[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
U.S. POLICY TOWARD SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH,
GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 26, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-178
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida--resigned 1/27/ GRACE MENG, New York
14 deg. LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and
International Organizations
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
The Honorable Donald Booth, Special Envoy to Sudan and South
Sudan, U.S. Department of State................................ 6
Mr. John Prendergast, co-founder, Enough Project................. 25
Walid Phares, Ph.D., co-secretary general, Transatlantic
Legislative Group on Counter Terrorism......................... 35
Mr. Adotei Akwei, managing director for government relations,
Amnesty International USA...................................... 56
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Donald Booth: Prepared statement................... 10
Mr. John Prendergast: Prepared statement......................... 30
Walid Phares, Ph.D.: Prepared statement.......................... 39
Mr. Adotei Akwei: Prepared statement............................. 59
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 72
Hearing minutes.................................................. 73
The Honorable Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress
from the State of New Jersey, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International
Organizations: Material submitted for the record............... 74
U.S. POLICY TOWARD SUDAN AND
SOUTH SUDAN
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health,
Global Human Rights, and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:34 p.m., in
room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order and good
afternoon. I, first of all, want to apologize to all, including
our distinguished witnesses. We did have a series of votes and,
unfortunately, you can never plan for that. So I do apologize.
Good afternoon. Today's hearing is very important, and not
only because the United States Government has been involved in
Sudan and its various crises for the past three decades.
Many of us first became interested in Sudan in the 1980s
because of the persistent reports of modern-day slavery in
which northern Arabs enslaved African southerners.
I would point out parenthetically I held my first hearing
when I was chairman of the subcommittee that dealt with human
rights after we took control in 1994 on slavery in Sudan and we
had freed slaves come and testify and it was a very telling
experience to hear them tell of the atrocities that they had
suffered.
My office also more recently helped to bring one of the
unfortunate people who had been enslaved to America for medical
treatment after he was freed, and his story affected me deeply
once again.
Ker Deng had been kidnapped into slavery while still a
child, and while he was an adolescent the man who held him in
bondage rubbed peppers in his eyes, blinded him, and later
abandoned him.
Ker is studying here in the United States thanks to his
benefactor, Ellen Ratner, and is awaiting a second operation to
help him recover at least some of his eyesight. The question
always is posed how many other Sudanese will never have that
opportunity or even achieve their freedom. Ker's mother has
never been freed from bondage.
We began supporting southern Sudanese efforts to end the
oppression from the North in the mid-1990s. In 2005, we
helped--the United States did--both North and South achieve the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end this long civil war and
provide the steps for a mutually beneficial peace and
productive coexistence.
Unfortunately, the rebellion in the Darfur region
distracted from efforts to fulfill that agreement. Khartoum's
alliance with the Janjaweed Arabs resulted in mass killings and
displacement in Darfur.
An estimated 1.9 million people were displaced, more than
240,000 people were forced into neighboring Chad, and an
estimated 450,000 people--nobody knows for sure what the real
number is but it is extraordinarily high--were killed.
At the time, Congress insisted that this was a genocide.
Eventually, the Bush administration concurred, but the United
Nations declined to go so far in their terminology, calling
what happened in Darfur crimes against humanity.
A peace agreement between the main rebel force in Darfur
and the Government of Sudan was signed in May 2006 but it did
not last.
In fact, no sustained agreement has been reached between
the government and Darfur rebel groups partly because these
groups have continued to split and form offshoots but also
because the Khartoum Government has not appeared willing to
resolve the Darfur situation constructively.
In June 2005, the International Criminal Court initiated an
investigation that resulted in arrest warrants for Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir and three other government officials
and militia leaders.
None of these warrants have been served, none of the four
have been taken into custody and the Government of Sudan has
refused to cooperate with the ICC. Meanwhile, the CPA remained
unimplemented.
In January 2011, South Sudan, which had been a semi-
autonomous region of the country since the signing of the CPA,
voted in a referendum on whether to remain part of Sudan or
become independent.
Having been marginalized and mistreated for decades, it was
not surprising that southern Sudanese voted overwhelmingly, at
the level of 98.8 percent, to become an independent nation.
On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became the world's newest
nation. However, these unimplemented elements of the CPA would
bedevil the new country from its birth. A referendum in the
disputed Abyei region and consultations on the status of
Sudan's Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States were never
completed.
In May 2011, Sudanese Armed Forces assumed control of the
towns in Abyei, quickly forcing at least 40,000 residents to
flee. Within weeks, fighting spread to Southern Kordofan and
Blue Nile States as Khartoum sought to crush the Sudan People's
Liberation Army-North, which had fought with southerners in the
north-south civil war.
Northern attacks on residents in those areas continued
unabated. Last year, Sudan and South Sudan engaged in a
conflict over oil supplies from South Sudan involving
allegations that Khartoum was undercounting the level of oil
flow to cheat South Sudan, as well as South Sudan's seizure of
the oil town of Heglig.
Again, this dispute was largely the result of unresolved
issues from the CPA. South Sudan continues to be engaged in a
conflict that began last December, despite a cessation of
hostilities agreement.
Thousands have been killed. Tens of thousands have been
displaced. Exact figures are constantly shifting because this
conflict continues. I will soon introduce a resolution offering
a sequenced approach to reaching a lasting solution to this
newest crisis.
This conflict also is the result of too little attention
paid to the warning signs because of a preoccupation with one
of the many other crises in the two Sudans.
Over the last three decades, I and other members of the
subcommittee and subcommittee chairs have held numerous,
numerous hearings on Sudan and, of course, we have all traveled
there.
Mr. Wolf, who is joining us from the Appropriations
Committee, was there back in 1989, I think even before that,
but certainly in 1989 and has been a steadfast voice and a
power in trying to bring relief to that troubled region.
In fact, too often, however, each crisis is seen as a
problem unto itself when these things break out, unrelated to
other issues, then we move on to other things, it seems, even
notwithstanding the good work of our Special Envoy.
In fact, successive administrations and Congresses,
advocacy groups, and humanitarian organizations have focused so
much on individual crises and issues that no one has created a
panoramic view which shows us all these individual crises and
how they interrelate with each other.
This stovepiping of government policy and public attention
and focus and prioritization has meant that long-term solutions
have been neglected while short-term eruptions have had to be
dealt with.
In reality, the two Sudans are inexorably linked and no
crisis in either can be resolved successfully without taking
into account the entire Sudan-South Sudan panorama.
We must end this cycle of myopic policy formulation based
on the crisis of the moment and adopt a longer-term, holistic
vision of what the best interests of the people of Sudan and
South Sudan demand--indeed, what would be in the best interests
of the entire region.
As we learned in our subcommittee hearing on the Sahel
crisis last May, Islamic extremists have their sights set on
making inroads wherever there is conflict, across the belt of
Central Africa, stretching from Senegal to Sudan and beyond.
Continuing unrest in the two Sudans only serves to provide
training grounds or bases of operation for terrorists.
Hardened ethnic conflicts can spread to long-term enmity
that no peace agreement alone can resolve. Hopefully, this will
not be the case in South Sudan, but that conflict is headed in
that ominous direction.
Two years ago, I held a meeting in my office with
representatives from Sudan's Nubian, Darfuri, Beja, and Nuba
communities, who all believe that Khartoum is engaged in a
long-term effort to exterminate non-Arab Sudanese.
Have we missed such a pernicious campaign while hopping
from one crisis to another as each appeared? The purpose of
today's hearing is to examine current U.S. policy toward Sudan
and South Sudan to see how we can unify our policy in order to
more effectively end long-term running tragedies that appear to
get worse despite all the attention to which we pay them.
This involves more than what the Department of State and
other executive agencies do and even what Congress can do.
Advocacy and humanitarian organizations also must join the
government in seeing the forest and not just the trees, so to
speak.
And let me also say the importance of engaging the faith
community remains a very important component if we are to
bring, or help bring, a lasting and sustainable peace to that
troubled part of the world.
I would like to now yield to my friend and colleague, Ms.
Bass, for opening comments.
Ms. Bass. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for today's hearing and
as always thank you for your leadership on this issue.
I want to thank our witnesses today. I had the pleasure of
working with the U.S. Special Envoy before he was the Special
Envoy but when he was the Ambassador to Ethiopia. So it is a
pleasure to see you here at the committee today.
The U.S. engagements in the Sudan, government officials in
both diplomacy and development have faced tremendous challenges
in devising holistic and unified approaches to grappling with
each nation's concerns.
