---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eric Reeves <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 3:32 AM
Subject: Concerning civilians in Blue Nile and South Kordofan, an open
letter to Princeton Lyman, U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan
To: Eric Reeves <[email protected]>
November 5, 2012
Concerning civilians in Blue Nile and South Kordofan, an open letter to:
Princeton Lyman, U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan
Department of State
Washington, DC
Dear Ambassador Lyman:
I write to you to express my profound dismay at the character of Obama
administration responses to the various political and humanitarian
crises that continue to define greater Sudan. I wish in particular to
express my distress at the failure of the administration you represent
to respond with appropriate urgency and commitment to the vast and
still-growing humanitarian crises in South Kordofan and Blue Nile
states, as well as the consequent exodus of Sudanese refugees to South
Sudan. These immense and geographically wide-ranging humanitarian
crises must also include the more than 100,000 Dinka Ngok who fled
before and after Khartoum's military seizure of Abyei in May 2011—an
egregious violation of the Abyei Protocol that is key to the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
With deep regret, I must simply note for the moment the extraordinary
suffering and violence that have for almost a decade defined life for
most of Darfur's civilian population, particularly the more than 2
million civilians who remain internally displaced or refugees in
eastern Chad. Here again the Obama administration, including both
yourself and Ambassador Dane Smith, has failed badly in using U.S
resources and influence to end violence that is now escalating and to
help provide security for humanitarian operations that are steadily
contracting amidst deteriorating security.
The facts about the origin of the crises in South Kordofan and Blue
Nile are readily apparent, and indeed have been for many months; these
facts make clear that your own initial response to the risk of a
massive civilian catastrophe was excessively skeptical and dilatory.
I discuss here in some detail that response as it emerged in the wake
of Khartoum's initiation of military hostilities in South Kordofan on
June 5, 2011. The atrocity crimes that began in the immediate wake of
these well-planned hostilities were directed overwhelmingly against
Nuba tribal groups, particularly in and around Kadugli during the
early weeks of conflict. And yet for your part, Ambassador Lyman, you
were neither sufficiently responsive to the evidence at hand nor
willing to acknowledge the well-documented crimes, even as the
evidence steadily accumulated and finally became overwhelming by
mid-July 2011.
In negotiations on these and other issues with the National Islamic
Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum, I believe that you
have chosen the path of expediency. My conviction derives in large
part from your wholly untenable characterizations of the potential for
change within this regime. Asked by the respected Arabic news outlet
Asharq Al-Awsat about the "Arab Spring," you said last year:
"Frankly, we do not want to see the ouster of the [Sudanese] regime,
nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via
constitutional democratic measures.” (March 21, 2011)
I believe the premise here—that this regime has revealed a potential
willingness to "carry out reform via constitutional democratic
measures"—is simply preposterous and, further, that you are quite
aware that there is not the slightest historical justification for
such an assumption. The men who make up the National Islamic
Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime have successfully
resisted all democratic change for 23 years. In the end, your views
as expressed in the Asharq Al-Awsat interview, and subsequently, have
served only to sustain the pretense that the U.S. is diplomatically
engaged with an interlocutor who places value on something other than
ruthless self-preservation.
Moreover, your statement was made at a time (March 2011) when it had
become unambiguously clear that Khartoum was on the verge of seizing
Abyei militarily. You and the administration you represent did
nothing of significance to warn Khartoum off its May 21, 2011 military
seizure of Abyei; this failure, along with the absence of any clear
signal from the rest of the international community, was all that the
regime needed to proceed with what constituted an outrageous violation
of the CPA, one that risked resumption of all-out war.
On October 4, 2011, during Congressional testimony, you declared in
characterizing the possibilities for political change in Sudan:
“[The government in Khartoum has] the opportunity to address the
fundamental issues that have driven conflict in Sudan for many years,
issues of power and wealth sharing, human rights, and the role of
democratic institutions such as political parties and the judiciary. A
broad-based national dialogue on these issues, and a clearly defined
process for participatory development of the new constitution would
offer the promise of a new day in Sudan—one in which all parts of the
country, and all of its people, would benefit. It is the participatory
nature of such a national effort that is most important, and such an
enterprise must reach all sectors of Sudanese society, including civil
society actors, workers, students, and representatives from all of
Sudan’s diverse populations."
