Sudan advocates are firing up about this nice scoop by Josh Rogin in Foreign Policy, documenting yet another feud between Special Envoy Gration and Ambassador Rice over the direction of the Obama administration’s Sudan policy:
Rogin writes, “At the meeting, Rice was said to be “furious” when Gration proposed a plan that makes the January referendum a priority, deemphasizes the ongoing crisis in Darfur, and is devoid of any additional pressures on the government in Khartoum.”
While the meeting sounds dramatic, I’m confused as to how the prioritization of the referendum can even be framed as a “plan” at this point. As far as I can see it has been policy for quite some time.
The on-paper promises in the 2009 policy review (to not trade off the three U.S. objectives of north-south, Darfur, and counterterrorism) notwithstanding, the practice has been to put the referendum first among equals, and the current regime is seen as the only one who can deliver it, hence the reluctance to pressure them on any of their many and ongoing violations.
As I mentioned in a prior post, this has been devastating for many northern Sudanese – and it is a point of particular disillusionment for the student activists I spoke to for this WaPo piece. Yet while I haven’t spent time in southern Sudan lately (a problem soon to be remedied), for many southerners in Khartoum, this is exactly as it should be. It has been argued to me, strongly, several times (and not only by southerners) that southerners have fought a multi-generational struggle for the right to self-determination and seeing the referendum proceed on time should be the only thing that matters for the next five months (149 days to be exact).
But one suspects that if anyone (and I mean anyone) could actually get into Kalma camp right now, they would hear a fiercely different view.
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