These include, of course, issues of governance, human
rights, international justice and the seemingly intractable
conflicts that continue with tragic consequences in the Sudan
and South Sudan.
The context of the post-9/11 world heightened these
challenges as our Government increasingly focused on regional
stability in East Africa and the counterterrorism cooperation
of regional governments including the Government of Sudan.
In dealing with these varied obstacles, U.S. foreign policy
efforts have often been crafted to address specific issues
which in some instances raises the question of our approach and
my question as to whether or not it has actually been
problematic.
For example, focusing on the status of Abyei, the conflicts
in Darfur and the Blue Nile, often at the expense of broader
comprehensive approaches which seek redress of the root causes
of conflict in South Sudan and in Sudan. So addressing the
crisis individually as opposed to looking at both nations
together.
The separation of Sudan and South Sudan--these root causes
continue to stoke internal conflict, threaten regional
stability, produce hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs,
and bring about massive loss of life.
I hope today from the witnesses that we can learn the
lessons of the past and formulate new ways to work through our
Special Envoy and his international counterparts as well as
regional bodies such as IGAD and the AU to find sustainable
solutions which bring peace, stability and economic growth to
Sudan and South Sudan.
I am, of course, committed to continuing to work toward
these ends and look forward to engaging my colleagues here in
Washington and on the continent to make this a reality.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
I would like to now yield to Chairman Frank Wolf.
Mr. Wolf. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to second
what Ms. Bass said about you. I appreciate your good efforts
and I think you have probably done more on this issue, on most
issues than any other Member of the Congress since I have been
here.
I am not a member of the subcommittee and I have an
appointment at 3 o'clock but I want to put on the record a
question that I hope that someone would follow up on.
On December 30th, Ambassador Booth, I wrote Secretary Kerry
urging that the administration, and at that time it was at a
crisis point--December 30th--and now we are ready to go into
March--urging that the administration enlist the aid of former
President George W. Bush and his team at the Bush Library whose
administration was absolutely pivotal in birthing South Sudan.
I was there in 2005 when Colin Powell and John Danforth
were with President Bush where they appointed the Special Envoy
that led to the new South Sudan. I noted that South Sudanese
President Salva Kiir's trademark black cowboy hat was in fact a
gift from President Bush.
President Bush and his team forged lasting relationships
with Salva Kiir and the South Sudanese leadership and would be
well positioned with the full blessing, obviously, working
under you, working under Secretary Kerry, working under the
President to engage in diplomacy and rebuilding the efforts at
this critical time.
I have had conversations with senior administration
officials over the last 2 months and yet nothing has happened.
I would urge you to take this request back to the Secretary.
Such an overture would send an important message to the
suffering people of South Sudan.
And the closing paragraph of the letter dated December 30,
2013, to Secretary Kerry said, ``It's been said that politics
stops at the water's edge.'' While perhaps not always the case,
I would hope that this administration, despite its past
differences with the Bush administration, would recognize the
wisdom of inviting former President Bush and key members of his
team who forged a lasting relationship with the leadership of
South Sudan to engage in high-level diplomacy with the various
actors involved in the current crisis and to do so with the
full support and blessing of the U.S. State Department and, of
course, the White House.
Such an overture would send a clear message to the people
of the fledgling nation that they have not been abandoned. And
also, President Clinton was used in Haiti. President Obama took
President Bush to Mandela's funeral. President Bush has fallen
in love with Africa, HIV/AIDS, PEPFAR.
So I would ask you, and maybe you ought to talk to Mr.
Smith at the next vote what your answer is, tell us will the
administration, will you, will Secretary Kerry, will the
President do this, and I think this picture of President Bush
with President Obama in the White House saying we are going to
engage and use all the resources, working with people like John
Prendergast and so many others, all the resources I think would
make a tremendous difference.
I appreciate Mr. Smith having this hearing. Yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Chairman Wolf.
And before I do introduce Ambassador Booth, I would just
echo his concern. When I read the letter in the op-ed that Mr.
Wolf wrote, it made a very compelling case.
It would really, I think, send a message to the key players
including Salva Kiir, who greatly esteems President George W.
Bush, and that kind of working side by side with you and
Secretary Kerry and, of course, President Obama would show a
unity on the part of the United States but also on the ground.
Senator Danforth worked wonders and we all credit him with
pulling an amazing feat with the CPA.
So perhaps, you know, in your opening comments you could
address the feasibility of that and I think it could act as a
tourniquet to this ever-worsening crisis.
Now, if I could introduce the Ambassador, our U.S. Special
Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, Ambassador Donald Booth, who
was appointed Special Envoy August 28, 2013.
He previously served as Ambassador to Ethiopia, Zambia, and
Liberia. Prior to that, he was director of the Office of
Technical and Specialized Agencies at the Department of State's
Bureau of International Organization Affairs.
Ambassador Booth has also served as director of the Office
of West African Affairs, deputy director of the Office of
Southern African Affairs, economic counselor in Athens and
division chief for Bilateral Trade Affairs at the U.S.
Department of State.
Mr. Ambassador.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE DONALD BOOTH, SPECIAL ENVOY TO SUDAN
AND SOUTH SUDAN, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Booth. Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Bass, members
of the committee, Chairman Wolf, I want to thank you very much
for the opportunity to testify before you here today. I am
going to summarize what has been submitted for the record.
This hearing comes at a tumultuous time for both Sudan and
South Sudan. South Sudan is mired in a devastating internal
conflict that has already caused widespread death and
destruction, and threatens to unravel the social fabric of that
young nation.
With the interests of other regional neighbors so heavily
in play, any increase in tensions has the potential to foment
broader regional instability. To the north, Sudan continues to
respond to the grievances of marginalized groups with violence,
particularly in Darfur and the ``two areas'' of Southern
Kordofan and Blue Nile States where government forces have
engaged in indiscriminate aerial bombardments.
Linked by geography and resources, Sudan and South Sudan's
interdependence could be a source of stability, but recent
steps toward resolving bilateral issues have been overshadowed
by the conflict in South Sudan.
As someone who has been in the region almost continuously
since December 21, I can assure you that the U.S. Government
has and will continue to be fully engaged in support of the
President's goals of two countries at peace internally and with
each other and with the region.
We stand ready to help both Sudan and South Sudan build a
peaceful and prosperous future in which all their citizens are
respected, protected and have a say in the governance of their
respective countries.
On South Sudan, 3 years after its historic referendum for
independence, South Sudan is again riven by conflict--not with
Khartoum, however, but with itself. This is devastating for all
of use who hoped to see it escape the terrible cycles of
violence that marked its past.
The cessation of hostilities signed by the parties on
January 23rd was a critical step. But, unfortunately, both
parties have continued to violate this agreement.
A true cessation of hostilities is our most pressing
priority and we are providing significant support to the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, the
monitoring and verification mechanism that they lead which will
monitor the cessation of hostilities and identify violators.
We are also deeply focused on moving the parties to a
meaningful and inclusive political discussion of the root
causes of the problem. Looking back, the government attempted
to contain intercommunal violence without fully committing to
the hard work of addressing its causes.
On top of this, the Government of South Sudan progressively
reduced the space for political competition within and outside
the ruling party as well as for the independent media and civil
society.
IGAD mediators have proposed meaningful political dialogue
between the two sides with a broad representation of others in
South Sudanese society.
Their premise, one with which I agree, is that a return to
business as usual with a quick fix and political accommodation
for the main protagonists will not restore peace.
Peace will require a process of national reconciliation and
a transparent mechanism for accountability for gross violations
of human rights committed during the conflict. The African
Union is establishing a commission of inquiry that will help
deliver both justice and reconciliation.
Finally, we are pressing all parties in South Sudan to
permit immediate and unconditional humanitarian access to the
hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese who are the real
victims of this violence.
The humanitarian crisis will only intensify in the coming
months with the coming of the rainy season, and to help the
United States has already committed close to an additional $60
million in lifesaving humanitarian assistance and we have sent
our disaster assistance team into South Sudan to assess what,
in addition, needs to be done.
Now, on Sudan and South Sudan relations, I would like to
note that in the months just prior to the conflict there were
signs of an improving relationship between Juba and Khartoum
and it appears that Sudan has so far played a constructive role
with the IGAD-led mediation.
But greater involvement by Sudan could cause friction with
other regional actors as well as opposing sides in South Sudan
and we will continue to press for restraint.