Again, suggesting that this regime might sanction "a broad-based
national dialogue" and "participatory development of the new
constitution" is sheer fantasy. Leaving aside the sham national
"elections" of 2010, by the time of your testimony Khartoum had seized
Abyei militarily and has subsequently repeatedly claimed the region as
part of the north, refusing to countenance or accept in any way the
self-determination referendum for the region guaranteed by the CPA.
Abyei should be the test case for any commitment by Khartoum to what
you describe as "dialogue" and the "addressing [of] fundamental issues
that have driven conflict in Sudan for many years." And yet the regime
has given no sign that it wishes the Abyei crisis to end, believing in
fact that the unsettled status of the region still provides
substantial diplomatic leverage. No one should be surprised by
Khartoum's refusal to accept the recommendation on Abyei made by the
African Union mediators in the most recent Addis Ababa agreement
(September 27, 2012)—or by the subsequent refusal (November 1) of the
regime to abide by the determination of the African Union Peace and
Security Council that the Abyei proposal, which includes provision for
a self-determination referendum, should be accepted, and that any
further negotiations must be completed within six weeks of this
decision. More recent pronouncements in the regime-controlled media
reject outright the AU proposal on Abyei.
Failure in later 2010 and early 2011 by Obama administration officials
and representatives—including Senator Kerry, Secretary of State
Clinton, and former special envoy Gration—ensured that Abyei would
become not simply the most serious military violation of the CPA, but
that it would inevitably spark further large-scale violence.
Moreover, on assuming your present position, you did nothing to
correct the disastrous diplomatic course set by General Gration and
others. With a grim predictability, the Khartoum regime seized Abyei
militarily, and two weeks later began hostilities in South Kordofan.
The hostilities began because the regime felt no serious international
pressure to withdraw from Abyei, or substantial criticism of the
fraudulent election of Ahmed Haroun to be state governor. As you are
of course aware, Haroun has been indicted by the International
Criminal Court on multiple counts of crimes against humanity and war
crimes in Darfur. Contriving his election in South Kordofan was
transparently a means for Khartoum to ensure that Haroun's genocidal
skills were fully redeployed. In turn, the hostilities initiated by
Khartoum would soon spread to Blue Nile (September 1, 2011), and this
violence—with Abyei as its clear point of origin—has caused untold
suffering, a great many civilian casualties, displaced as many as one
million people, and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of
starvation.
I am deeply troubled not only by your views of Khartoum, and your
failure to anticipate the violence that would follow the military
seizure of Abyei, but by your assessment of agreements to which the
regime nominally commits itself. You declared in your Congressional
testimony of October 2011, for example, that the June 28, 2011
"Framework Agreement" between Khartoum and the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement/Army-North "created a process to address political
and security arrangements for the Two Areas [South Kordofan and Blue
Nile]; it was a welcome step forward and it is vital that the parties
return to the principles of it."
But in fact your characterization had long been completely overtaken
by events: disingenuously, you made no mention of the fact that three
days after this "Agreement" was signed by senior presidential advisor
Nafie Ali Nafie, President Omar al-Bashir harshly renounced it, and
committed firmly to a military solution for Khartoum's new "southern
problems"—those in South Kordofan, but which would soon extend to Blue
Nile, as former governor Malik Agar, I, and a number of others had
strenuously warned:
"'[Al-Bashir] directed the armed forces to continue their military
operations in South Kordofan until a cleansing of the region is over,'
SUNA quoted Bashir as telling worshippers during Friday [July 1, 2011]
prayers."
These and subsequent developments seemed beyond your ability to
control or even to assess honestly, and certainly don't square with
your claim that negotiations between Khartoum and the SPLM/A-North had
"created a process to address political and security arrangements for
the Two Areas."
