Where’s Gration today?

A quick note courtesy of free wi-fi  – thanks Dubai airport. Just read a report in the Sudan Tribune that U.S. envoy, Scott Gration, will not be attending the meeting in El Fasher today that is supposed to bring together the (expansive) number of international envoys and mediators involved in “resolving” Darfur.

It would be interesting to hear from the State Department why Gration is not going to be there – this would have been a great chance for the various international “leads” on Darfur to present a unified front, and goodness knows Darfur is long overdue for being dealt with in a coordinated manner.   The Sudan Tribune points towards fractures that have been present for some time between the AU-UN joint mediator Bassole, and the AU Panel headed by Mbeki, and suggests that there is also friction between Gration and the new UNAMID head, Gambari. (All of which leads me to wonder how we expect rebels to come up with a unified negotiating position when the mediators themselves can’t manage it.)

While the Sudan Tribune doesn’t mention it, an explanation for Gration’s absence might be that he prioritizing the opening of the North-South negotiations on post-referendum issues also slated to begin today – which would be telling in and of itself.  I would say stay tuned, but given that this site is blocked in Sudan it will be radio silence from me for a while . . .

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On the carrots-sticks toolbox (& Art. 16 not being part of it)

An op ed yesterday (co-authored) by John Prendergast in USA Today argued the Obama administration should offer both carrots and sticks to get behavioral change from Sudan. In policy 101 terms that should be an uncontroversial assertion. But on Sudan, those who have suggested carrots in the past have been viewed with skepticism by activists, leading to something of a no-win situation that comes through pretty clearly in my book -  Unilateral U.S. sticks are ineffective, and the U.S., depressingly, isn’t willing to spend its capital to get multilateral sticks working (which is what it really should be doing). But at the same time it has been constrained from offering carrots by U.S. public sentiment which balks at the notion of “rewarding” Bashir’s regime for anything. As Prendergast writes:

“Because of international sentiment that opposes sanctions and other forms of pressure, the U.S. shies away from creating any real consequences for Sudan’s war crimes. And because activists and Congress strongly favor imposing such consequences, U.S. officials avoid serious discussion of peace incentives.”

I think this no-win ‘box’ has been a real one. As he acknowledges in the op ed, Prendergast has been part of the dynamic which has kept carrots (“peace incentives”) in the political no-go zone.  This actually makes him the best placed person I can think of to write such an op ed. When “JP” suggests carrots, this is unlikely to be read by activists as going soft on Khartoum – which is the charge that would be laid against most other people making the same suggestion. As an opinion leader in the advocacy community, this kind of signaling from Prendergast may lead mass movement activists to open themselves up a little to the possibility of carrots (appropriately linked to verifiable change) being one part of an effective leverage package. However convincing activists of this may no longer be the biggest problem.

After many years of the U.S. promising normalization of relations and never following through, the offer of carrots is no longer seen as credible by Khartoum. It’s important to point out here that not following through on normalization has been the correct course in the absence of real change on the ground. However it has been problematic nonetheless because the U.S., at least under the Bush administration, did not make its promises of normalization conditional upon real change on the ground, but rather upon the signing of agreements. Normalization should never have been offered for the signing of any agreement; verifiable implementation is the only metric on which carrots should be promised. But having made the mistake of promising normalization in return for the mere signing of various pieces of paper, the U.S. has lost the credibility of its word vis-à-vis Khartoum after these pieces of paper were signed and no normalization was forthcoming.

The other dynamic in play is that Sudanese officials believe (and indeed have been told explicitly by U.S. officials) that even if the U.S. wanted to, it couldn’t follow through on its promises of so-called “peace incentives” because Congress and the activists make it politically untenable for it to do so. If Congress and activists drew back from their hard line on this – and perhaps yesterday’s op ed is trying to kickstart such a process – then Sudanese officials might start to reassess the odds. But from conversations I have had in Khartoum I would say this is a calculation that is going to take considerable time and effort to modify – in my experience Sudanese officials accord Congress and activists more power than either would imagine themselves having.

Writing on the EnoughSaid blog today (and re-posted in the HuffPo), Prendergast defends his op ed,  which he has evidently received some flak for writing. It’s a good post, which I recommend reading. But with my old Den Haag hat on, I have to mark a serious objection to one line in it. In the context of defending his suggestion that the U.S. consider offering to get the ICC case against Bashir suspended through Article 16 at the UN Security Council in return for verifiable improvements on the ground, Prendergast writes: “Article 16 was specifically included in the ICC charter to give countries leverage where there might appear to be none, and only in support of peace.” This is wrong – and dangerous.