There are still unresolved issues between the two nations
that cannot be allowed to fester. They need to implement the
September 2012 agreements and also endeavor to resolve the
final status of Abyei.
Turning to Sudan, as I mentioned, the country continues to
suffer from internal conflicts. Economic and social tensions
last fall was a result of cuts to subsidies and resulted in the
largest protest seen under the National Congress Party's rule.
Unfortunately, the government responded with a violent
crackdown on the protestors, resulting in hundreds of deaths
and injuries. In South Kordofan and Blue Nile States, despite
the resumption of talks between the SPLM-North and the
Government of Sudan earlier this month, fighting continues.
And I will continue to work with both parties as well as
the umbrella opposition group of the Sudan Revolutionary Front
to urge them to achieve a cessation of hostility and
humanitarian access.
In Darfur, peace remains elusive as violence and insecurity
have increased. Last year alone, more than \1/2\ million people
were newly displaced primarily as a result of intertribal
conflicts and lawlessness.
The United States has provided $7 billion to date in
humanitarian, transition, and reconstruction assistance to the
people of Darfur and we continue to press the Sudanese
Government to allow greater or open humanitarian access and to
engage with all parties in Darfur for a comprehensive political
solution.
Against the backdrop of continued conflict and repressive
response to public demonstrations in September, we do take note
of President Bashir's speech of January 27 in which he called
for an inclusive process to redraft the constitution, a process
that would include both armed and nonarmed opposition groups
and that would address issues of peace, economic development,
political reform, and a dialogue about Sudanese identity.
The world will be watching Sudan carefully to gauge the
seriousness of this initiative which, if truly holistic,
inclusive and comprehensive, offers an opportunity to address
the underlying causes of Sudan's tragic history of war between
its center and its periphery.
Along with other senior U.S. Government officials, I have
endeavored to coordinate international engagement with key
partners such as China, the United Kingdom, Norway, the African
Union, the European Union, Ethiopia, Egypt, Qatar, and Russia,
among others.
While it is critical that we continue engagement,
improvement of our relations with the Government of Sudan will
continue to be predicated on genuine and sustained improvements
in how Sudan treats its citizens and adheres to its
international obligations.
So in conclusion, despite the horrendous conflicts that
have continued and erupted over the past months, opportunities
for peace do exist. The Government of Sudan can make the choice
to undertake a truly comprehensive and inclusive constitutional
process and national dialogue on the country's future.
Similarly, the Government of South Sudan has a crucial
opening to establish an inclusive peaceful nation
representative of all.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this opportunity and for your
continued commitment to the peoples of Sudan and South Sudan
and I look forward to your questions.
And if I could, Mr. Chairman, just to answer the question
posed by Chairman Wolf, the administration indeed did take on
board that recommendation and, indeed, even before, early in
the stages of the crisis before the 30th of December, had
reached out to previous administrations--the previous
Presidents and members of their senior leadership and had tried
to engage them.
And some of them did, indeed, intervene, make calls out to
the Government of South Sudan to try to put an end to the
conflict, to try to call for an early cessation of hostilities
and to sit down at the peace table. So I would be happy to go
into that further if you would like.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Booth follows:]
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Mr. Smith. I would appreciate that. Did President Bush make
a phone call? And I think, again, what Mr. Wolf is suggesting
and I think, you know, sometimes thinking outside the box while
working inside the box as robustly as possible helps yield a
result.
The Danforth team, obviously, Bush's team, brings another
layer of people who were there when many of these things were
hammered out. So did George Bush make a call but, more
importantly, will you engage even more thoroughly?
Mr. Booth. Well, I will certainly take the engagement of
former President Bush back to the Secretary for further
consideration. It was former Secretary Rice who tried to engage
President Kiir. Former President Carter did as well.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Let me just ask a couple of questions.
Again, if you could get back to us, you know, perhaps by early
next week. Time is of the essence.
I mean, there was an article in Voice of America a day ago
about Malakal deserted, destroyed and new South Sudan fighting.
The article points out, and I am sure you know this, that Oxfam
has pulled out and said that the streets were littered with
bodies.
And the comment was made in the article fighting resumed in
Malakal, the capital of the largest oil-producing state in
South Sudan, weeks after the two sides in the conflict signed a
cessation of hostilities agreement.
Certainly, it hasn't reached that town and many, many
others. So, again, the sense of urgency you might want to
comment on this because I know many of our witnesses do call
and make very persuasive argument on the need, and you said it
as well, of being able to get humanitarian workers in.
One, people are being killed, absolutely innocent women,
men and children who happen to be Sudanese or visitors there,
perhaps even some Americans. But now we have Oxfam and others
pulling out. So if you could maybe speak to that now, Mr.
Ambassador.
Mr. Booth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Clearly, both sides have not respected the cessation of
hostilities agreement that they signed. Fighting continued
after that agreement was signed in late January in Addis.
There were attacks on the towns of Leer in Unity State and
other areas, in Gadiang in Jonglei State by the government
forces, and then as you rightly mentioned, last week was the
attack on Malakal by the opposition forces.
One of the critical things to make the cessation of
hostilities a reality is to deploy the monitoring and
verification mechanism that IGAD had foreseen in the cessation
of hostilities agreement and we have been working day and night
with them.
I have secunded a member of my staff to work with the IGAD
mediation to get that team established. They have been into
South Sudan. They have visited numerous sites where the teams
will operate out of. They have verified that it is indeed
possible for those teams to operate.
We are working on a memorandum of understanding with the
U.N. Mission in South Sudan to provide some support to that
team, and just this week money that we had made available was
put on a contract to provide the services and support needed
for those teams to deploy.
So I understand the headquarters team will deploy this week
to Juba and as the other staff are brought on board from IGAD
member states and international partners the monitoring and
verification teams will be out there.
Now, these are monitoring teams and they will not be able
to enforce the cessation of hostility. The enforcement will
really come primarily from the political clout of the region--
the countries in the region that both parties in South Sudan
will need to live with and deal with.
And so the premise of the monitoring and verification
mechanism is that once good information is available the
Presidents of the countries in the region will be able to
intervene to ensure that those violations stop.
Mr. Smith. You have said that ominous signs in South Sudan
have been visible for quite some time. Matter of fact, on
February 7th in your remarks before the Africa Center for
Strategic Studies you suggested that, including internal
political tensions, shrinking political space, and
intercommunal tensions.
In light of the U.S. commitment to the world's newest
country, what can we do differently now to address these issues
that we have not done previously and what new direction is
likely to succeed at this point?
Mr. Booth. Mr. Chairman, I think the--as you mentioned,
there were signs that there was closing political space in the
country. We and others in the international community engaged
with the government to try to reverse that, to slow that down.
I personally was in Juba in early December and was very
active in lobbying the government to modify an NGO bill that
they were on the verge of passing, trying to keep this space
open. I also spoke out about the need for space for press
freedom at that time.
Now, clearly, the issue is not sort of what more might have
been done but what can we do to avoid a repetition of this, and
this is why the IGAD mediators with our full support and
encouragement have proposed that there be a very broad dialogue
going forward, that the solution to the crisis in South Sudan
is not going to be one that is a stitch up between a couple of
politicians to decide who gets what share of power but, rather,
something that is going to involve the civil society of South
Sudan, the religious leaders, the traditional leaders, the
business community, women, youth, as well as the political
class, as well as the political parties.
In order to look at the issues of how South Sudan should be
governed, there is already a constitutional process underway
that needs to be revised and invigorated. That is one of the
proposals from the IGAD mediation.
There are also proposals that the--this discussion needs to
look at some of the contributing causes to the current conflict
such as the security sector. The SPLA became a military force
which continued to grow after independence as more and more
militias were incorporated.
How can the security sector be reformed so that you don't
have an army that at the first sign of trouble will fracture,
as the SPLA did on the night of the 15th of December and
subsequently?
Issues of financial accountability and transparency,
allocation of resources that the government does have and how
do they actually get out to benefit more broadly the people of
South Sudan--those are all issues that have been put on the
table by IGAD.
We fully support that and we believe that by addressing all
of those issues with a broad range of stakeholders from South
Sudan to reach a consensus, at least a sufficient consensus
among those stakeholders on the way forward will be what will
address these ongoing issues.
There will also be a need, frankly, for an accountability
and a reconciliation process. People need to know what was
done. Those most responsible for gross violations of human
rights will need to face justice.
But there will above all need to be a reconciliation
process among the communities. Some things that have been an
issue in South Sudan are tensions between ethnic groups. These
are issues that we were working on before the conflict.
