were deeply involved, knowledgeable, and sometimes,
to my regret, critical of me was a good thing. And the
administration should be open to a full dialogue with these
communities, who are knowledgeable, who bring different
perspectives and different experiences, because it improves the
process, just like a free and open dialogue with Members of
Congress.
The long North-South war was horrific. I will not go
through the details of my written statement, which will be
accepted in the record. But let me just touch on a few points.
The North-South war was a great tragedy, and it was
prosecuted with brutality. The United States worked with focus
to try to advance the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Roger
Winter and Charlie Snyder and others, with Special Envoy
Danforth, did a heroic job, and it is a great achievement.
But, like all agreements to end long, brutal, messy wars,
it is imperfect. The 6-year implementation stage meant that
both sides have plenty of opportunity to try to change facts on
the ground to renegotiate aspects of it. And we have seen work
that has been done, especially by the north, that has been
destructive in that regard.
The U.S. also has an interest in Darfur, and these are
linked. If the CPA collapses, it is my opinion that there will
be no opportunity for progress in Darfur. The CPA has several
stress points, and the fundamental question is, does Khartoum
intend to implement it?
We recently had the Permanent Arbitration Tribunal in The
Hague's decision on the Abyei border. This was required because
Khartoum did not live up to its commitment to accept the
decision of the Abyei Border Commission. That being what it is,
it is progress that an Abyei board of demarcation has been
made, and both Khartoum and Juba have expressed their
willingness to follow it.
But there are problems that have not been fulfilled with
respect to CPA implementation dealing with disarming militia,
redeploying Sudan Armed Forces, the final border beyond Abyei,
laws for the environment to be such that you can have a free
and fair election in 2010, including laws to protect the right
to assemble, and media protection laws for the referendum.
The show-stopper, however, I would suggest, is the
election, and we should be gravely concerned. That election was
to take place in 2009. It has already been postponed to April
2010. And the preparations are not proceeding apace to be able
to have a free and fair election by that time. Most notably,
the census, which was delayed and delayed and delayed again,
came out with results that are questionable and have not been
accepted by all the parties.
We also should be concerned about the increase in South-
South ethnic violence. And there are reasons to believe that
some of this is being encouraged by forces in the north. This
can make not only an election impossible, but further progress,
which is needed for the people of Southern Sudan.
Let me note that the Government of Southern Sudan is not
blameless. They should work harder to spread the oil benefits
by improving education and health, and certainly should take
more steps on anti-corruption. Both sides should deal with the
pipeline and refinery fee issues for post-2009.
But these concerns, to me, just emphasize the need for the
United States to show greater effectiveness and commitment to
increase the capacity of the South. A stronger Southern Sudan
will help the likelihood of CPA full implementation. And this
means assisting in developing management capacity; economic
development, including agricultural development;
infrastructure; and, yes, also military.
I believed while I was special envoy and continue to
believe that assisting Southern Sudan to neutralize the aerial
advantage of the north would be an appropriate and beneficial
step.
Again, the big issue is Khartoum's intent. And we must
accept that, for whatever reason, the actions of the U.S.
Government in recent months have strengthened Omar Bashir.
Engagement for engagement's sake will not work. The NCP
knows what it needs to do. It has made the conscious decision
not to fully follow up on commitments. And the questions I
would urge the committee to consider or to press the
administration on: Is there a strategy? Is there contingency
planning? What of our moral and political commitment to the
people of Southern Sudan and Darfur? What is the return of our
investment?
I would mention to the committee that the U.S. taxpayers
pay almost $1 billion a year in humanitarian assistance. The
Government of Sudan is a wealthy government because of oil.
Close to $9 billion of oil exports a year. And one humanitarian
expert estimated to me in Darfur, while we are giving $1
billion a year, the American taxpayers, the Government of
Khartoum has given approximately $30 million, total, to help
their own people. As one cynic said to me, how can they do this
to their own people? They don't consider them ``their own
people.''
What about our national interest of regional stability? I
think it was most shameful that, when the 13 humanitarian
organizations were kicked out, we did not raise our voice
louder or take actions against that breach of international
humanitarian law; that we signed a two-page agreement that can
be interpreted as accepting their right to do that.
No one who knows what is going on in Darfur would make the
assertion today that they have the same level of humanitarian
assistance that they did before the March 5th action to expel
those humanitarian groups. Yet that was the promise when we
signed that agreement. What are we doing to make some
accountability?
I believe the President, the Vice President, the U.N.
Ambassador care deeply and are committed. But the time is fast
approaching where those who believe in helping the Darfuris and
helping the Southern Sudanese cannot in good conscience remain
silent. Like others, I hope and pray for progress, but real
progress is required, not just talking the talk.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Williamson
follows:]Richard Williamson deg.
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Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
Mr. Prendergast?
STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, CO-FOUNDER, ENOUGH PROJECT
Mr. Prendergast. Thank you, Congressmen Payne and Smith and
Royce, for your unyielding commitment to peace and democracy in
Sudan. And, unfortunately, my colleagues are clearly unwilling
to speak their mind so that responsibility falls to me.
It is interesting, here on this panel, that we have, I
think, around 60 years of combined experience working on Sudan,
negotiating with the Sudanese Government. Of course, I am the
baby of the bunch. And up on the dais there, you three have 50
to 60 years of dealing with this regime in Sudan and experience
with that. So I hope people will listen, you know, to us
dinosaurs. Because, strangely, from many different directions
all six of us have come to very similar conclusions about what
needs to be done, and it is at great variance to the existing
path that the current administration is taking.
So I want to reinforce the consensus that I think exists in
this room by saying very clearly that sustained pressure,
leveraged by meaningful and focused sticks, is the principal
tool that has moved the National Congress Party over the last
20 years to change its behavior during these long years of its
authoritarian rule. So this substantial track record of
empirical evidence of the value of real pressure makes the
direction of U.S. diplomacy presently all the more
questionable.
In fact, Special Envoy Gration has stated on the record
that, quote, deg. ``right now we are looking at
carrots and looking proactively to use them.'' That is the
wrong message to be sending to the NCP today. They will eat
these carrots and continue with the deadly status quo.
The voices of Darfurians, parenthetically, couldn't be
represented in this room today up on the table, but we have
received some very interesting feedback from Darfurians in the
camps, in the refugee camps that Congressman Royce and
Congressman Payne and I both have been able to visit together,
and Congressman Smith has been to himself. And they were
uniformly alarmed at Special Envoy Gration's visit and his
message.
He lectured them to be more positive about the future and
stop complaining about the past. He lectured them about why
they won't handle or don't handle the land tenure issue
themselves. You know, most of them have lost their land, as
Khartoum has pushed settlers into these villages that have been
burned and destroyed and ethnically cleansed. So he strangely
was telling them, why don't they deal with these problems
themselves. He lectured them that they should start going home
to their villages now without any security. And he said that
they shouldn't wait to be saved, which was, of course, more of
a jab to the coalition efforts back here in the United States,
who has made repeated comments about the unhelpful nature of
the anti-genocide movement here in the United States.
These are disturbing messages, I think, to be sending
people who have been on the receiving end of a genocide that
continues by other means. So that is the critique, you know.
And any one of us six people could go on all afternoon, but we
need a constructive alternative, you know, to present to this
present path.
And I think in the context of the policy review that is
very contentiously unfolding now today within the
administration, the U.S. should spell out very clear goals. I
think we need to be clear about five things.