The decision to include Article 16 in the Rome Statute had nothing to do with “leverage” for states. Article 16 was a compromise solution (proposed by Singapore and originating out of discussions over jurisdiction – law buffs can go to the Art. 16 chapter in Triffterer for this) negotiated in Rome to define the terms of the relationship between the court and the UN Security Council. It was included to ensure the UN Security Council had a mechanism to put the ICC at arm’s length for a finite period if the ICC’s involvement was disrupting promising peace negotiations or risked exacerbating a fragile situation (i.e. it was interfering with the UNSC’s  Ch. VII maintenance of “international peace and security” responsibilities). The distinction between this understanding of Article 16 and the view of Article 16 as a point of “leverage” is a subtle but important one.

The ICC’s work can be suspended by the UN Security Council in the interests of peace, but we should always be clear that the ICC is not a bargaining chip to be used to gain leverage to push for peace. Justice is not a tap to be turned on and off at will by countries looking for leverage – even with the best of intentions. Indeed the very vision behind the creation of the ICC is to break away from this old world view where justice is like any other item in the “leverage toolbox” of pressures and incentives; it should not be seen as a tradeable commodity.

Thinking of justice as an on/off bargaining chip analogous to say economic sanctions is problematic at any time. But given the heightened fears about the politicization of justice and the tensions between the AU and the Security Council on the Bashir warrant, talking about Article 16 in terms of leverage or bargaining chips is particularly dangerous right now. The ICC will never be able to realize the vision of its founders if it is treated as something that the P5 on the Security Council can stop and start to bolster their own leverage over a given regime.

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15 years later, genocide convictions for Srebrenica

This morning in The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted two Chief of Security officers from the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) of genocide, for their role in the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica where over 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men were killed. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Vujadin Popović, Chief of Security of the Drina Corps of the VRS, and Ljubiša Beara, Chief of Security of the VRS Main Staff are the second and third men to have been convicted for genocide by the ICTY, however the first genocide conviction – of Radislav Krstić in 2001 – was reduced to the charge of aiding and abetting genocide on appeal in 2004.

The genocide convictions for Popović and Beara were part of the largest trial that the ICTY has run to date. The trial, which took place from August 2006 – September 2009, involved seven defendants charged with crimes committed in Srebrenica and Žepa in 1995. The summary of today’s judgment is now online.

Meanwhile the trial of Radovan Karadžić, who is also charged with genocide, is ongoing, and pressure seems to be increasing on the ICTY’s most high profile fugitive, Ratko Mladic, after his wife was arrested earlier this week in Belgrade on charges of possessing illegal weapons.

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‘Anonymous victim’ book covers

I’m in book cover process and have been a little surprised by quite how distraught I am at the suggestion of having the photo of a Darfuri women (the same would go for man or child) I have never met and will never know the name of, on my book cover. So I wanted to take a little break from editing to think about why.

A quick scan of Amazon shows that the practice – of using anonymous victims on book covers – is not uncommon. Darfur has more than its fair share of examples. Rwanda is also not immune. Nor the Balkans.

Publishers seem to believe (and I’m not ruling out the possibility they have the data to back this up) that book buyers in general will be attracted to this kind of imagery. I’m a book buyer. Why do the anonymous victim style covers have the exact opposite effect on me?

I think it’s something to do with respect and a sense of “there but for the grace of God” – I could have been born ethnically Fur in Darfur and be stranded in a displaced camp right now. How would I feel to have someone I didn’t know come and taken of photo of me at such a traumatic stage of my life and then, five years later, have that photo turn up in bookstores across America on a book I hadn’t read, written by someone I didn’t know? Exploited would, I think, be the feeling. That the particular person who took my photograph got my “permission” to do so seems besides the point – unless perhaps the person taking the photograph was in fact taking it specifically for the book and explained to me what it was all about and why they wanted my image on the front of it. But my hunch is that in most of the anonymous victim book cover genre, there has been no such consultation.

If we wouldn’t want this exploitation for ourselves, then why is there seemingly no compunction about it in relation to others? I fear it gets to a much deeper issue that I see as fundamental in why governments the world over repeatedly fail to stop the massacre of the citizens of foreign countries – an inability to value “others” the same way we value “us.”