We spent a lot of time, particularly over this past summer,
in dealing with the crisis in Jonglei State which was a
conflict there between ethnic groups and we will continue to
try to work on this issue of reconciliation.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Ambassador, are faith leaders actively
involved in the reconciliation part in the pursuit of peace?
Are they included in the discussions?
Mr. Booth. Most definitely. In fact, there were a number of
the religious leaders from South Sudan who came to Addis Ababa
to talk with the mediators, to talk with the delegations that
were there.
When I was in Juba in late December, I met with several of
the religious leaders and was probing with them for their views
on how they might be able to contribute.
The religious community has long been a respected pillar of
South Sudanese society and I think definitely needs to part of
any ongoing efforts at both reconciliation but also at the
issue--addressing the issues of governance and the
constitution.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Akwei from Amnesty International points out
that Darfur is awash in small arms and he says that the U.N.
Security Council needs to immediately expand the current U.N.
arms embargo to cover the whole of Sudan in order to stop
military-related supplies reaching all parties of the conflict
of Darfur.
Is that something that you are looking at, that you think
should be done?
Mr. Booth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is, indeed, something that we think should be done and
it is something that we have proposed in New York in the
Security Council. We have, unfortunately, not had cooperation
from some of the other permanent members of the Security
Council and so we have not been able to succeed in expanding
that.
But we believe that the arming of so many people in Darfur
is, indeed, what is contributing now not just to the organized
fighting between tribes but also the general lawlessness in the
area.
Mr. Smith. Among his many suggestions and recommendations,
Mr. Prendergast points out that Eritrea needs to be
investigated ``for its support of the opposition forces.'' Are
arms flowing from Eritrea?
Mr. Booth. We have certainly heard those allegations and we
are trying to verify whether there is any reality to them.
They have been brought to our attention by a number of
governments in the region. There is certainly a concern about
regionalization of this conflict, and it is not just Eritrea
but it is the potential for this conflict, as I mentioned in my
opening remarks, to spread because of the fundamental interest
that the neighboring countries have in the region. And so we
are working very hard to try to get this conflict contained
without the intervention of outside forces.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Phares, in his testimony, suggests that
there needs to be Presidential statements on the crisis and I
have read both of those that have been posted on the White
House Web site, and they were good but one was two paragraphs
and one was four.
Not much length to it, and length doesn't necessarily
convey lack of substance but it suggested to me that more could
have been there.
But he asked for that but he also says that there should be
an invitation to representatives from both sides or factions, I
should say, to come to Washington for consultations with the
goal of finding a definitive solution to the divisions.
Sometimes when you take a group out of Addis, at least out
of Sudan, but sometimes when you come even a further distance
it has the consequence of sharpening the mind.
I mean, we have done that with so many players from so many
different countries over the years, including Northern Ireland.
When the disparate parties there would meet here, all of a
sudden things were improved.
Is that something you are looking at?
Mr. Booth. We believe the IGAD mediation, which is being
led by former Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin as well as General
Sumbeiywo who led the CPA process, are doing an outstanding
job. We have been fully supportive of them and we have been
working very closely with them.
There is a danger in opening multiple channels of
negotiation and that you open then the parties up to forum
shopping. And so we, at this point, are committed to supporting
the IGAD mediation and we will continue to do so as long as it
continues to make progress and has the trust of both parties.
Mr. Smith. Well, frankly, I am not suggesting multiple
venues. I mean, he is recommending and it sounded like it had
some merit to it, that--the idea of bringing people here,
perhaps to the White House, you know, where things could be--
the ball could be moved further down the field.
Mr. Booth. Well, we are certainly open to all ideas and we
can take that under advisement.
Mr. Smith. Appreciate that. Could you also tell me when the
last time you briefed the President personally on matters
relating--was it in the Oval Office or was it by phone and when
was that?
Mr. Booth. I believe the date was the 24th of January and
it was in the Oval Office.
Mr. Smith. And is it your recommendation that the President
should call the players including Salva Kiir?
Mr. Booth. We have had many calls to Salva Kiir as well as
to Riek Machar by senior administration officials and we are
calibrating when we need to use which official to try to move
the issue at the particular time.
So that is something that is certainly on the table and
that will be used when we consider that that would be the best
way forward at that time to move the--move us off of a sticking
point or otherwise breaking a log jam.
Mr. Smith. But, again, the fact that Oxfam has vacated one
of the larger cities, things are not moving, certainly not in
the direction as fast as we would like.
I don't think we wear out our welcome if the President
makes that phone call. I really don't. You know, maybe multiple
phone calls would be advisable. So please take that back, if
you would.
Mr. Cicilline.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to begin by thanking you and Ranking Member Bass for
holding today's hearing on this very important issue and thank
our witness for being here.
For several years, U.S. foreign policy focused on
addressing tensions and instability in the Sudan and South
Sudan and today we remain concerned about the civility of these
countries and the quality of life of their citizens.
As we all know, South Sudan is engulfed in conflict and
terrible violence and the United States Government continues
and must continue to work to achieve a peaceful solution and in
particular I believe we must ensure that U.N. peacekeepers in
South Sudan who are working to protect people seeking refuge
are provided with the resources they need.
I think our approach should be to craft a foreign policy
that focuses on Sudan and South Sudan and promotes democratic
values including respect for human rights, the necessity of
enfranchisement and equal protection under the law.
Religious tensions, ethnic tensions, and economic tensions
all underscore the need for a comprehensive approach that can
take these into account and I thank you, Ambassador Booth, for
the work that you are doing.
I would like you to focus, if you would, on the
humanitarian relief efforts in South Sudan and to what extent
you see them being constrained by the evacuation of foreign aid
workers, whether there are pro-government or anti-government
forces that are seeking to actually restrict relief efforts or
humanitarian air access, and what is the status of the refugees
that have taken refuge in U.N. compounds--are their most urgent
needs being met and what can we do to be of assistance?
And finally, if you would speak about the capacity of the
U.N. peacekeepers in South Sudan, their ability to protect
those civilians sheltering at U.N. bases and those beyond.
I asked this question last time during the last hearing,
and that is due to the legislative cap on peacekeeping
contributions that is currently in place and is set to remain
in place unless Congress acts, the U.S. did not pay its full
assessed rate for any of the peacekeeping missions, and for
UNMISS alone the shortfall amounted to about $10 million.
This funding shortage, I believe, continues to deny
critical resources to the missions and it means top troop-
contributing countries like Bangladesh and Ghana are not fully
reimbursed for their services.
And so would you talk a little bit about what it means for
this funding to not be in place, what impact it has on the
mission and what the long-term responsibilities that we have in
terms of our supporting U.N. peacekeeping work?
Mr. Booth. Well, thank you, Congressman.
You had a lot of questions there but let me try to see if I
can answer most of them.
UNMISS, I think, should be credited with savings tens of
thousands of lives during this current crisis in South Sudan.
They have given refuge in their own compounds to close to
80,000 South Sudanese.
Now, that is just a fraction of the number of South
Sudanese who have been displaced internally in the country but
they were able to offer protection. Not foolproof protection in
all cases, as some of their compounds actually were in the path
of fighting that moved back and forth, particularly in the town
of Bor.
And so the administration and other members of the Security
Council voted in late December to increase the troop ceiling
and the number of foreign police with the UNMISS mission,
almost doubling the size of the mission to give it capacity.
Despite efforts to recruit those forces very quickly,
unfortunately, I have to report that to date only several
hundred have actually arrived in country. More are on the way,
but it does take a number of the troop-contributing countries,
those countries willing to contribute, time to organize their
forces, provide the appropriate equipment and get them
transported to theater.
I think the top priorities of the U.N. Mission in South
Sudan are three, really. One is the protection of civilians
including the protection of civilians in their own compounds.
Two is to monitor the human rights situation and report on it,
and there was an UNMISS interim human rights report that was
just issued I believe the end of last week. And then three is
that of assisting the rest of the U.N. community there and
others in ensuring humanitarian access to those in need.
The U.N. I think has estimated that humanitarian need in
the country will be about $1.27 billion this year of which only
about $225 million has been pledged to date. So there, clearly,
is, if the U.N. estimates are accurate and we have no reason to
challenge them at this point, there will be a funding shortfall
in providing humanitarian assistance.
Our Embassy has been drawn down to de minimis staffing but
the first people that we sent in in addition to de minimis
staff we have there was our disaster assistance team--our DART
team--and they went in and they spent over a week working with
the U.N. and others to come up with a plan and an assessment of
what needs to be done and how to get it done.