First, we need U.S. leadership in constructing a more
effective Darfur peace process, using as a model the process
that the previous administration was able to craft, and lead an
international effort in bringing those peace talks, those long
and protracted and difficult peace talks, complicated peace
talks, to a conclusion.
And the U.S. needs to play a lead role in this. We cannot
continue to defer to a process that has clearly ground to a
halt. And we need to lead in a way that not only puts us in the
forefront of acting, but also acting multilaterally, with a
support structure that involves and includes and builds
international leverage and expertise and support--again, the
same thing that Roger and company did in 2003, 2004, and 2005
to get the CPA negotiated.
Secondly, we need U.S. leadership in supporting the
implementation of the CPA. Now, it is very encouraging that
this special envoy has refocused the interest of the United
States Government on implementing the agreement that it helped
to negotiate. But negotiating the implementation of a deal that
has already been struck is different than what we ought to be
doing, which is constructing an international coalition to
pressure the parties to implement what they have already
agreed. That is a very different paradigm. And I think we have
gone down the wrong road by trying to negotiate every aspect of
implementing an agreement that has already been reached.
We need to structure clear penalties for non-implementation
and then rally international support even if, yes, China and
Russia will be opposed to us in the Security Council, but we
need to rally international support for some consequence for
non-implementation. That is how we lead, that is how this
agreement might have a chance of being implemented.
Third, we need U.S. leadership in supporting the democratic
transformation of Sudan, by supporting the electoral process of
course, but also by providing institutional support to
opposition parties, building their capacity, and to civil
society organizations and to the Government of Southern Sudan
in building its abilities and capacities to govern people
effectively in the South.
Fourth, we need U.S. leadership, of course, as just to
reinforce all my colleagues and everything anyone has said, and
particularly what Pa'gan Amum said. We need U.S. leadership in
preparation for the South's referendum in 2011, which will be a
make-or-break process for the future, not just in the South but
in the entire country.
And, fifth, we need U.S. leadership in support of
accountability. The ICC indictment of President Bashir is a
crucial opportunity to begin the process of ending this cycle
of impunity that has fueled the crimes against humanity that we
have seen throughout the South and in Darfur repeated over and
over again.
There is a very troubling tendency, I believe, of our
current special envoy to focus on the future to the exclusion
of the past. That is a code word that is heard very clearly in
Khartoum, quite frankly. And ignoring what has happened in
Darfur and what has happened in the South and sweeping it under
the rug will ensure the return of these kinds of crimes.
The essential word that I would repeat throughout these
goals is U.S. leadership--multilaterally and, when necessary,
unilaterally. That will be the enormously influential
ingredient in a successful transformation, I think, to peace
and democracy in Sudan.
But here is the bottom line, and I want to reinforce it.
Success will require greater leverage that what presently
exists in Sudan today and the international community. The
debate that is going on now within the U.S. Government rests in
part, in large part, on the degree to which incentives or
pressures ought to be favored instruments for changing the
behavior of the regime in Khartoum, the Darfur rebels, and the
GOSS and SPLM.
It is the view, I think, unanimously of this panel and you
three congressmen and the activist organizations that we stay
all in close contact with and, in some cases, represent that
the way forward should involve deeper diplomatic engagement. No
one disagrees with that. So it isn't like those that are
supporting pressure are against engagement. We all want deeper
U.S. diplomatic engagement in Sudan. But it is engagement that
is rooted in multilateral pressures and the credible threat of
significant consequences for policies or actions by the
Sudanese parties that undermine peace efforts and lead to
worsening humanitarian conditions.
I think if the U.S. appears more interested in negotiating
the implementation of the CPA, again, to reinforce that point,
instead of marshalling the international coalition to pressure
the parties to implement the agreement, that will send a
dangerous signal that it is all for sale, that it can all be
rewritten, like the Ethiopia-Eritrea agreement.
So, ultimately, success will require the construction of
credible and effective processes that allow for the achievement
of U.S. goals, that requires us to get out in front of this
glaring failure of building a process in Darfur, and construct,
out of the existing elements, a new revitalized process that
has a real chance of ending Darfur's crisis.
And we need to intensify these efforts on the CPA and back
these efforts with the construction of a clear, multilateral
consequence for violations or non-implementations of the deal.
That is my message; I think that is all of our messages. There
must be consequences for committing atrocities like genocide
and what kinds of crimes occurred in the South and for anyone
who undermines peace. An incentive-only strategy, like the one
that is being envisioned, will guarantee failure.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prendergast
follows:]John Prendergast deg.
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Mr. Payne. Let me thank the three of you very much for very
thorough testimony.
And I understand that Ambassador Williamson will have to
leave in 5 or 10 minutes or so. So what I might do is direct
maybe a question to him and then ask our other two members if
they have a question specifically for him, and then we will ask
questions to the other witnesses.
But I just would certainly like to make clear that it is an
attitudinal problem of the Government of Khartoum. I have heard
people say, ``Well, Congressman Payne, you bring race in, and
members of the Government of Khartoum are blacker than you in
complexion, and therefore how can you say race is an issue?''
And it is certainly not race, it is attitude, a feeling of
superiority. It is sort of, ``We are the chosen people in
Khartoum, and those Darfurians came up from central Africa some
time. And they are different, of course. We are certainly
different from the ethnic groups in the South.''
And so the problem, as I said to the chairman of the League
of Arab States, is that there happens to be a feeling of
superiority that, to me, really drives this deformed government
in Khartoum. Because if you feel that you are better than your
subjects, so to speak, then you will never feel that they have
a right to justice. It is just that simple. And until that
situation changes, the government's attitude won't change, so
we will just have to do things, maybe, to change the
government.
The other thing--I do agree that it is convenient for the
government to allow the world to feed their people, as it has
been mentioned. Year-in and year-out, billions of dollars go.
What is the incentive for bringing the Sudanese back to their
lands and having to rebuild and having to support the people in
Darfur and in other areas in dispute? And so, there is very
little incentive for the Government of Sudan to come up with a
solution. And that is sad, because we really have a tough job
in front of us.
But let me just ask, Ambassador at this point in time, what
suggestions would you make--not saying if you were still the
ambassador or the special envoy, but let me just say, what
would you do at this time? What would be your major points?
And, secondly, I would like to say that I really
appreciated the cooperation that you showed and afforded me on
my travels in Sudan when we were in places at the same time,
where the administration didn't want me and felt you shouldn't
be there with me, but we just happened to be there. And you
welcomed me just in open arms, which I really appreciated.
And also, let me say, Mr. Winter, when you gave truthful
testimony, in spite of your position that, you know, there was
a feeling that maybe you shouldn't have told the whole truth
and nothing but the truth. So I really commend both of you.
So, Ambassador, could you just maybe give us some points
before you have to leave? And then I will turn it over to my
colleagues.
Ambassador Williamson. Thank you. And I apologize. Based on
the earlier timing, I made commitments back home in Chicago
tomorrow morning, and the last flight will require me to leave.
So, my apologies.
Second, I would just like to comment, if I could, Mr.
Chairman, on your analysis, which I think has truth to it, with
respect to a feeling of superiority.
However, I would subscribe to the views expressed by
Professor Benjamin Valentino from Dartmouth in his book, ``Mass
Murder and Genocide in the 20th Century,'' in which he
concludes that, while often there have been arenas of ethnic
clashes and ethnic differences, ultimately those differences
had been exploited in the 20th century by powerful people
dealing with their most difficult problem: To stay in power.
