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SUDAN: U.S. Works to Avert Post-Referendum Bloodshed

Matthew O. Berger

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 2010 (IPS) - With just under three months before southern Sudan votes on whether to become an independent country, the U.S. is stepping up efforts to ensure the vote and post-vote resolution are peaceful and credible – and NGOs are stepping up pressure to ensure that Washington follows through.

The U.S. is the largest aid donor to Sudan, but up until several weeks ago internal debates in Washington about how best to deal with Khartoum threatened to weaken the U.S.’s role as a peacekeeper there.

Since then, Washington has placed Sudan squarely on its diplomatic radar, as evidenced by President Barack Obama’s presence at a U.N. meeting on Sudan in New York Sep. 24. The goal? Avert a return to the civil war that ravaged Africa’s largest country until it was ended by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.

Five years later, Washington seems to have only just woken up to the fact that the referendum on secession promised in that 2005 accord is a short three months away, with both voting preparations and diplomatic negotiations behind schedule.

“The ball got dropped the day the peace agreement was signed between the north and south,” said John Prendergast, co- founder of the Enough Project, in Washington Tuesday. “As we do so often, once the biggest mountain is surmounted we go on to the next thing.”

Prendergast and other activists, such as the actor George Clooney, who has travelled to Sudan multiple times and produced a documentary on the Darfur conflict there, say that the U.S. has an opportunity, through effective diplomacy with Khartoum and southern Sudan, to avoid the massive post-referendum bloodshed that they say seems almost inevitable right now.

Clooney met this week with Obama and U.S. policymakers, telling them, “We can pick this up in five or six months when thousands of people have been killed or deal with it now.”

“On Jan. 9 [the South] is going to vote for their independence and they’re willing to die for it…we shouldn’t underestimate that,” he told a room of journalists and foreign policy experts following his day of meetings Tuesday. “We’re there. We spend almost a billion dollars a year there anyway. So, you know, this is something that requires no money and no American lives right now. We can do it now or we can mop it up.”

Washington seems to be listening to his and other activists’ pleas for more action from the U.S. in ensuring Sudan is prepared for the vote and its aftermath. Obama recently appointed a new special envoy to lead a U.S. negotiation teams in Sudan and his appearance at the U.N. meeting was praised by NGOs for helping to raise the international profile of the issue.

In terms of actions that can be taken to help the referendum go off as smoothly as possible, Prendergast recommends a carrot-and-stick approach in dealing with Sudan’s president – and indicted international war criminal – Omar al-Bashir

He says that, on the one hand, the U.S. and other international actors can try to compromise with Bashir to ensure he does not attack the south after it, almost assuredly, votes for its independence.

“Human rights activists, including us, are going to be sickened, but peace is more important,” Prendergast says.

The “stick” option might include freezing some of Bashir’s and other Khartoum figures’ assets. “We’ve got to be willing to go after assets in a very significant way. A lot of money has been made by this oil,” Prendergast said.

For now, though, the focus is on making sure powerful countries like the U.S. do what they can diplomatically to avoid post-referendum bloodshed between the oil-rich, Christian south and the Muslim north.

“There is a moment now in Sudan that is a decisive moment that could potentially, with the proper diplomatic intervention, prevent the loss of millions of lives,” said Prendergast.

“We were late to Darfur. We were late to Rwanda. We have an opportunity to be ahead of this,” said Clooney.

The last few weeks have seen a flurry of international activity in raising awareness of the possibility for a delayed referendum vote and post-referendum violence. The U.N. Security Council travelled to Sudan last week to assess the progress of preparations for the January vote and urge that it be held peacefully and on time. And a group of Sudan religious leaders is coming to Washington next week to maintain the awareness other activists have generated of the issue.

The U.N. envoys said Thursday in New York that the voting could still take place on time despite preparations being far behind schedule.

But they also warned of southerners fears of regarding the potential for post-vote war. The north is not expected to let the south – and its vast oil reserves – go easily, a situation U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called a “ticking-time bomb”.

“Bashir doesn’t want to be the guy that lost the South and got nothing out of it. He’s got to have a fairly significant oil wealth-sharing deal over a course of a number of years for him to at least get something out of the thing,” said Prendergast.

All this seems to place the U.S. – and the deals it can work out with the Sudanese parties between now and Jan. 9 – in a critical position. “[Bashir] doesn’t want a new state in the South appearing and the U.S. suddenly goes, you know what, we’ll just be good buddies with the people in the South and let’s go for regime change in Khartoum. This is worst-case scenario,” said Prendergast.