Beyond Darfur

Sudan's Slide Toward Civil War

Andrew S. Natsios

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008

Summary:  While the crisis in Darfur simmers, the larger problem of Sudan's survival as a state is becoming increasingly urgent. Old tensions between the Arabs of the Nile River valley, who have held power for a century, and marginalized groups on the country's periphery are turning into a national crisis. Engagement with Khartoum may be the only way to avert another civil war in Sudan, and even that may not be enough.

ANDREW S. NATSIOS, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan in 2006-7 and Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2001-6, is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

The approach emphasizing regime change has posed several problems. Severe pressure from Washington -- economic sanctions, being tagged a state sponsor of terrorism, and diplomatic downgrading -- did force Khartoum to expel bin Laden in the mid-1990s. But considering that the NCP is still in power today, it is clear that the policy has been a failure overall. The U.S. government is not very good at forcing regime change anywhere. And in Sudan, which is substantially bigger and more complex than Afghanistan or Iraq, the task is particularly difficult. Regime change cannot address the major challenge that Garang often mentioned to me, namely how to "de-NCPify" Sudan after the NCP government is removed. Garang believed that if his movement ever assumed power, its central problem would be dealing with the one to two million Sudanese who together have been controlling all levels of the state for two decades. The NCP rules not simply through its governing council but also through an extensive party organization, the national civil service (which NCP operatives have taken over from career officers), hundreds of thousands of agents and informants in the security and intelligence apparatuses, and a growing industrial complex.

The NCP infrastructure is massive, complex, and ruthless. It will not simply disappear; it has no place to go. Judging by the recent histories of the Balkan states, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, and the former Soviet republics, Sudan's old order will not leave quietly if it is offered no way out. If the NCP is forcibly deposed, it will likely reconstitute itself underground in the form of tribal militias and criminal mafias. Unless the interests of the Nile River Arabs are represented in a coalition government or protected by some constitutional arrangement, whatever is left of the party will try to infiltrate and destabilize the new regime. Several powerful NCP leaders have threatened in private to make the country ungovernable if they are forced out of office. Because of the tribal hatreds that the party has nurtured and manipulated over the years, retributive violence could break out on a grand scale. Everyone would be at risk, particularly in greater Khartoum.

This is but one reason why the West's strategy of confrontation, which I once supported, has not produced -- and cannot produce -- a solution to either Darfur's crisis or Sudan's. U.S. advocates and government officials once hoped that pressure could dislodge the NCP. It now seems clear that promoting regime change unintentionally reinforced the regime's intransigence and encouraged more violence. Careful and dispassionate observation of the NCP's behavior suggests that the party becomes more irresponsible and brutal when it feels threatened, from within Sudan or by the international community. As Western pressure on Khartoum has grown over the past few years, the NCP has established formal ties to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime in Iran and Hugo Chávez's in Venezuela. Last year, the U.S. Congress passed a divestiture statute protecting U.S. state governments, municipalities, universities, and companies from shareholder lawsuits if, on political grounds, they choose to sell the stocks they hold in companies that do business in Sudan. Within a month, the Sudanese government tried to overthrow the Chadian government through proxies, massively bombed civilian targets in Darfur after a rebel offensive, and launched a ground attack on UN peacekeeping troops.

SAVE SUDAN

Engagement is now the only policy that has any chance of success. With experience showing that the NCP can resist outside pressure thanks to Sudan's growing oil wealth, an approach offering rewards for compliance and cooperation is more likely to work than one based on punishing recalcitrance. Washington should offer Khartoum the chance to normalize U.S.-Sudanese relations incrementally if it takes tangible steps to settle the Darfur crisis and implement the transformational provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The NCP is particularly interested in being removed from Washington's list of terrorist sponsors. This change in status could mean the lifting of sanctions as well as new access to U.S. technology for oil refining -- and a chance for Khartoum to increase its oil revenues by as much as 40 percent, according to oil industry experts. The Bush administration is now trying to adopt a more pragmatic approach that would allow such measures, but opposition in Congress and among the Darfur advocacy movement might make that impossible. This would be unfortunate, because much good has come from engagement with Khartoum in the past: it produced the Comprehensive Peace Agreement -- the Bashir government's only forward-looking accomplishment to date.