And that at least one perspective about the tragedies in the
South and in Darfur would reflect on Professor Valentino's
views.
Second, look, special envoy is a very difficult job. There
is no simple answer. There is not a simple white hat/black hat
situation, et cetera. Second, I, based on my exposure, I have
confidence that the current special envoy is a very decent man.
So I preface that because it is easier to be a critic on the
sidelines, as I have seen from when both Roger and John would
criticize me from time to time.
Mr. Payne. I did, too.
Ambassador Williamson. Yes, you did, too, Mr. Chairman. I
will give you credit, yes. I don't want to leave you out. But,
as I said earlier, I think that is good for the process, and it
helped me do a better job.
I do think the concern is that President Bashir has been
strengthened, and that will perhaps embolden Khartoum not to
fully live up to commitments, which has been a pattern in the
past.
My view is not dissimilar to the prescription laid out by
John Prendergast, that you have to accept that change is not
going to happen just because you are talking. Engagement is not
a strategy; it is a tactic. And the strategy has to be to
change the game, because the party knows its self-interests and
has decided to act in a particular way.
And experience shows that the offer of incentives alone is
insufficient to change the incentives. So you must be prepared
to take other sorts of steps, not only yourself but the others
who say they care and are committed and concerned, and cannot
let one or two countries thwart you because their agenda might
be driven by oil or something else.
Then I would just go back to the list of items I mentioned
that I think we can more robust in helping strengthening the
South. Economically, in management capability, there are some
very talented people in the South, but it is a relatively small
group that are trying to do anything. In my written testimony,
I say take one, two, three, four dozen of the talented people
and have the United States bring them to our management and
business schools for 12 months. Help them build systems.
And, on economic development, while humanitarian aid is
important, Ameerah Haq, the coordinator of humanitarian
assistance for the U.N. In Sudan, has said, ``You know, you
could cut back on that. Let's start to develop their capacity
for themselves.''
And, finally, Mr. Chairman, a strong SPLA, a strong
Southern army, will both help deter abuse from the north now
and, after 2011, allow the South to be a full partner with the
north if the decision is unity, and, if it is not unity, allow
them to prosper as an independent country.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Ambassador Williamson--and let me say, all of you,
tremendous testimonies. And, you know, George Santayana once
said that those who don't learn the lessons from the past are
condemned to repeat them. And all three of you, we have three
gentlemen who have learned lessons that, if are not heeded by
the administration and by our new special envoy, I think could
be, and I think you would agree, absolutely catastrophic in
terms of what will happen.
And, you know, Mr. Winter, when you mentioned that 100
percent of the time the National Congress has not honored its
commitment--and you certainly were right there. You were part
of that negotiating team. You received me so well when I went
there, and I do thank you for that.
Now, I know you have to leave, Ambassador Williamson, so
let me just say a couple of things, questions.
And I just would say for the panel, when Ambassador
Williamson headed up our delegation to the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in Geneva, I joined him there for approximately a
week. And he worked overtime, night and day, to get our
European friends, some of our African Union friends, and others
to join in on the resolution. And the pushback, as people were
being slaughtered, of not doing anything, of looking askance
was appalling.
And I am concerned, Mr. Chairman, that there--you know, it
is almost like compassion fatigue or empathy fatigue that sets
in. I remember when Mengistu was doing his hard, horrific
deeds, the second time around, when the second famine occurred,
people were saying, ``Oh, we have been there. Wasn't that
resolved? Let's move on, turn the page.'' And we can't have
that, obviously.
And I think Pa'gan Amum made some very chilling suggestions
or observations. He admonished us not to reward the National
Congress for nothing. But he also said there is an escalation,
the alarming situation, and actually put a number on it, 79,000
AK-47s. And we have heard numbers, but I hadn't heard that
number. Perhaps you all had, but I had not.
That sounds to me--and when Mr. Winter talks about, you
know, the free and fair ballot will probably lead to an
independent state or a declaration, it sounds to me like
Khartoum is getting ready to begin or initiate new hostilities.
You know, it seems to me we are asleep at the switch.
And you put it in a way that couldn't be more dramatic. I
think our policy is one of making nice with dictatorships,
whether it be Tehran, Havana, Hanoi, Beijing, name the area,
even Pyongyang. We talk tough. What are we really doing? But
here you said we are making love with the Khartoum Government.
That takes it to a new level, in terms of accommodation and
appeasement, which I think will have catastrophic results.
Is it your view on this escalation, Ambassador Williamson--
are you hearing the same things in terms of an arming that
could very quickly become open hostilities over and above what
we already see, obviously, in places like Darfur?
Mr. Williamson. I think there are contingencies being
planned that, if they are forced into corners, violence could
be spread that would be devastating.
And let me also, if I could, sir, comment on your reference
to the concern of possible empathy fatigue or compassion
fatigue. I visited refugee camps in Latin America, Asia,
Africa--not as many as Roger Winter. But I guarantee that most
people, if they visit those camps today, will not come back and
say, ``It is not as bad as I thought it would be.'' They would
say it is horrific, unacceptable, and we must act.
Mr. Smith. Do I have time for another question or do you
have to leave?
Mr. Payne. I need to leave. And we want to give Mr. Royce a
chance.
Mr. Royce. I am going to let Ambassador Williamson catch
his flight. He is going to miss his flight if he doesn't leave.
And I will just have one question for Mr. Prendergast.
Ambassador Williamson. Okay, thank you very much.
Mr. Payne. Thank you.
Mr. Royce. There was hope that the international arrest
warrant against the Sudanese President, against Bashir, would
be the first step toward a pretty aggressive stance against
Khartoum. That has not happened. And we heard Scott Gration's
remarks, or at least read them, of his Oslo speech, in which he
said that Bashir would be held accountable in due time.
And we have heard that same principle-versus-pragmatism
arguments when Charles Taylor was escaping his indictment. He
was living in cushy luxury in Nigeria at the time. And I
remember those of us that pushed that indictment against the
countervailing strategy that, basically, it would make a
political settlement more difficult.
Now, in point of fact, by getting Charles Taylor in front
of The Hague, it seems to me that we have gotten stability,
much more stability in Liberia than we ever would have had had
we not made an example of him. But, you know, in this case, the
political settlement argument would seem to be, on the face of
it, bankrupt just by the fact that there isn't any Darfur peace
process to protect in this case. So it sort of removes that
argument.
But I was just going to ask you--you know, the
administration has decided it will not make Bashir's arrest
warrant a priority. In their view, an arrest strategy mode will
lock them out of negotiations.
So, talk a little bit about the principle-versus-pragmatism
argument. Are justice and the end of violence in Sudan mutually
exclusive, in your view?
Mr. Prendergast. Yeah, thank you for that thoughtful
question, Congressman Royce.
I think we see over and over again people advance the
argument that justice and peace somehow are incompatible. And I
have taken now eight trips to Darfur since the genocide began,
and I cannot recall a single conversation that I have had with
the Darfuri displaced by the violence either in the IDP camps
or living in rebel-held towns or living in refugee camps in
Chad who do not believe that peace is not possible without
justice. In other words, justice is an essential element of
peace, because if we don't break this cycle of impunity that we
always talk about with some measure, some consequence, some
cost to the commission of genocide, we are going to get more of
it. It is just human nature. The river will flow in that
direction.
