Sudan’s Future Is Now, U.S. Envoy Says
A day after Sudan’s leader coasted to victory in a fraud-tainted election, a senior Obama administration official defended the vote, and said the United States should turn its attention to getting southern Sudan ready for its likely future as an independent state.
“If we don’t redouble our efforts, and work so hard, we know what the predicted outcome will be: it will be violence,” Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, the administration’s special envoy to Sudan, said in an interview on Tuesday.
General Gration conceded that the election, in which President Omar Hassan al-Bashir won 68 percent of the vote, was flawed. But he said it set the stage for a political transformation of Sudan, one that would give more of its citizens a say about their future.
In January, the southern part of Sudan is to hold a referendum on whether to secede from the north. That is a hazardous prospect, given that the south has much of Sudan’s oil reserves and that Sudan has already fought a lengthy north-south civil war that killed two million people.
If the south votes to break away, as General Gration believes it will, the question is whether the north will let it go without a fight. And even if it does, he said, how will the new nation survive, with virtually no government institutions, few paved roads and desperate poverty?
The United States must not only head off a war, General Gration said, but will also have to pour in resources to help southern Sudan build its government and economy by July 2011, when independence would take effect. Fewer than 175 people are doing this work there now, compared with thousands who converged on East Timor, Bosnia and other newly established states.
“We in America are looking at a surge,” said General Gration, a retired fighter pilot. “We really haven’t had a good history of birthing nations. We sure don’t want a failed state or a country at war.”
Given how stretched the United States is in Afghanistan and Iraq, he acknowledged that there were sharp limits to what it could do on its own. He said the administration was trying to marshal support from Sudan’s African neighbors, as well as from Europe and even China.
Critics of the administration say it has not spoken out forcefully enough against Mr. Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity, stemming from what the court called his “essential role” in the bloodshed in the western Darfur region.
General Gration pre-emptively defended the elections in Sudan, saying they would be as “free and fair as possible.” Even now, he points out that 16 million people registered to vote, 16,000 people ran for office and voters were allowed for the first time to elect members of a national assembly.
“We sort of focused on the Bashir election, and sort of knew the outcome, and missed the bigger story,” he said. “We were not supporting an outcome or a party, but we were supporting the process.”
Analysts said the administration’s strategy, which mixes incentives and pressure, allowed Mr. Bashir’s government to flout international agreements to allow a free press and the right of free assembly.
Many worry that Mr. Bashir will feel emboldened to subvert the referendum or even start a war. Some analysts said the United States must be clear about what it would not tolerate.
“We need to set outer limits on what’s acceptable in terms of violence against civilians,” said Andrew Natsios, an envoy to Sudan during the Bush administration. “If the north attacks the south or attempts to take over the oil fields, we should have a response and it should not be rhetorical.”
Advocacy groups have urged Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or the United Nations ambassador, Susan E. Rice, to take control of Sudan policy. On Monday, six groups took out an advertisement in The Washington Post, saying the administration’s policy was “stalemated.”
“The sooner Secretary Clinton says, ‘This is something I need to do on my watch,’ the more she’s going to be able to demand answers,” said John Norris, executive director of Enough, an anti-genocide project.
General Gration said he had briefed both Mrs. Clinton and President Obama about Sudan’s elections in sessions last week. He is headed to Europe and Africa to drum up support among allies and Sudan’s neighbors. “I don’t think we can avoid having a leadership role,” he said.
But General Gration rejected the suggestion that the United States “owns” the Sudan problem. “The problem is so big that it’s not an American problem,” he said. “It’s a global problem.”