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Announcing . . .

FIGHTING FOR DARFUR: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide

to be published by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, Feb. 1, 2011

If you haven’t written a book before you’d be amazed at just how hard it is to nail down a title that both the author and the sales & marketing department can agree on – so it’s a relief to have reached this point.  It’s not the most creative title in the world and I’m still rather partial to The Promise of Engagement (though have long conceded that the risk it poses of attracting those in the spousal market is a totally fair critique!) – however I’m satisfied that what we’ve settled on clearly signals what the book is all about, and am happy to have truth in advertising.

I’m still in editing lock-down, but hope to resume blogging again over the summer.

Best, Bec

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Girifna

Girifna protest in Khartoum [photo: www.girifna.com]Following on from a comment from Mahid over at The Sudanese Guardian, I wanted to highlight the Sudanese voices at “Girifna” (We Are Fed Up/ Disgusted) – the student-driven organization that is trying to build grassroots support for change from inside Sudan. Their facebook page is full of activity for Arabic speakers, and they have a bilingual website that gives you the basics of what they are about.

This evening I asked one of their leaders what he thought about the decision of some opposition parties to boycott:

“It is painful but correct. Painful because of the hope and aspiration that sky-rocketed during the campaign for millions of us only to be grounded – - the hope of a path to democracy where is a better life and most importantly life with dignity can be patiently cultivated in our land, but that all fell flat so  soon.

It is correct because the election is crafted to basically save the dictator from the ICC by providing him an election victory that may shield him. This election will go down in Sudanese history as the most fraudulent, corrupt and ill- intended election in which millions of dollars were spent by the NCP of the empty pockets of the Sudanese people in order to fake their own mandate . . . bought loyalty spending obscenely, with their foot on the opposition’s head, including ours, holding our message of reaching to the people NCP is no political party, it is a cash and arms-rich government that can do anything to hold on to the throne of power.”

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Eyes on the elections

Hi all

I realize this is a terrible time for me not to be blogging, but it really is book crunch time with 7 weeks to go before my final manuscript is due (and with a current draft that is 40,000 words over my contractual word count). I am, of course, following the pre-elections build up and wishing I was in Sudan right now. When I wrote about Sudan’s “Empty Election” in December, I didn’t imagine it would be quite this empty – - with the Umma Party today being the latest to boycott completely.

Worthy of a much longer post I will just note one reflection for now. Ever since my last visit to Khartoum I have struggled with the notion that the international community continued to pour literally millions into an election that was, very clearly, not going get to anywhere near free or fair. I spoke with frustrated opposition party members who wished that the international community would pull the plug on all of it – of the funding, of the observing, of the whole machine that was moving through to the elections. Many times I felt the same way. But had they done so it would have been a propaganda victory for Bashir; you can imagine the rhetoric – We wanted to hold a democratic election and the international community would not support it! So in that sense it’s much better that the rug is pulled out from under this deeply flawed process by Sudanese themselves.

That said, I don’t think the opposition parties have handled the process well. There was an opportunity a year ago that they failed to capitalize on, to form a unified front and demand real reform  - to at least the media and security laws – in return for participation in an election process that they knew Bashir so desperately needed in light of the ICC indictment. Instead, they fractured and muddled all the way through until today – the eleventh hour.

I’m heading to the U.S. for some meetings and as the election is underway on Sunday I’ll be watching, not for the first time, Winter Miller’s gut-wrenching play, In Darfur at Theater J in D.C.

If you’re in town and, like me, unable to think about anything but Sudan this weekend, then come along and immerse yourself in the world her play brings to life. I’ll be speaking afterwards with Jon Temin, the U.S. Institute for Peace Program Director on Sudan. In theory I’m talking on GBV and he’s going through the Doha process – but given the timing it will be hard to talk anything but elections. . .

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Bakit

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Bakit in 2008

I met Bakit Musa in Goz Beida, Chad, when I traveled there with Mia in 2008. At that time Bakit was 7 years old. In January that year he had picked up an unexploded RPG when he and his friends had been out playing. It left him with only one eye, no arms from the elbows down, and scars all over his face and chest. His father had died the year before and his mother had abandoned him and his brother, who was 8.