So I think we need to maintain that focus on the arrest
warrant. Congress can be very helpful in enunciating that as a
very important objective of U.S. policy, accountability and
justice for what has happened and what is happening in Sudan.
And we need to, at a minimum, as a step toward seeing that
arrest warrant executed, at least, at the very least, isolate
the person who has been indicted by the ICC, President Bashir.
And remember, before someone can argue to you, ``Well, we
need to meet with him to be able to forward the peace
process,'' he was not materially involved in the peace process
related to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the North-South
peace deal. That was a Vice President Taha-led negotiation with
a number of people in Khartoum that were instrumental in
eventually making the decision to sign on the dotted line.
So I think that, again, using a rigorous study of empirical
evidence of what this regime moves in response to--and this is
one heck of a sword of Damocles that we can hold over their
head to get some modification or moderation in their behavior.
It is foolish, in fact, diplomatically foolish, to take it off
the table, as we seem to have taken it off the table
rhetorically.
I would simply footnote all that by saying, at the end of
the day, the Sudan policy review has not yet been finalized. So
Congress and the activists have a tremendous chance now, at
this moment, to weigh in with Secretary Clinton, to weigh in
with Vice President Biden, with Ambassador Rice, all of these
people who--and the President himself--all these people who,
during the campaign and in their previous jobs, were strident
advocates in support of this accountability, were strident
advocates even in support of military action in Darfur, which
isn't even what the activists or anyone is asking for.
We are just asking for principled engagement and pressure
on this regime. We just want people who have made their careers
in part on principle to live up to the rhetoric that they
enunciated during their campaigns, during their tenures in the
Senate, during their previous positions. And if they did so, I
think we would get substantial movement in Sudan forward, as we
all hoped the day after--well, some of us hoped--the day after
the election in November we would see come to fruition in
Sudan.
Mr. Royce. Thank you, John.
I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Payne. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And I thank Ambassador Williamson in his absence. We were
in two different meetings on health reform, and I know the
chairman has been in some of those meetings as well. So thank
you for your indulgence.
I just have two quick questions.
Ambassador Winter, what is your estimation of how many
people were killed in Sudan over the period of time when the
genocide was declared?
Mr. Winter. If you are talking about just Darfur, I think
the accepted number now is in the range of 400,000.
Ms. Jackson Lee. And then overall?
Mr. Winter. We did in 1998 and then updated it subsequently
using demographers who had retired from USAID, a very careful
study and a publication that documents about 2\1/2\ million
people who died during the course of the Southern war. You take
2\1/2\ million, add 400,000, you are talking about 3 million
people who didn't need to die but did under the auspices of the
Khartoum government.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Prendergast, do you agree with those
numbers?
Mr. Prendergast. Without any question.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Is the CPA, at this time, July 29, 2009,
hanging in the balance? And is there any future for the CPA?
Mr. Winter and then Mr. Prendergast.
Mr. Winter. I think there is a future for the CPA. The
question is, what is that future?
And, from my perspective, the key to everything at this
point--you weren't here when I said before--is the issue of the
referendum. There are all kinds of other aspects, and I am not
making light of them. But, ultimately, at this point in time,
the difference between future war and future peace, to me, is
producing and implementing a viable, free and fair referendum.
It is my view that Khartoum has killed the possibility of
unity in a free and fair referendum by their behavior. And
there isn't enough time over the next 18 months to suddenly
make unity attractive when they have made it so horribly
unattractive.
And so, from my perspective, if, in fact, Khartoum
frustrates the timely implementation of a free and fair
election, it is very possible that the South will declare
independence. They would be justified to do it, in my view,
because they have been following and pursuing the full
implementation of the CPA, and it is Khartoum that has not.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I believe that opportunities lost may be
lost forever. So let me ask this question of both Mr.
Prendergast--and you were eloquently speaking to Mr. Royce's
question. I think you partly answered it.
What can the administration, the United Nations, and maybe
separately this Congress, since we are one of the three
branches of government and have been able to characterize over
the years and act sometimes unilaterally in terms of actions
that Congress can take, what can we take as we sit here today?
I will start with Mr. Prendergast first.
Mr. Prendergast. Well, the big question mark in getting to
where Roger is talking about getting, to the referendum in
2011, is what the result will be of the now 6-month long policy
review of the current administration. And I think if the result
is that the administration pursues an incentives-only strategy
with this government in trying to achieve our policy
objectives, we guarantee failure.
And so, what the Congress urgently can do now--and we don't
really even need a 12- or 24- or 36-month plan because there is
a 1-month plan, there is a 2-week plan, which is weighing in
very constructively with the principals in the administration
who will sit around the table at some point in the very near
future in a National Security Council meeting, and they will
arbitrate and deliberate over the memo in front of them about
what U.S. policy should be.
Ms. Jackson Lee. At the United Nations?
Mr. Prendergast. At the National Security Council of the
United States Government. So, James Jones will be there----
Ms. Jackson Lee. Oh, the National Security Council of the
U.S.----
Mr. Prendergast. Exactly. Vice President Biden will be
there, Secretary Clinton will be there, and Ambassador Rice
will be there. It hasn't yet risen to that level yet. They have
been debating this policy now strenuously at the deputies
level.
And so we need the people who have been champions of
Darfur, champions of Southern Sudan throughout their Senate
careers, throughout their private-sector careers in the case of
Susan Rice, to be front and center in that meeting,
representing a policy that I think will potentially be the
game-changer in whether or not we see peace and stability come
to Sudan. And that would be a policy that focuses on using a
balanced collection of carrots and sticks, not an incentives-
only policy, but a collection of carrots and sticks with
credible, significant consequences for the obstruction of peace
and for the destruction of human life.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Winter?
Thank you very much, Mr. Prendergast.
Mr. Winter. I would say that we need to recognize that
there are significant problems in the South that relate to the
issues of corruption and weakness in governance and civil
violence.
It is time for us to surge, in terms of our involvement in
the South. I think by increasing, escalating our presence,
coming side by side with people in the Government of South
Sudan, for example, to bolster their capacity--I wouldn't send
them out, like Rich suggested, send them to the United States.
That is not the point. We need to send our people there so they
get the on-the-job training, they have an American sitting next
to them that helps them in terms of improving their financial
management skills and those kinds of things.
That surge on our part is something that I think this
Congress could play a key role in precipitating and, if
necessary, financing to some degree. I think if we did that, it
would be a big stabilizer of the situation in the South and
will actually prevent violence in the long run, and it will
make them successful.
This SPLM and this GOSS are fundamentally democrats. They
want a democratic government. Khartoum is disinterested in any
such thing. In the South, they want the development of their
population. That is what we should want. And we should capture
the next 18 months and after that to help them strengthen their
capacity to manage the petroleum sector, for example, to
increase their ability to detect corruption and fraud and such
things and prosecute that, to bolster the policing capacity of
the government so it can intervene properly, appropriately in
terms of communal violence, which is a significant problem.
There are many issues like that that we could assist with
which would help stabilize the South, show Khartoum that this
referendum, this new future for the South is actually going to
happen. We are the only ones that can come alongside them with
enough ``oomph'' to actually make that kind of difference. We
should not worry so much about appeasing the North, but make a
major effort in strengthening the South.
Ms. Jackson Lee. So every step they make, we make a step
with them?
