By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, May 17 2002 (IPS)

Three days after the release of a long-awaited report by U.S. Special Envoy John Danforth on prospects for peace in Sudan, experts here say they are unsure of the direction of U.S. policy toward Africa’s longest-running civil war.

Elements of the report contradict long-standing U.S. positions, according to independent analysts who say the former senator’s recommendations on self-determination and oil clearly favour the government in Khartoum.

They also express concern that the report’s recommendation that Washington continue to actively encourage two existing regional initiatives, which are themselves at odds on key points, rather than launch a new plan of its own, may simply lead to continued deadlock in a war that has killed more than two million people since 1983.

The existing initiatives include one put forward by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a group of Sudan’s East African neighbours, and another by Egypt and Libya.

“The message it sends is that the U.S. government does not want to be at the forefront of finding peace in Sudan,” says one Congressional analyst. “What does it mean that we want to be an energetic participant in a process that we know hasn’t worked? Is this a way of just washing our hands of the problem?”

The precise status of the report, which President George W. Bush will formally accept at the White House Monday, also is unclear.

State Department officials say its substantive recommendations, apart from its conclusion that both the National Islamic Front (NIF) government and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) are sufficiently committed to peace to warrant Washington’s “energetic participation” in a long-term peace process, are irrelevant.

“His views on self-determination and oil are his views,” says one senior official. “They are not defining in any sense.”

“The only thing that mattered was for Danforth to say yes or no on going forward,” says John Prendergast, a Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group (ICG) who previously served as an Africa aide to former President Bill Clinton. “The Danforth report will have served its purpose in that it endorses greater diplomatic engagement by the United States.”

That the report’s controversial recommendations survived a lengthy vetting process, as well as the likelihood that Danforth will likely retain his title as special envoy even if he now moves into the background, has only compounded the uncertainty.

“It raises a very fundamental question about who is articulating and initiating policy toward Sudan,” says Ted Dagne, a Sudan specialist at the Congressional Research Service. “Is it the special envoy or is it the State Department?”

Danforth’s most controversial recommendation involves the definition of “self-determination” for the predominantly black and non-Muslim people of southern Sudan who have been fighting the Arabic- and Muslim-dominated central government in Khartoum for all but 11 years since the country’s independence in 1965.

IGAD’s Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed by Khartoum and the SPLA/M in 1997 and strongly supported by Washington, recognised that self-determination includes the option of southern secession.

But Danforth concluded in his report that any secession would be exceedingly difficult to achieve and that autonomy within a unified Sudan was more feasible and preferable. This raises serious questions about consistency.

“The U.S. can’t support the DOP and then start questioning what the basis of self-determination is,” says Prendergast. “If the U.S. is going to support the DOP under IGAD, then Danforth can’t be the policy.”

Similar questions are being raised about Danforth’s proposals on oil, which is being pumped from fields in western Upper Nile, which has become the war’s main battleground. Sharing the proceeds from oil sales, currently the main source of financing for the government’s growing military arsenal, could result in a “cessation of the current conflict over the oil fields before a final peace agreement,” the report suggests.

Analysts dismiss this proposal as hopelessly unrealistic, if for no other reason than that the SPLA’s attacks on Sudan’s oil infrastructure are by far its biggest source of leverage in forcing the government to address its demands for self-determination.

“It’s true that oil revenues will be a central element in any final agreement, but there are fundamental issues for which the war is being fought that go far beyond the oil issue,” according to Prendergast, who adds that the SPLA will never agree to a cease-fire in the oil fields in advance of a comprehensive peace settlement based on the DOP.

Nonetheless, Danforth’s recommendation on this point has fuelled concerns that Washington may favour a creeping cease-fire, particularly in the wake of Danforth’s success in mediating an internationally monitored cease-fire covering the Nuba Mountains, one of four confidence-building measures he advanced to determine the two sides’ commitment to reaching a settlement.

Some European countries — home to most of the companies that are pumping oil in Sudan — have favoured a cease-fire for the oil fields and have pressed Washington to support them.

But, “if there’s a cease-fire in the Nuba and another in the oil fields, the rest is strategically insignificant, and the government will have no incentive to negotiate,” says the Congressional aide.

State Department officials say the SPLA has been reassured that Danforth’s recommendation regarding a cease-fire in the oil fields, as with his remarks on self-determination, are not U.S. policy. “His recommendations are not prescriptive,” says one senior official.

As evidence, he points to the fact that Washington sided with the SPLA two months ago on the question of whether SPLA attacks on oil installations or infrastructure would violate a ban attacks against civilians, the most significant of the confidence-building measures negotiated between the two sides by Danforth. Washington is planning to deploy 15-25 monitors to Sudan to oversee that accord next month.

The inconsistencies between Danforth’s recommendations and State Department policy, according to sources, were due primarily to the input of Ambassador Robert Oakley, Danforth’s chief of staff, who spent much of his career in Islamic countries.

“He argued Egypt’s brief,” says one source. Egypt, whose initiative with Libya does not seriously address self-determination, is strongly opposed to any possible break-up of its southern neighbour.

With the report now completed, State Department officials say any confusion created by it should be quickly dispelled, as Danforth moves to the sidelines and Oakley fades from the scene.

“I believe we’re going to have one peace process and it’s going to be IGAD, and it’s going to try to bring the Egyptians along,” says Prendergast. “Whether they will go along will be a test of how serious the U.S. is about peace in Sudan.”

But others see the Danforth mission as a missed opportunity to craft a clear policy and strategy for ending the war. “Danforth was a time-buying device for the administration,” according to Nina Shea of the neo-conservative think tank, Freedom House, who strongly opposes Khartoum. “The report will be a fig-leaf for indifference.”

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