It's a looming tragedy inside a failure wrapped in betrayal.
Time is short. The dangers are rising. The cost in human suffering will be unbearable.
Sudan's civil war, which raged for more years than not over the last six decades, claimed more than 2 million lives and displaced at least 4 million innocent people. In the south, civilians were targeted, villages were burned to the ground, rape was a weapon of war, and crimes against humanity were government policy. It was horrific.
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In large part thanks to U.S. leadership, the war ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that was signed on Jan. 9, 2005. This complex deal addressed a myriad of thorny issues and set a road map to a 2011 referendum in which the south will vote to determine whether it will remain part of Sudan or become an independent country. But now, through a combination of northern belligerence and the naiveté of U.S. President Barack Obama and his advisors, we are once again staring into the abyss -- as the administration's desperate appeal to Khartoum for forbearance in exchange for its removal from the state sponsors of terrorism list makes clear.
While the 2005 agreement ended the worst violence, lingering hostility and flashes of fighting have continued. As the scheduled referendum approaches, the drum beats of war grow louder. Both sides are girding themselves for renewed conflict.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. The six-year cooling-off period between the CPA and the referendum was intended to give the north the opportunity to make unity an attractive alternative to southern independence in 2011. Instead, the North continues to marginalize the south, denying full political participation and perpetuating economic and other forms of discrimination.
The north also failed to live up to many of its other CPA commitments. It did not disarm and demobilize the Arab militias it used as proxy warriors against the south. It did not create the fully integrated north/south army and police units. It did not hold national and local elections on time or in a free and fair manner. It has not provided transparent accounting of oil revenue. It did not live up to commitments to accept agreed-upon procedures to demarcate contested border areas. And the north has provided arms to Arab tribes and incited violence that last year claimed more than 1,000 more south Sudanese lives. The list goes on.
Furthermore, the north has failed repeatedly to meet deadlines to arbitrate issues related to the referendum such as citizenship, freedom of movement, and treaties. It was slow to form the referendum commission and failed to set up the machinery to hold the referendum on time. Many observers believe current talks on these issues are part of a well-established pattern by northern leaders of setting up elaborate and complicated forums for discussing, deliberating, and eventually denying commitments they never intended to honor in the first place. Meanwhile, their leverage grows.
In 2007 and 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama, along with his colleagues Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, harshly criticized George W. Bush's administration for engaging with Khartoum. They advocated a no-fly zone for Darfur and called for using sticks against the government. Susan Rice, now his U.N. ambassador, even advocated boots on the ground. Those bold proclamations -- untethered to responsibility -- were a promise and commitment to the Sudanese and to the millions of American activists who have made Sudan's quest for peace their own.
In May 2008, candidate Obama joined in a statement in which he demanded "that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end and that the CPA be fully implemented." He went further to "condemn the Sudanese government's consistent efforts to undermine peace and security, including its repeated attacks against its own people." He pledged to "pursue these goals with unstinting resolve."
I am not so cynical as to believe this tough language was just "politics as usual" without any conviction. I am sure they were sincere in their prescriptions and promises at the time. But those have not been pledges redeemed. They have been betrayed.
On March 4, 2009, after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan's president, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Obama did not even go before the cameras to applaud this step to end impunity. Instead, the White House made only a perfunctory statement. Just under a month later, the president's special envoy to Sudan, J. Scott Gration, got off a plane in Khartoum and said, "I love Sudan." He returned from his first trip to Darfur and proclaimed that it wasn't as bad as he had expected.
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