Washington should spearhead efforts to ensure the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, while following the UN's and the AU's lead in trying to secure a negotiated peace in Darfur and in getting it enforced by UN-AU peacekeepers. Darfur cannot be saved if Sudan is not, and saving Sudan depends, more than anything else, on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement's implementation. Preparations for the national elections are moving at a tortoise's pace because the NCP knows its chances of winning are negligible. Many Sudanese fear that the party will try to invoke the insecurity in Darfur as an excuse to cancel the contest. That would be disastrous, because if Khartoum refuses to hold the elections, steals them by rigging the process, or blocks the 2011 referendum on the south's secession, war will most certainly break out. The best way to convince the NCP to drop its obstructionist tactics is to offer it more positive incentives and fewer negative ones. The NCP is more likely to allow the general elections (and accept the presence of international peacekeepers in Darfur) if its leaders no longer fear that their clique will face retribution if the party loses or that they might be tried for war crimes before the International Criminal Court. Washington has agreed to cooperate with the court (whose creation it opposed) under pressure from domestic constituencies calling for the NCP to be punished for the 2003-4 atrocities in Darfur. But threatening to hold the trials is jeopardizing the chances for peace. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement says not one word about prosecuting war crimes or compensating the victims of atrocities for just this reason: back in 2003, during the peace negotiations, Garang wisely realized that if he demanded justice, the north-south war would not end (he also knew the southerners had committed their share of atrocities). Instead of war crimes trials, the South African model of a truth and reconciliation commission might be considered.

Engaging Khartoum would also directly serve the north-south peace process. Washington alone cannot save Sudan -- only the Sudanese can do that -- but it can support those forces, in the north and in the south, that seek a nonviolent, incremental path toward long-term peace. U.S. policy should continue to focus on preventing a return to war while developing formulas for wealth sharing in all parts of the country and a compromise on the status of Abyei. This last element is essential, because if war ignites Sudan, Abyei will likely have been the spark. (China and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders Khartoum respects, could help, much as they helped convince President Bashir to support the deployment of UN troops to Darfur.) In a similar spirit, Washington should press the UN, the NCP, the SPLM, and Sudan's traditional political parties to plan now for the aftermath of the 2011 referendum, in case the southerners decide to secede, as seems likely.

The Bush administration should also continue to develop its incremental road map for improving U.S. relations with Sudan -- something NCP leaders have repeatedly told me they want -- in exchange for a political settlement in Darfur and for Khartoum's implementation of the most transformational provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. A tangible improvement in relations might convince President Bashir to turn away from the NCP's hard-liners and toward its moderates and oversee a nonviolent transition to a pluralist democracy or at least a more inclusive society. (Washington successfully used a similar approach with South Africa in the early 1990s and Burundi at the turn of the century.) The NCP's leaders are worried that U.S. policy might change to their disadvantage under the next U.S. president and that they have only until the end of 2008 to improve relations with Washington -- a point that I have reinforced in all of my conversations with them. Unfortunately, rapprochement may face substantial resistance in the United States because the erroneous impression that tens of thousands of civilians continue to be slaughtered in Darfur is driving both a confrontational advocacy campaign and aggressive congressional action. But I believe it is the only approach that can save Sudan.

Engaging Khartoum would also mean abandoning the tempting but foolhardy option of military intervention, except under extreme circumstances. No Western government, not even the United States (regardless of who is its next president), is likely to invade Sudan or blockade its port on the Red Sea, because either move would constitute an act of war and involve high military risks. In any case, the use of U.S. airpower against Sudan would be justified, ethically or politically, in only two instances: if the Sudanese armed forces launched an unprovoked attack against the south or if Khartoum tried to violently shut down the refugee camps in Darfur and massacre or forcibly return people to their homes. Any U.S. military action would endanger the humanitarian aid effort that is keeping more than two million persons displaced from Darfur alive. Meanwhile, the number of deaths in Darfur has dropped dramatically since 2003-4, and last year more than half of them were among Arab tribes fighting over Africans' land. No civilian life is expendable, of course, but the current losses hardly justify the potential humanitarian consequences of military intervention. The time for military action has passed; if there was one, it was during the massive atrocities of 2003 and 2004, when 96 percent of all the deaths in Darfur from the recent conflict occurred. Khartoum has effectively lost control of the region and is unlikely to regain it anytime soon. And although many southerners believe an attack from the north is imminent, I think it is unlikely given the NCP's current military weakness.