واشنطون الكبرى: صحيفة حريات تكرم إيرك ريفز و جون بريندرغاست 6/23/2012

Quote: TRANSCRIPT JERRY FOWLER: For this week’s episode of Voices on Genocide Prevention, we are bringing you excerpts from a debate held recently at the Holocaust Museum on the question of, “What to do about Darfur?” The speakers were two past guests on our program, John Prendergast, Senior Advisor to the International Crisis Group and the founder of the ENOUGH Campaign, and Alex de Waal, Program Director of the Social Sciences Research Council. The debate was moderated by Akwe Amosu, who is a Senior Policy Analyst for Africa at the Open Society Institute. In their opening statements, both John and Alex generally agreed on the need for a meaningful peace process for Darfur and the need to protect civilians, but it soon became clear that they differed about the relationship between peace and protection as well as the most effective way to bring pressure to bear on the Sudanese government and other actors in the crisis. We pick up the debate with John Prendergast speaking. JOHN PRENDERGAST: Where we disagree is on, let me answer your question, on the military issue, and that is, and it’s really -- as you saw, we both put forward peace and protection -- [you] need that. I brought a third “P” to the table, which is punishment. We need to bring leverage to the table. We do that, in my view, by creating a cost. One of the things that I think in the arsenal of things we need to bring to the table that gives us leverage to get peace and protection is concerted, responsible, transparent planning for potential military operations to undertake both ground and air with one objective: protect civilian life. What in the hell is this international responsibility to protect, if the situation deteriorates -- there are one million people who are beyond the reach of international humanitarian assistance right now. Yes, the assistance approach has been a remarkable success where it has been able to reach, but the United Nations, not me, says there are about a million people who they cannot reach, who the entire system can’t reach. Now, if that number significantly increases, if there are increasing attacks against displaced camps, whatever the scenario is, and we can talk about scenario-building, it would be incredibly irresponsible for military planners in NATO, the United Nations, the United States, the Brits, the European Union, not to be thinking about these scenarios, not to be planning for these scenarios, because if there is a large-scale cut-off in humanitarian assistance, as the government did many times in Southern Sudan, and hundreds of thousands of people died as a result, and Alex wrote books about it. If we can’t get a planning process that is underway, then we have failed. In Rwanda, we were totally, the world was totally unprepared to respond in a hundred days. We’ve had four years to prepare. I just believe that a transparent planning process would give us some additional leverage for the peace and protection, but it would also prepare us more responsibly if it needed to come to the point where we needed military force, to protect civilian life. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about planning for military operations, and nothing more. And it’s not for invasion purposes, it’s not regime change. That might be the best scenario, but I know there’s no realistic possibility of that right now. What I’m talking about is the international responsibility to protect and operationalizing that, and all I’m talking about right now is planning. There’s no straw man in that one. AKWE AMOSU: Alex, certainly answer those points, but also say something about what you think is the real possibility of getting any traction with the government in Khartoum. If you really believe that a political process is critical, and that it’s critical to a responsibility-to-protect mission succeeding, then what real possibility is there of that being achieved given the skepticism that John... ALEX DE WAAL: I think one of the major obstacles to that being achieved is that at the moment the Sudan government thinks that whatever it does it will get hit out of Washington, and that if the next U.S. presidential election brings a democrat to the White House, the old Clinton administration policy of regime change will come back. Therefore the thinking of the security chiefs in Khartoum is, why should we give an inch now if we’re just going to be hammered like Saddam Hussein. That is their reading of it, I assure you. Over the month after President Bush made his speech here and said to Khartoum, you have thirty days in which to stand up this heavy support package to the AU, to make progress, etcetera, there was a flurry of activity to try and do a short term search. Bring some UN personnel to Darfur, and the security chiefs in Khartoum said, this is a great idea, but what we think will happen is, we will do it, and then either Washington will say, this is just a game. You’re just bringing someone from South Sudan. You’re not really doing the business. We will have the sanctions slapped on us anyway, so why do we move? That level of distrust, of complete collapse of confidence, is a problem. It is a problem because many people, not all, within that government, believe that there is a regime change card that’s going to come out sooner or later, maybe at the end of next year. And I think that in order for us to get some traction we need to have, as you say, transparency in our objectives, and I think that the transparent objective should be consensual. It should be that we get the comprehensive peace agreement which has a mechanism for regime change. It’s called elections. Has elections on the table, make that the centerpiece. Make it clear that the escalation of different measures -- sanctions, etcetera, etcetera -- does not include military action. I think when you have that then I think we have the possibility of getting some serious traction. I think that the strongest argument that I’ve heard for prioritizing protection over peace is peace