Indeed, the Sudan Tribune reported on September 28—a week before your
Congressional testimony—an especially revealing speech by al-Bashir,
shortly after his after the regime had initiated hostilities in Blue
Nile (September 1, 2011)
"Al-Bashir also reiterated his rejection to the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement-North’s demands for negotiations through a third
party, saying his government is done negotiating with 'outlaws'
abroad. 'There will be no more negotiations abroad…and we will not
allow international organizations to intervene under the blanket of
humanitarian assistance. Any force that wants to oppose [the
government] and impose protocols of Khawajat [an Arabic word used to
refer to Westerners] will not be allowed to do so,' he told the
crowd."
It would be difficult to imagine a more definitive rebuttal of your claim,
Ambassador Lyman, about the "Framework Agreement" of June 28,
2011—that it somehow "created a process to address political and
security arrangements for the Two Areas." Certainly al-Bashir has
been as good as his word, and nine months after an international
humanitarian access agreement for reaching civilians trapped in
rebel-held territory was jointly proposed by the UN, the African
Union, and the Arab League—and accepted immediately by the
SPLA/M-North—Khartoum continues to stall and prevaricate even as
people die from malnutrition and associated diseases.
You seem to have dismissed al-Bashir's remarks (reported February 2012
by al-Jazeera and widely thereafter): "President Bashir said last year
that if the Nuba did not accept the results of the Southern Kordofan
election [of Haroun], 'We will force them back into the mountains and
prevent them from having food, just as we did before.'" Al-Bashir is
of course referring to the extermination campaign against the Nuba in
the 1990s, during which Khartoum embargoed all food aid to the Nuba
Mountains. Here I feel obliged to recall your earlier, and again
profoundly misguided assessment of Khartoum and its ambitions in the
Nuba (June 28, 2011). In response to a question about whether the
Nuba Mountains might become a “new Darfur,” you said:
"I don’t think so for two reasons. One because the Nuba Mountain
people are fighting back and I don’t think the North is capable of
dislodging large numbers of people on an ethnic basis from the Nuba
Mountains. That’s the reality on the ground. Second, I’m not sure
that’s the objective of the government, though local commanders may
have a different point of view."
I and a great many others found this assessment astonishingly
ignorant: painfully silent about the history of the Nuba,
uncomprehending of what were already the clear ambitions of the
Khartoum regime, and simply dishonest about the power of relentless
aerial attacks to create a vast agricultural and ultimately
humanitarian and refugees crisis. The views you expressed in this
interview, at a critical moment, have been so thoroughly rebuked by
subsequent—and entirely foreseeable—events, that I wonder how you can
in good conscience continue in your role as special envoy for Sudan.
The more so since when you were asked in late June about the reports
of ethnically-targeted atrocity crimes that had already emerged
repeatedly and authoritatively from South Kordofan, you would say
only:
"We certainly have reports of [atrocity crimes]. Because we don’t have
a presence there, we haven’t been able to investigate it fully. There
are certainly reports of targeted killings. There are some reports
from the other side also. What we’ve asked for is a full
investigation."
This statement prevaricates about what the U.S. knew; moreover, in
casually blaming the SPLA-N ("There are some reports from the other
side also") in the same paragraph that you speak of reports about
massive atrocity crimes committed by Khartoum's regular and militia
forces, you provide one of the most disgraceful examples to date of
the diplomatically disabling "moral equivalence" that prevails within
the Obama administration.
To the follow-up question ("By whom [should the investigation be
conducted]?") you responded glibly: "Well, by the UN would be the
best. The UN presence has not been sufficient to get out and stop this
or to investigate it." Yet the U.S. has done nothing to push
effectively for such a UN investigation. Moreover, you knew full well
as you spoke that there was no political will at the UN to mount such
an investigation or even sustain a UN presence in Kadugli—either in
the Security Council, the Secretariat, or the UN High Commission for
Human Rights. No one, including you, offered more than lip service to
the idea of serious investigation—a telling diplomatic irresolution
whose implications were not lost on Khartoum.