In terms of the actual access on the ground, there have
been places and instances where the U.N. Mission has not been
able to fly in at particular times. We understand that the
cooperation now from both the opposition and the government is
improving though it is not foolproof yet in trying to move
humanitarian assistance.
There is an urgency to all of this as South Sudan will soon
enter its rainy season and if particularly bulky items--heavy
items such as food cannot be prepositioned in time, this will
result in either having to deliver this in a much more
expensive manner by air or that people will be on exceedingly
short rations.
So there is a huge humanitarian need that needs to be met
there. We are working with the U.N. and other humanitarian
agencies to try to meet that, and actually the humanitarian
access was one component of the cessation of hostilities
agreement and one that we indeed will hold both the government
and the opposition to their word on that to allow humanitarian
assistance.
Mr. Cicilline. Would you just spend a moment and speak
about the U.N. peacekeeping, the funding and our failure to pay
the assessed amount, and what impact that is having on both the
participation of other countries and our position in that part
of the world?
Mr. Booth. Well, I am not the expert on the U.N.
peacekeeping budget. I would really ask that I pass your
question to our international organization bureau that we work
very closely with, obviously, and perhaps have them come back
to you on that impact as they are the ones who are working
through the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York
and would have a better sense of what the impact of the
shortfall of U.S. funding is.
Mr. Cicilline. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield
back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much for your testimony.
Mr. Booth. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. A pleasure.
Mr. Smith. I would like to now introduce our second panel,
beginning first with Mr. John Prendergast, who is a human
rights activist, best-selling author and co-founder of the
Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes
against humanity.
He has worked for the National Security Council under
President Clinton, the State Department, and in several
congressional offices.
He has also worked for the National Intelligence Council,
UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group and
the U.S. Institute of Peace.
He has helped fund schools in Darfurian refugee camps and
have launched the Satellite Sentinel Project with actor and
activist George Clooney. Mr. Prendergast has worked for peace
in Africa for more than 25 years and has frequently appeared
before our subcommittee to provide his expert advice.
We will then hear from Dr. Walid Phares, who is co-
secretary general of the Transatlantic Legislative Group on
Counter Terrorism, a position he has held since 2008. He has
also been an advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives
Caucus on Counter Terrorism since 2007.
He is an expert on conflicts and terrorism, and lectures on
campuses nationwide as well as internationally. He has
testified before and conducts briefings in Congress, the
European Parliament and the European Commission, the U.N.
Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, and other
foreign ministries worldwide. Again, for 25 years he has
written books and articles on various developments in Sudan and
South Sudan.
We will then hear from Adotei Akwei who rejoined Amnesty
International as the managing director for government
relations. He was a senior policy advisor for CARE where he
also worked as regional advocacy advisor in Asia.
Before joining CARE, Mr. Akwei worked with Amnesty
International for 11 years. He also served as Africa director
for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, now Human Rights
First.
Prior to that, he served as research and human rights
director for the American Committee on Africa and the Africa
Fund.
Mr. Prendergast, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, CO-FOUNDER, ENOUGH PROJECT
Mr. Prendergast. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks
for the chance to address this subcommittee and for your
steadfast concern for the people of Africa for many years.
I just returned last week from South Sudan and I saw the
aftermath of some horrific atrocities perpetrated by both sides
in this conflict. I also in 2013 went to the Darfur-Chad border
as well as into the Nuba Mountains in rebel-held territory in
the Nuba Mountains and met with the survivors of equally
horrific atrocities.
I think Adotei will focus on the human rights issues,
rightly so, as Amnesty, so I would like to spend my time just
zeroing in on possible solutions.
I think the U.S. needs a real peace strategy for both
Sudans, something that is much more comprehensive and proactive
than the existing approach that we have taken, and I think I
would focus today on just four areas--on peace, democracy,
accountability, and then the leverage the U.S. needs to build
in order to make progress on those first three.
So the first element of a peace strategy for both countries
would be--I hate to use this term because of its overuse--but a
diplomatic surge. When the pre-referendum crisis was unfolding,
the U.S. dramatically upgraded its diplomatic strategy.
We had the President, the Secretary of State, the National
Security Advisor and the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. all
working the issue. We had three envoys, effectively. We had
former Senator Kerry, who was chairman of the SFRC, we had
Princeton Lyman, who then became the Special Envoy, and we had
Scott Gration, who was the Special Envoy. You know, we were all
over it, a full court press, and it paid off. This alliance
that was forged included China and other countries to pressure
Khartoum into allowing the referendum to occur, and averted
what many of us worried would be a catastrophic conflict.
The same could be said for the Bush administration's
efforts during the 2002 to 2005 period, which Congressman Wolf
was referring to and you were supporting, in that the full
court press the administration undertook with a very senior
envoy supported by a number of senior Foreign Service Officers,
one of whom is in the room right now, Jeff Millington, who has
experience doing these things. I mean, that model works so we
need to do it. We need to use it.
The escalating crises in both of those countries today I
think demand a similar diplomatic surge. One Special Envoy, no
matter how capable Ambassador Booth is, pales in comparison, I
think, to the current diplomatic requirements.
The wars in both countries are so complicated they require
their own envoys, and the interplay between these two conflicts
in the broader region demands a deeper political team upon
which these two envoys could rely.
So either a second Special Envoy or this kind of approach
that has been discussed already today where a senior political
figure, whether it is a former President like President Bush or
a former Secretary of State like Secretary Rice, Secretary
Albright, Secretary Clinton, these are all people who have a
very deep history and concern with what is happening in Sudan
and a direct participation in the history of the events when
they served publicly.
And so I think that dispatching somebody like Senator
Danforth back in those days, that could make a big difference.
Who exactly it is let us talk about it but, definitely, let us
put it on the table with something that could really make a
difference.
In South Sudan, I think--all right. Let us start with
Sudan, and Congresswoman Bass said it very clearly in your
opening remarks, you know, we need--there needs to be one
unified peace process for Sudan.
There are all these--we have talked about it for so long--
there are all these truncated stovepiped approaches, to Darfur
over here to--there is Nuba Mountains there to eastern Sudan
to--there are all these different initiatives, precisely what
Khartoum wants--divide and conquer, divide and conquer.
We can't play into that and, again, I don't think that an
envoy, again, no matter how capable Don Booth is, there is not
time to be able to work the--develop the international
coalition to pressure Khartoum to allow for a comprehensive
peace process to occur.
I think we understand it needs to happen. Well, how do you
make it happen? You have to operationalize the diplomatic
strategy to do it.
In South Sudan, one of the things I definitely wanted to
note is that well over half the countries in the world that are
in war go back to war once they have a peace deal. So it is not
crazy and unusual that this is happening in South Sudan. It is
a tragedy, but it is somewhat predictable.
South Sudan has its chance now to reboot and I think the
odds for developing a real sustainable track is in what
everyone has said today, which is there needs to be an
inclusive peace process.
We have all these civil society groups and you mentioned
religious leaders, the political parties, youth groups, women.
They all have to be included. We agree on that, but you have to
operationalize the diplomatic strategy to make that happen.
We have to be much more proactive in pushing and building
the countries that have leverage with South Sudan and the
rebels to encourage that they allow that to happen.
We can talk all day about the importance of this but if
those guys block it they won't do it and will sit there with,
again, a little closed room with the people with the biggest
guns deciding the future of the country and probably leading to
another war.
So I think, again, a huge push on something like that from
whether it is former President Bush, whether it is Secretary
Condoleezza Rice, Albright, Clinton, or someone with stature
can make a strong push.
The second element I would put forward for a comprehensive
peace strategy would be democracy promotion. DG Program--
Democracy and Governance Programs globally are going down.
This is, obviously, a bigger issue than what we have today.
But in Sudan and in South Sudan, both countries, the need to
get in there and support and be in solidarity with the civil
society groups and the opposition parties and independent
voices, the media, those that are pushing for solutions, is
more, I think, vital than ever.
And so I think figuring out a way that we can get some more
resources and support to the independent sector in both
countries, and I know that USAID grapples with this and I
think, again, with Congress' support there could be more done
in that regard.
The third element of a peace strategy is accountability,
justice and reconciliation. You know, I think, again, who
disagrees? We have a problem. In Sudan and South Sudan, no one
has ever been held accountable for any crime--war crime or
crime against humanity they have ever committed.