is a long-term process. Protection can be done immediately. The experience of Darfur actually suggests... JOHN PRENDERGAST: Who is making that argument? I’ve never heard it. You read that. I don’t see... ALEX DE WAAL: In various fora where I’ve said “let’s put the priority on the peace process,” an argument often comes from the floor saying “a peace process takes a long while. In the meantime, what we need is protection.” JOHN PRENDERGAST: So they’re saying do both? ALEX DE WAAL: Yes, but they’re saying... JOHN PRENDERGAST: They’re not saying prioritize. You’ve got to understand this, Alex. You’re misrepresenting what our view is, and it’s a collective view. We need to do both equally vigorously. You’re right. Too much energy has gone into protection. You’re absolutely right. Let me acknowledge, let me say it again. You are right. The problem is we’re not doing both at the same time and pushing them equally. I can’t imagine we disagree about that. ALEX DE WAAL: Okay, that’s good. And what I hope is that when ENOUGH and ICG come out with their reports you give as much attention to the detail of peace as you do to the protection. JOHN PRENDERGAST: The last 60-page report of ICG was the peace process. God, it was way too long. I’m sorry if we clogged up your in-boxes. AKWE AMOSU: Alex, sorry to interrupt you. The impression is being given that somehow if enough attention was given to the political process, the peace-making negotiation, that it would be fine. That all these various different parties would sit around the table and agree that we need to do something, and the only thing that’s missing right now is sufficient attention to do that, whereas in fact, as you know, and that we all know, [there are] shifting allegiences and very strong doubt within the government that there is any interest in it for them to make a deal of this kind, and so I can’t help feeling but you need to tell us how you believe it could be done. ALEX DE WAAL: The politics of getting peace has become more and more adversive the last couple of years. I mean, the reason a year ago why I advocated very strongly for the Darfur peace agreement although it was a flawed agreement, was [because] I felt this is one chance we have for getting the Darfurians properly into the peace process, making that work, getting them into the electoral process, civil politics, etcetera. Because I knew, I feared that it was going to get much more complicated, has got much more complicated. It’s got hideously more complicated in that you have involvement of neighboring countries. You have the fragmentation of the rebel movements, etcetera, etcetera. There is no quick fix now. But the lack of attention to the peace process has been absolutely shocking in this government, in the UN, frankly in the AU as well over the last year. What we can do is, we can’t get a quick fix on this peace process. This is going to take a long time. Now, it could have been done a year or eighteen months ago. It can’t be done quickly now. But that can at least get people towards the confidence that their interests are going to be looked after, which can allow for the type of mission design and strategic vision, strategic objective of a protection force so that it is not a fundamental threat to the interests of any of the communities in Darfur. At the moment, one of the reasons why the Sudan government and its allies in Darfur are really digging in their heels is they think that this force is a fundamental threat to them. They think it’s there to take [them] out. This may be a misreading. JOHN PRENDERGAST: Yes. ALEX DE WAAL: But a lot of reassurance needs to be done on that. JOHN PRENDERGAST: You’re right again. It’s a failure of diplomacy. Anyone in this room, anyone in the U.S. government, anyone in the world who is concerned about Darfur can have their opinions about what the right answer is. But ultimately the truth is, the Bush administration does not have a policy of regime change and they’re nowhere near that. They will never have a policy of regime change in Sudan. They have too many eggs in too many other baskets around the world to go mucking around in another place that isn’t as important. The Clinton administration, despite your best efforts to paint it that way, never had a policy of regime change. There was a great debate internally and it went up to principals a number of times but it was vetoed every time. No regime change. That’s not our policy. So there it is. That’s the facts. Now here’s the point. The failure of diplomacy is this, is the United States needs to be very clear to the government of Sudan, and the regime has been very clever, played the United States like a violin over the last six years. How they’ve done that is they’ve divided it up. They’ve made a whole effort go into trying to deal with the Southern peace deal, then a whole other effort go into Darfur, and there’s a whole other group of people that deal with the counter terrorism stuff. We have stovepipe policy here in the United States government. There’s no comprehensive Sudan policy. What needs to happen, and I’m very curious to see whether we might agree on this, is a very clear statement that counters this idea that the United States is out for regime change. Door number one and door number two. Danforth used to kind of talk about this, but he got it only about Southern Sudan. Door number one, you implement the CPA as you agreed to it. We don’t want… you don’t change it, don’t have to do anything more, just agree to the CPA and implement what you already agreed to. Participate in a credible peace process -- that’s the international community’s responsibility to get one together. Allow the hybrid force in which you already agreed to and then stonewalled, and continue to cooperate on counter terrorism. And by the way, you agreed to the elections, you’re absolutely right. Now let’s see a free and fair process unfold and that’s the slippery slope to regime transformation. You do those things and normalization, assistance, World Bank support, all the rest of it, an international