I am just as troubled by your comments of June 16, 2011—eleven days
after the killing began in Kadugli—claiming that the United States
"doesn’t have enough information on the ground to call the campaign
'ethnic cleansing.'" But contemporaneous reports—from civilians
speaking with news organizations and to expatriate groups—should have
been both chilling and compelling. Nuba were being systematically
stopped at checkpoints grimly similar to those once seen in Rwanda.
One aid worker who had recently escaped from South Kordofan told
McClatchy News, "Those [Nuba] coming in are saying, 'Whenever they see
you are a black person, they kill you.'" Another Nuba aid worker
reported that an Arab militia leader made clear that their orders were
simple: to "just clear." Yet another Nuba resident of Kadugli told
Agence France-Presse that he had been informed by a member of the
paramilitary Popular Defense Forces that they had been provided plenty
of weapons and ammunition, and a standing order: "He said that they
had clear instructions: just sweep away the rubbish. If you see a
Nuba, just clean it up .… He told me he saw two trucks of people with
their hands tied and blindfolded, driving out to where diggers were
making holes for graves on the edge of town."
A June 10, 2011 Human Rights Watch report spoke of "widespread abuses
including extrajudicial killings, arrests, and looting and destruction
of civilian property such as private homes and churches":
"Credible reports received by Human Rights Watch indicate SAF soldiers
and Popular Defense Forces, a militia force, deployed in large numbers
in Kadugli and other towns, targeted a number of civilians they
suspected to be SPLM members. The forces carried out house-to-house
searches and set up checkpoints, where they stopped civilians trying
to flee the violence and killed some of them, according to witnesses."
Human Rights Watch also cited "credible reports from the ground
indicat[ing] that military personnel arrested people who had sought
refuge inside the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) compound, in violation
of international humanitarian law." Eventually some 7,000 Nuba
civilians were removed from UN protection by Khartoum's security
forces; there has been no accounting for these people sixteen months
after they disappeared:
"The United Nations said Tuesday it was concerned about the fate of
7,000 Sudanese civilians last seen being forced by authorities to
leave the protection of a U.N. compound in the tense border region
between the North and South." (Associated Press [Geneva], June 28,
2011)
We have certainly heard nothing from you or the Obama administration
about the fate of these 7,000 human beings, forcibly removed from UN
custody by security forces (many disguised as Red Crescent workers).
At the same time, mass gravesites—capable of holding many thousands of
dead bodies—were identified by the Satellite Sentinel Project, using
grimly unambiguous satellite photography published on July 13 and
August 17. And yet you greeted these indisputable findings with
unwarranted and expedient skepticism, even as there is no evidence
that you seriously sought confirmation or disconfirmation from U.S.
intelligence assets. Evidence continued to pour in throughout the
summer, both from the ground and from further satellite imagery.
Indeed, yet further confirmation of the mass graves had come from a
July 1 report released by the International Federation of the Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies:
[T]he Sudan Red Crescent Society, reportedly acting on instructions
from the Government of South Kordofan, has been actively collecting
dead bodies in Kadugli town, and had at least 415 body bags and 2,000
plastic tarps recently transferred to it from the IFRC prior to the
fighting in June. By the end of June, the SRCS was publicly saying it
needed more body bags."
Are the implications of such a statement—that large numbers of body
bags were being deployed to Kadugli before June 5, 2011—not utterly
clear?
In early July a leaked UN human rights report, based on what it was
possible to investigate from the ground in Kadugli during June 2011,
offered an extraordinary indictment of Khartoum's brutal actions, and
yet there is no evidence that it had any impact on either your
thinking or public pronouncements. Are we to believe that you were
not aware of this report—widely available in early July—and its
devastating findings? It remains shocking reading, the more so given
the urgency of the recommendations by the UN human rights reporters
who compiled this very substantial catalog of war crimes and crimes
against humanity. UN monitoring had revealed "aerial bombardments
resulting in destruction of property, forced displacement, significant
loss of civilian lives, including of women, children and the elderly;
abductions; house-to-house searches; arbitrary arrests and detentions;
targeted killings; summary executions; reports of mass graves;
systematic destruction of dwellings and attacks on churches."