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Bakit in 2008

Bakit and his brother were with their grandmother in an IDP shelter constructed of branches and plastic sheeting when Mia and I met them. Bakit had not smiled since he was hurt. But whenever he was asked if he was in pain he would say “I am fine”. The first change in this stoic response had been a week earlier when he told Laura, an impressive 60-something NGO worker were are staying with, “I want my hands back” – - seemed not so much for a 7 year old to ask for. He was surely the most courageous little boy I had ever met.

As much as the situation of the refugees in Chad is awful, the situation of the IDPs is in many ways worse since UNHCR does not have the mandate to assist them (though it tries anyway), and yet the Chadian Government does not fulfill its responsibilities to them either.

Mia is back in Chad now and met up with Bakit again yesterday. She sent me this photo (below) – what a transformation two years can make. She says he is doing really well. Nothing has made my heart smile so much in ages. . . .

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Bakit today

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Quick update

- just submitted first ten chapters of the book to my editor. Still a long haul ahead to get it into shape, but it feels like I’m moving the the right direction. Phew.

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Karadzic trial: A view from Bosnia-Herzegovina

So, Radovan Karadzic is having his day in court here in The Hague. I have been following his Opening Statement in between editing draft chapters all morning; his overall defense seems be to a pretty classic ‘blame the victim’ approach (Karadzic: “Their conduct gave rise to our conduct, and that is 100% true”).

But the crimes he is charged with are not ones I “lived through” – obviously not directly, but also not indirectly the way I have with Darfur.  So I thought that better than sharing my thoughts would be to share the thoughts of a dear friend in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Muhamed Mesic. I wanted to know if Muhamed was following the hearing today;  the following was what he wrote back and has given permission for me to post:

Didn’t he just say: “They’re trying to convict us for something we never did”? No, if [troops commanded by Karadzic and Mladic] didn’t “do” Markale, didn’t “do” Kapija (in Tuzla, on May 25, 1995), didn’t “do” Keraterm, Omarska and Manjača, didn’t “do” Godinjske Bare, didn’t “do” all the raped women and all the mass graves, didn’t ultimately “do” Srebrenica, it was either the Bosnian Muslims (and/or Croats) who did this themselves (in a very elevated, conspirative attack of masochism aimed at obviously demonising the Serb nation), or one must blame, say, the Borg or the Romulans (both of Star Trek fame).

And yes, we’ll bring experts to prove it, warp spaceship landing tracks which prove a Bosnian Muslim-Croat-Vatican-US-UN-Borg-Romulan conspiracy, experts who, my oh my, will prove that poor little old doctor Dabic just wanted peace, love, tolerance and freedom for all. And so he commanded his troops to practice lovingkindness, his troops like Ratko Mladic, who once commanded a certain Vukasinovic to turn this into action by opening “fire towards Velusici [a part of Sarajevo actually called Velesici] (…) as there aren’t many Serbs there (…) so that they [the Bosnian Muslims and Croats] can’t sleep and we spread their minds apart…”. 

His “opening statement” – with the poor little old me arguments – is ridiculous to the point that it’s disgusting. What’s even more disgusting is that he’s trying to elevate himself as a martyr, a fighter for a just cause (how can raping women and slaughtering men, for Heaven’s sake, be a tool of a just cause?!!), a victim of an unfair global conspiracy (a new Milosevic of sorts). But then again, I guess nobody ever expected anything different. It’s not even refreshing or entertaining, and all dejavu in the ICTY courtroom. Which is why I’m not gonna spend the rest of this beautiful sunny March day by listening to it.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in a fair and due trial of law. And I believe that Karadzic, like any other human being, has the right to present arguments against any accusations that may be made against him. Every human being is entitled to personal convictions, too, and that goes for Radovan Karadzic as well. This is almost as important as the decency to now, eighteen or more years later, stand by the “heroism” he then displayed and all the death, pain, havoc and mayhem it ultimately caused.

And as for me, I believe he made his opening statement in the hall of the Bosnian parliament in late 1991, when he cautioned that independence – today is, oddly enough, March 1, celebrated by (one half of) Bosnia and Herzegovina as independence day as it marks the anniversary of the 1992 referndum – would be taking “Bosnia and Herzegovina on the same path of hell and suffering Slovenia and Croatia have taken.” In another act of his lovingkindness, he cautioned that independence would take the “Muslim people into extinction.” Extinction by whom? Oh yes, I forgot. The Borg and the Romulans.

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