Mr. Winter. Absolutely.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Payne. Thank you.
We have been joined by Mr. Ellison, and I yield to him at
this time.
Mr. Ellison. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And let me thank the panelists, as well. It is good to see
you all.
A few questions. First of all, I have a trip planned to
Darfur on August 4th, and so this hearing comes at an extremely
timely moment.
Could you, Mr. Prendergast, give the committee--and, again,
I know you have already talked about this. Forgive me for
getting here late. We had double hearings going on.
Can you give us the latest on the humanitarian condition of
people in Darfur? What are we looking at right now?
Mr. Prendergast. I think what we are seeing is a very slow
and steady deterioration. You know, we saw--and this gets to
the heart of this big debate about whether or not it is
genocide. You know, we saw the mass ethnic cleansing campaigns
in 2003 to 2005 where most of the villages of the particular
groups that were targeted--the Fur and the Zaghawa and the
Masalit--were burned. So they were gone. Those villages had
been destroyed, and those people are now in camps.
So, in those camps--and part of what some of us believe and
have contended is genocide by attrition, or genocide by other
means, is then the turning on and off of the tap of the
humanitarian aid tap in many different ways. It is not just
expelling NGOs. It is also, ``Oh, this area, by the way, is a
red zone for the next 2 weeks.'' So there is no delivery of
humanitarian assistance to these areas for a while, and then
suddenly people's nutritional level goes down. You see the
beginnings of outbreaks of particular diseases, et cetera, et
cetera. Then suddenly it is not a red zone anymore and the
agencies can rush back in. So you get that tactic and a number
of other approaches to undermining the nutritional and health
status of people in the camps and breaking their spirit.
And the biggest spirit-breaker and attempted spirit-breaker
is a policy, I think, which is--and the ICC clearly agrees, in
the indictment of President Bashir--is a policy of support for
security elements, both official and unofficial, in other words
military and paramilitary, of rape as a tool of war, rape as a
tool of social control.
It is clearly in every empirical effort to collect evidence
or data about rapes, and often NGOs that do that are expelled.
So we don't know, in a lot of places, what is going on, but we
have an anecdotal evidence that it is one of the highest rates
of sexual violence in the world.
So with all of these factors, we are seeing, I think, the
very slow, steady deterioration of people's capacities to cope
with the conditions in these camps in long-term displaced
environments.
Mr. Winter. Could I----
Mr. Ellison. Yes, sir.
Mr. Winter [continuing]. Suggest that some of the
approaches being taken by the special envoy could take us in
precisely the wrong direction. We have the minutes of meetings
that he had with various groups of NGOs and U.N. and other
international officials in which he is saying very forcefully:
Substantial returns of displaced Darfuris must begin before the
end of this year.
NGOs and others are unitedly saying the conditions are not
right for that, to actually force them out of camps or do
whatever you need to do to pressure them to return. So this is
an artificial goal line that he is setting when the realities
on the ground cannot properly cater for that. We could actually
make the situation worse if we went down that track.
Mr. Ellison. Yeah. And I may need to get with you gentlemen
more after the hearing, because I don't think the chairman is
going to let me talk forever. But I do want to see if you could
offer some views on just two more topics, which I will state
right up front.
I have been hearing and reading about greater levels of
violence in the South. I am interested in hearing about that.
And I am also curious to know, what about the political
solution? Ultimately, you know, the solution is not more aid,
it is not more aid workers. Ultimately, the solution is a
political resolution in which the Sudanese people come to an
agreement about how to solve their problems and live together.
Could you talk about the North-South agreement and then the
Khartoum Darfuri agreement?
Mr. Prendergast. You were just there. Do you want to talk
about the levels of violence?
Mr. Winter. Yeah, let me tell you how this kind of stuff
comes about. Khartoum fosters instability. Their policies
foster it. The most violent or, I should say, volatile place in
all of Sudan, in my view, is this place called Abyei, which was
burned to the ground in May of last year. All right? These
people remarkably come back, the civilians. They all ran away.
Now the largest number of them are back.
How do they destabilize the population? There are lots of
ways. Some of it is pure violence. The very people who burned
the place down in May of last year, the officers of that 31st
Brigade that did that, they almost all got promoted. They are
right up the street from Abyei now, hundreds and hundreds of
those same guys that did that. So there is an ever-present
threat that this is going to happen again, for example.
Or let's take a less directly violent kind of approach that
Khartoum uses. After the arbitration process began, there was
supposed to be a budget. It is provided for in the CPA that
there be an Abyei administration that is supposed to provide
services to the people, because, for the last 3 years,
President Bashir wouldn't advance the requirements of the Abyei
protocol, and there was no governance there at all. So there is
supposed to be a government there.
That government was supposed to operate on a fiscal year
that began last October. They never got an appropriation. To
this day, there is not an approved budget for that government
to function. They did get a little bit of an advance from the
government, but fundamentally none of the employees of the
Abyei administration have been paid since January.
This is the kind of, by presence and by dereliction of duty
in terms of supporting the government structures in the South
and in Abyei, this is the kind of way Khartoum destabilize the
population.
Mr. Prendergast. And I will take the second question about
political solutions.
I think that the CPA, this Comprehensive Peace Agreement,
and the North-South deal demonstrates beyond a shadow of a
doubt that a political solution in Sudan is possible if we
pursue it diligently in a sustained basis, using the leverage
of the United States, working with other countries around the
world as partners, to bring about a peace for particular areas
of the country. We need an all-Sudan solution focused on peace
and stability.
But to speak to the two biggest conflict zones of the
country, Darfur and the South, very quickly--first, Darfur. We
talked a little bit about this throughout the hearing, but to
really kind of focus it, it requires a more effective peace
process than there presently exits.
The thing that has been going on in Doha has bled along now
for quite some time, and it is a continuation of other
processes that have really yielded no fruit. And, strangely,
the United States, after having led the North-South peace
process, having built an international coalition to bring about
one of the great achievements, I think, of the Bush
administration in foreign policy, we then didn't do the same
thing for Darfur.
And now the Obama administration hasn't begun with that
kind of an objective. We basically deferred to the Arab League
and deferred to other actors who are in the driver's seat right
now and allowed for this process to continue. And there is no
reason why we shouldn't be working intensively with all those
partners, but the current process will not yield a deal, and
everyone believes it, especially Darfuris.
So the U.S., very respectfully--and everyone is pretty much
waiting for us to do this anyway, just like they waited for us
to do it in the North-South deal, is to get involved and lead
the construction of a more effective process that involves all
of the current players but arranges it in a way, just like we
did in the North-South deal, where everyone has a particular
role to play. Someone has to quarterback this; someone has to
grab the ball under the center and diagram the play and make
sure we can march downfield to get to the goal line.
That is just the way peace processes work. When I worked in
the previous administration and the Clinton administration,
that is how you do it. You build a strategy, you get the
partners together, and you move the ball down the field, one
play at a time. And you are thinking five plays ahead, but you
have to play out the existing one.
So the U.S. needs to lead the construction of that process.
I don't know why the last administration and this
administration hasn't decided to do that.
With the CPA, I think it is very clear to all of us in this
room, up there on your dais and down here, those that are
testifying, that it is one thing--and the U.S. has gone down a
road now in the last few months of attempting to negotiate the
implementation of the provisions of the North-South deal. And
that is, I think, a problematic approach.