At least there are a few people who have been issued arrest
warrants in The Hague. That is a beginning. But I think what,
and particularly now with South Sudan exploding as it has with
these terrible crimes being committed by both parties, ensuring
that there is some kind of a mechanism, we suggest in our
testimony a hybrid court or a mixed court, you know, where--
when a justice system of a country, especially an embryonic
country 2\1/2\ years old, is dwarfed by the needs, well, some
international support--still South Sudanese-led--it is not a
violation of sovereignty, it is support for sovereignty--to
build up the capacity of the judicial sector, to try the worst
cases of these crimes, I think, would be terribly important.
And on the flip side of that, a lot of Africans and people
who work on justice around the world talk about restorative
justice and, you know, in South Sudan, for example, when
somebody kills someone or when someone steals something in a
community, the restorative judicial mechanism is compensation.
So negotiating a form of compensation in this regard where
there is truth telling about who did what to whom and then
there is some compensation involved in addition to the more
formal accountable measures is the kind of thing you can see
underlying a solution going forward.
And then on Sudan itself, another push, whatever the
politics are in the ICC--the push for holding those people that
have already been indicted to--holding them accountable.
President Bashir's visiting the Congo today--that is a
signatory to the ICC. Of course, he will skate in and skate out
with no problem. Redoubling our efforts--again, another reason
why understanding one lonely envoy is not enough for the
enormity of these crises.
The fourth and final element of a peace strategy is
building the leverage so that we can get some of these things
done. We often say in a lot of these crises, well, the U.S., we
don't have any leverage anymore--we don't have any influence
anymore. I just don't buy that at all, and I think what we
suggest here in--is a number of things.
First and foremost, you always got to really, really
examine what are the incentives and the pressures--what are the
sticks and the carrots that can be put forward in this kind of
an environment.
Creating real penalties--when I say creating I mean they
don't exist. You have to create them. This requires imagination
and it requires some real discussion about what would actually
hurt some of these folks that are undermining peace or
committing terrible human rights atrocities.
We have to look at this, and so developing those sticks and
carrots, and we can talk a little bit about what they might be.
Working with other countries that have significant leverage.
You know, let us be honest about it. China has more leverage
than anyone.
China has dipped in and out of the diplomatic efforts and
the peace efforts in somewhat mildly encouraging ways. In other
words, not like it was a few years ago where they wouldn't even
engage at all--they wouldn't even--that is an internal matter,
it is not our business.
Their economic stake is so at risk now because of what is
happening that they have begun to, out of pure self-interest,
get involved in the--in supporting negotiations. Very
generally, I would like to see a senior person from Washington
go to Beijing and talk to China about how we can work together
on this in limited ways.
We have maybe the same end goal, which is peace. What our
interests are may be wildly different. Doesn't matter. Let us
figure out how we can work together.
Going in with China with the parties in both Sudan and
South Sudan on particular things--even if it is just
humanitarian issues, that would make a difference. That would
bring leverage. That would build leverage that we don't have
now or that we are lacking now.
Targeted sanctions is something that I think we need to use
more liberally in this case for war crimes and crimes against
humanity and folks that are undermining the peace process.
So the African Union has already put targeted sanctions on
the table for South Sudan. That is encouraging. We need to get
behind that very strongly as well and build, again, a coalition
of countries that are willing to--so it is not just the U.S.
standing alone.
Build the coalition who is willing to exact a price for
those that would commit terrible atrocities to achieve their
political objectives and likely the U.N. Security Council once
again will not be amenable to this because of China and Russia.
Again, this is where it is.
So we go around it, build the coalition that is willing to
do this kind of stuff and push it and jam some of these actors
who are doing--undertaking the kind of actions that they are.
Sudan has a particular vulnerability, I think. Given the
loss of revenue from oil, not just the post-2011 loss but now
even more because of the revenues declining even further, they
have turned to gold.
Last year in 2013, they committed terrible ethnic cleansing
crimes in Darfur--north Darfur in order to consolidate control
or to gain control over the exports of gold from Darfur.
At the very least, the U.S. should lead a multilateral
effort to target the Khartoum Government's lifeline by
labelling Sudan's gold as conflict-affected and work with the
U.N. sanctions committee to see if there are particular people
that are involved in that gold trade that can be sanctioned to
hurt their business interests, to hurt their economic interest,
and then definitely working multilaterally to ensure that any
offer of debt relief, which many countries are constantly
bringing up the possibility of providing debt relief to Sudan
even in the midst of all the terrible atrocities that they are
committing, making that debt relief contingent on an end to the
wars inside and transformative political reform.
Thanks so much for the time that you have given me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prendergast follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Dr. Phares.
STATEMENT OF WALID PHARES, PH.D., CO-SECRETARY GENERAL,
TRANSATLANTIC LEGISLATIVE GROUP ON COUNTER TERRORISM
Mr. Phares. Chairman Smith, Madam Ranking Member
Congresswoman Bass, thank you very much for this invitation. It
is a pleasure and honor to be speaking to your subcommittee
about it. I would like to ask the chairman to add my written
testimony to the record.
Mr. Smith. Without objection, so ordered, and anything else
you would like to add to the record--you know, additional
papers and what not.
Mr. Phares. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, over the past 35 years from 1979 until this
year I have been monitoring, analyzing, and publishing about
Sudan, north and south, and about the ethnic conflicts taking
place inside Sudan.
The first work was in 1979. That was in the first war,
after the first war of Sudan before the second one and my last
work will appear in a month in a new book, ``The Lost Spring''
in 2014.
Based on my research, what I would like to address today is
a global strategic assessment rather than going into the actual
case by case. I know my colleagues have addressed human rights.
We will also address the humanitarian issue.
I divide my findings in three--1) dealing with Sudan, i.e.
northern Sudan, the Republic of Sudan, 2) about South Sudan
and, 3) a few suggestions, as you have requested, on how to
adapt U.S. foreign policy to these two crises.
On Sudan, as I show in map number two--if you have the
opportunity to show it, at least I will show the chairman--what
is very important for the American public and also our
bureaucracy and our Government to understand is that the map of
Sudan is one of a central government, a central regime which
has an ideology, at war or at conflict with five other ethnic
communities that happen to be African minorities in Sudan.
If we don't understand that concept, it will be very
difficult to deal--to jump from one area to the other area
without understanding that there is a grand design, a grand
architecture of the regime trying to implement it on the ground
and in a very dramatic way.
In Sudan, you have the center, of course, which is Arab-
Sudanese. The regime in that center has an ideology. It is a
jihadi regime. It has been involved in the past in the--as of
1989 and, of course, throughout the 1990s in supporting
jihadist organizations around the world.
Dr. Turabi, but also the regime of Mr. Bashir, have
convened conferences in Khartoum in 1992, 1993 with many
organizations, some of which are on our terrorist list and the
terrorist list of other countries as well.
The problem is that you have four issues this regime is
involved with. Number one, it is at war with five ethnic
communities. One is Darfur that my colleagues have mentioned.
Despite all the agreements on Darfur, the regime is still
involved in arming forces and factions against the population
of Darfur.
The labeling of these are factions fighting against each
other is not as much accurate as the regime arming the neo-
Janjaweed because you had the Janjaweed in the past and now the
new forces with a different name to stop the implementation of
human rights or protection of Darfur.
Darfur still is a open wound. Darfur is as large as Syria,
though in Syria you had 120,000 people killed. In Darfur, more
than 200,000 people killed.
Then you have the issue of the Kordofan in the south where
the government--the regime, as it was mentioned several times,
is conducting air raids. This is a military activity against a
civilian population, not just against the SPLM in that area.
The regime is also engaged in a third ethnic confrontation
with the Nubians in the north both on the political and on the
cultural fronts. What we see coming in all these four ethnic
conflicts is the fact that the regime is denying the African
identity of these communities.
That is the bottom line. It is denying them their school,
their languages, their political representation and as a result
you have a rebellion, as was the case with South Sudan.
Last but not least, the Beja area, which is across eastern
Sudan including Port Sudan, this is a community--an African
community--which also is suppressed by this regime. And the
fifth group basically is located in between South Sudan and
northern Sudan. Map number four would show that. It is the area
of Abyei.
We do know that it is about oil and petrol and political
control of this area but there is a population and that
population, as you just said in your statement, has not been
consulted yet about its future, as South Sudan has been
consulted before.
