More background on Gration and the WaPo article

A few people have asked me questions about Gration’s interactions on his latest Sudan trip, especially with respect to some parts of Stephanie McCrummen’s Washington Post article since I posted on it this morning. I thought it could be useful to share my responses:

Stephanie wrote: During a stop in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, Gration was greeted like a rock star by hundreds of cheering Bashir supporters in a conference hall plastered with posters of Bashir and Obama, poorly photo-shopped together.

I wrote about this incident in a previous post. I myself wouldn’t characterize Gration as having been “greeted like a rock star” – there was nothing spontaneous or genuine about it. The whole thing was a set-up by the NCP to sell to the Sudanese media (who were present in abundance) that relations were improving between Sudan and the US.

Stephanie also wrote: The rebels explained how the government was now backing a certain rebel faction in order to defeat another, more powerful one. Gration asked who was providing the support. The rebels told him but added that such distinctions were unimportant. “In all cases, it’s the government,” a rebel leader said.

This seems to have generated some confusion, so it might be useful to clarify that the rebel faction that the rebels referred to were Chadian rebels, which Khartoum has long used as proxies to destabilize Darfuri rebel bases in near the border (and not to mention make various unsuccessful attempts at overthrowing Deby). The allegation is that since the split in JEM, the Abu Garda faction (JEM-CL) have been conducting operations that are aligned with the Chadian rebels because both have the goal (consistent with Khartoum’s goal) of defeating JEM (Khalil Ibrahim). When the rebel answering the question said that it didn’t matter which branch of the GOS was doing it, Gration responded that it did because he needed to know who to go and raise it with.

This is probably not yet an exhaustive list of the questions that will arise, so I’ll keep adding my thoughts as needs be.