They have already made a deal. Everyone has agreed to
respecting that deal, as we saw with the latest example of the
Abyei report on the drawing of the boundary, which the SPLM and
the Government of Southern Sudan accepted even though it had
altered the original judgment. But the U.S. rather should be
leading an international effort to build clear consequences for
non-implementation.
We have 1\1/2\ years left. It is literally the sprint to
the finish line of this marathon. And if there are going to be
additional major diversions away from that course that is set
now by the agreement that both parties have signed and
committed over and over to, if there is not a consequence for
diverting from that path, by whoever it is, whether it is the
SPLM or the National Congress Party, whether it is the
Government of Southern Sudan or the regime in Khartoum, then we
will fail. Then that agreement will not be implemented, and we
will see a return to war between the North and the South.
There needs to be international multilateral consequences
for the obstruction of implementation of that deal. That is the
role of the United States Government right now.
Mr. Ellison. Is the work that General Gration is doing now
helping to provide a basis for the kind of structure that you
have just identified? Or are we heading in the wrong direction?
I am not asking you to comment on him professionally, because
everybody----
Mr. Prendergast. Yeah, I understand.
Mr. Payne. Oh, you can comment like you have been. You can
feel free to comment.
Mr. Prendergast. Okay. He goaded me. Look at him.
Mr. Payne. Call it unprofessional.
Mr. Prendergast. Well, I think that--first of all, I think
what General Gration has brought is quite a significant energy.
He has direct access to the President and to the key actors in
the White House. And he is absolutely committed to seeing a
solution in Sudan.
I believe, after extensive discussions with him--and we
have had it out in his office many times--that he has just made
an incorrect policy analysis and, thus, a direction for U.S.
Government policy in Sudan.
And that is why I believe we ought to be and Congress ought
to be investing in attempting to influence the Sudan policy
review that the United States Government is currently engaged
in, because that, then, will be the marching orders for General
Gration.
And it is up to Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice and
Vice President Biden and the President himself to weigh in on
the basis of their principles and what they have said
throughout the last 10 years of their careers about issues
related to Sudan in different fora over and over again, so that
we can see a policy that is rooted in what I think is a very
different view than General Gration has of what will influence
the parties to actually make the compromises necessary to bring
about peace in Sudan.
Mr. Winter. Let me just say, I think he is on a very steep
learning curve. He has been here, what, 5 months? The guys that
he is dealing with in Khartoum have all been together with each
other for 20 years. They know us very well. They don't have a
steep learning curve. They read us very well.
Mr. Ellison. You know, as I am trying to put my hands
around the issue, I am sort of analogizing it to the work that
you see Senator Mitchell doing in the Israel-Palestine
conflict. It appears as though he is, sort of, putting
foundation blocks in place so that he can get to a point of
negotiation. And it sounds to me as though this same--there may
not be a parallel structure going on. Do you understand what I
am--yeah.
Mr. Prendergast. What I am concerned about, at least in
these first few months, George Mitchell had a running start
there from 3 days after, I think, the inauguration. So he has
been in there longer. However, I don't believe that the United
States has made a decision--which, again, back to the policy
review, what is the U.S. policy? And that is what Congress can
influence. I don't believe the United States has made a
decision to take the lead in constructing a revitalized peace
process in Darfur.
General Gration can't make that call. The United States
Government has to decide that is our role. We have failed up
till now for 7 years or 6 years, since 2003, to do anything of
any meaning or consequence for those people in Darfur on the
political front. This is now time for us to lead. Now go ahead,
General Gration, and do it. That has to be done.
And then on the other side, on the CPA thing, I really do
think it is a--I am not sure if you think I am on the right
track here, Roger. Again, I think it is very laudable that
General Gration has taken a great interest in CPA
implementation. He brought the parties here to Washington, to
his credit. He is indefatigable. He works all the time. He is
traveling everywhere.
But he has made a decision to attempt to go down--there are
two paths you can choose, I think, in this regard, very
simplistically and crudely. One path is you negotiate the terms
of implementation. The other path is you build a coalition to
demand that the parties implement the deal they signed. That is
two different ways of going about business.
And I believe that he is going down the prior road, even
though we still have the chance to address that through the
Sudan policy review. So I just think he has made an incorrect
choice, but on the basis of goodwill.
Mr. Ellison. Can I ask a separate question off the subject?
Again, I want to give full appreciation for the circumstances
within Sudan. I know that there are real problems there, and I
am confident of that. But Sudan is a country that is on the
United States list of state sponsors of terrorism. And I just
want to ask you, if you know, do you know if Sudan is engaged
in activity that could legally be defined as terrorism beyond
its own borders?
Do you understand my question? And ``I don't know'' is a
perfectly acceptable answer. But if you do know, I would be
happy to hear what your thoughts are.
Mr. Winter. I don't know.
I would say that we have a number of sanction-like
mechanisms in place. Some of them--for example, the idea that
we don't have an Ambassador and we don't have a fully
functioning Embassy in Khartoum--are really fraudulent. There
are sanctions that we can speak to. I don't know how to speak
to the issue of the state sponsors of terrorism.
Mr. Ellison. Well, the Sudan is on that list, the United
States list. And what I am just trying to ascertain is, you
know, I mean, if a country, any country in the world, has
certain problem, let's address those problems. If it does not
have other problems, let's not address those problems. I mean,
do you understand? I am just trying to be precise.
Mr. Prendergast. Very, very good point. I get it. And it is
a crucially important element of the strategy debate that is
ongoing within the Obama administration. And I personally
witnessed it when I worked in the National Security Council,
even 15 or whatever it has been now, 10 years ago, that this
was a live, hot-wire issue.
It is clear that, after September 11, after some very
significant representations were made publicly and privately by
the United States and the Sudanese Government, the NCP,
watching what was going on in Afghanistan, that they made some
substantial alterations in their behavior. It had followed a
number of years where bin Laden had been kicked out and a
number of al-Qaeda operatives had been dismantled and taken
out.
But they have retained relationships with some of the
organizations that remain of great interest to the United
States and have dismantled and severed their relationships with
others. And you can get, I think, a more pointed briefing from
the State Department's counterterrorism person before you
leave, just so you can get the specifics. I mean, I would be
glad to talk to you afterwards about it.
But, secondly and more importantly, there is a relevant,
actionable consequence for this strange evolving relationship
between the United States and Sudan on the terrorism front.
Because, 10 years ago, we were locked in this quite difficult
relationship with Sudan with respect to terrorism, where we
were actively monitoring their direct involvement in operations
that led to all kinds of different actions, including the
assassination attempt of President Mubarak and many other
things around the world.
Today it is a very different relationship, as you know.
There is a great deal of cooperation between the United States
and the intelligence services within the Sudanese Government,
overseen by Salah Gosh, the architect of the John Dewey policy
in Darfur. And so, it complicates, I think--it has complicated
the Bush administration's policies. It is complicating the
Obama administration's debate over its policy.
And I had the fortune to be in a meeting with President
Obama and a few Senators on the day that he rolled out General
Gration as his special envoy before the press came in. And it
was a robust discussion about where the policy ought to go, and
I thought President Obama got it completely right. It just
hasn't been implemented the way he said it yet, because the
policy hasn't been made yet.
But there was an interesting exchange between a couple of
the Senators who are on the Intelligence Committee in the
Senate, and they said to President Obama very clearly, ``The
level to which the Government of Sudan is offering the United
States Government actionable and important intelligence for our
counterterrorism efforts globally is overstated. And please do
not allow that line of reasoning to pollute your decision-
making with respect to what we ought to be doing in Sudan.