So one aspect that U.S. foreign policy needs to address is
to put pressure on the Sudan-Khartoum regime to recognize the
basic rights of these four or five ethnic African communities
in Sudan, and if need be this issue, as I recommend, should go
to the United Nations.
This is an issue that is very similar to what has happened
in East Timor, to what has happened in Kosovo and to what has
happened, as you just mentioned, in Northern Ireland.
B, inside the north Arab Muslim country, as map number two
shows, you have an actual opposition to the Khartoum regime. So
it is not just an issue of ethnicity, of Arab versus non-Arab.
Inside the Arab Muslim Sunni area of northern Sudan you
have a civil society rising. You have something similar to what
happened in Tunisia or in Egypt or in Syria. People are
opposing the Bashir regime--not just that he has been
responsible for genocide against African neighbors and co-
citizens but because it is suppressing them. This is something
that also should be added to all U.S. foreign policy thinking
and policy about Sudan.
There are two more crises that the north is generating--the
northern regime. One, a constant support by the Bashir regime
to jihadist organizations. Bases are being established there.
Our intelligence and security committees in Congress should
request more reports from our intelligence agencies about the
backing that the Bashir regime has been supplying, has been
bringing not just to jihadi organizations including Hamas,
which is on our list of states--of organizations that are
terrorists.
Last but not least, what is very worrisome, as we show in
map number eight, is the rise of Iranian military activities on
the eastern coast of Sudan on the Red Sea.
We now know that Iranian military presence in Port Sudan
and the regions around Port Sudan is now facilitated by that
regime. That regime is engaged in five ethnic conflicts,
suppressing its own community, backing Hamas and other jihadist
organizations, and now opening its own coast and ports to
Iranian facilities.
These should be the basis of our policy with regard to that
regime, with regard to South Sudan, if I may. South Sudan is a
drama that should not exist.
The way we are handling it, as if this is a conflict--this
is a conflict that's going to last for many years and we are
trying to look at the humanitarian issue. This is a conflict
that should have not even existed.
We should have reacted to it in a very firm way. The loss
of South Sudan would be the loss of the latest independent
country in the world, would be the loss of a very promising
African democracy, would be the loss of an ally which has huge
experience in fighting terrorism.
These forces, the SPLM, SPLA, despite the fight that they
have now inside Southern Sudan, are the most experienced
African forces on the continent against jihadi forces for the
last 30 years.
We will be losing this experience, and if that goes down
then many--as you just mentioned, Mr. Chairman, many jihadi
organizations in central Africa, in Somalia and other parts of
the Sahel will be converging to Sudan to create those bases.
So in my recommendations, which I am going to go over very
quickly and you have mentioned one, I would strongly recommend
that the President of the United States, President Obama, will
address in public the issue of Sudan.
He has visited the continent of Africa twice. He has
delivered speeches in Cairo and other places. He should, in my
view, modestly, deliver a speech and the reason is simple.
We need high energy. People in South Sudan, those
commanders on the ground, needs to have a very high important
personality that would address them from Washington that would
ask them to cease fire.
This is a civil war, and in civil wars they are not going
to listen to diplomats. They are going to listen to the highest
personality, especially Mr. Obama. President Obama is well seen
in Africa, well seen in the Sudan.
He should be, as was mentioned by Congressman Wolf, have
with him a delegation and leaders such as President Bush, who
had in the past been working on the issue.
Leaders like yourself, like the madam and others should be
present so that the psychological message being sent to the
South Sudan, not just to the President and the former Vice
President but to the fighting forces on the ground--the
commanders, when they will see that the President of the United
States is addressing them.
As you just mentioned, inviting representatives to
Washington, we had the Israelis and the Palestinians. We had
the Irish here. We had many other people. Let us take them to
Camp David or bring them to the Congress and put that
psychological pressure so that they will understand it is a
U.S. priority.
On Sudan, we are dealing with not one, but four or five
Darfurs. What I would recommend at this point in time is that
the President, when addressing the issue of South Sudan, would
call on Khartoum, would call on Mr. Bashir and tell him you are
under international indictment and you are responsible for the
security and the rights of these four African communities in
Sudan.
Second, we need to invite to Washington representatives of
the Beja, of the Nubians, of the Darfuris, and of the Kordofan,
and other areas in northern Sudan so that the American public
will understand what are their claims and what are their
difficulties.
When we have issues of conflict, especially ethnic
conflict, it is very important that our foreign policy would be
backed by the public. Lawmakers represent the public and the
public needs to see them.
That is why I would recommend as well that there will be
another hearing in this committee and other committees where
representatives from Sudanese NGOs will be here at this table
and then making those statements.
Beja people, American citizens, and people from Darfur and
people from the Nubians will be actually addressing the
American public and explaining their situation.
Last but not least, we are funding a significant amount of
aid and help to U.S. media. We have Voice of America. We have
Radio Free Europe.
It is time now that we would instruct Voice of America to
start addressing the issue of Sudan using ethnic languages.
If we want to have any leverage by sending our diplomats,
fine. The diplomats are going to be meeting few people. We need
to speak with their languages, and we have significant budgets.
We have significant bureaucracies. You don't need to add
any additional budget. Just giving instructions to VOA to start
addressing these ethnic communities with their language.
Thank you very much for giving me that opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Phares follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Dr. Phares.
Mr. Akwei.
STATEMENT OF MR. ADOTEI AKWEI, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR GOVERNMENT
RELATIONS, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
Mr. Akwei. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Bass.
It is an honor to be testifying before you today. Your long
record of engagement in Africa continues to be an inspiration
and we look forward to working with you going forward.
I am going to go straight to my conclusions and to the
recommendations, given the very strong recommendations from my
peers on the panel. I think these hearings, first of all, come
at a critically important time.
Maybe they bring into focus the crisis in South Sudan but
they certainly should serve to remind Washington of its long
history of engagement and the investment that it has made in
Sudan and in South Sudan and also on the issues of promoting
human rights and freedom for the people in South Sudan.
The U.S. has been heavily engaged in Sudan since the 1970s,
first providing support to the government in Khartoum and then
in 1989 leading the international effort to end the protracted
bloody civil war between the SPLM and the Government of Sudan.
The United States also has responded to different
humanitarian crises that have cost millions of lives. The U.S.
played a key role in brokering the end of the civil war and
orchestrating the process that resulted in the secession of
South Sudan, its birth as an independent nation and has been
the single largest donor to the new government in addition to
providing support to a government formed from an armed group
that had been fighting over 20 years.
In other words, the near collapse of the new government in
Juba represents not only another tragedy for the people of
South Sudan unless resolved in a manner that leads to sustained
improved governance and respect for human rights, it sends a
chilling message for the entire continent and, arguably, here
in Washington. This is why the peace talks in Addis, as John
mentioned, must not be conducted in a business as usual manner,
leaving the shaping of the cease fire, its implementation and
hopefully ensuring its longevity only to the Government of
Sudan and the forces of former Vice President Riek Machar and
their supporters.
The manner in which a peace agreement is reached will be as
important as the agreement itself because it will help cement
the legitimate and critical role of civil society in affairs of
their country and include historically marginalized
populations.
It will also underscore the concept of accountability for
governments and the people in those governments to meet the
ceasefire and to live and abide by it.
So for Amnesty International, it is important that policy
makers in Washington deliberate on the steps going forward and
that there is clarity on the nature of the issues that both
countries face individually that are similar but that are in
different context, and those where seeking to address an issue
in one country would benefit from better coordination or
efforts to address that with the other.
In this category, we would include improving the delivery
of humanitarian assistance and expanding and robustly informing
the U.N. arms embargo which, Chairman Smith, you referred to.
While over 800,000 people have been displaced by the
current crisis in South Sudan with over 700,000 of those
internally displaced and either seeking shelter in U.N. bases
or staying in rural open settings with little to no access to
food or water, sanitation or shelter, in Sudan the delivery of
essential humanitarian assistance to civilian populations in
conflict-affected areas has been severely hindered due to
government restrictions and widespread insecurity.
The United States and the international community must
prioritize getting the Governments of Sudan and South Sudan to
facilitate the unrestricted work of humanitarian organizations.
This includes removing obstacles to their operations,
working to ensure the safety of staff delivering humanitarian
assistance, ensuring access to at-risk communities, and
ensuring the safety and protection of refugees and internally
displaced.
Second, the destructive role of the glut of small arms in
both South Sudan and Sudan has contributed to conflicts, loss
of life and destruction of livelihoods.