And the assignment of responsibility to Khartoum and its paramilitary
forces is explicit:
"Monitoring has also revealed that the SAF, paramilitary forces and
Government security apparatus have engaged in violent and unlawful
acts against UNMIS, in violation of International Conventions and the
Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) including: verified incidents of
shelling in close proximity to UN property, resulting in damage;
summary execution of a UN national staff member; assaults on physical
integrity of UN staff; arbitrary arrest and detention of UN Staff and
associated human rights violations including ill treatment amounting
to torture; harassment, intimidation, and obstruction of freedom of
movement; and intrusion on UN premises including the UNMIS Protective
Perimeter established to protect civilians internally displaced as a
result of the conflict. The international community must hold the
Government of Sudan accountable for this conduct and insist that those
responsible be arrested and brought to justice."
Yet even as evidence confirming atrocities in Kadugli and throughout
South Kordofan, and subsequently Blue Nile, grew rapidly throughout
the summer of 2011—and continues to grow—you felt no need to offer a
correction to your earlier and clearly untenable skepticism about what
was occurring in Kadugli and South Kordofan.
Inevitably your subsequent Congressional testimony (October 4, 2011)
reeked of hypocrisy:
… accountability for human rights violations that have occurred in
[South Kordofan and Blue Nile] is critical to a lasting resolution of
the conflict. We will continue to push for a credible, independent
investigation of violations of human rights that will contribute to
efforts to bring those responsible to account. Unfortunately, to date,
there has been insufficient support in the UN Security Council for
such an investigation.
This was nothing more than political "boilerplate." Neither you nor
the Obama administration has done anything in the interim to move
forward with any meaningful investigation. Even if conducted only by
means of the extremely high-resolution satellite photography available
to the U.S. Government (and not to groups such as Satellite Sentinel
Project), much could be definitively established. Such satellite
investigation has clearly not been a priority for you or the Obama
administration. Why not?
On the humanitarian crisis in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, you have
also spoken with a painful lack of urgency that has certainly
registered in Khartoum, working to assure the regime's génocidaires
that they would face no real pressure to halt deliberate, large-scale
civilian destruction. Over the past seventeen months, this
destruction has included ground assaults on Nuba villages and food
stores, and more broadly a relentless campaign of aerial bombardment
meant to destroy agricultural production and which has been the major
instrument of civilian displacement—then and now. Yet in your
Congressional testimony of October 4, 2011 you would say only: "We
believe a major humanitarian crisis may be developing in Southern
Kordofan and potentially in Blue Nile."
“May be developing”? "Potentially"? Had you not read the weekly
reports from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs? Did you not listen to the many reports from the ground in
South Kordofan and Blue Nile—from intrepid journalists, from a few
courageous humanitarians, and from countless Sudanese witnesses? You
yourself cited conservative figures indicating that some 400,000
people had already been displaced at the very moment of traditional
food harvesting. Is this merely a potential “humanitarian crisis”?
This sort of understatement is wholly inappropriate in the context of
what was clearly—at the time—a “major humanitarian crisis,” one that I
and many others predicted would grow in scope by the day as Khartoum
continued its military actions.
In the past year the humanitarian crisis has indeed continued to grow
rapidly, forcing more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees to flee from Blue
Nile and South Kordofan to South Sudan and in some cases Ethiopia.
Conditions in the camps, especially those in Upper Nile, have been
extremely poor and many refugees have died—either from the arduous
flight itself or from subsequent dehydration and malnutrition. By
early October 2011 the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
declared that harvests would "largely fail" because of the violence
Khartoum had initiated and purposefully directed at civilians and
agricultural production. By December 2011 the Famine Early Warning
Systems Network (FEWSNet) was predicting "near-famine conditions" in
the Nuba Mountains by the following March (2012).