Don't let the counterterrorism imperative undermine the moral
imperative of the United States Government's need to engage,
again, with the kind of instruments that will actually
influence behavior, that will bring about peace in that
country.'' And I thought that was quite interesting.
So there are a lot of things that Roger and I, as civilians
now, wouldn't have access to, in terms of intelligence. But we
have been around the block enough times to know where things
are and where the bodies are buried, particularly. And it is an
extremely complicating factor, because on the one hand the
Sudanese Government is cooperating with the United States on
counterterrorism, but on the other hand they retain
relationships with certain groups which we are much more
concerned about globally with respect to our counterterrorism
imperatives.
So that is why they remain on the list. And they remain on
the list because Congress has been very strong in saying, don't
remove these very specific penalties or pressures until we see
real changes in behavior across the board.
Mr. Ellison. And, you know, I don't know what my opinion is
on this thing; I am still thinking about it. But I do think
that it is legitimate for a country to say, ``Because of your
human rights record, we are going to take this particular
posture with you.'' But let's do it for the reason that we are
doing it and not have a bunch of other stuff hanging out there.
So, I guess, it was just a question. You answered it pretty
well. Thank you very much.
Mr. Payne. Thank you.
Yeah, I think it is pretty clear that the same characters
that are in place now were in place when they had a cozy
relationship with Osama bin Laden. I mean, anyone who has
followed this, Ghazi Salah al-Addin was the one who took the
perpetrators of the murder attempt on Mubarak to Addis and,
when the plan was foiled, personally escorted them by plane to
Iran, or got them out of Sudan. And so he is the same guy that
led and has cooperated with the person who is responsible for
9/11, the most dastardly act on our country. Those people are
murderers, no doubt about it. Salah Gosh was head of security.
And you tell me that, all of a sudden, they love America?
You tell me they are giving you information that is going to
nail Osama bin Laden? You know, they are bad, but they are not
that bad. And so, anyone who buys that, you know, is certainly
being deceived.
But it takes time, as you have mentioned. You know, our
special envoy has been on the job for 5 months. And I agree
with you, he has more energy and he is meeting and he is doing
all that. However, those guys have been in place for 20, 30
years. They made Turabi sound like he was the worst guy in the
world, so they said, ``Look, we are saving the world. We are
going to put Turabi in jail.'' Right? So he is in jail, and
Bashir still reigns, because he says--you know, and we bought
it. Well, Bashir has to be better than Turabi.
So it is a learning curve, and I just hope that we don't
have our pockets totally picked while this curve is being
learned. Because we are losing in Sudan every day, there is no
question about it, there is no doubt about it.
Not one person has been brought up on charges who
participated in these acts in Sudan. They are still in the same
positions. And when people go to Khartoum, they are going to
meet them, and they are going to have some wine with them, and
they will have champagne in the nice hotels, and they will sell
them a bill of goods because that is what they do. And they do
it well.
And we tried to caution--I was at that meeting with the new
envoy before he left--``Be careful, they are slick.'' Right. So
what happened? Zoom. You know.
And even with the negotiations--four times in Khartoum, a
half a day in Juba once, maybe a couple more days there at
another point in time. But how are you going to have
negotiations with the South, Darfur, and the Government of
Khartoum when you spend all your time in Khartoum? And then you
leave Khartoum, come to the States, and then go to China. What
is that all about? I wonder what kind of concessions--because
China is the big guy on the block. If they want to see changes,
China will make the changes. They can push Bashir, and they
really refuse to do so.
And so, I think that my question is, have either of you had
the opportunity to dialogue with the Senate? Senator Kerry
heads up this issue in the Senate. What is your assessment of
what is going on over there?
Mr. Prendergast. I think Senator Kerry is faithfully
supporting the Obama administration's direction in Sudan. And
he has been a very strong supporter of General Gration. And
there will be a hearing tomorrow morning, which will be very,
very different than the hearing we had today.
Mr. Payne. Well, you know, we couldn't get the General to
testify because we are only a subcommittee, and therefore he
was not allowed to testify. Of course, the Assistant Secretary
can't testify, because you have a special envoy; therefore, he
can't testify. Not that there is anything wrong you two.
Go ahead, John.
Mr. Prendergast. Well, I think, you know, the good news is
that there are some very strong voices on Sudan in the Senate,
just like there are here, on body sides of the aisle. And I
think that the chairman and the ranking member of the
Subcommittee on Africa, your counterparts in the Senate,
Feingold and Isakson, are fantastic on these issues. They are
very, very committed, just like you two are.
And I really think that, you know, again, if anything is
going to work, just like it did with the Clinton
administration, just like it did with the Bush administration--
unfortunately, here we are again--Congress is going to have to
weigh in with principle in pressing and pushing another new
administration to not be fooled again, to not make the kind of
mistakes that people keep making with respect to this regime in
Khartoum.
So, I mean, that is the hope, is that the subcommittees of
these two International Relations and Foreign Relations
Committees will lead the charge and muster enough of a
coalition on both sides of the aisle. Because this remains a
bipartisan issue, fantastically. I mean, you saw it today, two
Republicans and one Democrat sitting here. You don't even know
which one is which, because we are all saying pretty much--we
are reinforcing each other's messages. And you guys up there
are reinforcing each other's messages.
And that is our hope for these U.S. policies. We are going
to have to take that hopefully accumulated experience and
deliver it, at least let it be heard by Secretary Clinton, let
it be heard by Ambassador Rice, let it be heard especially by
Vice President Biden who was so strident in his Senate career
and in his campaign and has disappeared on this issue. And he
needs to show up at that principals' committee meeting when
they have it on Sudan, and he needs to be a voice at the table
for a principled policy.
Mr. Winter. Yeah, I would just add that I think we have
some erosion in the Senate, because now we have at least two
Republican Senators who also, as did Kerry, go simply to
Khartoum and Darfur and never approach the South. And that is
the kind of pattern that I would not like to see expanded in
any way.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Would you yield?
Mr. Payne. Mr. Smith and then----
Ms. Jackson Lee. I am not going to ask any--if he would
just yield for just a moment, I just want to reaffirm that the
South is very important. And many of us, Mr. Chairman, are
going to try and go back to Sudan and never leave out any part
of the country. I think we should go everywhere.
And I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Payne. Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me say, we are joined at the hip on this. And I think
it is important that we say this: There is no politics in this,
absolutely none. There is no separation, Republican or
Democrat. And that is the way it was when I was chairman of
this committee and chair of the Human Rights Committee for 6
years before that. We always spoke out. And Mr. Payne was on
that committee and was ranking, and now I am ranking on this.
So I hope everyone here understands that, that we--I wish,
frankly, that the three of you, four counting the Secretary
General, could present your testimony. Because in the written
form it is powerful, but the way you have conveyed it here
today, the NSC needs to hear it.
So my hope is that--I mean, we will convey your testimonies
to all of the principals and say, you have got to look at this
and take the time to understand that the collective wisdom of
the four of you cannot go unheeded.
You know, I have been in Congress 29 years, and I am
shocked--shocked--how, so often, some of the best and the
brightest, executive branch and congressional, miss by a mile
all of the alarms and the warning signals, early warning
signals, that are out there.
