In this 30-minute podcast I ask former UN Special Representative to the Secretary General for Sudan, Jan Pronk, questions that you submitted through the website, plus a few follow-up questions of my own. (My apologies for the poor sound quality at the beginning of the interview – it gets better once Pronk starts speaking at about 1.15 minutes in.)

Until you get time to listen, here are the questions we covered and some select highlights:

What do you think accounts for the drop in violent deaths that the CRED report suggested took place after April 2004?

Pronk explains different phases of the crisis and the improvements that came once the Security Council started addressing it, humanitarians got in there etc. But he also notes that one reason for the drop is that by the time he arrived in Sudan in “people had been killed already . . . there weren’t too many more people left to be killed.”

When I re-stated something he had referred to as an “improvement” in the statistics in camps once there was humanitarian access, he was very quick to pull me up on the use of the word “improvement” and to make clear that it was more accurate to call it a “new situation” that was partly due to humanitarian access, but also partly because “so many had been killed already” and that “to a certain extent the Government, together with the Janjaweed, had gotten what they wanted . . . they had wanted to empty that part of the country in order to make it available for themselves . . .”

Pronk made reference to R2P and also talked about how people within the UN system asked members of the Security Council about Darfur, but that throughout 2003 “they continuously refused to put it [Darfur] on the agenda of the Security Council . . .”

I asked who was blocking it and why. He said the requests were directed at the U.S. and U.K. – and that “later on we understood that they were afraid to make life too difficult for the government in Khartoum which was involved in a peace negotiation with SPLM/SPLA in southern Sudan . . . I understand it as a [sic] reasoning; I think it’s wrong reasoning . . .”

What can the Obama Administration can do to assist UNAMID?

His reply started with: “UNAMID is in disarray.”

He said UNAMID needs to get up to the authorized troop level and be given the equipment – in particular military helicopters – that it needs, and has been promised. “It is as if the international community thinks ‘they are only Africans’ . . ” he said.

In terms of what the Obama Administration can do to change this:

1. Get the force up to standard in terms of size and resources

2. Implement sanctions “to make life difficult for those who are responsible for the policies in Darfur”. Until this happens they can continue to make it difficult for whatever UNAMID contingent is there to operate effectively.

3. Demand that the Government of South Sudan starts to step up and take responsibility for Darfur now that they are part of the Government of National Unity.

Regarding the first point, I asked what Western countries can do to increase troop numbers to the authorized level when the GOS won’t let Western troops into Darfur. He said that there needs to be political pressure on, in particular, Asian countries – Bangledesh, Nepal – to increase numbers. But he also had a novel idea (which you should listen to properly rather than just rely on this brief summary) about getting GOS consent to re-deploy the (primarily non-Western) troops from UNMIS in South Sudan to UNAMID in Darfur. Then Western troops could be deployed to UNMIS to replace them, since the GOS “does not have the right to question the composition of UNMIS in the South.”

On the third point, I questioned whether the GOSS has the leverage to push on Darfur given their fear about the future of the CPA. You can listen to his answer, but in short, he acknowledges they are in a difficult position but thinks they have more leverage than they realize.

How many military helicopters are needed?

They only have four and they need “some dozens . . . it is outrageous that they have not been made available – as if there are no [military] helicopters in the world.”

Why, after almost 3 months, have the agencies that were expelled not been re-admitted. What can and should governments do to change this?

He talked about needing a strong and, most important, unified response. “The fact that the United Nations has divided the U.N. presence into two missions is of course not helpful. The Government of Sudan always tries to divide and rule. . . The U.N. has weakened itself. It was [a] stupid decision, asking the people of Sudan to stay together and then to make yourself into two missions in that specific country. I never understood the political wisdom of that decision . . .”

What do you see as the prospect for a united Sudan?

You need to guarantee:

1. Peace in the South

2. Peace in Darfur

3. Development

4. Guarantees of fundamental rights (He commented:  “In the period I was there, I really had the impression that they (the Government of South Sudan) were doing good things . . . they really did a good job in the first two years. . “)

“If these four conditions . . . would be met, there’s a chance for unity. If these conditions would not be met, I bet the people in the South would vote for independence. . . .”