According to present UN figures from the UN High Commission for
Refugees (UNHCR) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA), approximately 1 million people have been made
refugees, are internally displaced in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, or
are acutely distressed for lack of food and primary medical care.
Humanitarian aid workers have repeatedly expressed fears that another
large wave of refugees would move southward as the dry season settles
in and travel once again becomes possible. John Ging, OCHA's
operations director for South Sudan, recently warned that the crisis
is far from over, or even diminishing, declaring that "we anticipate
up to 350,000 Sudanese will be hosted in South Sudan by the end of
2013." This would roughly double the present refugee population,
putting even greater strains on relief operations that are already
stretched to the breaking point.
Your efforts to respond to a humanitarian crisis of these proportions
have been scandalously inadequate, and there are no plans in evidence
to create the critically needed humanitarian corridors, especially to
Blue Nile. Nor have you made progress in creating international
pressure on Khartoum to accept the February 2012 access proposal from
the UN, African Union, and Arab League: Khartoum remains obdurate in
preventing virtually all humanitarian access to the most critically
endangered populations.
I have, it should be said, encountered reports from various
confidential sources suggesting that the U.S. may be facilitating some
surreptitious food deliveries into South Kordofan. How
"surreptitious" seems an open question, given the number of people who
evidently know about this assistance, but let us be clear: such
assistance is woefully inadequate. Humanitarian logisticians
estimate that roughly 1,700 metric tons of food per month are required
per 100,000 of population in need. Using the current UN figures for
South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and not including Upper Nile and Unity,
that means roughly 3,000 tons per week are required. Nothing
approaching this kind of relief assistance is or has been provided,
and if it were, Khartoum would certainly be aware. Moving 3,000 tons
of food per week anywhere in Sudan is a daunting transport and
logistical task; during the past rainy season it would have been quite
impossible. Obviously there can be no public account or even
acknowledgement of such assistance, though privately substantial
claims are apparently made; even so, the emphasis must be on the gross
inadequacy of U.S. and international efforts to date.
Here the very recent (October 18) humanitarian assessment by the
Enough Project makes clear just how inadequate the response has been:
the Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate is at the emergency threshold
in the Nuba Mountains; 81.5 percent of families survive on one meal a
day (the figure was 9.5 percent last year and 0 percent the year
before); Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) is over 3 percent in all
population groups sampled. SAM is a critical medical condition and
without therapeutic and supplementary feeding, most children and even
adults will die. The results of the daring Enough assessment were
carefully reviewed by the Johns Hopkins University School of Public
Health before publication. Moreover, the Enough findings have been
confirmed by constrained, localized, but still revealing UN
humanitarian assessments, including a finding that "the levels of
'severe' hunger reported in Western Kadugli are particularly high,
hovering at 85.4 percent for resident households and 87.5 percent for
displaced households." Most respondents felt food security was
deteriorating.
This is intolerable, Ambassador Lyman: Khartoum is attempting nothing
less that the slow extermination of the African peoples of the Nuba
and Blue Nile. To date your efforts and those of the Obama
administration have been dismayingly dilatory and inadequate,
acquiescing before Khartoum's claim that national sovereignty confers
upon this illegal regime the right to starve its civilians to death.
Given your belief that the Khartoum regime is capable of "carrying out
reform via constitutional democratic measures," it is difficult to see
how you can respond to the viciously survivalist instincts that guide
this regime or to its determination to use all necessary
measures—however brutal, even genocidal—to ensure that it maintains
its tyranny. More fundamentally, I fail to see how you can continue
to function effectively as U.S. special envoy for Sudan in any new
Obama administration.
Sincerely,
Eric Reeves
Smith College
author, Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan,
2007 – 2012
[email protected]
413-585-3326
www.CompromisingWithEvil.org
www.sudanreeves.org
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