I will never forget when General Dallaire--and we knew
about that soon after he made his, you know, the so-called fax
that went to the United Nations, that there was something that
could have been mitigated and maybe stopped completely, and
that was the terrible genocide against the Rwandan people. That
was under the Clinton administration.
And while under the Bush administration, Bush I, we had
early warning information that when the declaration of
independence occurred in the former Yugoslavia, of Slovenia,
Bosnia, and Croatia, that Serbia, Milosevic would quickly turn
his guns and his hate toward those countries.
And Larry Eagleburger, you know, number two at the State
Department, former Ambassador to Yugoslavia, spent time in
Belgrade. Never thought it would escalate to the killing fields
and the genocide in Srebrenica and elsewhere that occurred.
And Mr. Winter mentioned earlier two possible outcomes: A
vote, a plebiscite that leads to independence; or a unilateral
declaration. I am very concerned that, if we are not careful,
that will trigger a whole new renewed fighting, and we will
have the best and the brightest here on Capitol Hill saying,
``Now, how did that happen?''
You have given us, I think, the early warning that we need
to more robustly be engaging the 79,000 AK-47s that are being
strategically placed among people who could use them to great
harm. And that may be an underestimation; who knows? And I
would be interested in knowing what you know about that. That
sounds like an order of battle that is being placed for, you
know, a terrible bloodletting. So I would appreciate your
thoughts on that.
And in terms of a referendum, 2010, which is now the date
that slipped--I guess no one has a month.
Mr. Winter. January 2011.
Mr. Smith. Say it again?
Mr. Winter. The referendum is scheduled for January 2011.
Mr. Smith. 2011, okay. Now, can the logistics be
accomplished? You know, the IDPs, the census that would be
required, all of that, is that enough time to get it together?
And if you would talk about the early warning. How do we
prevent what would be an unmitigated disaster if we don't heed
your warnings and tell the people in our own Government, all
carrots, no sticks--and all three of you have said that--you
know, is the path to disaster?
Mr. Winter. I think we have the time to put in place the
architecture we need to do a referendum. The question is, will
the enabling legislation be adopted in the Parliament in
Khartoum? Which they already say they refuse to do. All right?
So the pattern, just as with regular elections and every
other thing that they really don't want to do, is ultimately
not to decline it absolutely, but just to delay and then delay
further and delay further. That is, I would suspect, a likely
thing, which, of course, raises ultimately that possibility of
a unilateral declaration if they don't get the opportunity do
what the CPA guarantees them.
Mr. Prendergast. Plan A is delay. Because that is the
easiest and that is the one that, you know, diplomats buy into
because then maybe we can work this and maybe we can negotiate
that.
Plan B is the 79,000 AK-47s. Plan B is what I think we just
need to understand the empirical evidence of the last 20 years
demonstrates, and that is that this regime has used a policy of
supporting paramilitary units, of supporting militias to fight
its conflicts in the periphery of the country, in the South and
the Southwest and in the West in Darfur.
Whether it is called Murahaleen, as Pa'gan was talking
about earlier, or whether it is call the Janjaweed today in
Darfur, whether it is the Nuer militia in Southeast Sudan in
the early 1990s that led to what may have been the bloodiest
period of conflict in Sudan's history, they consistently use
the same approach, which is--and it is a very effective one--
of, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, keep doing it.
And so, what is the upshot? If there is no consequence for
that, if the Government of Sudan can go ahead and just
distribute these kinds of weapons and then throw the match on
the gasoline and say, ``Look at those Southerners, they can't
govern themselves; we had better not have that referendum now,
let's delay it,'' if we allow that to happen, as they
increasingly--and it is the same thing as the first month of
the genocide we saw. People were like, ``Wait a minute, isn't
this ancient interethnic tribal violence?'' No, it is a
government strategy aimed at dividing and destroying opposition
for a political objective: Maintaining power by any means
necessary. That is what it is.
So we just need to understand it, get in front of it. And
then what to do about it? Because I don't want to just make the
critique and then not say it. There has to be consequences for
this kind of behavior at the end of the day. And that requires
difficult diplomatic engagement with a number of countries,
including Beijing and Moscow, to talk about, ``Okay, what are
these consequences going to be?''
And if we can't do it through the United Nations Security
Council, if two-fifths of the permanent members of the Security
Council will refuse and veto anything we do or obstruct--which
I don't believe they will; I think they will stand down and
abstain--then we need to build the disgraced phrase,
``coalition of the willing,'' who are willing to say, ``Okay,
if the Government of Southern Sudan, if the Darfur rebel
movement, if the Government of Sudan--whoever it is--undermines
peace and security in the country, they will be on the
receiving end of the following set of escalating
consequences.''
That is the way we are going to get some measure of
progress toward peace and democracy in Sudan, I think.
Mr. Payne. Ms. Jackson Lee?
Ms. Jackson Lee. I am fine, sir.
Mr. Payne. Okay.
Well, let me certainly thank the witnesses for this very
interesting hearing. Always the passion that you have has been
really a breath of fresh air, to know that we still have people
on the fighting line.
Let me also thank the audience, who--you know, this hearing
was supposed to be at 3:30, and with all of the problems that
we had, it shows the interest that you have to be here after 8
o'clock. No cameras, no Voice of America, no C-SPAN, simply
interest. And so I know we are on the right side.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Members, too.
Mr. Payne. Members, too. Oh, no question about it, which--I
am going to bring that up in the CBC next week to say, ``There
were no cameras, and she came back.''
Ms. Jackson Lee. And came back.
Mr. Payne. And came back. I know we are on the right track
now.
But it shows the interest. It certainly is very difficult--
if there were solutions, there would not have been a special
envoy. Ever since I have been in Congress, I remember at least
1995 was the first one, when my former colleague became a
special envoy, Congressman Harry Johnson. Maybe it was later
than that. But we went through Johnson and Natsios and Danforth
and the head of the World Bank, Zoellick.
And, I mean, the difference in Sudan, when my colleague
asked the question about special envoys, there has been a base
for the new special envoy to open up to see where the last one
left off, because we have consistently, for a decade or 15
years, have had a special envoy dealing with Sudan, which, I
mean, believe it or not, is as important an issue as the
Israel-Palestinian effort is.
This is the first special envoy that has been appointed in
7, 8, or 10 years. Bush II had no special envoy to deal with
the issue. But during that whole time, every President has had
a special envoy since I can remember, from Clinton to Bush, on
Sudan, whether it is Darfur or the CPA. And so there is no
excuse, you are not reinventing the wheel with our new special
envoy. You have volumes of information to review, and so you
don't have to recreate the will Senator George Mitchell was
recreating. He was starting from scratch. The envoys are here.
And so I just hope that the administration can get on the
same page. As we mentioned, President Obama said that the
decision on the expelling of the 13 international workers and
three NGOs should be reversed. Secretary Clinton said it should
be reversed. The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. said it should be
reversed. Yet the special envoy went and, in direct
contradiction to all of that, signed an agreement that said it
doesn't have to be reversed.
So one thing, for sure, is that there has to be one page as
it relates to the other one, because those guys will pick one
off against the other. Nontheless, you have Vice President Joe
Biden, who supported my resolution of a no-fly zone. He was the
only one in the Senate who said, if a plane went in to bomb
with those drones again, take the planes in, he is with them.
Now, you can't be any stronger than that. But, now, again,
where is the beef?
The meeting is the adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 8:12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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