integration, trade agreements, all the rest of it. If you continue to obstruct the deployment of a force in Darfur, if you continue to undermine efforts to get a peace process started, you can’t possibly argue that bombing the site of the rebel groups as they try to figure out a way to bring their issues cohesively is not trying to undermine the peace process. There just couldn’t be a more graphic illustration of that. If you continue to undermine efforts to implement the CPA, you continue to hold it as a threat over our ######### that you’re going to stop cooperating on CT issues, and if you undermine the electoral process, there are going to be consequences. We’re not trying to change the regime. We can’t get that agreement within the administration, couldn’t get it in the last administration. But there will be serious consequences, and here’s the escalating future that you face. Most of you will be indicted for war crimes in the ICC because we’re going to turn over information. Most of you are going to be subject to targeted sanctions. We’re going to put a spotlight on you, put scarlet letters on you, and say you people are war criminals and international pariahs and we’re going to push you out. That’s the outcome of door number two. Make your choice. AKWE AMOSU: Okay, Alex. A short rebuttal. ALEX DE WAAL: A question to you. Is credible threat of military action still on the table? I mean, do you have a disagreement with Joe Biden and Susan Rice? JOHN PRENDERGAST: But see, shockingly, maybe to you, those are not the people who are in charge in the United States right now. And for the people that are in charge in the United States right now, that is not a credible option. It is fine in my view to have voices in the community of people who care about Sudan to talk about different ideas. To push the envelope to say we need to do more, and if you boil down what Biden is saying, he’s talking about accelerated planning within NATO so that they can figure out what to do in the event that things happen. Now Susan and Tony have a different view about the way you could use strategic air strikes to influence the government of Sudan. I don’t happen to agree with that, but it’s a point of view that’s out on the table. Can we really… it’s shocking to me, frankly, Alex. You spend so much time talking about an Op-ed that Susan and Tony and Don Paine wrote, and don’t talk about John Bolton, who spent months up in the Security Council basically threatening something the United States didn’t have, which is, troops to sign up to 1706 to a UN military intervention, whatever word you want to use. He wasn’t using “non-consensual deployment of force” or whatever the code words were for this thing, and not one soldier was signed up for that. Not one country was going to send in troops. It was the height of hubris, and that, to me, is the thing we ought to be concerned about. Not people writing Op-eds in the Washington Post. That’s good, diversity. Let’s get the views on the table. If fact, if I was a mediator right now sitting at the table with the Sudanese government and rebels, I would like it if I had Frank Wolf behind me saying to the Chinese “we’re going to boycott the Olympics.” I would like it if I had Tony Lake behind me saying, “you know, we ought to start bombing in five minutes.” We need leverage. And you can go to the table with these guys and say “the barbarians are at the gate, what do you want to do? We don’t have policy. We’re not going to be in charge much longer, let’s get this thing done. Let’s work with the Chinese. Let’s work with the French. Let’s work with the United Nations Security Council and get this thing done. Let’s get a peace deal for Darfur, let’s get a credible security force and let’s move this thing.” I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a diversity of voices out there who are… if it’s used properly in the good cop/bad cop scenario, the oldest trick in the book in diplomacy. If it’s used properly by those that are responsible for doing the diplomacy and who are in charge of our policy right now, if they used that, they can actually make, I think, much bigger gains then they would if everyone was just quiet. If there was no activist community, if no one gave a rat’s ####### about what was going on to people in Darfur today. AKWE AMOSU: Alex, short statement and then I’m going to open it up. ALEX DE WAAL: I’m all for diversity of opinion. I simply wanted clarity on what your opinion was on this. JOHN PRENDERGAST: You got it, I hope. ALEX DE WAAL: I’m not sure I got complete clarity on exactly what it was you would be advocating if you were... JOHN PRENDERGAST: Can I do it again, Akwe? AKWE AMOSU: No. ALEX DE WAAL: ... if you were in the next administration or whatever. I simply want to make the point that the success of the North/South peace process, for me, was the clarity of the ultimate objective which was peace, a peace that the government of Sudan would accept even though it had many provisions that the government was really quite unhappy with. It was consistently pursued. It made the civilian protection an adjunct to the peace process. People were being killed in South Sudan during that peace process, and it was painful keeping that process on track. It was a multi-lateral thing, and at that time the U.S. had a lot more leverage on the global stage than it does now post-Iraq. I think we need to be realistic in that relatively modest objectives can be achieved in Sudan, and I think that the bellicose rhetoric that comes from some quarters in this city is sowing that confusion and I think that those who are influential in the advocacy community need to, as you are doing now, focus on really what is the center of gravity of this problem which is the political and the diplomatic. JERRY FOWLER: You have been listening to a debate on “What to do about Darfur?” with John Prendergast and Alex de Waal, moderated by Akwe Amosu. Next week, we will bring additional excerpts including questions from the audience that attended the debate. Tags: Sudan, Responses