Obama Administration Engages Sudanese Regime It Blasted

Obama Administration Engages Sudanese Regime It Blasted
By Stephanie McCrummen
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, September 28, 2009; 2:29 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802336.html?hpid=topnews


EL FASHER, Sudan -- The volatility of this East African nation -- from the Darfur conflict to the threat of renewed civil war in the south -- is becoming a test of how President Obama will reconcile a policy of engagement with earlier statements blasting a government he said had "offended the standards of our common humanity."

Top administration officials are scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss a major review of the United States' Sudan policy. But even as that document is being finalized, U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of one man, Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, who is pushing for normalizing relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted for war crimes.

Although Gration describes the approach as pragmatic and driven by a sense of urgency, his critics here and in the United States say it is dangerously, perhaps willfully, naive. Obama himself last year criticized a similar Bush administration proposal as a "reckless and cynical initiative" that would reward a regime with a history of broken promises.

During a recent five-day trip to Sudan, Gration heard from southern officials, displaced Darfuris, rebels and others who complained uniformly that he is being manipulated by government officials who talk peace even as they undermine it.

Still, at the end of the visit, Gration maintained a strikingly different perspective. He had seen signs of goodwill from the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, he said, and viewed many of the complaints as understandable yet unfair, knee-jerk reactions to a government he trusts is ready to change.

"We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration, who was appointed in March. "Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement." Gration's detractors say that his approach is based on a misunderstanding of how Bashir's ruling party works. John Prendergast, co-chairman of the Enough Project, a human rights group advocating tougher, multi-lateral sanctions against Sudan, said that Bashir's crowd responds only to pressure. "They do not respond to nice guys coming over and saying we have to be a good guest," he said. "They eat these people for dinner."

Adam Mudawi, a Sudanese human rights activist who has seen envoys come and go, put it more bluntly: "In six months, he'll find out," he said. "They are liars."

But in several interviews during the trip, Gration said that Sudanese government officials have not lied to him yet. He spoke of new realities in Darfur, where a brutal government counterinsurgency has given way to banditry and fighting among rebel factions and tribes. Although many say the government has orchestrated the chaos, Gration spreads the blame. Rebels have turned into criminal gangs and failed to unify for peace talks, he said. And many displaced Darfuris are dealing with "psychological stuff" that is leading to unhelpful mistrust of the government and preventing their return home, he said.

On the other hand, Gration said, the ruling party feels they've "not gotten a fair shake," and deserves credit lately for allowing some foreign aid groups to return after Bashir expelled others following his March indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur. Gration said that economic sanctions, first imposed against Sudan in 1997 for allegedly harboring terrorists, have thwarted development that would help marginalized parts of Sudan.

And as distasteful as it may seem, he said, engaging the ruling party is the only way to get a settlement in Darfur and avert a potentially more devastating war ahead of the semi-autonomous southern region's 2011 vote on independence.

"We have to relate," said Gration, a former fighter pilot who was raised in Congo, where his parents were missionaries. "We can't just whoop on 'em."

Ghazi Salahuddin, a close Bashir adviser, praised Gration for "trying to be even-handed." During a stop in this Darfur capital, Gration was greeted like a rock star by hundreds of cheering Bashir supporters in a conference hall plastered with posters of Bashir with Obama, poorly joined together using a computer.

Elsewhere during the trip, the reception was less festive.

In the southern capital of Juba, the region's President Salva Kiir Mayardit told Gration he is concerned that his approach is emboldening the ruling party to dictate unfavorable terms for the south's secession vote, such as demanding 75 percent turnout. Southerners have repeatedly accused the government of arming militias to create chaos ahead of the vote, and tribal violence has killed 2,000 people in the south this year.

But in his meeting with Kiir, Gration backed the ruling party's argument, saying it had legitimate concerns about the referendum. Gration urged southerners to trust the government that waged a brutal war against them for 20 years.

"It is the other side that can build trust," Kiir countered during a press conference. "How will you trust that person that was killing you yesterday?"

Worries Over Refugees' Return

In the western region of Darfur, leaders from several camps of displaced people told Gration that security has not improved. Ahmed Ali Osman said that 22 camp leaders had been arrested recently for resisting a government plan to tax a market inside a camp. Hawa Abdallah Mohamed said there was still "rape and intimidation and different types of harassment by pro-government armed elements."

And as Musa Tohlil addressed Gration, he wore a yellow patch over his left eye, saying he could not look at the envoy with both of them.

"We have a concern about you, sir, that you will go to Bashir and ask him what to do," he said.

Tohlil and others accused Gration of backing a government plan to force displaced Darfuris to return home, where many fear they will be attacked again. Leaders see the plan as a government attempt to erase the Darfur problem and destroy the rebels' political base.

Gration agreed that security must improve, and strongly denied backing forced returns. Then, in a mantra he repeated many times during the trip, he urged people to focus on preparing for an eventual return home that he said would be voluntary and "with dignity."

"We can't change injustices and atrocities that happened in previous years," he said, as the leaders took notes. "But we can change things for your children."

Gration delivered his message to a group of women in the Abu Shouk camp on the edge of town, a place that has transformed into a sprawl of straw-roofed huts and brick walls since the start of the conflict, which some experts estimate killed as many as 400,000 people, and left another 1.7 million displaced.

"We've been receiving visits from senior officials from the U.S.," a frustrated Majda al Faki Adam told Gration, who handed the women a glossy photo of the White House. "But we don't feel the impact of those visits."

Hoping for Change

Later, Gration met with aid workers who told him the government was still delaying their permits and access to the camps.

"I thought that problem was fixed," Gration said to the group, citing a deal he had struck with the government in Khartoum.

"It wasn't," an aid worker said.

Others complained about kidnappings in government-controlled areas, suggesting that the government was responsible.

But when he was asked whether he thought the ruling party was serious about security, Gration responded that he was hopeful.

"I personally have seen a lot of change. If you remember back on March 3, you guys were being called 'thieves and spies,' " he said, referring to the day Bashir booted out the foreign aid groups. "You don't hear that anymore."

On the last day of his trip, Gration flew in a helicopter to a rebel base and sat with the men in the shade of mango and guava trees. The rebels explained how the government was now backing a certain rebel faction in order to defeat another more powerful one.

Gration leaned in and asked exactly who was providing the support. The rebels told him but added that such distinctions were unimportant.

"In all cases, it's the government," a rebel leader said.

Later, stranded in a hot desert airport waiting for a dust storm to clear, Gration said he did not necessarily see some nefarious government plot behind all the complaints he had heard. Maybe the permit issues the aid workers raised represented a "disconnect" between Khartoum and low-level bureaucrats, he said. Maybe the rape and harassment the displaced people were speaking of were local issues, rather than part of some systematic government plan. Maybe the militias receiving arms in the south were getting them from some rogue government official.

"Up to now, the efforts I've seen, the changes I've been observing, make me say 'Yes, I'm willing to take a risk that I'll be betrayed' " Gration said. "And if that trust is violated, then I believe pressure should come. And it should come hard."