This is despite the U.N. Security Council's imposed arms
embargo on Darfur. We all know that there has been compelling
evidence that arms have been and continue to be used to commit
serious violations of international humanitarian and human
rights law in Darfur and other parts of Sudan.
As such, the U.N. Security Council must immediately expand
the current U.N. arms embargo to cover the whole of Sudan in
order to stop military and related supplies reaching all
parties of the conflict in Darfur.
The flow of small arms to the region has not stopped and
the civilian populations continue to suffer the consequences.
Reducing the availability of these weapons will be critical to
helping curb abuses in Darfur, Blue Nile and southern Kordofan
and will be essential for conducting effective DDR processes in
South Sudan where abuses carried out by soldiers and armed
civilians in the last few months have underscored the dangers
of unrestricted easy access to weapons.
However, as these bilateral challenges must be taken up,
there must be continued focus on the human rights challenges
inside each of these countries. In Sudan, the United States
must work with the international community to immediately cease
all attacks in violation of international humanitarian law and
human rights in Darfur, southern Kordofan, and Blue Nile,
including deliberate attacks on civilians and indiscriminate
aerial bombardments in civilian areas.
The United States must also push the Sudanese Government to
promptly, independently and impartially investigate all
allegations of attacks against civilians by members of the
Sudanese paramilitary forces in line with the requirements of
international law, standards of fair trial, and to ensure that
perpetrators are held to account.
The Government of Sudan must comply with the arms embargo
in Darfur including stopping all offensive military flights and
seeking prior authorization with the Security Council sanctions
committee to move military equipment to Darfur or into Darfur.
And the United States must also express concern over the
ongoing restrictions on basic civil and political rights and
the continued harassment of critics of the government including
through the practice of arbitrary detention, torture, ill
treatment, restrictions on freedom of expression, association,
and assembly.
And I would point out that the civil society groups in
Sudan have issued statements calling for a comprehensive
response and approach to the situation in the country. We must
build on that, as my colleague has just said. That is going to
be the critical actor and agent to sustain reform inside Sudan.
In South Sudan, I think we have all reached fairly easy
agreement that the consensus is that the cease fire and
implementing an effective cease fire is the priority.
We must ensure that the peace negotiations and the
establishment of the AU Commission of Inquiry prioritize
accountability, as well as reconciliation, ensuring that those
responsible for abuses during the conflict are brought to
justice and ending the cycle of impunity that John referred to.
The negotiations in Addis have to be opened up.
Representatives of all stakeholders--women, civil society
groups, and other marginalized communities--must be allowed to
participate and, as John said, we must work to facilitate that.
If there is going to be a lasting peace, there has got to
be broader ownership, and the protection of human rights in the
country is helped and strengthened by all of their
involvements.
I will thank you there.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Akwei follows:]
----------
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Akwei.
We do have votes again occurring so I will just ask two
questions and then yield to my colleague.
You mentioned, Mr. Akwei, that hundreds of activists were
arrested in September 2013 and we haven't, I don't think,
brought enough attention to what has become of them.
Has there been access by NGOs or other humanitarian groups
or the Red Crescent, the Red Cross, anyone, to any of those
people? Are they being tortured, do we know?
Mr. Akwei. No, and in fact, unfortunately the history of
the country is that people who are arrested in Sudan are very
much at risk of ill treatment if not torture. So this has to be
prioritized in terms of not letting the spotlight completely
drop away from what is going on.
Mr. Smith. No, I appreciate you underscoring it in your
testimony.
Let me ask you, Mr. Prendergast, you talked about the
diplomatic surge very diplomatically and, I believe, very
sincerely. You talk about how, you know, a very capable Special
Envoy could only do so much. It has to be all hands on deck.
This has to happen now. It seems to me that we are in an
absolutely urgent situation. Which way is this trending? I
mean, can this get significantly worse in days, weeks, and
months if something is not done that would really signal U.S.
full, all-in, type engagement?
Mr. Prendergast. Yes. To address both of those points, on
the one hand, I do think it could get worse. I think it could
get much worse.
I think if there isn't a stoppage with a real cessation of
hostilities that is respected that it is really about the
nature of the attacks.
So if there were just two armies battling each other, like
we saw in Ethiopia and Eritrea--they fought each other,
civilian damage was not insignificant but minimal and the
losses were to the armed forces. That is one thing.
It is not what is happening here. It is not what happened
when they fought the war--the North-South war when there was
the intra-south war from '91 to '96.
They attack each other's communities and when I went into
some of the neighborhoods that had been where soldiers from the
government had gone house to house looking for particular
people from a particular ethnic group, the Nuer, and pulling
them out of houses, executing them, I mean, this reverberates
throughout the country.
And then I just--we went up to Bor after that and in that
place the rebel groups led by, sadly, Nuer--young Nuer people
who were recruited into these militias, these paramilitary
forces principally called the White Army, and the kinds of
atrocities they committed there--going into the hospital
killing everybody in the hospital, going into the church
compound killing the female pastors, raping and killing--like
very, very terrible atrocities that, again, send major signals
to each other's communities.
So you have this war between a government and an opposition
but you also have--underneath that is a developing problem
between Nuer and Dinka and that is--you know, these are
politicians using ethnicity as a mobilizing force.
And so that is what worries me about things getting worse.
So yes, I do believe we need to do more than what we are doing
now. What we are doing now in standard diplomatic terms makes
sense. But this isn't a standard diplomatic problem.
Mr. Smith. Now, is it time for the President to call Salva
Kiir and Machar?
Mr. Prendergast. Yes. There are gradations of things. He
should definitely be engaged. We need additional firepower,
diplomatically, to go out.
I think all these ideas are good and let us see if
President Bush or Condoleezza Rice or Hillary Clinton or
Madeleine Albright or somebody of a significant stature who has
a history of doing things positively in Sudan to be deployed
out there, to bring a message, to push forward for the process
to begin in earnest.
Mr. Smith. Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Yes. I am sorry that we will have to go because I
have at least 100 questions. But just real quickly--one, I just
really appreciate, you know, the quality of your comments and
recommendations and all, and you mentioned that inside of South
Sudan that there would be a call from folks for a comprehensive
response and I am wondering with what Mr. Prendergast said if
that is an example.
So in other words, I love the term diplomatic surge. You
know, if we really went in with full force would that be
responsive to what you feel people are calling, and then also,
you know, with you, Dr. Phares, you know, you described all of
the different struggles that are taking place within Sudan. How
do you feel that type of response could help?
Mr. Phares. For Southern Sudan, may I recommend a shock
treatment at this point in time. As my colleagues have
mentioned, we are way beyond the traditional confrontation on
our border line.
And the shock treatment--I am going to repeat one more
time--the President of the United States has immense weight in
the eyes not just of the two leaders on the ground but other
commanders on the ground.
They look at him as he is the head of the free world, and
if he can include in his speech directed to them I will make
you responsible if you continue to kill civilians, and then we
could have our diplomats, former Presidents, so on and so--we
need that shock treatment.
And number two, we need to invite representatives. I am not
sure at what level but bring your representatives here. Sending
that message--that image back by TV into South Sudan will
create an energy that is different.
Because now people are killing people. They think that the
international community and United States are just sending one
diplomat.
Mr. Akwei. I would think that having that kind of political
representation that speaks directly to these civil society
groups would be one of the most powerful things we could do
because it would send a statement to the ``leaders'' of the
major armed forces that these groups matter, these groups have
to be listened to, these groups have a legitimate stake in the
future of the country and you are not the only ones driving the
future.
Mr. Prendergast. And one footnote to that is part of what
you surge diplomatically for is to ensure those voices are at
the table and heard but you also want to surge because in South
Sudan itself the trend line in the year before the conflict
started was a closing of space.
Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly--all those were
under siege and that space needs to be reopened for people to
have the confidence that anything that is agreed to in Addis
Ababa can be brought back to the country and people will have a
chance to really build this country with and have a free and
fair electoral process that will allow for everyone to be able
to participate in an equal way.
So I think that is what we are really missing here is the
pressure--the high-level pressure that says this matters to us
deeply and in the absence of that inclusivity and those rights
how can you build this country, and you won't get our help
because that means it is going the wrong way if you are not
doing those things.
Mr. Smith. I want to thank our distinguished witnesses.
Thank you for your expertise, your very significant
recommendations we will follow up on.
I hope the administration takes to heart all that you have
said as well.
And without any further ado, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:04 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Material Submitted for the Record.
t
Material submitted for the record by the Honorable Christopher H.
Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, and
chairman, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations