The Need to Retool Liberia's Relationship With the U.S.
By Robtel Neajai Pailey,
20 January 2012
AllAfrica
Liberian Observer
Two very significant and interconnected events happened this week in Liberia - President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated for a second term with a subdued opposition attending the ceremonies, and former Liberian President Charles Taylor was implicated in a Boston Globe article for serving as a CIA informant beginning in the early 1980s and spanning many decades.
Taylor, Taylor, How Did Your Garden Grow?
America's facilitation of Taylor's escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985 - while he was facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly stealing US$1 million from the General Services Agency, which he headed during President Samuel Kanyon Doe's regime - was always rumored but never corroborated. I remember covering the first day of Taylor's trial in the Hague for Pambazuka News, and interviewing Stephen Rapp, the then chief prosecutor, about whether or not his investigations into Taylor's exploits in Libya and Sierra Leone ever unearthed the real causes of his 'escape' from the maximum security prison in Massachusetts.
Rapp was tight-lipped, yet appeared confounded by this mystery as well. When Taylor eventually confessed during the Hague trial that he strolled out of prison after a guard conveniently opened his cell one night, we all knew that something was awry: "I am calling it my release because I didn't break out," Taylor testified. "I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding [afterwards]."
The Taylor-CIA connection has re-inscribed for Liberians an age-old dilemma, what to do with our so-called historical relationship with the United States, which has been fraught with betrayal after betrayal. Liberians who have been commenting on various notice boards are justifiably angry, upset and disappointed, but not surprised. This is the validation we've been wanting for years, and it comes on the heels of the inauguration for a second term of our head of state, who was ironically pictured dedicating the new U.S. Embassy in Liberia this week, with a smiling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the foreground.
Some Liberians, under anonymity, are arguing that U.S. authorities who courted Taylor for intelligence be brought to justice for crimes against humanity in the Liberian civil war, that the International Criminal Court - now headed by a female Gambian national - should exhibit blind justice, that instead of hauling African and non-Western leaders to the international body for prosecution, they too should face the full weight of the law. I tend to agree with these arguments, however radical and farfetched they may seem.
Inquiring Liberian Minds Deserve to Know
The Globe article recounts that the CIA has said releasing further information could be a national security threat. A threat to whom, might I ask? Liberians deserve to know the nature, duration, scale, and scope of the CIA-Taylor relationship, it is a part of our national history, and must be recounted in the history books for our children, and our children's children to remember that a relationship with the U.S. must be monitored at all times.
Liberians are not gullible, nor are we unsophisticated in realizing that one plus one equals two. We've always known that the dubiousness surrounding Taylor's escape from the Massachusetts maximum-security prison was the beginning of the end for us. And if the implications of the Globe article are true, then the CIA could provide more answers.
It's no wonder that the U.S. didn't intervene in the Liberian civil war, though Liberians begged and pleaded for its "father/mother" to stop us from killing each other. One U.S. diplomat at the time even said that "Liberia is of no strategic interest to the United States." It begs the question, if Liberia was of "no strategic interest" during the war, when we were killing ourselves and each other in the name of liberation, what is Liberia's strategic interest to the U.S. now, when U.S. NGOs and development workers abound, and the Peace Corps has reinserted itself?
This should send a strong signal to Liberians and Liberia once and for all that America cannot be trusted. From Noriega, to Osama, to Saddam, to Samuel Doe, authoritarian leaders who end up in the U.S.'s good graces are never there for long.
Limits of Reciprocity
What Liberians and the Liberian government should be doing is strategizing, devising our own "Liberia Policy for the U.S." which factors in seriously our checkered history with unsentimental bias.
We should also rely on a corpus of intellectual and creative work that has already investigated our 'limits of reciprocity' with the United States. Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright's film, Liberia: America's Stepchild, explores the torturous relationship between Liberia and the United States, with her thesis being that the U.S. sees Liberia as an 'outside' child, one who is illegitimate upon conception and can be used and abused at will without consequence. And Liberian academic Dr. D. Elwood Dunn also interrogates this relationship in his book, Liberia and the United States During the Cold War: Limits of Reciprocity, showing that the Cold War placed Liberia in a very strategic position to exploit its relationship with the United States, yet with unintended consequences.
In this new political dispensation, it should be clear that Liberia should hold the U.S. at arm's length, that hosting AFRICOM or any U.S. satellite post is out of the question, that we have to use them just as strategically as they have used us. With the geopolitics of China and other emerging nations, Liberia needs to develop a "Look South Policy," not because we have become alienated, as in the case of Zimbabwe, but because we have made a conscious decision to explore other options, remembering that the U.S. will act only in its interest and leave those caught in the crossfire to fend for themselves.
We deserve to know the details of Taylor's relationship with the CIA. It is crucial to our development planning, historical remembrance, healing and nation-building.
Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Robtel Neajai Pailey is currently pursuing a doctorate in Development Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), as a Mo Ibrahim Foundation Ph.D. Scholar.
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label africa. Show all posts
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Yes, I’m the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia
Tuesday, 08 May
By Paul Yeenie Harry
The New Dawn (Liberia)
After re-working on “Is This the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia?” and publishing it last Wednesday, I went home and lay on my bed prone. Soon, I was arrested; neither by officers of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of Liberia nor by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, but by that natural, invisible arresting officer we call sleep.
After my arrest, I found myself in a dreamy world. It looked like the court setting in The Hague. I saw Taylor reading my article. Then he paused the reading, laid the New Dawn newspaper on the desk before him and started a monologic presentation – his response to my article.
Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia. I went to college in the United States. I have a master’s degree in economics. You could call me a pro-democracy advocate. Remember I was once the President of the Union of Liberia Associations in America (ULAA). I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
If you will recall, I returned to Liberia in the 1970’s, and when the 1980 coup occurred, I found myself as Director General of the General Services Agency (GSA). You remember? I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
Following some allegation from the Samuel Doe government that I stole about US$1m under the pretext that I was purchasing some machines/equipment from some non-existent Earth Removing Equipment Company in the US. Doe and his government started some extradition litigation against me. In the process, I was imprisoned at a correction center in Massachusetts, Boston, USA. I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I was in my little cell in Boston when some arrangement – arrangement made by powerful and well-connected individuals and institutions – was put in place for me to be released for some scheme they wanted me to execute for them. This is what such individuals and institutions have done all the time, causing setbacks, suffering and death for scores of people – sometimes a whole nation.
Of course, they will tell you that I broke jail. Do you believe that? Anyway, what I wish to point out is that I am the same Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
[Taylor was gesticulating as he spoke, causing the eyeglasses on his face to drop to the edge of his nose, almost falling from there. He paused, repositioned his glasses and stared at the New Dawn newspaper before continuing his monologic presentation.]
They sent me to Africa with the sole purpose of deposing the Doe government, thereby destabilizing the country in the process. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
To consummate the process, I passed through a few countries, including Ghana and Sierra Leone. I also temporarily settled in, or befriended the military and the political leaders of, some countries, including Libya, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. Yes, I am the Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I am the one under whose leadership the NPFL war was launched in Liberia, by way of the Liberian border town called Butuo. It was on December 24, 1989. Remember? Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
Believe me. Launching that war was a very difficult undertaking. Two things helped me. Generally speaking, the Liberian people were tired of Doe and his government. Second, I had the support of many powerful individuals and institutions, individuals and institutions that had interest in what I was doing or had interest in something they had seen in Liberia. I even got military and political advice, trained fighters, arms and ammunition and some other logistical support from either those individuals or their countries. That’s why there were Ivoirians, Burkinbes and other nationals fighting for the NPFL during the war. Let me restate. I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
Look, when I agreed to head the NPFL, when I bravely accepted to lead that difficult venture of overthrowing President Doe and his government by way of arms, I did it because I, too, had some interest in the process. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay of Liberia.
Now, hear this. There were some other Liberians who had political interest in the undertaking – they wanted to be this and be that in any government formed after the overthrow of Doe, with some presenting and positioning themselves as the president-in-waiting, but they were scared to lead the most difficult aspect – the military part. They wanted me to risk my life and my future, while they sat in their cozy homes in the United States and other places, and just come after everything and be given authority. Like the late Gaddafi, I call them cockroaches. They thought they had seen a fool to use. I knew them well. I knew their games and tricks and how they had played them over the years. I was prepared for them and their games. I said to myself, “Do these people think I am stupid?” I, too, was interested in becoming president in the process. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
[Taylor paused for a few seconds, looked at the audience and looked at the newspaper article. He was furious, and the furiousness was not hidden. But it also seemed he was not using his anger to scribe the elimination of real and perceived enemies, but to tell a true story.]
I waged the rebel war against Doe and his government, determined to depose him and end his ten-year despotic rule. Yes, I am the one who said “The only good Doe is a dead Doe.” Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I controlled the largest and strongest rebel group in Liberia. I had the most strategized rebel operation in Liberia. I had the most popular rebel group in Liberia. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor who vehemently opposed the intervention of the military men and women of the Economic Community of West African Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), militarily attacking them on the high sea, even before their landing on the soil of Liberia. I fought them for years. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
When the news about the formation of an interim government was heard in 1990, especially considering the games and tricks of the Liberian politicians who wanted me to fight in the jungle of Liberia while they discuss and divide political positions, I declared that there would be no interim government that I, Charles Gahankay Taylor, would not be the head of. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
[Taylor paused again, blew his nose in the white handkerchief in his left hand and glanced at the new Dawn newspaper article, “Is This the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia?”]
To be continued…
Thursday, March 08, 2012
On the western NGO's proclivity to "help" Africa.
This IC campaign is a perfect example of how fund-sucking NGO’s survive. “Raising awareness” (as vapid an exercise as it is) on the level that IC does, costs money. Loads and loads of money. Someone has to pay for the executive staff, fancy offices, and well, that 30-minute grand-savior, self-crowning exercise in ego stroking—in HD—wasn’t free. In all this kerfuffle, I am afraid everyone is missing the true aim of IC’s brilliant marketing strategy. They are not selling justice, democracy, or restoration of anyone’s dignity. This is a self-aware machine that must continually find a reason to be relevant. They are, in actuality, selling themselves as the issue, as the subject, as the panacea for everything that ails me as the agency-devoid African. All I have to do is show up in my broken English, look pathetic and wanting. You, my dear social media savvy click-activist, will shed a tear, exhaust Facebook’s like button, mobilize your cadre of equally ill-uninformed netizens to throw money at the problem.
Cause, you know, that works so well in the first world.
....
If there was a prize for the NGO who best commodifies white man’s burden on the African continent, and more specifically in Uganda, Invisible Children
On Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 Campaign.
Siena Anstis
March 7, 2012
If there was a prize for the NGO who best commodifies white man’s burden on the African continent, and more specifically in Uganda, Invisible Children would win.They recently struck again with a new video and campaign titled “Kony 2012.” I was surprised to see it popping up everywhere on my Facebook feedback yesterday: clearly, their social media tactics are to be admired. Their underlying message – which is, of course, more important – is not to be.
I think it would be useful for persons unfamiliar with the issues featured in the movie and with the difficulties of poverty porn messaging to read up on some past blogs about Invisible Children before sharing this film. A friend has circulated a list of links providing critique from bright and well-qualified individuals speaking on these issues:
Wronging Rights is headed by two human rights lawyers who, for many years, have been on top of the development and humanitarian aid debate, as well as international justice. A few thoughts on the previous Invisible Children “Abduct Yourself” campaign from their blog:
First, organizations like Invisible Children not only take up resources that could be used to fund more intelligent advocacy, they take up rhetorical space that could be used to develop more intelligent advocacy. And yeah, this may seem like an absurdly academic point to raise when talking about a problem that is clearly crying out for pragmatic solutions, but, uh, the way we define problems is important. Really, really important. Choosing to simplistically define Congolese women as “The Raped” and Ugandan children as “The Abducted” constrains our ability to think creatively about the problems they face, and work with them to combat these problems.
Second, treating their problems as one-dimensional issues that can be solved by a handful of plucky college students armed only with the strength of their convictions and a video camera doesn’t help anyone. These gets back to something very simple and very smart that Alanna Shaikh wrote a few months ago: “Bad development work is based on the idea that poor people have nothing. Something is better than nothing, right? So anything you give these poor people will be better than what they had before.”
Over on Texas in Africa, the blog has previously hosted two students who have provided some additional thoughts on Invisible Children. The students made a good faith effort to get in contact with Invisible Children and get both sides of the story on their former abduction campaign:
This is a symptom of the larger problem at hand. Not only does IC fail to base its decisions on what Ugandans think is best for them, the organization also make efforts to explain away any dissent. IC has become a brand with machine guns and cameras as its apparent logo and celebrity filmmakers as the protagonists against the evil LRA. The war is no longer about the people versus the LRA; it has transformed itself into something far too sensationalized and, at times, seemingly insincere. Poole, Russell, and Bailey v. Kony.
… And this is why we are as concerned as we are. IC has great potential and opportunity to do good. The organization has successfully motivated masses of young people to be globally and politically active. Advocacy, however, does not end at trendy t-shirts and cool graphics.
While I could reiterate what bad advocacy looks like and why we do not want nor need it, Texas in Africa has provided a thoughtful list of issues to consider as well. There is little I could add to it and I strongly suggest you read the whole post here.
Unmuted has also posted an excellent critique of this new video. An extract:
The dis-empowering and reductive narrative: the Invisible Children narrative on Uganda is one that paints the people as victims, lacking agency, voice, will, or power. It calls upon an external cadre of American students to liberate them by removing the bad guy who is causing their suffering. Well, this is a misrepresentation of the reality on the ground. Fortunately, there are plenty of examples of child and youth advocates who have been fighting to address the very issues at the heart of IC’s work. Want evidence? In addition to the organizations I list above, also look at Art for Children, Friends of Orphans, and Children Chance International. It doesn’t quiet match the victim narrative, does it? I understand that IC is a US-based organization working to change US policy. But, it doesn’t absolve it from the responsibility of telling a more complete story, one that shows the challenges and trials along side the strength, resilience, and transformational work of affected communities.
Revival of the White savior: if you have watched the Invisible Children video and followed the organization’s work in the past, you will note a certain messianic/savior undertone to it all. “I will do anything I can to stop him,” declares the founder in the video. It’s quite individualistic and reeks of the dated colonial views of Africa and Africans as helpless beings who need to be saved and civilized. Where in that video do you see the agency of Ugandans? Where in that Video do you see Jacob open his eyes wide at the mere possibility of his own strength, as Jennifer Lentfer of How Matters describes here? Can we point out the problem with having one child speak on the desires, dreams, and hopes of a whole nation? I don’t even want to mention the paternalistic tone with which Jacob and Uganda (when did it become part of central Africa by the way?) are described, not excluding the condescending use of subtitles for someone who is clearly speaking English.
Finally, a few words of my own. My impression is that the movie is being used as means for Invisible Children to (i) stay relevant and (ii) raise more funding. Capturing Kony and the focus on international justice is a good excuse. Regardless of this opinion, running campaigns to raise awareness is not necessarily damning in itself (and, indeed, in many cases should be commended). Rather, as all the writers above suggest, the manner in which it is done is very important. A few comments on this new video.
The issue with social media is really highlighted by Invisible Children. The number of “likes” on your Facebook page is not necessarily related to the quality of information you share. Social media allows making anything viral, quickly. People often do not look into the substance of the message, or even watch the video you are sending. Once you become a brand, you can do anything. Invisible Children has successfully become a brand, but is sharing information that is far from nuanced and based on emotional reactions. It fails to paint the full picture. In addition to what Unmuted and others have said, I’d like to add the following thoughts:
My main concern is that Gulu – and Uganda - has gone through some incredible changes. The economy is booming. The region is re-stabilizing. While Kony’s men continue to kill, rape and slaughter elsewhere, Gulu is not a static, unchanging place. Neither is Uganda, neither is the continent. Portraying a region like Gulu as such, and sending the mass message that the whole continent reflects this, is damaging. It undermines possibilities of investment. It clouds story of entrepreneurship, success and innovation. This goes hand in hand with saying “I work in Africa.” Lumping the continent as one messy area.
When it comes to the ICC indictment of Kony, the film clip fails to consider the difficulties that such an international indictment can have and what alternative effects an offer like amnesty might have had. There have been major debates about the peace versus justice debate (an interesting and recent reflection on this is available here), which not only have an impact on how we conceive of the Kony indictment, but also of the ICC as an institution. When it comes to supporting American troops in Uganda, it fails to consider the wider systemic problems that are likely contributing to a failure to arrest Kony and which have little to do with whether the US sends a few soldiers abroad or not. Surely Invisible Children’s audience is not so simplistic that being presented with these critical questions would kill their messaging? I think Musa Okwonga, writing in the Independent, highlights the tension between the need to draw attention to these issues, while using sophisticated techniques:
I understand the anger and resentment at Invisible Children’s approach, which with its paternalism has unpleasant echoes of colonialism. I will admit to being perturbed by its apparent top-down prescriptiveness, when so much diligent work is already being done at Northern Uganda’s grassroots. On the other hand, I am very happy – relieved, more than anything – that Invisible Children have raised worldwide awareness of this issue. Murderers and torturers tend to prefer anonymity, and if not that then respectability: that way, they can go about their work largely unhindered. For too many years, the subject of this trending topic on Twitter was only something that I heard about in my grandparents’ living room, as relatives and family friends gathered for fruitless and frustrated hours of discussion. Watching the video, though, I was concerned at the simplicity of the approach that Invisible Children seemed to have taken.
The thing is that Joseph Kony has been doing this for a very, very, very long time. He emerged about a quarter of a century, which is about the same time that Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni came to power. As a result the fates of these two leaders must, I think, be viewed together. Yet, though President Museveni must be integral to any solution to this problem, I didn’t hear him mentioned once in the 30-minute video. I thought that this was a crucial omission. Invisible Children asked viewers to seek the engagement of American policymakers and celebrities, but – and this is a major red flag – it didn’t introduce them to the many Northern Ugandans already doing fantastic work both in their local communities and in the diaspora. It didn’t ask its viewers to seek diplomatic pressure on President Museveni’s administration.
About ten minutes into the video, the narrator asks his young son who “the bad guy” in Uganda is; when his young son hesitates, he informs him that Joseph Kony is the bad guy. In a sense, he let Kony off lightly: he is a monster. But what the narrator also failed to do was mention to his son that when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it. He probably should have told him that, too.
There is another aspect about this particular video and campaign that I, and others, find disturbing. Invisible Children says it will be targeting “culture makers.” Not one of these individuals have significant, vested interests in the African continent (let alone Uganda). Not one person is from Uganda or the wider region. Encouraging a diversity of voices, and providing a platform for new African leaders – whether political, economic, or social – would help highlight that the continent is not just Kony, war and rape and would provide a valuable, wider messaging. The bottom line with poverty porn messaging is that it paints leaders who are struggling in their communities to tackle these problems as hopeless and useless. Keep the American “culture makers,” but why not also provide Ugandan leaders with a platform from which to speak?
In closing, I think the ‘we must start somewhere’ and the ‘better than nothing’ arguments are really tricky. The thing with Invisible Children is that they are not just starting from nowhere and they aren’t just doing nothing. They affect a huge contingent of people around the world. Through extensive fundraising, they have incredible resources. They have a strong foundation and could present a more nuanced and respectful campaign if they wanted to. With that said, I guess I think it is a shame that, after all this time and with their experience, they (i) believe their listeners do not want more answers to the complicated questions and (ii) that they have not considered including and uplifting leaders from the communities which they talk about who could provide a more honest and in-depth picture.
Regardless, I’d like to thank Invisible Children for giving us yet another opportunity to discuss how destructive bad advocacy can be. Here’s an opportunity to challenge ourselves, particularly those who work in development and aid communication, to try and collectively brainstorm how we can generate important stories and campaigns, while sending messages that are empowering, accurate and thought-provoking. It is also an opportunity for each of us to personally dig a bit deeper into the challenge of Kony and the LRA and become more familiar with these issues in a respectful way.
My first suggestion would be to start listening and engaging with the following individuals:
Rosebell Kagumire
TMS Ruge
Maureen Agena
Ssozi Javie
Siena Anstis
March 7, 2012
If there was a prize for the NGO who best commodifies white man’s burden on the African continent, and more specifically in Uganda, Invisible Children would win.They recently struck again with a new video and campaign titled “Kony 2012.” I was surprised to see it popping up everywhere on my Facebook feedback yesterday: clearly, their social media tactics are to be admired. Their underlying message – which is, of course, more important – is not to be.
I think it would be useful for persons unfamiliar with the issues featured in the movie and with the difficulties of poverty porn messaging to read up on some past blogs about Invisible Children before sharing this film. A friend has circulated a list of links providing critique from bright and well-qualified individuals speaking on these issues:
Wronging Rights is headed by two human rights lawyers who, for many years, have been on top of the development and humanitarian aid debate, as well as international justice. A few thoughts on the previous Invisible Children “Abduct Yourself” campaign from their blog:
Second, treating their problems as one-dimensional issues that can be solved by a handful of plucky college students armed only with the strength of their convictions and a video camera doesn’t help anyone. These gets back to something very simple and very smart that Alanna Shaikh wrote a few months ago: “Bad development work is based on the idea that poor people have nothing. Something is better than nothing, right? So anything you give these poor people will be better than what they had before.”
Over on Texas in Africa, the blog has previously hosted two students who have provided some additional thoughts on Invisible Children. The students made a good faith effort to get in contact with Invisible Children and get both sides of the story on their former abduction campaign:
This is a symptom of the larger problem at hand. Not only does IC fail to base its decisions on what Ugandans think is best for them, the organization also make efforts to explain away any dissent. IC has become a brand with machine guns and cameras as its apparent logo and celebrity filmmakers as the protagonists against the evil LRA. The war is no longer about the people versus the LRA; it has transformed itself into something far too sensationalized and, at times, seemingly insincere. Poole, Russell, and Bailey v. Kony.
… And this is why we are as concerned as we are. IC has great potential and opportunity to do good. The organization has successfully motivated masses of young people to be globally and politically active. Advocacy, however, does not end at trendy t-shirts and cool graphics.
While I could reiterate what bad advocacy looks like and why we do not want nor need it, Texas in Africa has provided a thoughtful list of issues to consider as well. There is little I could add to it and I strongly suggest you read the whole post here.
Unmuted has also posted an excellent critique of this new video. An extract:
The dis-empowering and reductive narrative: the Invisible Children narrative on Uganda is one that paints the people as victims, lacking agency, voice, will, or power. It calls upon an external cadre of American students to liberate them by removing the bad guy who is causing their suffering. Well, this is a misrepresentation of the reality on the ground. Fortunately, there are plenty of examples of child and youth advocates who have been fighting to address the very issues at the heart of IC’s work. Want evidence? In addition to the organizations I list above, also look at Art for Children, Friends of Orphans, and Children Chance International. It doesn’t quiet match the victim narrative, does it? I understand that IC is a US-based organization working to change US policy. But, it doesn’t absolve it from the responsibility of telling a more complete story, one that shows the challenges and trials along side the strength, resilience, and transformational work of affected communities.
Revival of the White savior: if you have watched the Invisible Children video and followed the organization’s work in the past, you will note a certain messianic/savior undertone to it all. “I will do anything I can to stop him,” declares the founder in the video. It’s quite individualistic and reeks of the dated colonial views of Africa and Africans as helpless beings who need to be saved and civilized. Where in that video do you see the agency of Ugandans? Where in that Video do you see Jacob open his eyes wide at the mere possibility of his own strength, as Jennifer Lentfer of How Matters describes here? Can we point out the problem with having one child speak on the desires, dreams, and hopes of a whole nation? I don’t even want to mention the paternalistic tone with which Jacob and Uganda (when did it become part of central Africa by the way?) are described, not excluding the condescending use of subtitles for someone who is clearly speaking English.
Finally, a few words of my own. My impression is that the movie is being used as means for Invisible Children to (i) stay relevant and (ii) raise more funding. Capturing Kony and the focus on international justice is a good excuse. Regardless of this opinion, running campaigns to raise awareness is not necessarily damning in itself (and, indeed, in many cases should be commended). Rather, as all the writers above suggest, the manner in which it is done is very important. A few comments on this new video.
The issue with social media is really highlighted by Invisible Children. The number of “likes” on your Facebook page is not necessarily related to the quality of information you share. Social media allows making anything viral, quickly. People often do not look into the substance of the message, or even watch the video you are sending. Once you become a brand, you can do anything. Invisible Children has successfully become a brand, but is sharing information that is far from nuanced and based on emotional reactions. It fails to paint the full picture. In addition to what Unmuted and others have said, I’d like to add the following thoughts:
My main concern is that Gulu – and Uganda - has gone through some incredible changes. The economy is booming. The region is re-stabilizing. While Kony’s men continue to kill, rape and slaughter elsewhere, Gulu is not a static, unchanging place. Neither is Uganda, neither is the continent. Portraying a region like Gulu as such, and sending the mass message that the whole continent reflects this, is damaging. It undermines possibilities of investment. It clouds story of entrepreneurship, success and innovation. This goes hand in hand with saying “I work in Africa.” Lumping the continent as one messy area.
When it comes to the ICC indictment of Kony, the film clip fails to consider the difficulties that such an international indictment can have and what alternative effects an offer like amnesty might have had. There have been major debates about the peace versus justice debate (an interesting and recent reflection on this is available here), which not only have an impact on how we conceive of the Kony indictment, but also of the ICC as an institution. When it comes to supporting American troops in Uganda, it fails to consider the wider systemic problems that are likely contributing to a failure to arrest Kony and which have little to do with whether the US sends a few soldiers abroad or not. Surely Invisible Children’s audience is not so simplistic that being presented with these critical questions would kill their messaging? I think Musa Okwonga, writing in the Independent, highlights the tension between the need to draw attention to these issues, while using sophisticated techniques:
I understand the anger and resentment at Invisible Children’s approach, which with its paternalism has unpleasant echoes of colonialism. I will admit to being perturbed by its apparent top-down prescriptiveness, when so much diligent work is already being done at Northern Uganda’s grassroots. On the other hand, I am very happy – relieved, more than anything – that Invisible Children have raised worldwide awareness of this issue. Murderers and torturers tend to prefer anonymity, and if not that then respectability: that way, they can go about their work largely unhindered. For too many years, the subject of this trending topic on Twitter was only something that I heard about in my grandparents’ living room, as relatives and family friends gathered for fruitless and frustrated hours of discussion. Watching the video, though, I was concerned at the simplicity of the approach that Invisible Children seemed to have taken.
The thing is that Joseph Kony has been doing this for a very, very, very long time. He emerged about a quarter of a century, which is about the same time that Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni came to power. As a result the fates of these two leaders must, I think, be viewed together. Yet, though President Museveni must be integral to any solution to this problem, I didn’t hear him mentioned once in the 30-minute video. I thought that this was a crucial omission. Invisible Children asked viewers to seek the engagement of American policymakers and celebrities, but – and this is a major red flag – it didn’t introduce them to the many Northern Ugandans already doing fantastic work both in their local communities and in the diaspora. It didn’t ask its viewers to seek diplomatic pressure on President Museveni’s administration.
About ten minutes into the video, the narrator asks his young son who “the bad guy” in Uganda is; when his young son hesitates, he informs him that Joseph Kony is the bad guy. In a sense, he let Kony off lightly: he is a monster. But what the narrator also failed to do was mention to his son that when a bad guy like Kony is running riot for years on end, raping and slashing and seizing and shooting, then there is most likely another host of bad guys out there letting him get on with it. He probably should have told him that, too.
There is another aspect about this particular video and campaign that I, and others, find disturbing. Invisible Children says it will be targeting “culture makers.” Not one of these individuals have significant, vested interests in the African continent (let alone Uganda). Not one person is from Uganda or the wider region. Encouraging a diversity of voices, and providing a platform for new African leaders – whether political, economic, or social – would help highlight that the continent is not just Kony, war and rape and would provide a valuable, wider messaging. The bottom line with poverty porn messaging is that it paints leaders who are struggling in their communities to tackle these problems as hopeless and useless. Keep the American “culture makers,” but why not also provide Ugandan leaders with a platform from which to speak?
In closing, I think the ‘we must start somewhere’ and the ‘better than nothing’ arguments are really tricky. The thing with Invisible Children is that they are not just starting from nowhere and they aren’t just doing nothing. They affect a huge contingent of people around the world. Through extensive fundraising, they have incredible resources. They have a strong foundation and could present a more nuanced and respectful campaign if they wanted to. With that said, I guess I think it is a shame that, after all this time and with their experience, they (i) believe their listeners do not want more answers to the complicated questions and (ii) that they have not considered including and uplifting leaders from the communities which they talk about who could provide a more honest and in-depth picture.
Regardless, I’d like to thank Invisible Children for giving us yet another opportunity to discuss how destructive bad advocacy can be. Here’s an opportunity to challenge ourselves, particularly those who work in development and aid communication, to try and collectively brainstorm how we can generate important stories and campaigns, while sending messages that are empowering, accurate and thought-provoking. It is also an opportunity for each of us to personally dig a bit deeper into the challenge of Kony and the LRA and become more familiar with these issues in a respectful way.
My first suggestion would be to start listening and engaging with the following individuals:
Rosebell Kagumire
TMS Ruge
Maureen Agena
Ssozi Javie
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Africom and the 21st Century colonial war regime
Invariably, corporations followed.
Perhaps the bloodiest of colonial rulers was Leopold II, the Belgian monarch who took the Congo as his personal fiefdom in 1885, ruthlessly exploiting its inhabitants to run his rubber plantations.
Before his death in 1908, Leopold was responsible of upwards of five million deaths, with some estimates running as high as 21.5 million, all of them sacrificed for the profits of corporations in which the monarch personally owned the majority interest.
While it’s still available [until 29 April], we recommend you watch this 2003 Belgian documentary, White King, Red Rubber, Black Death for an account of one of the darkest and least known holocausts of modern times, one which may have dwarfed the murderous records of Hitler and Stalin.
And the war was about one simple thing: Exploitation of natural resources.
It was a later European leader, Adolf Hitler, who summed up the colonialist imperative: “To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them.”
Africom is America’s newest imperial tool, created under the impetus of Air Force Gen. Chuck Wald, the same four star who directed the air war against Afghanistan in the opening round of the Bush/Obama endless wars.
Wald was also the driving force behind the Pentagon’s agrofuel program, which aims to create vast amounts of crop-derived fuels to keep America’s war machine, well, booming.
The Iraq war, after all was all about oil. Even John McCain, Dubya’s senatorial stalwart, acknowledged back during his presidential campaign in 2008:
“My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”
And as Alan Greenspan famously confirmed, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
So let’s stop pretending that what we’re seeing play out in Africa these days has anything to do with “freedom” and “humanitarian needs.” It’s significant to note that targets of Western “intervention” tend to control critical resources.
Libya boasts the world’s finest light, sweet crude oil. Afghanistan holds trillions in natural resources as well as the geography needed for critical pipelines. And of course there was Iraq.
Now back to Africom, this from The East African back in January [via Ayyaantuu Oromiyaa]:
The incoming head of the US Africa Command has promised to consider African countries as part of a review of where Africom’s headquarters should be situated.
“I think we ought to consider locations on the continent of Africa,” Gen Carter Ham told a US Senate panel that was assessing his appointment in November.
Gen Ham was chosen by President Barack Obama to succeed Africom’s first commander, Gen William Ward, who recently visited Tanzania and Rwanda on a “farewell tour.”
Gen Ward is credited with having partly soothed the suspicions with which many African leaders have viewed Africom since its inception four years ago.
Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host Africom.
Misgivings among Africans about the command’s purposes caused the Pentagon to scrap initial plans to locate Africom’s headquarters on the continent. It has been based in Stuttgart, Germany, for the past three years.
“Some Africans worry that the move represents a neo-colonial effort to dominate the region militarily,” the US Congress’ research arm said in a recent report reviewing Africom’s creation and current status.
“Reports of US air strikes in Somalia in recent years and US support for Ethiopia’s military intervention there have added to those concerns,” the report noted. “Many view US counter-terrorism efforts in Africa with skepticism, and there appears to be a widespread belief that the new command’s primary goals will be to hunt terrorists and to secure US access to African oil.”
And remember: The Congressional report was written well before the eruptions in North Africa and Mideast, which haven’t done much to reassure Africans about America’s real intentions.
Now consider this from Horace Campbell, writing 15 March n the independent African Pambazuka News:
The Western bombardment of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya has become an opportunistic public relations ploy for the United States Africa Command (Africom) and a new inroad for US military stronghold on the continent. This involvement of Africom in the bombardment is now serving to expose the contradictions and deceit that have surrounded the formation of this combatant command, which is a front for military humanitarian assistance to Africa in coordination with the US Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Attempts by the US to re-militarize its engagement with Africa is extremely dangerous, given the fact that the US does not have any positive or credible tradition of genuine assistance to freedom fighters and liberation movements in Africa.
The US was complicit in the planning of the murder of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, after which they propped up the monstrous dictator Mobutu Sese Seko who raped and pillaged the country and established a recursive process of war, rape, plunder, corruption, and brutality which the Congo still suffers from till today. Jonas Savimbi was sponsored by the US to cause destabilization and terror in Angola. The US gave military, material and moral support to the apartheid regime in South Africa while anti-apartheid freedom fighters, including Nelson Mandela, were designated as terrorists. It was only in 2008 that the US Congress passed a bill to remove Mandela’s name from the terrorist watch list). The US has yet to tell the truth about how Charles Taylor escaped from its prison custody in Massachusetts to go destabilize Liberia. Young people who are recruited for the US military and deployed to Africom may not know much about the notorious history of US military involvement in Africa. The military top brass take advantage of this ignorance among the young folks.
Just as the US military carried out psychological warfare against US senators, one of the tasks of Africom is to rain down psychological warfare on Africans. Built in this subtle psychological warfare is the concept of the hierarchy of human beings and the superiority of the capitalist mode of production and ideas of Christian fundamentalism. It is on this front that we find a section of the US military known as the “Crusaders.”
And consider this from another African source, Dr. Kwame Osei writing at Modern Ghana News:
With the ongoing civil war in Ivory Coast seemingly close to an end it is appropriate to tell the REAL untold story of the crisis in Ivory Coast and inform our readers of the REAL issue(s) behind the situation in the country.
I have heard many commentators on this subject and the bulk of them rant about the fact that the situation in the Ivory Coast is about elections that were supposedly won by Alassane Ouattara and that he is “the internationally recognized president of Ivory Coast” and that Laurent Gbagbo refuses to stand down because he thinks he won the elections – this in itself is flawed because according to a report from a US senate committee that went to Ivory Coast to monitor the elections complained of voter irregularities in areas that were pro-Ouattara
However the deception about the elections is the line that the western media is peddling and experience informs us that when it comes to the western media and Afrika we must be very circumspect of the agenda of the western media who have nothing but disdain for Afrikan people.
That said it is very simplistic to say that the situation in Ivory Coast is solely as a result of undisputed elections and is giving the public a much skewed view of the actual situation.
The REAL issue behind the current impasse in the Ivory Coast is a battle relating to French imperialism and control of the Ivory Coast. What this actually means in reality is that on one hand you have Gbagbo who is against French imperialism in Ivory Coast and championing the cause of Pan-Afrikanism and on the other hand you have Ouattara who one could say is very accommodating to safeguarding French interests in Ivory Coast.
And consider this from James Petras, Bartle Professor [Emeritus] of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York:
According to a US Congressional Research Service Study published in November 2010, Washington has dispatched anywhere between hundreds and several thousand combat troops, dozens of fighter planes and warships to buttress client dictatorships or to unseat adversarial regimes in dozens of countries, almost on a yearly bases. The record shows the US armed forces intervened 46 times prior to the current Libyan wars. The countries suffering one or more US military intervention include the Congo, Zaine, Libya, Chad, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Ruanda, Liberia, Central African Republic, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea. The only progressive intervention was in Egypt under Eisenhower who forced the Israeli-French-English forces to withdraw from the Suez in 1956. Between the mid 1950’s to the end of the 1970’s, only 4 overt military operations were recorded, though large scale proxy and clandestine military operations were pervasive. Under Reagan-Bush Sr. (1980-1991) military intervention accelerated, rising to 8, not counting the large scale clandestine ‘special forces’ and proxy wars in Southern Africa. Under the Clinton regime, US militarized imperialism in Africa took off. Between 1992 and 2000, 17 armed incursions took place, including a large scale invasion of Somalia and military backing for the Ruanda genocidal regime. Clinton intervened in Liberia, Gabon, Congo and Sierra Leone to prop up a long standing stooge regime. He bombed the Sudan and dispatched military personnel to Kenya and Ethiopia to back proxy clients assaulting Somalia. Under Bush Jr. 15 US military interventions took place, mainly in Central and East Africa. The Obama regime’s invasion and bombing of Libya is a continuation of a longstanding imperial practice designed to enhance US power via the installation of client regimes, the establishment of military bases and the training and indoctrination of African mercenary forces dubbed “collaborative partners”. There is no question that there is a rising tide of imperial militarism in the US over the past several decades.
Read the rest.
But all we hear in our media, endlessly repeated, is that we’re bombing to bring freedom.
Finally, one last take on Libya, again from Pambazuka News [14 April], this time by Jean-Paul Pougala:
For most Africans, Gaddafi is a generous man, a humanist, known for his unselfish support for the struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. If he had been an egotist, he wouldn’t have risked the wrath of the West to help the ANC both militarily and financially in the fight against apartheid. This was why Mandela, soon after his release from 27 years in jail, decided to break the UN embargo and travel to Libya on 23 October 1997. For five long years, no plane could touch down in Libya because of the embargo. One needed to take a plane to the Tunisian city of Jerba and continue by road for five hours to reach Ben Gardane, cross the border and continue on a desert road for three hours before reaching Tripoli. The other solution was to go through Malta, and take a night ferry on ill-maintained boats to the Libyan coast. A hellish journey for a whole people, simply to punish one man.
Mandela didn’t mince his words when the former US president Bill Clinton said the visit was an ‘unwelcome’ one – ‘No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do’. He added – ‘Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi, they are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.’
Indeed, the West still considered the South African racists to be their brothers who needed to be protected. That’s why the members of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, were considered to be dangerous terrorists. It was only on 2 July 2008, that the US Congress finally voted a law to remove the name of Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades from their black list, not because they realised how stupid that list was but because they wanted to mark Mandela’s 90th birthday. If the West was truly sorry for its past support for Mandela’s enemies and really sincere when they name streets and places after him, how can they continue to wage war against someone who helped Mandela and his people to be victorious, Gaddafi?
AFRICOM: The U.S. Militarization of Africa
By Olayiwola Abegunrin
CAS
December 2007
President George W. Bush approved a Pentagon plan in January 2007 to set up Africa Command Center, to be known as AFRICOM. According to the plan, the Command Center is set to complete and go into service by the end of September 2008. The United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed the new plans as he addressed the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on the defense spending President Bush proposed in his 2008 budget submitted to the Congress that, “The main purposes of the Africa Command Center would be to fight the war on terror, cooperation, provide humanitarian aid, building partnership capability, oversee security, defense support to non-military missions, and if directed, military training operations designed to help local governments.”
The U.S. had initially reportedly intended to build AFRICOM in Algeria but it was turned down, thus, it had to relocate it to Stuttgart, Germany for the time being. African countries hold that U.S. has harbored with ulterior motives. Mohamed Bedjaoui, the Algerian Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, “questioned that why no one had ever proposed for any anti-terror cooperation with Algeria in the 1990s when terrorist violence went on rampant and wrought great havoc?” Africans are suspicious of the U.S. intentions. Majority of Africans believe that the aim of the U.S. for the Africa Command Center is to protect its potential oil interests in Africa. Second reason is that U.S. is worried about current rapid increased economic and diplomatic competition from China in Africa.
AFRICOM is an example of U.S. military expansion in the name of the war on terrorism, when it is in fact designed to secure Africa’s resources and ensure American interests on the continent. AFRICOM represents a policy of U.S. military-driven expansionism that will only enhance political instability, conflict, and the deterioration of state security in Africa. This is a project that most African countries have rejected to be located on their soil. African leaders are opposed to U.S. permanent military command bases/installations on African soil. Early (September 2007) this year the Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states defense ministers have decided that no member states would host AFRICOM. Nigeria, Ghana, Libya and Morocco have joined in opposing AFRICOM in Africa. However, Liberian Government has accepted to host AFRICOM on her soil. Of course we should not be surprised that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia has accepted to host AFRICOM, after all Liberia is the American stepchild in Africa. AFRICOM is a deadly project to accept for any African country that wants peace and stability. Accepting this project would be a recipe to intensify anti-Americanism and for Al-Qaeda to make that African country a target of terrorist attack. AFRICOM would destabilize an already fragile continent, which would be forced to engage with U.S. interests on military terms.
Militarization of Africa with the U.S. designed so-called AFRICOM is not the solution to Africa’s problem. What African countries need is development of their own institutions for security, political and economic independence; massive infusion of foreign direct investment, fair equitable trade, access to U.S. markets, and for U.S. to decrease/or total removal of agricultural subsidies, debt relief and improved Official Development Assistance tailored towards the development aspirations of (recipient countries) African countries and not AFRICOM that will only lead to militarizing the continent.
What has President Bush’s current policy in Somalia achieved but chaos and more disasters for the Somali people? AFRICOM is another U.S. strategy of recolonization of Africa through the so-called military assistance to the continent. The age of gun-boat diplomacy is over. Africans do not need this in this twenty-first century.
About the Author
Olayiwola Abegunrin is a lecturer in Political Science at Howard University.
CAS
December 2007
President George W. Bush approved a Pentagon plan in January 2007 to set up Africa Command Center, to be known as AFRICOM. According to the plan, the Command Center is set to complete and go into service by the end of September 2008. The United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed the new plans as he addressed the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on the defense spending President Bush proposed in his 2008 budget submitted to the Congress that, “The main purposes of the Africa Command Center would be to fight the war on terror, cooperation, provide humanitarian aid, building partnership capability, oversee security, defense support to non-military missions, and if directed, military training operations designed to help local governments.”
The U.S. had initially reportedly intended to build AFRICOM in Algeria but it was turned down, thus, it had to relocate it to Stuttgart, Germany for the time being. African countries hold that U.S. has harbored with ulterior motives. Mohamed Bedjaoui, the Algerian Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, “questioned that why no one had ever proposed for any anti-terror cooperation with Algeria in the 1990s when terrorist violence went on rampant and wrought great havoc?” Africans are suspicious of the U.S. intentions. Majority of Africans believe that the aim of the U.S. for the Africa Command Center is to protect its potential oil interests in Africa. Second reason is that U.S. is worried about current rapid increased economic and diplomatic competition from China in Africa.
AFRICOM is an example of U.S. military expansion in the name of the war on terrorism, when it is in fact designed to secure Africa’s resources and ensure American interests on the continent. AFRICOM represents a policy of U.S. military-driven expansionism that will only enhance political instability, conflict, and the deterioration of state security in Africa. This is a project that most African countries have rejected to be located on their soil. African leaders are opposed to U.S. permanent military command bases/installations on African soil. Early (September 2007) this year the Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states defense ministers have decided that no member states would host AFRICOM. Nigeria, Ghana, Libya and Morocco have joined in opposing AFRICOM in Africa. However, Liberian Government has accepted to host AFRICOM on her soil. Of course we should not be surprised that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia has accepted to host AFRICOM, after all Liberia is the American stepchild in Africa. AFRICOM is a deadly project to accept for any African country that wants peace and stability. Accepting this project would be a recipe to intensify anti-Americanism and for Al-Qaeda to make that African country a target of terrorist attack. AFRICOM would destabilize an already fragile continent, which would be forced to engage with U.S. interests on military terms.
Militarization of Africa with the U.S. designed so-called AFRICOM is not the solution to Africa’s problem. What African countries need is development of their own institutions for security, political and economic independence; massive infusion of foreign direct investment, fair equitable trade, access to U.S. markets, and for U.S. to decrease/or total removal of agricultural subsidies, debt relief and improved Official Development Assistance tailored towards the development aspirations of (recipient countries) African countries and not AFRICOM that will only lead to militarizing the continent.
What has President Bush’s current policy in Somalia achieved but chaos and more disasters for the Somali people? AFRICOM is another U.S. strategy of recolonization of Africa through the so-called military assistance to the continent. The age of gun-boat diplomacy is over. Africans do not need this in this twenty-first century.
About the Author
Olayiwola Abegunrin is a lecturer in Political Science at Howard University.
AFRICOM: Wrong for Liberia, Disastrous for Africa
By Ezekiel Pajibo and Emira Woods. Edited by John Feffer,
July 26, 2007, FPIF
“This new command will strengthen our security cooperation with Africa,” President Bush said in a White House statement, “and create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa.” Ordering that AFRICOM be created by September 30, 2008, Bush said “Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa.”
The general assumption of this policy is that prioritizing security through a unilateral framework will somehow bring health, education, and development to Africa. In this way, the Department of Defense presents itself as the best architect and arbiter of U.S. Africa policy. According to Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, director of the AFRICOM transition team, “By creating AFRICOM, the Defense Department will be able to coordinate better its own activities in Africa as well as help coordinate the work of other U.S. government agencies, particularly the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.”
Competition for Resources
This military-driven U.S. engagement with Africa reflects the desperation of the Bush administration to control the increasingly strategic natural resources on the African continent, especially oil, gas, and uranium. With increased competition from China, among other countries, for those resources, the United States wants above all else to strengthen its foothold in resource-rich regions of Africa.
Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States. The West Africa region currently provides nearly 20% of the U.S. supply of hydrocarbons, up from 15% just five years ago and well on the way to a 25 share forecast for 2015. While the Bush administration endlessly beats the drums for its “global war on terror,” the rise of AFRICOM underscores that the real interests of neoconservatives has less to do with al-Qaeda than with more access and control of extractive industries, particularly oil.
Responsibility for operations on the African continent is currently divided among three distinct Commands: U.S. European Command, which has responsibility for nearly 43 African countries; U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya; and U.S. Pacific Command, which has responsibility for Madagascar, the Seychelles, and the countries off the coast of the Indian Ocean. Until December 2006 when the United States began to assist Ethiopia in its invasion of Somalia, all three existing Commands have maintained a relatively low-key presence, often using elite special operations forces to train, equip, and work alongside national militaries.
A new Africa Command, based potentially in or near oil-rich West Africa would consolidate these existing operations while also bringing international engagement, from development to diplomacy, even more in line with U.S. military objectives.
AFRICOM in Liberia?
AFRICOM’s first public links with the West African country of Liberia was through a Washington Post op-ed written by the African- American businessman Robert L. Johnson, "Liberia's Moment of Opportunity." Forcefully endorsing AFRICOM, Johnson urged that it be based in Liberia. Then came an unprecedented allAfrica.com guest column from Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, “AFRICOM Can Help Governments Willing To Help Themselves,” touting AFRICOM’s potential to “help” Africa “develop a stable environment in which civil society can flourish and the quality of life for Africans can be improved.”
Despite these high-profile endorsements, the consolidation and expansion of U.S. military power on the African continent is misguided and could lead to disastrous outcomes.
Liberia's 26-year descent into chaos started when the Reagan administration prioritized military engagement and funneled military hardware, training, and financing to the regime of the ruthless dictator Samuel K. Doe. This military "aid," seen as “soft power” at that time, built the machinery of repression that led to the deaths of an estimated 250,000 Liberians.
Basing AFRICOM in Liberia will put Liberians at risk now and into the future. Liberia’s national threat level will dramatically increase as the country becomes a target of those interested in attacking U.S. assets. This will severely jeopardize Liberia’s national security interests while creating new problems for the country’s fragile peace and its nascent democracy.
Liberia has already given the Bush administration the exclusive role of restructuring its armed forces. The private U.S. military contractor DYNCORP has been carrying out this function. After more than two years in Liberia and an estimated $800,000 budget allocated, DYNCORP has not only failed to train the 2,000 men it was contracted to train, it has also not engaged Liberia’s Legislature or its civil society in defining the nature, content, or character of the new army. DYNCORP allotted itself the prerogative to determine the number of men/women to be trained and the kind of training it would conduct, exclusively infantry training, even though Liberia had not elaborated a national security plan or developed a comprehensive military doctrine. In fact, the creation of Liberia’s new army has been the responsibility of another sovereign state, the United States, in total disregard to Liberia’s constitution, which empowers the legislature to raise the national army.
This pattern of abuse and incompetence with the U.S. military and its surrogate contractors suggests that if AFRICOM is based in Liberia, the Bush administration will have an unacceptable amount of power to dictate Liberia’s security interests and orchestrate how the country manages those interests. By placing a military base in Liberia, the United States could systematically interfere in Liberian politics in order to ensure that those who succeed in obtaining power are subservient to U.S. national security and other interests. If this is not neo-colonialism, then what is?
Perhaps the South Africans will be the loudest voices on the continent in opposition to AFRICOM. Recent media reports spotlight growing tensions in U.S.-South Africa relations over AFRICOM. The U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Eric Bost, complained that South Africa’s defense minister Mosiuoa Lekota, was not responding to embassy requests to meet General Kip Ward, the recently nominated first commander of AFRICOM.
Opposing AFRICOM
The Bush administration’s new obsession with AFRICOM and its militaristic approach has many malign consequences. It increases U.S. interference in the affairs of Africa. It brings more military hardware to a continent that already has too much. By helping to build machineries of repression, these policies reinforce undemocratic practices and reward leaders responsive not to the interests or needs of their people but to the demands and dictates of U.S. military agents. Making military force a higher priority than development and diplomacy creates an imbalance that can encourage irresponsible regimes to use U.S. sourced military might to oppress their own people, now or potentially in the future. These fatally flawed policies create instability, foment tensions, and lead to a less secure world.
What Africa needs least is U.S. military expansion on the continent (and elsewhere in the world). What Africa needs most is its own mechanism to respond to peacemaking priorities. Fifty years ago, Kwame Nkrumah sounded the clarion call for a “United States of Africa.” One central feature of his call was for an Africa Military High Command. Today, as the African Union deliberates continental governance, there couldn’t be a better time to reject U.S. military expansion and push forward African responses to Africa’s priorities.
Long suffering the effects of militaristic "assistance" from the United States, Liberia would be the worst possible base for AFRICOM. But there are no good locations for such a poorly conceived project. Africa does not need AFRICOM.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
United States “humanitarian diplomacy” in South Sudan
United States “humanitarian diplomacy” in South Sudan[1]
Séverine Autesserre
January 2002
Abstract
This essay studies the manipulation of food aid to South Sudan, and its interplay with US politics: the US is the major donor of relief aid to Sudan, and at the same time it appears as one of Khartoum’s major opponents on the international scene. This essay argues that humanitarian aid, and especially food aid, is not a substitute for political action, but that it has become the main channel of the US’s Sudan policy for the past ten years.
Torn between its conflicting economic, political, geo-strategic, and moral imperatives, the US has had to adopt a difficult strategy: supporting the rebels, but not openly, and not enough to enable them to win the war. In this situation, humanitarian aid, with its reputation of neutrality and its moral appeal concealing a fundamental vulnerability to all sorts of manipulation, is a very efficient tool. Food aid is especially useful: it directly counteracts Khartoum’s strategy (starving the South into submission) and directly helps the rebel movement and army in a number of ways (bringing them resources, as well as domestic and international legitimacy). Food aid also has the crucial advantage of fitting perfectly into western prejudices about Africa – a starving continent dependent on the West – so that no one thinks about questioning the underlying motives of US relief aid to Sudan.
Introduction
Amartya Sen, “There is no such think as an apolitical food problem.”[2]
Sudan can boast some world records: largest African country, second longest civil war currently going on in the world (nineteen years), highest death toll of any conflict (two million deaths so far, more than the sum of Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria combined), largest number of internally displaced persons (more than five million),[3] largest international relief operation ever launched in world history (some say the largest failure in humanitarian aid history), and arguably the worst violations of human rights.
Sudan is often presented as one of these “forgotten emergencies” that have proliferated since the end of the cold war. Yet, the amount of emergency aid given to Sudan –sometimes more than one million dollars a day – invites us to question this affirmation. From a humanitarian point of view, Sudan is far from being forgotten. Does the label “forgotten emergency” really reflect the political attitude towards Sudan? Such a large-scale and long-term humanitarian intervention could then be seen as one of the many examples of governments’ tendency to send relief aid as a substitute for political action in situations of messy civil conflicts. To judge from the example of the “sole superpower” on today’s international scene, the United States (US), it cannot be said that no attention at all is being paid to the Sudanese case. The US is the major donor of emergency aid in Sudan, and it seems to be one of Khartoum’s major opponents. The superposition of the two characteristics raises a question: why is the US so involved in providing humanitarian aid to a country it apparently fights so fiercely in the diplomatic arena? This leads to several related questions: what exactly does US foreign policy towards Sudan consist of? Is US-funded humanitarian aid to Sudan a form of political disengagement or a form of political engagement? In other words, is US engagement in emergency relief purely based on humanitarian grounds or is it part of a coherent policy towards Sudan?
This article shows what an important role humanitarian aid, and especially food aid, has played in US foreign policy towards Sudan since the early 1990s. It argues that humanitarian aid is one of the main channels of the US’s Sudan policy. To successive US governments, funding relief aid is not a “fig leaf” for political action but a real tool in the pursuance of the US’s perceived best, but conflicting, interests: containment of the Khartoum government, pursuit of the civil war within Sudan, strong support of the rebels, but one which is not too open, and not enough to enable them to win. To prove this point, this article focuses on the manipulation of humanitarian food aid in South Sudan.[4] It does not analyze the issue of humanitarian aid in North Sudan, which is part of a different set of dynamics, with different players animated by very distinct motivations. The focus on food aid is grounded on the observation that Sudan is constructed as a nutritional crisis: the problem of food is central in the presentation of the Sudanese disaster in the media, in most academic studies, as well as in action reports from the different international actors involved in South Sudan. Consequently, most relief aid to Sudan takes the form of food supply.[5] Part of the puzzle will also be to assess why and how the problem of food has been given such a central place in South Sudan.
This article first details how the conflicting interests of the United States lead it to adopt a difficult strategy: supporting the rebels, but not openly, and not enough to enable them to win the war. It then shows why humanitarian aid, especially thanks to its core value of “neutrality,” is paradoxically a particularly useful tool in such a case. It builds upon this to demonstrate how, in South Sudan, the US manages to help the rebels through the humanitarian channel, and why almost no humanitarian or diplomatic actor protests against this strategy. To support the demonstration, this article draws mainly on academic books and articles, on the "gray literature" from diverse intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and from donors, on press reports, and on interviews with aid workers.
US diplomacy towards Sudan: supporting or not supporting the rebels?
Like all influential Western and African powers, at first view, the US seems to be totally puzzled by the conflict in Sudan. As the American Ambassador for religious freedom Robert Seiple summarized for the US Committee on Foreign Relations in 2000:
“Sudan is both simple and terribly complicated. If it were easy, however, it would not have gone on for seventeen years with the killing of two millions plus people, most of them noncombatants. It also has been, unfortunately, a war without heroes in the south, certainly in the north. So it has been difficult sometimes to take sides and to know that the issues are going to be resolved. (…) It is as complicated and as humbling as it gets.”[6]
Yet, scholars and politicians observing the US policy towards Sudan propose a quite different analysis. For example, a congresswoman opposing the US’s Sudan policy points out that “it is as if we really don’t want the warring to end and that we are deliberately unwilling to fashion a policy that really will produce the stated desired results.”[7] More strongly, an article from Tufts University’s Fenstein International Famine Center concludes that “the US, whether it wants to be or not, isa key player in facilitating peace, but instead appears to be fomenting war.”[8]
On the international scene, the US openly adopts a very strong position against Khartoum
At first sight, there seems to be a strong will in American political circles to overthrow Sudan’s Islamic government. US policy on Sudan has been characterized since the early 1990s by a very strong international campaign to ostracize the Sudanese government.[9] Diplomatically, the US’s main actions were to categorize Sudan as a “rogue state” in 1993, to prompt a realignment of forces against Sudan in the Horn of Africa in 1995, and to prevent Sudan’s election as a temporary member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council in 2000. Militarily, the US launched Tomahawk missiles at a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory suspected of manufacturing chemical weapons for Osama Bin Laden in 1998. Economically, the US supported the 1996 UN economic sanctions against Sudan, and imposed its own bilateral economic sanctions in November 1997, blocking all Sudanese assets in the US, restricting exports and imports, barring financial transactions, and prohibiting investment in Sudan by companies listed on the US Stock Exchange.
Like many other Western countries, the US fears Khartoum’s will to export Islamic rule into other countries, and accuses it of regional destabilization. The US is also adamantly opposed to Khartoum on the issue of terrorism, all the more since Khartoum’s links with Bin Laden are supposed to have persisted long after Bin Laden’s expulsion to Afghanistan. During political debates, the strongest pressure against Khartoum comes from human rights and religious groups. Among these, two networks seem especially influential: aid agencies and anti-slavery groups operating in South Sudan, and the religious lobby that allies Catholics and Protestants in their protest against the “religious war” waged by Khartoum against the South. The religious lobby seems to have become even more influential under George Bush Junior’s administration. In 2001, right-wing senators and Christians allied over the issue of slavery in South Sudan and started to turn Sudan in a cause comparable to South Africa during the time of apartheid. The evangelical lobby was especially influential.[10] After much work, it finally obtained the nomination of John Danfort, ex senator and minister of the Episcopalian Church, as special envoy to Sudan, on September 6, 2001. At that time, i.e. five days before the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, observers were also expecting a tightening of sanctions against Khartoum, probably on oil or arms.
As relations with the Sudanese government deteriorated in the early 1990s, the relations between the US and the Southern People Liberation Movement (SPLM) improved. Fragile in the early 1990s because of the poor human rights record of the SPLM military branch, the Southern People Liberation Army (SPLA),[11] the US-SPLM relations improved following the opening of humanitarian space in rebel areas and the effort of the rebel movement to at least appear to respect human rights.[12] In 1997, the relations were even so good as to prompt the then secretary of state Madeleine Albright to officially meet the SPLM leader John Garang in Kampala, and to express support for his objectives. A second official meeting between Madeleine Albright and the SPLM and National Democratic Alliance leaders took place in 1999 and, according to the press, this time Madeleine Albright promised help to the rebels. In parallel, from 1993 on, repeated demands were issued in Congress to overlook the issue of Khartoum’s sovereignty and to provide direct assistance to the opposition forces in southern Sudan – “opposition forces” meaning the major rebel movement, the SPLM.[13] Representatives linked with the religious lobby were usually the strongest advocates of the idea, but hearings and debates show that a large majority of American politicians favored the idea. This has resulted in two important pieces of legislation. First, the Brownback amendment to the Fiscal year 2000 Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act authorizes the administration to provide food aid directly to the SPLA. Second, the Sudan Peace Act introduced in the Senate in January 2001 and still under discussion also aims at countering Khartoum by providing direct non-lethal aid to the rebels until the Sudanese government accepts a peace agreement. Yet neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration has used the legal power it had to directly aid the rebels. At first sight, it is difficult to understand why. It seems actually to be due to the pressure of important lobby groups: economic, strategic and diplomatic interests restrain the US in its opposition to Khartoum.
Economic, strategic and diplomatic interests restrain the US in its opposition to Khartoum
Influential economic groups lobby the US against most of its actions opposing Khartoum. First, Sudan is the primary and by far the most important world producer of gum Arabic, a product indispensable to the fabrication of candies, soft drinks such as Coca-cola, and pharmaceuticals. Second, several of the oil companies involved in oil exploration or exploitation in South Sudan rank among the most important firms of the oil industry,[14] and their influence on US policy towards Sudan seems crucial. No US company is directly involved in Sudan, but US citizens are at the head of many companies doing business there – Talisman Oil for example. In addition, several American states seem to have an economic stake in oil exploitation in Sudan.[15] Finally, a congress representative even evoked the fact that “many of the players in [the US] government, including in the Bush administration, have business interests and businesses that are doing business” in Sudan.[16] As a result, it seems that the US economic sanctions are designed to pretend countering the government of Sudan but without really hurting it, and they are often denounced as ineffective. The gum Arabic lobby has obtained an exception to economic sanctions for the import of gum Arabic – the only produce that the US was importing from Sudan, and Sudan’s major export. As far as oil is concerned, an Office of Foreign Assets Control study shows that the measures taken are not strong enough to prevent US companies from working in the Sudanese oil industry, and that firms doing business in Sudan can perfectly well raise money on the US capital market.[17] In spite of many requests by religious and human rights lobby groups to tighten the sanctions and render them more effective, nothing is done.
Besides, most probably under the influence of these the oil and gum Arabic lobby groups, the US has begun softening its position on the issue of terrorism in Sudan. In summer 2000, a team of FBI and CIA agents arrived in Khartoum to work on terrorist issues in cooperation with the Government of Sudan. The first result came just few months later, in February 2001, with the (discreet) expulsion of the authors of the assassination attempt on president Mubarak. This beginning of cooperation became a close collaboration after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. From this day on, the Khartoum government has come to serve as a principal collaborator to the US in its attempt to understand the functioning of international terrorist networks. Khartoum gives names of terrorists and of organizations backing terrorist associations, arrests suspects upon Washington’s request, helps Washington map out terrorist networks, etc.[18] As a result, on September 27, 2001, the US abandoned its veto on the lifting of UN sanctions against Khartoum, and the multilateral sanctions were finally revoked. Probably to appease the human rights and religious groups infuriated by this gesture, the US kept its bilateral sanctions (it renewed them for one more year in November 2001), but nevertheless backed away from a more effective piece of legislation banning companies doing business in Sudan from the US stock exchange. Thus, if the 2001 shift of US policy towards Sudan seemed prompted by the aftermath of the September 11 attack, it actually reflects the logical conclusion of a process that started more than a year before. The return of terrorism as a first priority for the Bush administration was the occasion to reward Khartoum’s new position on terrorism without losing too much credibility in the eyes of the US human rights and religious lobby groups.
US policy on Sudan is thus determined by contradictory influences: human rights versus economic interests, and divided political, geo-strategic, and security interests. To further complicate the issue, the US cannot take the risk of helping the rebels seize power in Khartoum. First, the SPLM’s human rights record is so poor that putting it in power would expose the US to many moral criticisms. Second, no influential party in US politics has any interest in seeing the rebels in power. Oil companies currently engaged in the oil business in Sudan would encounter huge difficulties due to the probable renewed insecurity around the oil fields, and to the risk of their assets being confiscated. Egypt would have difficulties in exploiting Nile waters,[19] and Egyptian interests have to be preserved at all costs so that Egypt’s cooperation in the Middle East peace process can be secured. As a result, keeping the current state of war going seems the easiest way to balance all these different interests: the rebels do not seize control of the whole country, hence no one is faced with any problem of secession, accountability for human rights abuses, or economic backlash; and on the other hand Khartoum is kept off-balance, and cannot concentrate too much on propagating terrorism or fundamentalism.
Consequently, the best strategy for the US is to find a way to support the rebels enough to enable them to counter the government of Sudan, but not enough to help them win, and not too openly in order to preserve US economic and strategic interests. Supporting the rebels is especially important now that, with the renewed exploitation of oil fields and the resulting upgrading of Khartoum armaments,[20] the Government of Sudan is in the best position ever to defeat its opponents. Humanitarian aid seems the best tool for this strategy.
Humanitarian Aid: between neutrality and politicization
Using the provision of humanitarian aid to sustain a conflict seems paradoxical at first sight. Humanitarian aid is traditionally presented as neutral, apolitical. Besides, aid agencies usually claim their independence, refuting all connection to any government, any influence by state parties. How can humanitarian aid then be used as a political tool, especially as a tool for reaching political goals diametrically opposed to the humanitarian ones?
The core conception of neutrality of humanitarian aid in Sudan
Humanitarian aid is usually presented as neutral in its essence. The core conception at the heart of international aid agencies’ action is that “the provision of humanitarian assistance should be made on the basis of need alone and should be above and beyond any political, military, strategic or sectarian agenda.”[21] The International Committee of the Red Cross was the first to develop this principle, and at their instigation all international UN agencies and almost all humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) adopted it as the basis of their international engagement.
At the beginning, the main conception was that remaining purely “technical,” for example giving medical and nutritional emergency relief aid to civilians, and not paying attention to any political issue, was the best way to be neutral. The turning point was December 1994, when about a dozen NGOs pulled out of refugee camps in eastern Zaire to protest against the manipulation of their work by Hutu leaders.[22] Aid agencies and scholars had realized how badly warring parties could manipulate emergency aid.[23] The late 1990s, however, saw an upsurge of criticism against aid agencies, first in academic circles and later in the mainstream media. Aid was accused of fueling conflicts, harboring and feeding killers, and feeding the war economy. This prompted many aid agencies to reconsider their conception of neutrality. One trend was to accentuate the quest for independence, and to claim to be impartial rather than neutral. The other – the one often adopted for pragmatic reasons - was to work on all sides of the conflict. In any case, the conception of emergency relief as a non-political commitment remains pervasive in humanitarian and diplomatic circles.
The humanitarian intervention in Sudan is constructed as neutral
In 1989, the UN-led relief operation in Sudan, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), was constructed as perfectly neutral. The main purpose of this “purely humanitarian operation” was to negotiate with all the warring parties the establishment of safe areas in which humanitarian organizations could distribute food to all the war-affected populations – on the government’s as well as on the rebels’ side of the conflict.[24] Since then, OLS has served as the umbrella for United Nations Agencies and for more than forty local and international NGOs respecting the “neutrality principle.”[25] Yet, it should be noted that OLS not only came into being just one month after the major shift in US policy towards Sudan, but it also began under the impetus of the American Congress.[26]
OLS was presented at its inception as a “model”, a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”[27] It was the first time a government agreed on a violation of its own national sovereignty by accepting that humanitarian organizations aid rebel-held areas. Further, the negotiators decided that non-government areas would be supplied from Lokichoggio, Kenya, consequently establishing the first legitimate cross-border operation for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.[28] Finally, the 1996 OLS Review proudly emphasizes that “it was the first humanitarian program that sought to assist internally displaced and war affected civilians during an ongoing conflict within a sovereign country, as opposed to refugees beyond its borders.” Informal and ad hoc at the beginning, OLS’s agreements with the warring parties became progressively more and more formal and bureaucratic.[29]
“Neutrality” was a fundamental part of the 1989 agreement which gave birth to OLS and has been reasserted in each official document since then. It was the only possibility for UN humanitarian agencies to work in rebel-held areas in South Sudan. Still today, UN officials managing OLS argue that membership of the consortium automatically confers neutrality on the participants. However, the problem is that OLS’s conception of neutrality is twofold. It cannot mean “provision of aid on the basis of needs alone” since the OLS agreement states that for any of its actions OLS has to go through the government of Sudan and through the rebel factions. Thus, openly, “neutrality” means that OLS ensures that humanitarian aid does not influence the direction of the war or confer benefits to one side.[30] It can also be interpreted as the fact that both sides can control OLS action. It can thus be argued that the idea of neutrality renders OLS vulnerable to all sorts of manipulations.
Such “neutral” humanitarian interventions are very useful in the political game
Humanitarian interventions can indeed be used as substitutes, and even as forms, of political intervention. First, after the cold war, many scholars[31] have pointed to a growing tendency to use relief aid as a substitute for political engagement, especially in cases of messy situations in which no one has a real economic or strategic interest in imposing peace. As Alex de Waal puts it, “sending relief is a weapon of first resort: popular at home, usually unobjectionable abroad, and an excuse for not looking more deeply into underlying political problems.”[32] David Rieff has best analyzed the reasons for this[33]: in today’s world deprived of ideals, humanitarian workers can appear as “the last of the just”, and humanitarianism as the last moral cause to which people from all religions and all political backgrounds could adhere. The heroism involved in many of its actions grab the attention of the media and the approval of the public. Its apparent success makes it even more appealing. It thus provides governments with the perfect excuse they need to turn their back on world problems they do not want to (or cannot) deal with. Sending aid salves western consciences; it is an alibi to at least appear to do something without having to address the root causes of the problems.
Second, thanks to these very reasons, more and more academic scholars and aid workers recognize that aid can be a very useful tool for reaching specific political goals. As Duffield argues,[34] the movement of privatization of the public sphere that has developed since the end of the cold war has involved the passage from a political focus on bilateral aid to a focus on private aid through NGOs. The financial resources devoted to bilateral aid have fallen while the financial resources devoted to private aid have skyrocketed. This apparent switch, however, should not camouflage the fact that private aid is conceived exactly as bilateral aid was regarded earlier: as a constituent part of a State’s foreign policy. There is “coherence” among all State actions on the international scene: “in relation to conflict, the different tools of aid and politics, trade and diplomacy, and so on, should work together in the interests of stability and development.”[35] Aid has no special and independent status. It participates like other constituents in promoting the State’s political goals; it is even the “primary form of international policy” towards “borderland” countries – i.e. countries that do not present a real strategic or economic interest.[36] It is a very useful form, since its appearance of “neutrality” and its positive image disarm all accusations of “imperialist” interference and all diplomatic protestations over what would otherwise be seen as inexcusable intervention in the internal affairs of another country.
This is perfectly relevant for Sudan. Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh recall that, in the early 1990s, the international community was still trying to find a solution to the conflict, and OLS was linked to the peace process. When the peace process faltered, and especially with the failure of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) initiative, political diplomacy was replaced by humanitarian diplomacy, with OLS as the “focus” and the “medium” for international engagement in Sudan. Most of the time, this funding was not disbursed on purely humanitarian grounds: as characterised by the manager of a non-governmental organization (NGO), “donors” are actually “governments that donate money,” but have themselves called “donors” to mask their political status and better use humanitarian access to fulfill their political agenda.[37] This is considered especially easy when working through NGOs “who, generally, provide donors with a more flexible policy instrument” than UN agencies.[38] Since the beginning of the international humanitarian operation, the US has been the major donor to OLS: its overall contribution between 1989 and March 2001 amounted to $1.2 billion dollars,[39] and represented some 68% of OLS’s $180 million annual budget between 1989 and 1998.[40] On average, 75% of the funding is channeled through NGOs and 25% through UN agencies.[41] This is an easy way to fulfill a political agenda aimed at sustaining one of the parties in a conflict: aid agencies are indeed always at risk of being manipulated by warring parties.
AId as a weapon: manipulation of aid by warring parties
Manipulation of aid in South Sudan is obvious
Today, deploring the manipulation of aid in conflict situations has become a cliché. Academic scholars, politicians, and journalists keep on denouncing this problem in South Sudan; for example, “Operation Lifeline Sudan is constantly manipulated by both sides” serves as the introduction to the House of Representatives 2001 hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.[42] This problem is logical: as Mary Anderson argues,
“Aid resources represent economic wealth and political power, so people engaged in war will always want to control them. It would be odd – even subversive to their cause – if they did not do so. […] When the ‘enemy’ receives any support, including humanitarian aid, it is viewed as counter to the sought-after victory.”[43]
South Sudan is a perfect example of the process of integrating relief assistance into the dynamic of violence that Alex de Waal details in Famine Crimes. The general pattern he describes seems to have been followed step by step: “the diversion or taxation of relief supplies [has] become a major way for belligerents to provision themselves and, in time, the very command structure and military strategy themselves [have] come to reflect the availability of external aid and the means whereby it is delivered.”[44] In South Sudan, aid saves plenty of lives, no doubt, but as it is also manipulated by all the warring parties and by foreign governments, it is transformed as a lethal weapon in the war: it increases the resources to perpetuate conflict.[45]
The crucial importance of aid to warring parties: aid increases the resources to perpetuate conflict
Fighting a war is hugely expensive, so the resources available to the warring parties usually determine the pattern and the outcome of the conflict. As Paul Collier has analyzed[46], availability of resources is a crucial factor in the initiation and the sustaining of a rebellion. While government can extract taxes and direct the State’s resources towards their war effort, rebel armies have to find other ways to generate revenues – especially when they do not permanently control a sufficiently large territory and population. In Sudan, rebels cannot tap natural resources as other rebel movements do in Angola or Sierra Leone (the SPLM has no access to the oil fields yet). They cannot rely on the financial support of the diaspora, which is mostly extremely poor. Their only resource is to rely on foreign aid. Knowing that, the US strategy is to counter Khartoum’s manipulation of humanitarian access and to ensure that the rebels have access to as much aid as possible.
In Sudan, diversion and taxation of aid items are the most widely recognized process by which aid increases resources to perpetuate conflict.
Diversion and taxation of relief supply is blatant in South Sudan. The government always used it, and it became particularly important to the SPLM after the end of Soviet and Ethiopian support following the collapse of their communist governments. In the 1980s and the early 1990s, diversion was so wide scale that NGOs and the UN had to look for a way to stop, or at least minimize it. The 1995 agreement called the “Ground Rules” thus comprises an article especially aimed at combating diversion of food aid.[47] There is no real enforcement mechanism, however, and diversion has continued almost unhindered in government-held as in rebel-held areas. For example, during the 1998 famine crisis in Bahr el-Ghazal, OLS dropped huge amounts of food aid, sufficient to prevent all civilians from starving, but the famine still continued. After the crisis, the UN, in collaboration with the “humanitarian branch” of the SPLM, the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA), launched a comprehensive internal review to investigate the reasons of this failure. It found that much of the food had been diverted to rebel military commanders, clan leaders and local tribal chiefs.[48] The 1999 Danish International Development Agency [DANIDA] evaluation team even reported that, during the peak of the 1998 famine in Bahr El Ghazal, “in one town, WFP [the UN agency World Food Program] was accidentally given a report documenting the collection of cereals by the SRRA, 80% of which was allocated to the army, 15% to administration, and 5 % to the SRRA.”[49] Diversion does not always happen in such large proportions, but testimonies of aid workers, reports, and press articles suggest that it is a permanent characteristic of the war in South Sudan, in every place, at all times.[50]
Food relief items can be diverted from the intended beneficiaries by force, though taxation, or via eligible family members. The use of force was especially used in the 1980s, and is still very prevalent among small military groups. In some places, humanitarian agencies’ distributions of food to civilian populations lead so often to raids by soldiers that certain villages have even asked to be crossed from the list of beneficiaries.[51] For the mainstream rebel movements and for the government, “taxation” has become the preferred way of diverting food aid. The main reason is that the idea of “taxation” is well accepted by the international food providers. Aid agencies and donors usually admit that, like any government, local authorities have to raise taxes in exchange for the services they provide to the population (security for example). The SPLA, among others, has always asserted its right to raise the tayeen – i.e. to tax civilians in the areas it controls.[52] The problem is that usually the “tax” is not reciprocated with any services, the “tax” is often applied by force, and the rate of the “tax” is not based on the capacity of the population to pay but on the whims of the civil or military chiefs.[53] Finally, the last of the popular ways of diverting food aid is via eligible family members. This is particularly easy for the rebels because, most of the time, their “humanitarian branches” are entrusted with organizing the distribution of food items brought by OLS-sponsored operations.[54] This delegation of the control of food distribution obviously leads to a high level of inequality. For example, in SPLM areas, certain children receive triple rations (usually those belonging to families associated with SPLM’s officials), while others do not receive any.[55] Many analysts[56] even claim that the SRRA was created not to help the population but to channel food to the military and political command.
The most important factor enabling this diversion, and ensuring its continuity, is that rebels and government forbid all independent evaluation of need or monitoring of food distribution in areas under their control. During needs evaluations, the SRRA and the government of Sudan decide to which sites aid workers will have access, so humanitarian agencies cannot obtain a comprehensive picture of the area they cover. For the areas they cannot access, humanitarian workers have to work with demographic data given by local authorities, with all the bias this implies. In accessible areas, the information gathered is often most selective, due to the lack of free interaction with the local population.[57] The program is then applied almost blindly, and there is no mean to correct it a posteriori, for future programs: aid agencies cannot monitor the impact of the food deliveries. Khartoum and the SPLM forbid almost all nutritional surveys and other common tools for evaluating the efficiency of aid programs, under the threat of expelling the delinquents, as happened to the NGO Action Contre la Faim in 1997.[58] Consequently, no one can really protest nor stigmatize any of the warring parties for the diversion, unless it is willing to take the risk of being banned from the country.
Finally, in addition to food, the technical resources brought in by aid agencies to facilitate humanitarian operations are also often diverted. As Pendregast contends, humanitarian infrastructures (i.e. “assets, agreements, and personnel that facilitate the delivery of aid”) are often “hijacked” and used by warring parties to pursue their military goals: communication tools (radio, walky-talkies) and the vehicles are often “borrowed” while the staff is “conscripted” when it has been sufficiently trained. Infrastructures such as roads or airstrips, rehabilitated to facilitate aid deliveries, are requisitioned by armies to move their military assets. Humanitarian cease-fires are even used to re-deploy and rearm, as happened during the 1995 “Guinea worm” cease-fire negotiated by former US President James Carter.[59]
Therefore, as Pendregast demonstrates,[60] warring parties get enormous benefits from aid diversion. In a direct way, diversion of aid inputs can be seen as the “principal strategy of resource accumulation” for the warring parties. It feeds the soldiers; it is generally acknowledged that relief is the main, or even unique, source of food for the different armies in Sudan. Relief items can also be sold in order to buy arms and other necessary military items. Indirectly, Anderson[61] and Pendregast[62] demonstrate that humanitarian aid helps the rebels concentrate on war issues through what Pendregast calls the “principle of fungibility.” External aid substitutes itself for local public welfare responsibilities. Warring parties no longer have to shoulder their responsibility of ensuring food, shelter, health care and other services for the population. The SPLM for example has clearly developed the habit of always calling for external assistance to provide food and services to the population – building roads and other infrastructure, providing seeds, etc.[63] Warring parties can then concentrate all their energy on combat. Instead of spending their time and resources to get food or other logistical items, they can focus their expenses on getting arms and other war-related items. In rural societies such as Sudan, this also tends to transform the seasonal army into a more conventional one; the combatants no longer have to devote one part of the year to cultivating their fields and the other part to fighting. As the controversy around the 2000 Memorandum of Understanding in SPLM areas clearly showed, SPLM’s benefits from diversion are so substantial that the rebels prefer to expel the NGOs refusing to abide by their whims rather than taking a smaller share of humanitarian aid, no matter what this can mean for the population under their control or for their international image.[64].
The US is perfectly aware of this issue, and of the benefits it represents for the warring parties.
The US is perfectly aware of the problem of diversion of food aid and other aid infrastructure. Further, the 2000 Hearing on International Religious Freedom[65] shows in a particularly striking manner that the US government considers humanitarian food aid as a form of direct aid to the rebels. After Robert Seiple finished its statement on Sudan, a Senator asked for a clarification: “How can Robert say that the administration is already providing ‘direct, non-lethal aid to rebels’ and at the same time affirm that the administration is not working under the Brownback amendment [which authorizes the US President to provide food assistance to opposition groups]?” Robert Seiple’s answer was that he was referring to the aid offered outside the OLS system: food through an “NGO system,” “not through the opposition forces.” It emerges from the following discussion on the proposed Sudan Peace Act, that the current system (working through NGOs) is perfectly effective for what the administration wants to do. The only trick is to make sure that aid reinforces the rebels, and not the government of Sudan. This means finding a way to counter Khartoum’s strategy of blocking access to rebel-held areas, and ensuring that humanitarian aid supplies do get to the rebels.
The US strategy: countering Khartoum’s manipulation of access and ensuring that rebels have access to aid
Khartoum manipulates humanitarian access as part of its strategy of using hunger as a weapon
In order to obtain the permission to operate both in governmental and in rebel areas, the UN negotiators had to grant Khartoum control of many aspects of OLS’s operations, including an absolute control of plane circulation. The OLS agreement stipulates that each month, Khartoum declares which areas will be open to aid deliveries. Therefore, the Government of Sudan can not only manage access to the population under its control, but also to the population in rebel-held areas. It has absolute control over where, when, and what food can be brought to any part of Sudan. The conditions for delivering aid to the rebel-held areas have become increasingly drastic over the years. The reason is straightforward: since 1994, the government of Sudan has adopted the deliberate tactic of starving the South into submission. Academic studies, political speeches, lobby reports and media broadcasts and articles constantly detail this strategy: planes bomb the agricultural infrastructure, ground troops destroy people’s ability to feed themselves (by slaughtering cattle, burning crops, poisoning wells, destroying everything). Khartoum works either directly or through the intermediary of its southern allies, paying militias to force southerners off their lands,[66] especially since the development of oil exploitation further increased the incentive to target civilians.[67] OLS agreements thus end up in an absurd situation in which aid workers are required to seek the permission of the government of Sudan to bring food aid to the very populations this government is trying to starve.
These agreements enable Khartoum to manipulate humanitarian access as part of its strategy of using hunger as a weapon, as proved by the numerous flight bans to many of the places that are not under direct government control. As the Nuba Mountains are one of the major targets in the war, there has been a permanent flight ban on this area between 1994 and 1999; the government finally had to relent under international pressure and authorize relief to be brought to the Nuba population, but it still does so very sparingly. The two-months long flight ban to the rebel-held towns in the Bahr el Ghazal area in 1998 can also be seen as the engineering of the worst famine since 1988 by means of retaliation against places that had just fallen to the rebels.[68]
Besides, denial of humanitarian access is a way of depriving the rebels of their bases, of denying them any opportunity for aid diversion, and of diverting aid towards places under its control. Many times, the government bans food aid deliveries to a rebel airstrip “for security reasons” but authorizes aid deliveries to the nearest airstrip under its control.[69] When people starve in areas under rebels’ control and know that food relief is available in garrison towns, they of course tend to move to the government places. There, the government often exchanges the food aid that has been delivered for religious and political conversions.[70] Those who prefer to resist starve to death. Diplomatic protestations and moral considerations do not, of course, restrain the government at all: from Khartoum’s point of view, letting OLS bring any food aid to populations under rebel control is doing the rebels a major favor. All protestations against access restrictions are seen as manifestations of ingratitude. The most cynical aspect of the government diversion of aid towards the places under its control is that Khartoum does not need food aid. In 1998, the year of the major famine in Bahr el Ghazal province, the UN reported that Sudan had produced a record six million five hundred thousand tons of food, which is more than enough to feed everyone in the country.[71]
Finally, banning access avoids the risk of having international workers witness atrocities that the government prefers to hide. Opening an area to humanitarian agencies would also let the media enter places that the government wants to keep far from the spotlight. As the desk officer of an NGO working in Sudan explained, “access is the key word in such situations. If there is no access to certain areas, the governments that do not want to get involved can say that they don’t know. Even if there are rumors, testimonies of atrocities… there is no proof.”[72] The opening of several “no-go areas” by Khartoum in 1994 clearly demonstrates how the government plays with the aid workers and the media, showing them only what the government wants them to see and report on. The opening took place with considerable publicity and media presence. Two witnesses went beyond the border of the open zone, and there, they discovered “government raiders just out of view of the media” leaving behind them a “path of burned homes and fields and bodies.” [73]
As a result, denial of access to OLS has often been pointed out as "the single most important constraint” facing aid agencies in their work.[74] Humanitarian agencies that belong to OLS and abide by the government’s will emphasize that limited access is better than nothing. If they were to bring relief without government approval, they would afterwards be denied any authorization to work in government places. Besides, they would lose their membership in OLS, and hence have to work illegally on Sudanese territory, which would mean tremendous personal risk. Consequently, in spite of all the constraints and moral dilemmas facing OLS members, only seventeen NGOs have chosen to refuse OLS’s agreement and facilities, and bring help to the population to which the government denies access without asking for permission. This is why, besides providing the rebels with aid through OLS, the US government increasingly counts on these non-OLS NGOs to pursue its strategy.
US counter-strategy: increasing the amount of aid delivered outside the OLS framework
The US Congress and the US administration clearly know that the Sudanese government uses humanitarian aid as a weapon by restricting the population’s access to it and by “manipulating the delivery of relief supplies to [its] advantage on the battlefield.”[75] For example, the Sudan Peace Act states that
“The Congress hereby (…) recognizes that, along with selective bans on air transport relief flights by the Government of Sudan, the use of raiding and slaving parties is a tool for creating food shortages and is used as a systematic means to destroy the societies, culture, and economies of the Dinka, Nuer, and Nuba peoples in a policy of low-intensity ethnic cleansing.”[76]
If Khartoum’s tactic is to starve the South into submission, then to support the South means to make sure that it does not starve. If manipulation of aid is crucial in this war, the US has to reinforce the potential of aid manipulation by the SPLM and impair such potential for Khartoum. The easiest way is to encourage aid deliveries outside of OLS. Therefore, in almost all Congressional hearings during which the issue of the war in South Sudan is tackled, many Senators, Congress Representatives, and even members of the current administration advocate an increase of aid delivery outside of the OLS framework.
The US funding trend for the past three years clearly reflects these recommendations. The amount given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to non-OLS NGOs has constantly increased since 1998[77] - i.e. since the hardening of US policies against the government of Sudan at the time of the bombing of the Al-Shalif factory. In 1998, funding the non-OLS NGO Norwegian People Aid enabled the US government to get round the government flight ban on Bahr el Ghazal province.[78] In fiscal year 1999, out of $159 million in humanitarian assistance to Sudan, $28.6 million went in emergency assistance to non-OLS NGOs ($24 million for food and $4.6 million in other non emergency assistance). This figure has increased in 1999 and 2000.[79] As a result, the Sudan Peace Act can proudly state in its Findings that “the efforts of the United States and other donors[80] in delivering relief and assistance through means outside OLS have played a critical role in addressing the deficiencies in OLS and offset the Government of Sudan’s manipulation of food donations to its advantage in the civil war in Sudan.”[81] The US can thus more effectively aid the rebels and, to avoid diplomatic protestations, pretend that it does so for “purely humanitarian” motives and even if there is a risk of “humanitarian” aid ending up in the hands of combatants, “aid can be monitored, it can be controlled, and it can be checked,”[82] so that it can be sure that warring parties do not benefit from it. This is not true, and opponents of increased assistance to southern Sudan outside of OLS have sufficiently repeated it for the Congress to be perfectly aware of the reality.[83] Aid channeled through humanitarian organizations does help the rebels considerably in their fight against Khartoum: as the CSIS has argued before the Congress, the US is “the principal external backer, in humanitarian and diplomatic terms, of the Southern Sudanese opposition”, which vitally “relies on over $100 million per annum in US humanitarian transfers.”[84]
The question that then arises is why NGOs, so attached to their neutrality and their independence, do not protest against being manipulated by their donors and by the warring parties? Why do they not protest against this diversion of their work, which turns it into a weapon, and makes it a tool in the pursuance of agendas totally opposed to theirs? The answer is twofold. A minority of aid agencies understand that they are manipulated, but they are often prevented from taking the appropriate action. Others, the majority, do not realize how their actions could feed into the conflict.
Aid agencies do not use the method that could help them avoid being manipulated
Those who try are often prevented from taking the appropriate actions.
To avoid the risk of being manipulated, aid providers should admit that their work is not neutral in essence, acknowledge the existence of the problem, analyze how and why they are manipulated, by which warring parties, and study how they could alleviate this problem. They should develop political and social analysis to better understand the situation they are working in, the dynamics of the manipulation, and develop potential ways to avoid their project being trapped into feeding the conflict. Information on the potential risk and the appropriate responses is available. Research on the interaction between humanitarian aid and civil wars have often taken South Sudan as a case study. Some of them have led to advocacy campaigns to entice aid agencies to include this type of analysis in their program evaluation.[85] This has yielded some results so far: the major NGOs and the UN agencies working in complex emergencies and post-conflict situations have started to pay attention to this issue.[86] Also, for a few years, several European NGOs like the Médecins Sans Frontières movement have tried to better analyze the political and social context of their mission.[87] Most of these agencies can thus see how warring parties rely heavily on them for their combat missions. However, when they have reached this conclusion, they do not have many options.
Almost no large-scale protest or advocacy campaign has ever been launched on this issue. First, the aid agencies’ claim of neutrality conflicts with the very idea of human rights and political advocacy. The often-neglected drawback of OLS’s claim to be neutral is that it prevents its members from speaking out and from denouncing the abuses of the Sudanese counterparts. Second, any protestation would jeopardize the agency’s access to the populations it strives to assist. It would mean high risk for the team on the field, and put the agency at risk of being expelled. Now, whatever the warring parties may do to the civil population and to the items delivered, aid agencies still want to work and try to save at least some lives. Therefore, as Pendregast deplores, with all emergencies in the Horn of Africa the “primacy of access” usually takes precedence over advocacy for justice, human rights, and international humanitarian law.[88] Most aid workers protest in private meetings with commanders, which usually does not really change the situation, but do not dare to denounce the warring parties to the international community. They also sometimes try to find ad-hoc solutions, on a case-by-case basis, but such small initiatives do not affect the overall pattern of diversion and taxation.
The only large-scale attempt to prevent aid in Sudan from being too subjected to political manipulation, the Ground Rules, has been a failure. It worked on fostering a somewhat greater respect of human rights by the rebel movements, but it did not succeed at all in preventing rebels from manipulating aid, or in convincing aid agencies that they needed political and social analysis.[89] Most NGOs still consider the idea of political and social analysis as totally opposed to their principle of neutrality.[90]
Most aid agencies do not realize how their actions could feed into the conflict
Indeed, most aid agencies still do not address the issue of their role in the prolongation of the war, in Sudan as everywhere else. Most aid workers still firmly believe that they can “do no harm”, that they can be perfectly “neutral”, that their action can yield purely positive results. Most NGOs, particularly the newly created or the smaller ones, still act out of a pure sense of moral outrage without paying attention to the potential negative side-effects of their actions. As emergency funds are disbursed for short-term periods, these agencies are reinforced in their tendency to function on a day-to-day basis. They have no incentive to try to move to some strategic thinking and consider the broader picture of their involvement in Sudan. They get funds to bring relief items to the affected population, so that is what they do. Even the large UN agencies still do not really pay attention to the issue. The 1996 Review denounced the fact that OLS assesses food security and health and not even the basic social and political dimensions of the crisis.[91] As the Danish International Development Agency evaluation team still deplored three years later, OLS pays little attention to the “inherently political nature of vulnerability” – such as the use of food as a weapon, the necessity of political connections to be able to get food aid or merely to avoid being killed: “There are no formal mechanisms to monitor political trends in order to inform a vulnerability analysis.”[92] The words of a desk officer of a disaster relief agency working in Sudan seem to represent many of his colleagues’ attitude: “we are aware that it can be some political weight added to Garang’s movement, but we are not in the business of recognizing movements. We just want to carry the work and help people.”[93] Without social, political, or anthropological analysis, aid agencies remain prone to all sorts of manipulation. Humanitarian aid remains a very efficient tool for countries interested in reinforcing a part of the conflict.
It is not the purpose of this essay to explore in depth all the reasons why the aid agencies overlook their role in US diplomacy, as described here. If it had been so, several other factors would have had to be explored: the problem of immediacy of needs (when aid workers see people dying, they want to help them, no matter what the political implications); and the institutional interest of aid agencies (their fundraising campaign would have difficulty accommodating the ideas of political manipulation and aid feeding the war). This leads international agencies to not even question the relevance of bringing food aid to a fertile country that, in the 1970s, many development economists predicted would turn into the “bread basket of the Arab world.” On the contrary, the representation of Sudan as a land of food crisis fits into the Western stereotypes about Africa – African people are starving people on inhospitable land, unable to feed themselves but for the courageous and charitable intervention of the West (its missionaries, its churches, and then its governmental and non-governmental agencies). The South Sudan disaster can thus be normalized (a “humanitarian food crisis” and not a political one), and bringing food aid (even if to support the rebels) can be presented as the “normal” and logical response to such a problem.
Conclusion
The US appears to have adopted a very effective strategy to promote or preserve its conflicting economic, political, geo-strategic, and moral imperatives. The US needs to keep the Sudanese government off-balance in order to avoid a further spread of fundamentalism and destabilization in the Horn of Africa. Supporting the SPLM seems the best way to maintain this situation but, for political, moral, geo-strategic and economic reasons, the US cannot openly do so, and it cannot afford to have the rebels seize power in Sudan. At that point, humanitarian aid, with its reputation of neutrality and its moral appeal concealing a fundamental vulnerability to all sorts of manipulation, is a very efficient tool. Food aid is especially useful: it directly counteracts Khartoum’s strategy (starving the South into submission) and directly helps the rebel movement and army in a number of ways (bringing them resources, as well as domestic and international legitimacy). Food aid also has the crucial advantage of fitting perfectly into Western prejudices about Africa (a starving continent dependent on the West) and on humanitarian aid (humanitarian aid is neutral, etc). Who would then dare to question the legitimacy of the charitable US intervention to save starving babies? Western aid agencies’ and the media’s never questioned categories of analysis lead them to accept passively and reproduce the construction of the Sudanese disaster as a mere food problem to which relief aid is the most sensible answer. Humanitarian aid thus not only participates in the pursuance of US foreign policy goals in South Sudan, it is also a crucial component, absolutely necessary for reaching the appropriate balance. No matter if the South Sudanese populations are the first victims of all this.
[1] I would like to thank Dr. Timothy Mitchell, Roger Persichino, Philippe Rosen, Dr. Shanker Satyanath, and Dr. Leonard Wantchekon for their invaluable comments on various drafts of this article.
[2]Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).
[3] Strategic concerns lead the warring parties to introduce bias in these data: to say how many persons are in a given area is to say how many persons are on the side of the local chief. Estimates can thus vary greatly. The statistics used in this paper are based on the most reliable sources – mainly academic.
[4] Following traditional usage, the words “North” and “South” are used to refer respectively to government-held areas and to rebel held areas, even if the division is more complicated than a simple geographic partition of the territory by a continuous line. This essay studies humanitarian aid in the “South” – i.e. in the territory mainly under rebel control and with few government towns in it.
[5] For example, the US provided $106,636,688 in aid to Sudan in Fiscal Year 2000, out of which $80,000,000 was direct food aid (Food for Peace, and food from the US Department of Agriculture) and part of the rest was funding for food programs through private NGOs. (USAID, Fact Sheet: USAID Assistance to Sudan, July 19, 2001).
[6] Ambassador Seiple. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom: Findings on Russia, China, and Sudan; and religious persecutions in the world (May 16 and September 7, 2000).
[7] Cynthia Mckinney, House of Representatives hearing on America’s Sudan Policy: A New Direction? Joint hearing before the subcommittee on Africa and subcommittee on international operations and human rights of the committee on international relations (One hundred and seventh Congress, March 28, 2001)
[8] Tufts University Fenstein International Famine Center, Aid to Sudan’s Rebels: Right Idea, Wrong Plan (Dec. 1999).
[9] Before the 1990s, i.e. at the time of the Cold War, Sudan was just one more place of indirect fighting between the Soviet and the Western blocs. The two camps opposed were clear cut: the SPLM backed by Ethiopia and the Soviet Union on the one side, the Government heavily backed, financially and militarily, by the US and the Western countries on the other. In 1988, a famine in which about 250 000 people died awoke the international community to the consequences of the war, and prompted Western governments to reconsider their support to Khartoum. The US ended most of its bilateral aid to Sudan in January 1989, suspended its remaining bilateral assistance to Khartoum when the National Islamic Front overthrew the legitimate government, and definitively cut all cooperation with the Sudanese government when the latter supported Iraq in the Gulf war.
[10] On this issue and the whole subject tackled in this paragraph, see Martin Buckley, “In Africa’s human game reserve, strangers intrude,” New Statesman 130 (London, June 2001).
[11] The (accidental? voluntary?) killing of three expatriates in the rebel-held territory of Eastern Equatoria in 1992 did also much to prevent close collaboration between the US and the SPLA in 1992 – 1993. The circumstances of these deaths have never been clarified, but it is generally accepted that the expatriates were killed in an ambush set for the military commander William Nyuon by the SPLA. Mark Bradbury, Nicholas Leader and Kate Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules” in South Sudan (Human Policy Group, report 4, Overseas Development Institute, 2000).
[12] The best account of this process is in Bradbury, Leader and Mckintosh, The “Agreement on the Ground Rules.”
[13] See for example the successive recommendations of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, or the many Senators pushing for such measures during the Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[14] Elf-Aquitaine, Total Fina, Royal Dutch Shell, Talisman Oil, etc.
[15] For example, the state of New Jersey had shares in Talisman Oil up to 2000. Source: Christopher Smith, New Jersey Representative, House of Representatives hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.
[16]Cynthia Mckinney. Senate hearing on The United Nations’ Policy in Africa, hearing before the committee on foreign relations (One hundred and sixth congress, second session, July 12, 2000).
[17] Nina Shea on behalf of US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[18] Jean-Philippe Remy and Stephen Smith“Une dictature islamiste avec laquelle Washington a décidé de négocier,” Le Monde (Oct 26, 2001).
[19] First, a victory for the rebels would probably mean the coming to power of a non-Arab government that could threaten Egypt’s access to Nile waters. Second, the Egyptians started massive irrigation projects in the Northern and Southern parts of the country in the mid-1990s. These projects, two of the most important items on the Mubarak government’s agenda, require Egypt to use much more than its share of Nile water than foreseen in the Egypto-Sudanese agreement regulating the allocation of Nile waters between the two countries. Khartoum has never really protested against this since its attention has been focused on getting support on the civil war issue. If the Sudanese civil war stopped, Sudan would most probably claim its legal share of Nile water, and Egypt would have to reduce its consumption, which would mean a severe blow to the irrigation projects.
[20] Since the reprise of oil exploitation in 1998, the defense budget expenditures have doubled. Officially, the annual defense budget has gone from 166 million dollars in 1998 to 327 million dollars in 2000. Sources: Christian Aid; Oil and Gas Journal;Energy Information Agency; IMF. Quoted in Karl Vick, “Oil Money is fueling Sudan’s war,” Washington Post (June 11, 2001).
[21] Definition taken from Ian Levine, Report on workshop on Humanitarian Principles for Sudanese NGOs, mimeo (April 1995), p.8, quoted in John Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy: Humanitarian Aid and Conflict in Africa (Boulder: London, 1996), p.39.
[22] Refugee camps in Zaire had provided many important leaders of the Rwandan genocide with a safe haven and with a base from which they could launch their military counter-offensive and from which they could get the resources necessary by exploiting the population benefiting from international aid.
[23] See for a more detailed account David Rieff, “The humanitarian trap,” World Policy Journal 12 (Winter 1995 – 1996).
[24] Studies of the 1988 famines have shown that it had taken such a high toll on the population partly because the international community was unable to respond effectively, and partly because the SPLM and Khartoum denied humanitarian agencies access to the population.
[25] The United Nations International Children Fund (UNICEF) has been chosen as the leading agency: in addition to the implementation of its own programs, UNICEF has the responsibility of coordinating the UN agencies and the NGOs that have signed OLS’s Letters of Understanding – i.e. that have agreed on basic program requirements and on OLS humanitarian principles (neutrality, impartiality, etc…). Thanks to funds raised through the OLS annual appeal, UNICEF provides the organizations working under the OLS umbrella with air transportation, security information, and acts as the focal political liaison with counterparts such as the SRRA [the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, the humanitarian branch of the SPLA] and the RAAS [the Relief Association of South Sudan, the humanitarian branch of the SPLM - United].
[26] After a Senate Africa Subcommittee meeting focused on Sudan on April 2, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland led a delegation to Sudan comprising, among others, the then head of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance Julia Taft, and the then head of the United Nations International Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) Jim Graham. OLS was launched out of that mission. (Source: Stephen Morrison, Center for Strategic International Studies, during House of Representatives hearing on America’s Sudan policy).
[27] See the presentation of OLS in A. Karin et al., Operation Lifeline Sudan: A review (Edgbaston; Geneva: Birmingham University and DHA, 1996), p.1.
[28] OLS-South is managed from Nairobi, has its main logistical base at Lokichoggio (North Kenya), and is supervised from Khartoum by the UN Coordinator for Emergency and Relief Operations in Sudan.
[29] In areas controlled by the government of Sudan, population and humanitarian workers were legally protected by the Geneva Conventions, but in areas controlled by the rebels, no legal bases could be invoked to protest against major violations of human rights and humanitarian laws. In 1994, after two years of negotiations under the patronage of the IGAD peace process, a Tripartite Agreement over humanitarian access was formalized between the government of Sudan, the SPLM and the SPLM-United, and the UN. In 1995, OLS signed a formal agreement with the rebels (the “Ground Rules”) by which rebels agreed on respecting humanitarian law in exchange for some institutional and logistical support. This resulted in an impressive growth in coverage of OLS, particularly in the Southern sector – from less than ten sites served by air in 1992 to over two hundred sites by the end of 1997. Source: M. Buchanan-Smith, S. Collins, C. Dammers, and F. Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan. 1992 - 1998. First Draft. (ODI: July 1999).
[30] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” p.48.
[31] See among many others Alex De Waal, Mark Duffield, Larry Minear, John Pendregast, David Rieff, Jean-Christophe Ruffin.
[32] Alex De Waal, Famine Crimes (Oxford: Indiana University Press, 1997).
[33] David Rieff. “The humanitarian trap”.
[34] See among others his paper Governing the Borderlands: Decoding the Power of Aid. Draft. Paper presented at a Seminar on Politics and Humanitarian Aid: Debates, Dilemmas and Dissension (Commonwealth Institute, London, 1 February 2001).
[35] Duffield, Governing the Borderlands, p.11.
[36] Joanna Macrae and Nicholas Leader, Shifting Sands: the search for “Coherence” between political and humanitarian responses to complex emergencies. Humanitarian Policy Group, Report 8 (London: Overseas Development Institute, Aug 2000), quoted in Duffield, Governing the Borderlands, p.13.
[37] Interview with Antoine Gerard, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - USA Program Manager, May 15, 2000, New York.
[38] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules.” Parts 1 and 2.
[39] Stephen Morrison. House of Representatives, America’s Sudan Policy.
[40] Figure taken from Washington Office on Africa. Slavery, war and peace in Sudan (Dec. 1999).
[41] Source: Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” p.51.
[42] Chairman Roger Royce, opening remarks to the House of Representative hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.
[43] Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace… Or War (Boulder, 1999), p. 38 -39
[44] De Waal, Famine Crimes.
[45] It has been extensively documented. See among many others Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy and Crisis Response: Humanitarian band-Aids in Sudan and Somalia (London: Pluto Press, 1997); Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes; Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi, eds., War and Hunger: Rethinking International Response to Complex Emergencies (New Jersey : Zed Books, 1994); and to a lesser extent Anderson, Do No Harm.
[46] Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. Greed and grievance in civil war, working paper n° 2355, World Bank Group, May 2000.
[47] Article A 4. II: “Diversion of aid from intended beneficiaries is regarded as a breach of humanitarian principles.”
[48] Findings mentioned in Human Rights Watch / Africa, Famine in Sudan, 1998: the human rights cause (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), pp. 119 – 122.
[49] Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa. Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan. Chapter 13-2.
[50] For many statistics and anecdotes, see Human Rights Watch / Africa, Civilian devastation: abuses by all parties in the war in south Sudan, (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994), pp. 174 – 189.
[51] Informal interview with the team of Action Against Hunger – USA (New York, March 2000).
[52] The SPLA Code (i.e. the only “legal” rules that apply on territories controlled by the SPLM), dated 1983, claims as revenue the “local taxation, the rate and value of which shall have regard to the conditions of the people as approved by the Chairman” (section 25 – 2). Source: Human Rights Watch / Africa, Civilian devastation, p. 181.
[53] See for a more detailed analysis, Human Rights Watch / Africa, Ibid., pp. 181 – 184.
[54] The OLS agreement and the Ground Rules recognizes the SRRA as a formal counterpart for the humanitarian projects implemented in rebel areas. OLS workers can thus delegate to local chiefs or to the SRRA the responsibility of distributing food aid items when security conditions are too precarious, or when no one is willing to do the job. Outsourcing to local humanitarian-political counterparts could be seen as a violation of the basic principles of humanitarian impartiality, but when the security conditions are very bad (as they are most of the time in South Sudan), there is not much choice.
[55] See the constant denunciations by MSF, and among others Philippe Biberson, “Soudan, un renoncement mortel”, Le Monde (26 Feb. 1999).
[56] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh; and African Rights, among many others.
[57] The most comprehensive analysis of this bias is in Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan. It should also be noted that the extremely difficult logistics of South Sudan does much to prevent adequate assessments: English speakers are difficult to find, places are very often not accessible (floods, no roads), etc.
[58] In September 1997, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) tried to conduct a nutritional survey to investigate why malnutrition rate in the camp of Labone (Eastern Equatoria province) was so high despite the on-going food distributions. As the camp was situated next to an SPLA garrison, the goal was to prove that the soldiers were diverting food aid from the intended beneficiaries. When the SPLA saw it, it gave ACF 24 hours to leave Sudan – under the pretext that ACF staff were spies. Source: informal interview with the team of Action Against Hunger – USA (March 2000).
[59] For more details, see Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy, p. 27.
[60] Ibid, p. 22.
[61] Anderson, Do No Harm, pp.49 – 50.
[62] Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy, p. 25.
[63] See the account of this process in Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh, The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” p. 21.
[64] The SPLM had designed this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to regulate humanitarian assistance in its territories. NGOs were very reluctant to accept it: for very little in the way of security guarantees, it meant an increased control by the SPLM of their operations, gave the SRRA the right to use the NGOs’ communication assets, to tax aircraft landings and movements in territories under its control, and compelled the NGOs to give the SPLA their assets situated in Sudan when they left the country. On March 1, 2000 (the deadline set by the SPLM for the NGOs to either sign the MoU or leave their territory), out of 43 NGOs working in South Sudan, 32 signed and twelve did not. The twelve NGOs thus expelled accounted for 35% of food aid and assisted 1.6 million people with food, health, and agriculture. Source: BBC Monitoring service, Sudan: Rebel movement issues statement on aid workers in rebel-held areas (6 March 2000).
[65] Ambassador Robert Seiple and Senator Sam Brownback. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[66] For a detailed list of the militias and ethnic groups armed by the government against the SPLA, see Hailes Janney, “Oil reserves transform the Sudanese civil war,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 13 (June 2001).
[67] Most of Sudan’s oil reserves are located in the South of the country, so the renewed oil exploitation (since 1998) has brought the fighting to new areas. Before 1998, Khartoum’s strategy was to maintain its foothold in the South by holding several strategic garrison and market towns such as the regional capital Juba. Since 1998, Khartoum has started fighting around the drilling fields and the passage of the pipelines: the petroleum concessions have to be cleared from any potential danger in order to develop the oil fields, especially since the SPLA has clearly stated its will to destroy the oil complexes. The easiest way to clear the oilfields is to amplify of the well-known use of starvation as a weapon: to engage in massive scorched earth warfare, and produce such a complete destruction that returning to the oil region seems frightening and pointless. For the impact of the oil factor on the Sudanese civil war, see: Christian Aid, The scorched earth: oil and war in Sudan (http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/0103suda/sudanoil .htm); and for Khartoum’s military strategy: Janey, “Oil reserves transform the Sudanese civil war.”
[68] Aid agencies were warning in January that a major famine crisis was about to happen because of a particular severe drought for the second year in a row. In February and March, the government maintained a ban on humanitarian flights, hence preventing humanitarian agencies from delivering seeds and tools at the appropriate time so that crops could be raised. Once the flight ban was finally lifted, aid agencies arrived too late: 60 000 persons had already died, or were about to.
[69] OLS publishes a monthly list of the Security state for locations in South Sudan, in which examples of flight denials by Khartoum for areas under rebel control with no security problems, and flight clearances for government places situated just nearby, abound.
[70] African Rights, Facing genocide: the Nuba of Sudan (London: African Rights, 1995), pp. 242 to 275.
[71] Source: Tony Freemantle, “The hunger weapon,” Houston Chronicle (Aug. 29, 1999), based on UN data.
[72] Desk officer of an NGO working in Sudan, interviewed on 13 April 2000 in New York. The interviewee has asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation on his team on the ground. Hereafter, this interview will be referred to as Interview X.
[73] Story reported in “The Self-Mutilation of Sudan,” Swiss Review of World Affairs (July 1995).
[74] See for example Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan, Chapter 8.4.
[75] Sudan Peace Act: A bill to facilitate famine relief efforts and a comprehensive solution to the war in Sudan. Introduced by Sen. Frist on 01/25/01. Section 6: Multilateral pressure on Combatants.
[76] Sudan Peace Act, Section 4: Condemnation of Slavery, other human rights abuses, and tactics of the government of Sudan. The fact that the Sudanese government “uses aid as a weapon” by manipulating OLS(Mr. Royce, House of Representative hearing on America’s Sudan Policy) had already been denounced before many times. See for example Senator Winter in 1997 stating that “the regime in Khartoum has made abundantly clear over the years, by words and deeds, that it is prepared to manipulate OLS and block entire relief programs for political and military reasons” (Roger Winter, US Senate, Sudan and Terrorism hearing before the subcommittee on African Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, One hundred and fifth Congress, First session, May 15, 1997); and two years later, the recommendation by the US Commission on Religious freedom to “end [the government of] Sudan’s ability to control foreign food aid and use it as a weapon of war” (Dr. Kazemzadeh. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom).
[77] Source: Ambassador Seiple. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[78] Source: Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules.”
[79] No precise data is available, but the trend is clear. The director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House was told by the US Africa Bureau that non-OLS aid had been increased by 30% between mid 1998 and mid 2000. Source: Nina Shea, US policy in Sudan – A Keynote address to the Claremont institute conference on statesmanship and Sudan: what should America do?” (Washington, DC, June 14, 2000). Other observers report a much sharper increase, for example up to “around $100 million each year.” Source: James Phillip, “To stop Sudan’s brutal jihad, support Sudan’s opposition,” Heritage Foundation report (June 2001). In addition, the US has launched in 1999 what USAID proudly presents as the “only development project so far implemented in rebel-held areas,” the STAR (Sudan Trust for Rehabilitation) project, a five-year capacity-building program especially designed to reinforce the institutional capacity of the SPLM and to foster internal reform towards good governance (budget: $13 millions). Source: USAID. Sudan – complex emergency. Situation Report #1 - FY 1999 (Jan. 1999).
[80] Western governments opposed to the Government of Sudan, especially Norway, appear to have adopted the same tactics. In 1999, DANIDA’s evaluation team demonstrated that the wider donor trend seems to increase their proportion of funding to NGOs rather than the UN, and among NGOs to non-OLS agencies rather than OLS agencies. (Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa. Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan.).
[81] Sudan Peace Act.
[82]Michael K. Young, Commissioner of the US commission on religious freedom, House of Representative hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.
[83] See for example Dr. Laila Al-Marayati. Senate hearing during The United Nations’ Policy in Africa.
[84] Francis M. Deng and J Stephen Morison (co chairs), US policy to end Sudan’s war – Report of the CSIS task force on US – Sudan policy (Washington, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001).
[85] The most famous analysis, Mary Anderson’s Do No Harm, has been especially influential through the advocating developed by her research group, the Local Capacity for Peace project and by the sister project Humanitarianism andWar.
[86] Consultants from the Local Capacity for Peace and Humanitarianism and War projects are now invited more and more frequently to conflict zones to organize workshops and training. As a result, many aid workers in management positions in the major NGOs (OXFAM, Save the Children, CARE, etc) and many UN representatives are at least aware that relief aid can “do harm”.
[87] For example, MSF sections have created several special field positions of “Context analysts” or “humanitarian officers” for countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, etc. This is still very rare, but the idea seems to appeal more and more to other NGOs.
[88] Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy, pp. 9 – 11.
[89] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” pp. 10 and the proofs, pp. 10 -12. The worst of all is that the Ground Rules did have a major impact, but quite opposite to what they had been designed for: they gave a strong legitimacy to the rebel movements. The OLS agreement had just mentioned the rebels, and none of the rebel groups had had to formally sign any diplomatic documents. The Ground Rules posed the rebels as “legal counterparts” to the aid agencies, had the head of the movements sign the agreement, and seemed to assume that they were representative of the people (which of course no one believed). As a result, the Ground Rules greatly increased the diplomatic credentials of the rebel movements. Especially, they did much to rehabilitate the SPLM and to secure backing from the US. Source: Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh, Ibid.
[90] Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan.
[91] Karin et al., Operation Lifeline Sudan.
[92] Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan, chapter 13-4.
[93] Interview X.
Séverine Autesserre
January 2002
Abstract
This essay studies the manipulation of food aid to South Sudan, and its interplay with US politics: the US is the major donor of relief aid to Sudan, and at the same time it appears as one of Khartoum’s major opponents on the international scene. This essay argues that humanitarian aid, and especially food aid, is not a substitute for political action, but that it has become the main channel of the US’s Sudan policy for the past ten years.
Torn between its conflicting economic, political, geo-strategic, and moral imperatives, the US has had to adopt a difficult strategy: supporting the rebels, but not openly, and not enough to enable them to win the war. In this situation, humanitarian aid, with its reputation of neutrality and its moral appeal concealing a fundamental vulnerability to all sorts of manipulation, is a very efficient tool. Food aid is especially useful: it directly counteracts Khartoum’s strategy (starving the South into submission) and directly helps the rebel movement and army in a number of ways (bringing them resources, as well as domestic and international legitimacy). Food aid also has the crucial advantage of fitting perfectly into western prejudices about Africa – a starving continent dependent on the West – so that no one thinks about questioning the underlying motives of US relief aid to Sudan.
Introduction
Amartya Sen, “There is no such think as an apolitical food problem.”[2]
Sudan can boast some world records: largest African country, second longest civil war currently going on in the world (nineteen years), highest death toll of any conflict (two million deaths so far, more than the sum of Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria combined), largest number of internally displaced persons (more than five million),[3] largest international relief operation ever launched in world history (some say the largest failure in humanitarian aid history), and arguably the worst violations of human rights.
Sudan is often presented as one of these “forgotten emergencies” that have proliferated since the end of the cold war. Yet, the amount of emergency aid given to Sudan –sometimes more than one million dollars a day – invites us to question this affirmation. From a humanitarian point of view, Sudan is far from being forgotten. Does the label “forgotten emergency” really reflect the political attitude towards Sudan? Such a large-scale and long-term humanitarian intervention could then be seen as one of the many examples of governments’ tendency to send relief aid as a substitute for political action in situations of messy civil conflicts. To judge from the example of the “sole superpower” on today’s international scene, the United States (US), it cannot be said that no attention at all is being paid to the Sudanese case. The US is the major donor of emergency aid in Sudan, and it seems to be one of Khartoum’s major opponents. The superposition of the two characteristics raises a question: why is the US so involved in providing humanitarian aid to a country it apparently fights so fiercely in the diplomatic arena? This leads to several related questions: what exactly does US foreign policy towards Sudan consist of? Is US-funded humanitarian aid to Sudan a form of political disengagement or a form of political engagement? In other words, is US engagement in emergency relief purely based on humanitarian grounds or is it part of a coherent policy towards Sudan?
This article shows what an important role humanitarian aid, and especially food aid, has played in US foreign policy towards Sudan since the early 1990s. It argues that humanitarian aid is one of the main channels of the US’s Sudan policy. To successive US governments, funding relief aid is not a “fig leaf” for political action but a real tool in the pursuance of the US’s perceived best, but conflicting, interests: containment of the Khartoum government, pursuit of the civil war within Sudan, strong support of the rebels, but one which is not too open, and not enough to enable them to win. To prove this point, this article focuses on the manipulation of humanitarian food aid in South Sudan.[4] It does not analyze the issue of humanitarian aid in North Sudan, which is part of a different set of dynamics, with different players animated by very distinct motivations. The focus on food aid is grounded on the observation that Sudan is constructed as a nutritional crisis: the problem of food is central in the presentation of the Sudanese disaster in the media, in most academic studies, as well as in action reports from the different international actors involved in South Sudan. Consequently, most relief aid to Sudan takes the form of food supply.[5] Part of the puzzle will also be to assess why and how the problem of food has been given such a central place in South Sudan.
This article first details how the conflicting interests of the United States lead it to adopt a difficult strategy: supporting the rebels, but not openly, and not enough to enable them to win the war. It then shows why humanitarian aid, especially thanks to its core value of “neutrality,” is paradoxically a particularly useful tool in such a case. It builds upon this to demonstrate how, in South Sudan, the US manages to help the rebels through the humanitarian channel, and why almost no humanitarian or diplomatic actor protests against this strategy. To support the demonstration, this article draws mainly on academic books and articles, on the "gray literature" from diverse intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and from donors, on press reports, and on interviews with aid workers.
US diplomacy towards Sudan: supporting or not supporting the rebels?
Like all influential Western and African powers, at first view, the US seems to be totally puzzled by the conflict in Sudan. As the American Ambassador for religious freedom Robert Seiple summarized for the US Committee on Foreign Relations in 2000:
“Sudan is both simple and terribly complicated. If it were easy, however, it would not have gone on for seventeen years with the killing of two millions plus people, most of them noncombatants. It also has been, unfortunately, a war without heroes in the south, certainly in the north. So it has been difficult sometimes to take sides and to know that the issues are going to be resolved. (…) It is as complicated and as humbling as it gets.”[6]
Yet, scholars and politicians observing the US policy towards Sudan propose a quite different analysis. For example, a congresswoman opposing the US’s Sudan policy points out that “it is as if we really don’t want the warring to end and that we are deliberately unwilling to fashion a policy that really will produce the stated desired results.”[7] More strongly, an article from Tufts University’s Fenstein International Famine Center concludes that “the US, whether it wants to be or not, isa key player in facilitating peace, but instead appears to be fomenting war.”[8]
On the international scene, the US openly adopts a very strong position against Khartoum
At first sight, there seems to be a strong will in American political circles to overthrow Sudan’s Islamic government. US policy on Sudan has been characterized since the early 1990s by a very strong international campaign to ostracize the Sudanese government.[9] Diplomatically, the US’s main actions were to categorize Sudan as a “rogue state” in 1993, to prompt a realignment of forces against Sudan in the Horn of Africa in 1995, and to prevent Sudan’s election as a temporary member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council in 2000. Militarily, the US launched Tomahawk missiles at a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory suspected of manufacturing chemical weapons for Osama Bin Laden in 1998. Economically, the US supported the 1996 UN economic sanctions against Sudan, and imposed its own bilateral economic sanctions in November 1997, blocking all Sudanese assets in the US, restricting exports and imports, barring financial transactions, and prohibiting investment in Sudan by companies listed on the US Stock Exchange.
Like many other Western countries, the US fears Khartoum’s will to export Islamic rule into other countries, and accuses it of regional destabilization. The US is also adamantly opposed to Khartoum on the issue of terrorism, all the more since Khartoum’s links with Bin Laden are supposed to have persisted long after Bin Laden’s expulsion to Afghanistan. During political debates, the strongest pressure against Khartoum comes from human rights and religious groups. Among these, two networks seem especially influential: aid agencies and anti-slavery groups operating in South Sudan, and the religious lobby that allies Catholics and Protestants in their protest against the “religious war” waged by Khartoum against the South. The religious lobby seems to have become even more influential under George Bush Junior’s administration. In 2001, right-wing senators and Christians allied over the issue of slavery in South Sudan and started to turn Sudan in a cause comparable to South Africa during the time of apartheid. The evangelical lobby was especially influential.[10] After much work, it finally obtained the nomination of John Danfort, ex senator and minister of the Episcopalian Church, as special envoy to Sudan, on September 6, 2001. At that time, i.e. five days before the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, observers were also expecting a tightening of sanctions against Khartoum, probably on oil or arms.
As relations with the Sudanese government deteriorated in the early 1990s, the relations between the US and the Southern People Liberation Movement (SPLM) improved. Fragile in the early 1990s because of the poor human rights record of the SPLM military branch, the Southern People Liberation Army (SPLA),[11] the US-SPLM relations improved following the opening of humanitarian space in rebel areas and the effort of the rebel movement to at least appear to respect human rights.[12] In 1997, the relations were even so good as to prompt the then secretary of state Madeleine Albright to officially meet the SPLM leader John Garang in Kampala, and to express support for his objectives. A second official meeting between Madeleine Albright and the SPLM and National Democratic Alliance leaders took place in 1999 and, according to the press, this time Madeleine Albright promised help to the rebels. In parallel, from 1993 on, repeated demands were issued in Congress to overlook the issue of Khartoum’s sovereignty and to provide direct assistance to the opposition forces in southern Sudan – “opposition forces” meaning the major rebel movement, the SPLM.[13] Representatives linked with the religious lobby were usually the strongest advocates of the idea, but hearings and debates show that a large majority of American politicians favored the idea. This has resulted in two important pieces of legislation. First, the Brownback amendment to the Fiscal year 2000 Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act authorizes the administration to provide food aid directly to the SPLA. Second, the Sudan Peace Act introduced in the Senate in January 2001 and still under discussion also aims at countering Khartoum by providing direct non-lethal aid to the rebels until the Sudanese government accepts a peace agreement. Yet neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration has used the legal power it had to directly aid the rebels. At first sight, it is difficult to understand why. It seems actually to be due to the pressure of important lobby groups: economic, strategic and diplomatic interests restrain the US in its opposition to Khartoum.
Economic, strategic and diplomatic interests restrain the US in its opposition to Khartoum
Influential economic groups lobby the US against most of its actions opposing Khartoum. First, Sudan is the primary and by far the most important world producer of gum Arabic, a product indispensable to the fabrication of candies, soft drinks such as Coca-cola, and pharmaceuticals. Second, several of the oil companies involved in oil exploration or exploitation in South Sudan rank among the most important firms of the oil industry,[14] and their influence on US policy towards Sudan seems crucial. No US company is directly involved in Sudan, but US citizens are at the head of many companies doing business there – Talisman Oil for example. In addition, several American states seem to have an economic stake in oil exploitation in Sudan.[15] Finally, a congress representative even evoked the fact that “many of the players in [the US] government, including in the Bush administration, have business interests and businesses that are doing business” in Sudan.[16] As a result, it seems that the US economic sanctions are designed to pretend countering the government of Sudan but without really hurting it, and they are often denounced as ineffective. The gum Arabic lobby has obtained an exception to economic sanctions for the import of gum Arabic – the only produce that the US was importing from Sudan, and Sudan’s major export. As far as oil is concerned, an Office of Foreign Assets Control study shows that the measures taken are not strong enough to prevent US companies from working in the Sudanese oil industry, and that firms doing business in Sudan can perfectly well raise money on the US capital market.[17] In spite of many requests by religious and human rights lobby groups to tighten the sanctions and render them more effective, nothing is done.
Besides, most probably under the influence of these the oil and gum Arabic lobby groups, the US has begun softening its position on the issue of terrorism in Sudan. In summer 2000, a team of FBI and CIA agents arrived in Khartoum to work on terrorist issues in cooperation with the Government of Sudan. The first result came just few months later, in February 2001, with the (discreet) expulsion of the authors of the assassination attempt on president Mubarak. This beginning of cooperation became a close collaboration after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. From this day on, the Khartoum government has come to serve as a principal collaborator to the US in its attempt to understand the functioning of international terrorist networks. Khartoum gives names of terrorists and of organizations backing terrorist associations, arrests suspects upon Washington’s request, helps Washington map out terrorist networks, etc.[18] As a result, on September 27, 2001, the US abandoned its veto on the lifting of UN sanctions against Khartoum, and the multilateral sanctions were finally revoked. Probably to appease the human rights and religious groups infuriated by this gesture, the US kept its bilateral sanctions (it renewed them for one more year in November 2001), but nevertheless backed away from a more effective piece of legislation banning companies doing business in Sudan from the US stock exchange. Thus, if the 2001 shift of US policy towards Sudan seemed prompted by the aftermath of the September 11 attack, it actually reflects the logical conclusion of a process that started more than a year before. The return of terrorism as a first priority for the Bush administration was the occasion to reward Khartoum’s new position on terrorism without losing too much credibility in the eyes of the US human rights and religious lobby groups.
US policy on Sudan is thus determined by contradictory influences: human rights versus economic interests, and divided political, geo-strategic, and security interests. To further complicate the issue, the US cannot take the risk of helping the rebels seize power in Khartoum. First, the SPLM’s human rights record is so poor that putting it in power would expose the US to many moral criticisms. Second, no influential party in US politics has any interest in seeing the rebels in power. Oil companies currently engaged in the oil business in Sudan would encounter huge difficulties due to the probable renewed insecurity around the oil fields, and to the risk of their assets being confiscated. Egypt would have difficulties in exploiting Nile waters,[19] and Egyptian interests have to be preserved at all costs so that Egypt’s cooperation in the Middle East peace process can be secured. As a result, keeping the current state of war going seems the easiest way to balance all these different interests: the rebels do not seize control of the whole country, hence no one is faced with any problem of secession, accountability for human rights abuses, or economic backlash; and on the other hand Khartoum is kept off-balance, and cannot concentrate too much on propagating terrorism or fundamentalism.
Consequently, the best strategy for the US is to find a way to support the rebels enough to enable them to counter the government of Sudan, but not enough to help them win, and not too openly in order to preserve US economic and strategic interests. Supporting the rebels is especially important now that, with the renewed exploitation of oil fields and the resulting upgrading of Khartoum armaments,[20] the Government of Sudan is in the best position ever to defeat its opponents. Humanitarian aid seems the best tool for this strategy.
Humanitarian Aid: between neutrality and politicization
Using the provision of humanitarian aid to sustain a conflict seems paradoxical at first sight. Humanitarian aid is traditionally presented as neutral, apolitical. Besides, aid agencies usually claim their independence, refuting all connection to any government, any influence by state parties. How can humanitarian aid then be used as a political tool, especially as a tool for reaching political goals diametrically opposed to the humanitarian ones?
The core conception of neutrality of humanitarian aid in Sudan
Humanitarian aid is usually presented as neutral in its essence. The core conception at the heart of international aid agencies’ action is that “the provision of humanitarian assistance should be made on the basis of need alone and should be above and beyond any political, military, strategic or sectarian agenda.”[21] The International Committee of the Red Cross was the first to develop this principle, and at their instigation all international UN agencies and almost all humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) adopted it as the basis of their international engagement.
At the beginning, the main conception was that remaining purely “technical,” for example giving medical and nutritional emergency relief aid to civilians, and not paying attention to any political issue, was the best way to be neutral. The turning point was December 1994, when about a dozen NGOs pulled out of refugee camps in eastern Zaire to protest against the manipulation of their work by Hutu leaders.[22] Aid agencies and scholars had realized how badly warring parties could manipulate emergency aid.[23] The late 1990s, however, saw an upsurge of criticism against aid agencies, first in academic circles and later in the mainstream media. Aid was accused of fueling conflicts, harboring and feeding killers, and feeding the war economy. This prompted many aid agencies to reconsider their conception of neutrality. One trend was to accentuate the quest for independence, and to claim to be impartial rather than neutral. The other – the one often adopted for pragmatic reasons - was to work on all sides of the conflict. In any case, the conception of emergency relief as a non-political commitment remains pervasive in humanitarian and diplomatic circles.
The humanitarian intervention in Sudan is constructed as neutral
In 1989, the UN-led relief operation in Sudan, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), was constructed as perfectly neutral. The main purpose of this “purely humanitarian operation” was to negotiate with all the warring parties the establishment of safe areas in which humanitarian organizations could distribute food to all the war-affected populations – on the government’s as well as on the rebels’ side of the conflict.[24] Since then, OLS has served as the umbrella for United Nations Agencies and for more than forty local and international NGOs respecting the “neutrality principle.”[25] Yet, it should be noted that OLS not only came into being just one month after the major shift in US policy towards Sudan, but it also began under the impetus of the American Congress.[26]
OLS was presented at its inception as a “model”, a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”[27] It was the first time a government agreed on a violation of its own national sovereignty by accepting that humanitarian organizations aid rebel-held areas. Further, the negotiators decided that non-government areas would be supplied from Lokichoggio, Kenya, consequently establishing the first legitimate cross-border operation for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.[28] Finally, the 1996 OLS Review proudly emphasizes that “it was the first humanitarian program that sought to assist internally displaced and war affected civilians during an ongoing conflict within a sovereign country, as opposed to refugees beyond its borders.” Informal and ad hoc at the beginning, OLS’s agreements with the warring parties became progressively more and more formal and bureaucratic.[29]
“Neutrality” was a fundamental part of the 1989 agreement which gave birth to OLS and has been reasserted in each official document since then. It was the only possibility for UN humanitarian agencies to work in rebel-held areas in South Sudan. Still today, UN officials managing OLS argue that membership of the consortium automatically confers neutrality on the participants. However, the problem is that OLS’s conception of neutrality is twofold. It cannot mean “provision of aid on the basis of needs alone” since the OLS agreement states that for any of its actions OLS has to go through the government of Sudan and through the rebel factions. Thus, openly, “neutrality” means that OLS ensures that humanitarian aid does not influence the direction of the war or confer benefits to one side.[30] It can also be interpreted as the fact that both sides can control OLS action. It can thus be argued that the idea of neutrality renders OLS vulnerable to all sorts of manipulations.
Such “neutral” humanitarian interventions are very useful in the political game
Humanitarian interventions can indeed be used as substitutes, and even as forms, of political intervention. First, after the cold war, many scholars[31] have pointed to a growing tendency to use relief aid as a substitute for political engagement, especially in cases of messy situations in which no one has a real economic or strategic interest in imposing peace. As Alex de Waal puts it, “sending relief is a weapon of first resort: popular at home, usually unobjectionable abroad, and an excuse for not looking more deeply into underlying political problems.”[32] David Rieff has best analyzed the reasons for this[33]: in today’s world deprived of ideals, humanitarian workers can appear as “the last of the just”, and humanitarianism as the last moral cause to which people from all religions and all political backgrounds could adhere. The heroism involved in many of its actions grab the attention of the media and the approval of the public. Its apparent success makes it even more appealing. It thus provides governments with the perfect excuse they need to turn their back on world problems they do not want to (or cannot) deal with. Sending aid salves western consciences; it is an alibi to at least appear to do something without having to address the root causes of the problems.
Second, thanks to these very reasons, more and more academic scholars and aid workers recognize that aid can be a very useful tool for reaching specific political goals. As Duffield argues,[34] the movement of privatization of the public sphere that has developed since the end of the cold war has involved the passage from a political focus on bilateral aid to a focus on private aid through NGOs. The financial resources devoted to bilateral aid have fallen while the financial resources devoted to private aid have skyrocketed. This apparent switch, however, should not camouflage the fact that private aid is conceived exactly as bilateral aid was regarded earlier: as a constituent part of a State’s foreign policy. There is “coherence” among all State actions on the international scene: “in relation to conflict, the different tools of aid and politics, trade and diplomacy, and so on, should work together in the interests of stability and development.”[35] Aid has no special and independent status. It participates like other constituents in promoting the State’s political goals; it is even the “primary form of international policy” towards “borderland” countries – i.e. countries that do not present a real strategic or economic interest.[36] It is a very useful form, since its appearance of “neutrality” and its positive image disarm all accusations of “imperialist” interference and all diplomatic protestations over what would otherwise be seen as inexcusable intervention in the internal affairs of another country.
This is perfectly relevant for Sudan. Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh recall that, in the early 1990s, the international community was still trying to find a solution to the conflict, and OLS was linked to the peace process. When the peace process faltered, and especially with the failure of the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) initiative, political diplomacy was replaced by humanitarian diplomacy, with OLS as the “focus” and the “medium” for international engagement in Sudan. Most of the time, this funding was not disbursed on purely humanitarian grounds: as characterised by the manager of a non-governmental organization (NGO), “donors” are actually “governments that donate money,” but have themselves called “donors” to mask their political status and better use humanitarian access to fulfill their political agenda.[37] This is considered especially easy when working through NGOs “who, generally, provide donors with a more flexible policy instrument” than UN agencies.[38] Since the beginning of the international humanitarian operation, the US has been the major donor to OLS: its overall contribution between 1989 and March 2001 amounted to $1.2 billion dollars,[39] and represented some 68% of OLS’s $180 million annual budget between 1989 and 1998.[40] On average, 75% of the funding is channeled through NGOs and 25% through UN agencies.[41] This is an easy way to fulfill a political agenda aimed at sustaining one of the parties in a conflict: aid agencies are indeed always at risk of being manipulated by warring parties.
AId as a weapon: manipulation of aid by warring parties
Manipulation of aid in South Sudan is obvious
Today, deploring the manipulation of aid in conflict situations has become a cliché. Academic scholars, politicians, and journalists keep on denouncing this problem in South Sudan; for example, “Operation Lifeline Sudan is constantly manipulated by both sides” serves as the introduction to the House of Representatives 2001 hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.[42] This problem is logical: as Mary Anderson argues,
“Aid resources represent economic wealth and political power, so people engaged in war will always want to control them. It would be odd – even subversive to their cause – if they did not do so. […] When the ‘enemy’ receives any support, including humanitarian aid, it is viewed as counter to the sought-after victory.”[43]
South Sudan is a perfect example of the process of integrating relief assistance into the dynamic of violence that Alex de Waal details in Famine Crimes. The general pattern he describes seems to have been followed step by step: “the diversion or taxation of relief supplies [has] become a major way for belligerents to provision themselves and, in time, the very command structure and military strategy themselves [have] come to reflect the availability of external aid and the means whereby it is delivered.”[44] In South Sudan, aid saves plenty of lives, no doubt, but as it is also manipulated by all the warring parties and by foreign governments, it is transformed as a lethal weapon in the war: it increases the resources to perpetuate conflict.[45]
The crucial importance of aid to warring parties: aid increases the resources to perpetuate conflict
Fighting a war is hugely expensive, so the resources available to the warring parties usually determine the pattern and the outcome of the conflict. As Paul Collier has analyzed[46], availability of resources is a crucial factor in the initiation and the sustaining of a rebellion. While government can extract taxes and direct the State’s resources towards their war effort, rebel armies have to find other ways to generate revenues – especially when they do not permanently control a sufficiently large territory and population. In Sudan, rebels cannot tap natural resources as other rebel movements do in Angola or Sierra Leone (the SPLM has no access to the oil fields yet). They cannot rely on the financial support of the diaspora, which is mostly extremely poor. Their only resource is to rely on foreign aid. Knowing that, the US strategy is to counter Khartoum’s manipulation of humanitarian access and to ensure that the rebels have access to as much aid as possible.
In Sudan, diversion and taxation of aid items are the most widely recognized process by which aid increases resources to perpetuate conflict.
Diversion and taxation of relief supply is blatant in South Sudan. The government always used it, and it became particularly important to the SPLM after the end of Soviet and Ethiopian support following the collapse of their communist governments. In the 1980s and the early 1990s, diversion was so wide scale that NGOs and the UN had to look for a way to stop, or at least minimize it. The 1995 agreement called the “Ground Rules” thus comprises an article especially aimed at combating diversion of food aid.[47] There is no real enforcement mechanism, however, and diversion has continued almost unhindered in government-held as in rebel-held areas. For example, during the 1998 famine crisis in Bahr el-Ghazal, OLS dropped huge amounts of food aid, sufficient to prevent all civilians from starving, but the famine still continued. After the crisis, the UN, in collaboration with the “humanitarian branch” of the SPLM, the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA), launched a comprehensive internal review to investigate the reasons of this failure. It found that much of the food had been diverted to rebel military commanders, clan leaders and local tribal chiefs.[48] The 1999 Danish International Development Agency [DANIDA] evaluation team even reported that, during the peak of the 1998 famine in Bahr El Ghazal, “in one town, WFP [the UN agency World Food Program] was accidentally given a report documenting the collection of cereals by the SRRA, 80% of which was allocated to the army, 15% to administration, and 5 % to the SRRA.”[49] Diversion does not always happen in such large proportions, but testimonies of aid workers, reports, and press articles suggest that it is a permanent characteristic of the war in South Sudan, in every place, at all times.[50]
Food relief items can be diverted from the intended beneficiaries by force, though taxation, or via eligible family members. The use of force was especially used in the 1980s, and is still very prevalent among small military groups. In some places, humanitarian agencies’ distributions of food to civilian populations lead so often to raids by soldiers that certain villages have even asked to be crossed from the list of beneficiaries.[51] For the mainstream rebel movements and for the government, “taxation” has become the preferred way of diverting food aid. The main reason is that the idea of “taxation” is well accepted by the international food providers. Aid agencies and donors usually admit that, like any government, local authorities have to raise taxes in exchange for the services they provide to the population (security for example). The SPLA, among others, has always asserted its right to raise the tayeen – i.e. to tax civilians in the areas it controls.[52] The problem is that usually the “tax” is not reciprocated with any services, the “tax” is often applied by force, and the rate of the “tax” is not based on the capacity of the population to pay but on the whims of the civil or military chiefs.[53] Finally, the last of the popular ways of diverting food aid is via eligible family members. This is particularly easy for the rebels because, most of the time, their “humanitarian branches” are entrusted with organizing the distribution of food items brought by OLS-sponsored operations.[54] This delegation of the control of food distribution obviously leads to a high level of inequality. For example, in SPLM areas, certain children receive triple rations (usually those belonging to families associated with SPLM’s officials), while others do not receive any.[55] Many analysts[56] even claim that the SRRA was created not to help the population but to channel food to the military and political command.
The most important factor enabling this diversion, and ensuring its continuity, is that rebels and government forbid all independent evaluation of need or monitoring of food distribution in areas under their control. During needs evaluations, the SRRA and the government of Sudan decide to which sites aid workers will have access, so humanitarian agencies cannot obtain a comprehensive picture of the area they cover. For the areas they cannot access, humanitarian workers have to work with demographic data given by local authorities, with all the bias this implies. In accessible areas, the information gathered is often most selective, due to the lack of free interaction with the local population.[57] The program is then applied almost blindly, and there is no mean to correct it a posteriori, for future programs: aid agencies cannot monitor the impact of the food deliveries. Khartoum and the SPLM forbid almost all nutritional surveys and other common tools for evaluating the efficiency of aid programs, under the threat of expelling the delinquents, as happened to the NGO Action Contre la Faim in 1997.[58] Consequently, no one can really protest nor stigmatize any of the warring parties for the diversion, unless it is willing to take the risk of being banned from the country.
Finally, in addition to food, the technical resources brought in by aid agencies to facilitate humanitarian operations are also often diverted. As Pendregast contends, humanitarian infrastructures (i.e. “assets, agreements, and personnel that facilitate the delivery of aid”) are often “hijacked” and used by warring parties to pursue their military goals: communication tools (radio, walky-talkies) and the vehicles are often “borrowed” while the staff is “conscripted” when it has been sufficiently trained. Infrastructures such as roads or airstrips, rehabilitated to facilitate aid deliveries, are requisitioned by armies to move their military assets. Humanitarian cease-fires are even used to re-deploy and rearm, as happened during the 1995 “Guinea worm” cease-fire negotiated by former US President James Carter.[59]
Therefore, as Pendregast demonstrates,[60] warring parties get enormous benefits from aid diversion. In a direct way, diversion of aid inputs can be seen as the “principal strategy of resource accumulation” for the warring parties. It feeds the soldiers; it is generally acknowledged that relief is the main, or even unique, source of food for the different armies in Sudan. Relief items can also be sold in order to buy arms and other necessary military items. Indirectly, Anderson[61] and Pendregast[62] demonstrate that humanitarian aid helps the rebels concentrate on war issues through what Pendregast calls the “principle of fungibility.” External aid substitutes itself for local public welfare responsibilities. Warring parties no longer have to shoulder their responsibility of ensuring food, shelter, health care and other services for the population. The SPLM for example has clearly developed the habit of always calling for external assistance to provide food and services to the population – building roads and other infrastructure, providing seeds, etc.[63] Warring parties can then concentrate all their energy on combat. Instead of spending their time and resources to get food or other logistical items, they can focus their expenses on getting arms and other war-related items. In rural societies such as Sudan, this also tends to transform the seasonal army into a more conventional one; the combatants no longer have to devote one part of the year to cultivating their fields and the other part to fighting. As the controversy around the 2000 Memorandum of Understanding in SPLM areas clearly showed, SPLM’s benefits from diversion are so substantial that the rebels prefer to expel the NGOs refusing to abide by their whims rather than taking a smaller share of humanitarian aid, no matter what this can mean for the population under their control or for their international image.[64].
The US is perfectly aware of this issue, and of the benefits it represents for the warring parties.
The US is perfectly aware of the problem of diversion of food aid and other aid infrastructure. Further, the 2000 Hearing on International Religious Freedom[65] shows in a particularly striking manner that the US government considers humanitarian food aid as a form of direct aid to the rebels. After Robert Seiple finished its statement on Sudan, a Senator asked for a clarification: “How can Robert say that the administration is already providing ‘direct, non-lethal aid to rebels’ and at the same time affirm that the administration is not working under the Brownback amendment [which authorizes the US President to provide food assistance to opposition groups]?” Robert Seiple’s answer was that he was referring to the aid offered outside the OLS system: food through an “NGO system,” “not through the opposition forces.” It emerges from the following discussion on the proposed Sudan Peace Act, that the current system (working through NGOs) is perfectly effective for what the administration wants to do. The only trick is to make sure that aid reinforces the rebels, and not the government of Sudan. This means finding a way to counter Khartoum’s strategy of blocking access to rebel-held areas, and ensuring that humanitarian aid supplies do get to the rebels.
The US strategy: countering Khartoum’s manipulation of access and ensuring that rebels have access to aid
Khartoum manipulates humanitarian access as part of its strategy of using hunger as a weapon
In order to obtain the permission to operate both in governmental and in rebel areas, the UN negotiators had to grant Khartoum control of many aspects of OLS’s operations, including an absolute control of plane circulation. The OLS agreement stipulates that each month, Khartoum declares which areas will be open to aid deliveries. Therefore, the Government of Sudan can not only manage access to the population under its control, but also to the population in rebel-held areas. It has absolute control over where, when, and what food can be brought to any part of Sudan. The conditions for delivering aid to the rebel-held areas have become increasingly drastic over the years. The reason is straightforward: since 1994, the government of Sudan has adopted the deliberate tactic of starving the South into submission. Academic studies, political speeches, lobby reports and media broadcasts and articles constantly detail this strategy: planes bomb the agricultural infrastructure, ground troops destroy people’s ability to feed themselves (by slaughtering cattle, burning crops, poisoning wells, destroying everything). Khartoum works either directly or through the intermediary of its southern allies, paying militias to force southerners off their lands,[66] especially since the development of oil exploitation further increased the incentive to target civilians.[67] OLS agreements thus end up in an absurd situation in which aid workers are required to seek the permission of the government of Sudan to bring food aid to the very populations this government is trying to starve.
These agreements enable Khartoum to manipulate humanitarian access as part of its strategy of using hunger as a weapon, as proved by the numerous flight bans to many of the places that are not under direct government control. As the Nuba Mountains are one of the major targets in the war, there has been a permanent flight ban on this area between 1994 and 1999; the government finally had to relent under international pressure and authorize relief to be brought to the Nuba population, but it still does so very sparingly. The two-months long flight ban to the rebel-held towns in the Bahr el Ghazal area in 1998 can also be seen as the engineering of the worst famine since 1988 by means of retaliation against places that had just fallen to the rebels.[68]
Besides, denial of humanitarian access is a way of depriving the rebels of their bases, of denying them any opportunity for aid diversion, and of diverting aid towards places under its control. Many times, the government bans food aid deliveries to a rebel airstrip “for security reasons” but authorizes aid deliveries to the nearest airstrip under its control.[69] When people starve in areas under rebels’ control and know that food relief is available in garrison towns, they of course tend to move to the government places. There, the government often exchanges the food aid that has been delivered for religious and political conversions.[70] Those who prefer to resist starve to death. Diplomatic protestations and moral considerations do not, of course, restrain the government at all: from Khartoum’s point of view, letting OLS bring any food aid to populations under rebel control is doing the rebels a major favor. All protestations against access restrictions are seen as manifestations of ingratitude. The most cynical aspect of the government diversion of aid towards the places under its control is that Khartoum does not need food aid. In 1998, the year of the major famine in Bahr el Ghazal province, the UN reported that Sudan had produced a record six million five hundred thousand tons of food, which is more than enough to feed everyone in the country.[71]
Finally, banning access avoids the risk of having international workers witness atrocities that the government prefers to hide. Opening an area to humanitarian agencies would also let the media enter places that the government wants to keep far from the spotlight. As the desk officer of an NGO working in Sudan explained, “access is the key word in such situations. If there is no access to certain areas, the governments that do not want to get involved can say that they don’t know. Even if there are rumors, testimonies of atrocities… there is no proof.”[72] The opening of several “no-go areas” by Khartoum in 1994 clearly demonstrates how the government plays with the aid workers and the media, showing them only what the government wants them to see and report on. The opening took place with considerable publicity and media presence. Two witnesses went beyond the border of the open zone, and there, they discovered “government raiders just out of view of the media” leaving behind them a “path of burned homes and fields and bodies.” [73]
As a result, denial of access to OLS has often been pointed out as "the single most important constraint” facing aid agencies in their work.[74] Humanitarian agencies that belong to OLS and abide by the government’s will emphasize that limited access is better than nothing. If they were to bring relief without government approval, they would afterwards be denied any authorization to work in government places. Besides, they would lose their membership in OLS, and hence have to work illegally on Sudanese territory, which would mean tremendous personal risk. Consequently, in spite of all the constraints and moral dilemmas facing OLS members, only seventeen NGOs have chosen to refuse OLS’s agreement and facilities, and bring help to the population to which the government denies access without asking for permission. This is why, besides providing the rebels with aid through OLS, the US government increasingly counts on these non-OLS NGOs to pursue its strategy.
US counter-strategy: increasing the amount of aid delivered outside the OLS framework
The US Congress and the US administration clearly know that the Sudanese government uses humanitarian aid as a weapon by restricting the population’s access to it and by “manipulating the delivery of relief supplies to [its] advantage on the battlefield.”[75] For example, the Sudan Peace Act states that
“The Congress hereby (…) recognizes that, along with selective bans on air transport relief flights by the Government of Sudan, the use of raiding and slaving parties is a tool for creating food shortages and is used as a systematic means to destroy the societies, culture, and economies of the Dinka, Nuer, and Nuba peoples in a policy of low-intensity ethnic cleansing.”[76]
If Khartoum’s tactic is to starve the South into submission, then to support the South means to make sure that it does not starve. If manipulation of aid is crucial in this war, the US has to reinforce the potential of aid manipulation by the SPLM and impair such potential for Khartoum. The easiest way is to encourage aid deliveries outside of OLS. Therefore, in almost all Congressional hearings during which the issue of the war in South Sudan is tackled, many Senators, Congress Representatives, and even members of the current administration advocate an increase of aid delivery outside of the OLS framework.
The US funding trend for the past three years clearly reflects these recommendations. The amount given by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to non-OLS NGOs has constantly increased since 1998[77] - i.e. since the hardening of US policies against the government of Sudan at the time of the bombing of the Al-Shalif factory. In 1998, funding the non-OLS NGO Norwegian People Aid enabled the US government to get round the government flight ban on Bahr el Ghazal province.[78] In fiscal year 1999, out of $159 million in humanitarian assistance to Sudan, $28.6 million went in emergency assistance to non-OLS NGOs ($24 million for food and $4.6 million in other non emergency assistance). This figure has increased in 1999 and 2000.[79] As a result, the Sudan Peace Act can proudly state in its Findings that “the efforts of the United States and other donors[80] in delivering relief and assistance through means outside OLS have played a critical role in addressing the deficiencies in OLS and offset the Government of Sudan’s manipulation of food donations to its advantage in the civil war in Sudan.”[81] The US can thus more effectively aid the rebels and, to avoid diplomatic protestations, pretend that it does so for “purely humanitarian” motives and even if there is a risk of “humanitarian” aid ending up in the hands of combatants, “aid can be monitored, it can be controlled, and it can be checked,”[82] so that it can be sure that warring parties do not benefit from it. This is not true, and opponents of increased assistance to southern Sudan outside of OLS have sufficiently repeated it for the Congress to be perfectly aware of the reality.[83] Aid channeled through humanitarian organizations does help the rebels considerably in their fight against Khartoum: as the CSIS has argued before the Congress, the US is “the principal external backer, in humanitarian and diplomatic terms, of the Southern Sudanese opposition”, which vitally “relies on over $100 million per annum in US humanitarian transfers.”[84]
The question that then arises is why NGOs, so attached to their neutrality and their independence, do not protest against being manipulated by their donors and by the warring parties? Why do they not protest against this diversion of their work, which turns it into a weapon, and makes it a tool in the pursuance of agendas totally opposed to theirs? The answer is twofold. A minority of aid agencies understand that they are manipulated, but they are often prevented from taking the appropriate action. Others, the majority, do not realize how their actions could feed into the conflict.
Aid agencies do not use the method that could help them avoid being manipulated
Those who try are often prevented from taking the appropriate actions.
To avoid the risk of being manipulated, aid providers should admit that their work is not neutral in essence, acknowledge the existence of the problem, analyze how and why they are manipulated, by which warring parties, and study how they could alleviate this problem. They should develop political and social analysis to better understand the situation they are working in, the dynamics of the manipulation, and develop potential ways to avoid their project being trapped into feeding the conflict. Information on the potential risk and the appropriate responses is available. Research on the interaction between humanitarian aid and civil wars have often taken South Sudan as a case study. Some of them have led to advocacy campaigns to entice aid agencies to include this type of analysis in their program evaluation.[85] This has yielded some results so far: the major NGOs and the UN agencies working in complex emergencies and post-conflict situations have started to pay attention to this issue.[86] Also, for a few years, several European NGOs like the Médecins Sans Frontières movement have tried to better analyze the political and social context of their mission.[87] Most of these agencies can thus see how warring parties rely heavily on them for their combat missions. However, when they have reached this conclusion, they do not have many options.
Almost no large-scale protest or advocacy campaign has ever been launched on this issue. First, the aid agencies’ claim of neutrality conflicts with the very idea of human rights and political advocacy. The often-neglected drawback of OLS’s claim to be neutral is that it prevents its members from speaking out and from denouncing the abuses of the Sudanese counterparts. Second, any protestation would jeopardize the agency’s access to the populations it strives to assist. It would mean high risk for the team on the field, and put the agency at risk of being expelled. Now, whatever the warring parties may do to the civil population and to the items delivered, aid agencies still want to work and try to save at least some lives. Therefore, as Pendregast deplores, with all emergencies in the Horn of Africa the “primacy of access” usually takes precedence over advocacy for justice, human rights, and international humanitarian law.[88] Most aid workers protest in private meetings with commanders, which usually does not really change the situation, but do not dare to denounce the warring parties to the international community. They also sometimes try to find ad-hoc solutions, on a case-by-case basis, but such small initiatives do not affect the overall pattern of diversion and taxation.
The only large-scale attempt to prevent aid in Sudan from being too subjected to political manipulation, the Ground Rules, has been a failure. It worked on fostering a somewhat greater respect of human rights by the rebel movements, but it did not succeed at all in preventing rebels from manipulating aid, or in convincing aid agencies that they needed political and social analysis.[89] Most NGOs still consider the idea of political and social analysis as totally opposed to their principle of neutrality.[90]
Most aid agencies do not realize how their actions could feed into the conflict
Indeed, most aid agencies still do not address the issue of their role in the prolongation of the war, in Sudan as everywhere else. Most aid workers still firmly believe that they can “do no harm”, that they can be perfectly “neutral”, that their action can yield purely positive results. Most NGOs, particularly the newly created or the smaller ones, still act out of a pure sense of moral outrage without paying attention to the potential negative side-effects of their actions. As emergency funds are disbursed for short-term periods, these agencies are reinforced in their tendency to function on a day-to-day basis. They have no incentive to try to move to some strategic thinking and consider the broader picture of their involvement in Sudan. They get funds to bring relief items to the affected population, so that is what they do. Even the large UN agencies still do not really pay attention to the issue. The 1996 Review denounced the fact that OLS assesses food security and health and not even the basic social and political dimensions of the crisis.[91] As the Danish International Development Agency evaluation team still deplored three years later, OLS pays little attention to the “inherently political nature of vulnerability” – such as the use of food as a weapon, the necessity of political connections to be able to get food aid or merely to avoid being killed: “There are no formal mechanisms to monitor political trends in order to inform a vulnerability analysis.”[92] The words of a desk officer of a disaster relief agency working in Sudan seem to represent many of his colleagues’ attitude: “we are aware that it can be some political weight added to Garang’s movement, but we are not in the business of recognizing movements. We just want to carry the work and help people.”[93] Without social, political, or anthropological analysis, aid agencies remain prone to all sorts of manipulation. Humanitarian aid remains a very efficient tool for countries interested in reinforcing a part of the conflict.
It is not the purpose of this essay to explore in depth all the reasons why the aid agencies overlook their role in US diplomacy, as described here. If it had been so, several other factors would have had to be explored: the problem of immediacy of needs (when aid workers see people dying, they want to help them, no matter what the political implications); and the institutional interest of aid agencies (their fundraising campaign would have difficulty accommodating the ideas of political manipulation and aid feeding the war). This leads international agencies to not even question the relevance of bringing food aid to a fertile country that, in the 1970s, many development economists predicted would turn into the “bread basket of the Arab world.” On the contrary, the representation of Sudan as a land of food crisis fits into the Western stereotypes about Africa – African people are starving people on inhospitable land, unable to feed themselves but for the courageous and charitable intervention of the West (its missionaries, its churches, and then its governmental and non-governmental agencies). The South Sudan disaster can thus be normalized (a “humanitarian food crisis” and not a political one), and bringing food aid (even if to support the rebels) can be presented as the “normal” and logical response to such a problem.
Conclusion
The US appears to have adopted a very effective strategy to promote or preserve its conflicting economic, political, geo-strategic, and moral imperatives. The US needs to keep the Sudanese government off-balance in order to avoid a further spread of fundamentalism and destabilization in the Horn of Africa. Supporting the SPLM seems the best way to maintain this situation but, for political, moral, geo-strategic and economic reasons, the US cannot openly do so, and it cannot afford to have the rebels seize power in Sudan. At that point, humanitarian aid, with its reputation of neutrality and its moral appeal concealing a fundamental vulnerability to all sorts of manipulation, is a very efficient tool. Food aid is especially useful: it directly counteracts Khartoum’s strategy (starving the South into submission) and directly helps the rebel movement and army in a number of ways (bringing them resources, as well as domestic and international legitimacy). Food aid also has the crucial advantage of fitting perfectly into Western prejudices about Africa (a starving continent dependent on the West) and on humanitarian aid (humanitarian aid is neutral, etc). Who would then dare to question the legitimacy of the charitable US intervention to save starving babies? Western aid agencies’ and the media’s never questioned categories of analysis lead them to accept passively and reproduce the construction of the Sudanese disaster as a mere food problem to which relief aid is the most sensible answer. Humanitarian aid thus not only participates in the pursuance of US foreign policy goals in South Sudan, it is also a crucial component, absolutely necessary for reaching the appropriate balance. No matter if the South Sudanese populations are the first victims of all this.
[1] I would like to thank Dr. Timothy Mitchell, Roger Persichino, Philippe Rosen, Dr. Shanker Satyanath, and Dr. Leonard Wantchekon for their invaluable comments on various drafts of this article.
[2]Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).
[3] Strategic concerns lead the warring parties to introduce bias in these data: to say how many persons are in a given area is to say how many persons are on the side of the local chief. Estimates can thus vary greatly. The statistics used in this paper are based on the most reliable sources – mainly academic.
[4] Following traditional usage, the words “North” and “South” are used to refer respectively to government-held areas and to rebel held areas, even if the division is more complicated than a simple geographic partition of the territory by a continuous line. This essay studies humanitarian aid in the “South” – i.e. in the territory mainly under rebel control and with few government towns in it.
[5] For example, the US provided $106,636,688 in aid to Sudan in Fiscal Year 2000, out of which $80,000,000 was direct food aid (Food for Peace, and food from the US Department of Agriculture) and part of the rest was funding for food programs through private NGOs. (USAID, Fact Sheet: USAID Assistance to Sudan, July 19, 2001).
[6] Ambassador Seiple. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom: Findings on Russia, China, and Sudan; and religious persecutions in the world (May 16 and September 7, 2000).
[7] Cynthia Mckinney, House of Representatives hearing on America’s Sudan Policy: A New Direction? Joint hearing before the subcommittee on Africa and subcommittee on international operations and human rights of the committee on international relations (One hundred and seventh Congress, March 28, 2001)
[8] Tufts University Fenstein International Famine Center, Aid to Sudan’s Rebels: Right Idea, Wrong Plan (Dec. 1999).
[9] Before the 1990s, i.e. at the time of the Cold War, Sudan was just one more place of indirect fighting between the Soviet and the Western blocs. The two camps opposed were clear cut: the SPLM backed by Ethiopia and the Soviet Union on the one side, the Government heavily backed, financially and militarily, by the US and the Western countries on the other. In 1988, a famine in which about 250 000 people died awoke the international community to the consequences of the war, and prompted Western governments to reconsider their support to Khartoum. The US ended most of its bilateral aid to Sudan in January 1989, suspended its remaining bilateral assistance to Khartoum when the National Islamic Front overthrew the legitimate government, and definitively cut all cooperation with the Sudanese government when the latter supported Iraq in the Gulf war.
[10] On this issue and the whole subject tackled in this paragraph, see Martin Buckley, “In Africa’s human game reserve, strangers intrude,” New Statesman 130 (London, June 2001).
[11] The (accidental? voluntary?) killing of three expatriates in the rebel-held territory of Eastern Equatoria in 1992 did also much to prevent close collaboration between the US and the SPLA in 1992 – 1993. The circumstances of these deaths have never been clarified, but it is generally accepted that the expatriates were killed in an ambush set for the military commander William Nyuon by the SPLA. Mark Bradbury, Nicholas Leader and Kate Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules” in South Sudan (Human Policy Group, report 4, Overseas Development Institute, 2000).
[12] The best account of this process is in Bradbury, Leader and Mckintosh, The “Agreement on the Ground Rules.”
[13] See for example the successive recommendations of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, or the many Senators pushing for such measures during the Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[14] Elf-Aquitaine, Total Fina, Royal Dutch Shell, Talisman Oil, etc.
[15] For example, the state of New Jersey had shares in Talisman Oil up to 2000. Source: Christopher Smith, New Jersey Representative, House of Representatives hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.
[16]Cynthia Mckinney. Senate hearing on The United Nations’ Policy in Africa, hearing before the committee on foreign relations (One hundred and sixth congress, second session, July 12, 2000).
[17] Nina Shea on behalf of US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[18] Jean-Philippe Remy and Stephen Smith“Une dictature islamiste avec laquelle Washington a décidé de négocier,” Le Monde (Oct 26, 2001).
[19] First, a victory for the rebels would probably mean the coming to power of a non-Arab government that could threaten Egypt’s access to Nile waters. Second, the Egyptians started massive irrigation projects in the Northern and Southern parts of the country in the mid-1990s. These projects, two of the most important items on the Mubarak government’s agenda, require Egypt to use much more than its share of Nile water than foreseen in the Egypto-Sudanese agreement regulating the allocation of Nile waters between the two countries. Khartoum has never really protested against this since its attention has been focused on getting support on the civil war issue. If the Sudanese civil war stopped, Sudan would most probably claim its legal share of Nile water, and Egypt would have to reduce its consumption, which would mean a severe blow to the irrigation projects.
[20] Since the reprise of oil exploitation in 1998, the defense budget expenditures have doubled. Officially, the annual defense budget has gone from 166 million dollars in 1998 to 327 million dollars in 2000. Sources: Christian Aid; Oil and Gas Journal;Energy Information Agency; IMF. Quoted in Karl Vick, “Oil Money is fueling Sudan’s war,” Washington Post (June 11, 2001).
[21] Definition taken from Ian Levine, Report on workshop on Humanitarian Principles for Sudanese NGOs, mimeo (April 1995), p.8, quoted in John Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy: Humanitarian Aid and Conflict in Africa (Boulder: London, 1996), p.39.
[22] Refugee camps in Zaire had provided many important leaders of the Rwandan genocide with a safe haven and with a base from which they could launch their military counter-offensive and from which they could get the resources necessary by exploiting the population benefiting from international aid.
[23] See for a more detailed account David Rieff, “The humanitarian trap,” World Policy Journal 12 (Winter 1995 – 1996).
[24] Studies of the 1988 famines have shown that it had taken such a high toll on the population partly because the international community was unable to respond effectively, and partly because the SPLM and Khartoum denied humanitarian agencies access to the population.
[25] The United Nations International Children Fund (UNICEF) has been chosen as the leading agency: in addition to the implementation of its own programs, UNICEF has the responsibility of coordinating the UN agencies and the NGOs that have signed OLS’s Letters of Understanding – i.e. that have agreed on basic program requirements and on OLS humanitarian principles (neutrality, impartiality, etc…). Thanks to funds raised through the OLS annual appeal, UNICEF provides the organizations working under the OLS umbrella with air transportation, security information, and acts as the focal political liaison with counterparts such as the SRRA [the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association, the humanitarian branch of the SPLA] and the RAAS [the Relief Association of South Sudan, the humanitarian branch of the SPLM - United].
[26] After a Senate Africa Subcommittee meeting focused on Sudan on April 2, 1989, Congressman Mickey Leland led a delegation to Sudan comprising, among others, the then head of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance Julia Taft, and the then head of the United Nations International Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) Jim Graham. OLS was launched out of that mission. (Source: Stephen Morrison, Center for Strategic International Studies, during House of Representatives hearing on America’s Sudan policy).
[27] See the presentation of OLS in A. Karin et al., Operation Lifeline Sudan: A review (Edgbaston; Geneva: Birmingham University and DHA, 1996), p.1.
[28] OLS-South is managed from Nairobi, has its main logistical base at Lokichoggio (North Kenya), and is supervised from Khartoum by the UN Coordinator for Emergency and Relief Operations in Sudan.
[29] In areas controlled by the government of Sudan, population and humanitarian workers were legally protected by the Geneva Conventions, but in areas controlled by the rebels, no legal bases could be invoked to protest against major violations of human rights and humanitarian laws. In 1994, after two years of negotiations under the patronage of the IGAD peace process, a Tripartite Agreement over humanitarian access was formalized between the government of Sudan, the SPLM and the SPLM-United, and the UN. In 1995, OLS signed a formal agreement with the rebels (the “Ground Rules”) by which rebels agreed on respecting humanitarian law in exchange for some institutional and logistical support. This resulted in an impressive growth in coverage of OLS, particularly in the Southern sector – from less than ten sites served by air in 1992 to over two hundred sites by the end of 1997. Source: M. Buchanan-Smith, S. Collins, C. Dammers, and F. Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan. 1992 - 1998. First Draft. (ODI: July 1999).
[30] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” p.48.
[31] See among many others Alex De Waal, Mark Duffield, Larry Minear, John Pendregast, David Rieff, Jean-Christophe Ruffin.
[32] Alex De Waal, Famine Crimes (Oxford: Indiana University Press, 1997).
[33] David Rieff. “The humanitarian trap”.
[34] See among others his paper Governing the Borderlands: Decoding the Power of Aid. Draft. Paper presented at a Seminar on Politics and Humanitarian Aid: Debates, Dilemmas and Dissension (Commonwealth Institute, London, 1 February 2001).
[35] Duffield, Governing the Borderlands, p.11.
[36] Joanna Macrae and Nicholas Leader, Shifting Sands: the search for “Coherence” between political and humanitarian responses to complex emergencies. Humanitarian Policy Group, Report 8 (London: Overseas Development Institute, Aug 2000), quoted in Duffield, Governing the Borderlands, p.13.
[37] Interview with Antoine Gerard, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - USA Program Manager, May 15, 2000, New York.
[38] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules.” Parts 1 and 2.
[39] Stephen Morrison. House of Representatives, America’s Sudan Policy.
[40] Figure taken from Washington Office on Africa. Slavery, war and peace in Sudan (Dec. 1999).
[41] Source: Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” p.51.
[42] Chairman Roger Royce, opening remarks to the House of Representative hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.
[43] Mary Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace… Or War (Boulder, 1999), p. 38 -39
[44] De Waal, Famine Crimes.
[45] It has been extensively documented. See among many others Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy and Crisis Response: Humanitarian band-Aids in Sudan and Somalia (London: Pluto Press, 1997); Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes; Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi, eds., War and Hunger: Rethinking International Response to Complex Emergencies (New Jersey : Zed Books, 1994); and to a lesser extent Anderson, Do No Harm.
[46] Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. Greed and grievance in civil war, working paper n° 2355, World Bank Group, May 2000.
[47] Article A 4. II: “Diversion of aid from intended beneficiaries is regarded as a breach of humanitarian principles.”
[48] Findings mentioned in Human Rights Watch / Africa, Famine in Sudan, 1998: the human rights cause (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), pp. 119 – 122.
[49] Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa. Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan. Chapter 13-2.
[50] For many statistics and anecdotes, see Human Rights Watch / Africa, Civilian devastation: abuses by all parties in the war in south Sudan, (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994), pp. 174 – 189.
[51] Informal interview with the team of Action Against Hunger – USA (New York, March 2000).
[52] The SPLA Code (i.e. the only “legal” rules that apply on territories controlled by the SPLM), dated 1983, claims as revenue the “local taxation, the rate and value of which shall have regard to the conditions of the people as approved by the Chairman” (section 25 – 2). Source: Human Rights Watch / Africa, Civilian devastation, p. 181.
[53] See for a more detailed analysis, Human Rights Watch / Africa, Ibid., pp. 181 – 184.
[54] The OLS agreement and the Ground Rules recognizes the SRRA as a formal counterpart for the humanitarian projects implemented in rebel areas. OLS workers can thus delegate to local chiefs or to the SRRA the responsibility of distributing food aid items when security conditions are too precarious, or when no one is willing to do the job. Outsourcing to local humanitarian-political counterparts could be seen as a violation of the basic principles of humanitarian impartiality, but when the security conditions are very bad (as they are most of the time in South Sudan), there is not much choice.
[55] See the constant denunciations by MSF, and among others Philippe Biberson, “Soudan, un renoncement mortel”, Le Monde (26 Feb. 1999).
[56] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh; and African Rights, among many others.
[57] The most comprehensive analysis of this bias is in Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan. It should also be noted that the extremely difficult logistics of South Sudan does much to prevent adequate assessments: English speakers are difficult to find, places are very often not accessible (floods, no roads), etc.
[58] In September 1997, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) tried to conduct a nutritional survey to investigate why malnutrition rate in the camp of Labone (Eastern Equatoria province) was so high despite the on-going food distributions. As the camp was situated next to an SPLA garrison, the goal was to prove that the soldiers were diverting food aid from the intended beneficiaries. When the SPLA saw it, it gave ACF 24 hours to leave Sudan – under the pretext that ACF staff were spies. Source: informal interview with the team of Action Against Hunger – USA (March 2000).
[59] For more details, see Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy, p. 27.
[60] Ibid, p. 22.
[61] Anderson, Do No Harm, pp.49 – 50.
[62] Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy, p. 25.
[63] See the account of this process in Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh, The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” p. 21.
[64] The SPLM had designed this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to regulate humanitarian assistance in its territories. NGOs were very reluctant to accept it: for very little in the way of security guarantees, it meant an increased control by the SPLM of their operations, gave the SRRA the right to use the NGOs’ communication assets, to tax aircraft landings and movements in territories under its control, and compelled the NGOs to give the SPLA their assets situated in Sudan when they left the country. On March 1, 2000 (the deadline set by the SPLM for the NGOs to either sign the MoU or leave their territory), out of 43 NGOs working in South Sudan, 32 signed and twelve did not. The twelve NGOs thus expelled accounted for 35% of food aid and assisted 1.6 million people with food, health, and agriculture. Source: BBC Monitoring service, Sudan: Rebel movement issues statement on aid workers in rebel-held areas (6 March 2000).
[65] Ambassador Robert Seiple and Senator Sam Brownback. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[66] For a detailed list of the militias and ethnic groups armed by the government against the SPLA, see Hailes Janney, “Oil reserves transform the Sudanese civil war,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 13 (June 2001).
[67] Most of Sudan’s oil reserves are located in the South of the country, so the renewed oil exploitation (since 1998) has brought the fighting to new areas. Before 1998, Khartoum’s strategy was to maintain its foothold in the South by holding several strategic garrison and market towns such as the regional capital Juba. Since 1998, Khartoum has started fighting around the drilling fields and the passage of the pipelines: the petroleum concessions have to be cleared from any potential danger in order to develop the oil fields, especially since the SPLA has clearly stated its will to destroy the oil complexes. The easiest way to clear the oilfields is to amplify of the well-known use of starvation as a weapon: to engage in massive scorched earth warfare, and produce such a complete destruction that returning to the oil region seems frightening and pointless. For the impact of the oil factor on the Sudanese civil war, see: Christian Aid, The scorched earth: oil and war in Sudan (http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/0103suda/sudanoil .htm); and for Khartoum’s military strategy: Janey, “Oil reserves transform the Sudanese civil war.”
[68] Aid agencies were warning in January that a major famine crisis was about to happen because of a particular severe drought for the second year in a row. In February and March, the government maintained a ban on humanitarian flights, hence preventing humanitarian agencies from delivering seeds and tools at the appropriate time so that crops could be raised. Once the flight ban was finally lifted, aid agencies arrived too late: 60 000 persons had already died, or were about to.
[69] OLS publishes a monthly list of the Security state for locations in South Sudan, in which examples of flight denials by Khartoum for areas under rebel control with no security problems, and flight clearances for government places situated just nearby, abound.
[70] African Rights, Facing genocide: the Nuba of Sudan (London: African Rights, 1995), pp. 242 to 275.
[71] Source: Tony Freemantle, “The hunger weapon,” Houston Chronicle (Aug. 29, 1999), based on UN data.
[72] Desk officer of an NGO working in Sudan, interviewed on 13 April 2000 in New York. The interviewee has asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation on his team on the ground. Hereafter, this interview will be referred to as Interview X.
[73] Story reported in “The Self-Mutilation of Sudan,” Swiss Review of World Affairs (July 1995).
[74] See for example Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan, Chapter 8.4.
[75] Sudan Peace Act: A bill to facilitate famine relief efforts and a comprehensive solution to the war in Sudan. Introduced by Sen. Frist on 01/25/01. Section 6: Multilateral pressure on Combatants.
[76] Sudan Peace Act, Section 4: Condemnation of Slavery, other human rights abuses, and tactics of the government of Sudan. The fact that the Sudanese government “uses aid as a weapon” by manipulating OLS(Mr. Royce, House of Representative hearing on America’s Sudan Policy) had already been denounced before many times. See for example Senator Winter in 1997 stating that “the regime in Khartoum has made abundantly clear over the years, by words and deeds, that it is prepared to manipulate OLS and block entire relief programs for political and military reasons” (Roger Winter, US Senate, Sudan and Terrorism hearing before the subcommittee on African Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations, One hundred and fifth Congress, First session, May 15, 1997); and two years later, the recommendation by the US Commission on Religious freedom to “end [the government of] Sudan’s ability to control foreign food aid and use it as a weapon of war” (Dr. Kazemzadeh. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom).
[77] Source: Ambassador Seiple. Senate Foreign Relations full committee hearing on US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
[78] Source: Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh. The “Agreement on the Ground Rules.”
[79] No precise data is available, but the trend is clear. The director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House was told by the US Africa Bureau that non-OLS aid had been increased by 30% between mid 1998 and mid 2000. Source: Nina Shea, US policy in Sudan – A Keynote address to the Claremont institute conference on statesmanship and Sudan: what should America do?” (Washington, DC, June 14, 2000). Other observers report a much sharper increase, for example up to “around $100 million each year.” Source: James Phillip, “To stop Sudan’s brutal jihad, support Sudan’s opposition,” Heritage Foundation report (June 2001). In addition, the US has launched in 1999 what USAID proudly presents as the “only development project so far implemented in rebel-held areas,” the STAR (Sudan Trust for Rehabilitation) project, a five-year capacity-building program especially designed to reinforce the institutional capacity of the SPLM and to foster internal reform towards good governance (budget: $13 millions). Source: USAID. Sudan – complex emergency. Situation Report #1 - FY 1999 (Jan. 1999).
[80] Western governments opposed to the Government of Sudan, especially Norway, appear to have adopted the same tactics. In 1999, DANIDA’s evaluation team demonstrated that the wider donor trend seems to increase their proportion of funding to NGOs rather than the UN, and among NGOs to non-OLS agencies rather than OLS agencies. (Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa. Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan.).
[81] Sudan Peace Act.
[82]Michael K. Young, Commissioner of the US commission on religious freedom, House of Representative hearing on America’s Sudan Policy.
[83] See for example Dr. Laila Al-Marayati. Senate hearing during The United Nations’ Policy in Africa.
[84] Francis M. Deng and J Stephen Morison (co chairs), US policy to end Sudan’s war – Report of the CSIS task force on US – Sudan policy (Washington, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001).
[85] The most famous analysis, Mary Anderson’s Do No Harm, has been especially influential through the advocating developed by her research group, the Local Capacity for Peace project and by the sister project Humanitarianism andWar.
[86] Consultants from the Local Capacity for Peace and Humanitarianism and War projects are now invited more and more frequently to conflict zones to organize workshops and training. As a result, many aid workers in management positions in the major NGOs (OXFAM, Save the Children, CARE, etc) and many UN representatives are at least aware that relief aid can “do harm”.
[87] For example, MSF sections have created several special field positions of “Context analysts” or “humanitarian officers” for countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, etc. This is still very rare, but the idea seems to appeal more and more to other NGOs.
[88] Pendregast, Frontline Diplomacy, pp. 9 – 11.
[89] Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh The “Agreement on the Ground Rules,” pp. 10 and the proofs, pp. 10 -12. The worst of all is that the Ground Rules did have a major impact, but quite opposite to what they had been designed for: they gave a strong legitimacy to the rebel movements. The OLS agreement had just mentioned the rebels, and none of the rebel groups had had to formally sign any diplomatic documents. The Ground Rules posed the rebels as “legal counterparts” to the aid agencies, had the head of the movements sign the agreement, and seemed to assume that they were representative of the people (which of course no one believed). As a result, the Ground Rules greatly increased the diplomatic credentials of the rebel movements. Especially, they did much to rehabilitate the SPLM and to secure backing from the US. Source: Bradbury, Leader and Mackintosh, Ibid.
[90] Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan.
[91] Karin et al., Operation Lifeline Sudan.
[92] Buchanan-Smith, Collins, Dammers, and Wekesa, Evaluation of Danish Assistance to Sudan, chapter 13-4.
[93] Interview X.
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