US hearing links peace efforts, humanitarian access

Despite the misery being caused by the Sudanese civil war - Africa’s longest-running and bloodiest - very little is being done to end the suffering of the helpless and innocent, Henry J. Hyde, chairman of the US Committee on International Relations, told a special Congressional hearing on Sudan on Wednesday.

"Somewhere in that land of misery today, a child will die, a mother will lose a limb and young women will be enslaved," he stated, saying Wednesday's hearing was another effort, one of many in the past decade, to help push the quest for peace in Sudan.

"Unfortunately, a new generation of southern Sudanese are growing up in the midst of war and hopelessness," Hyde said, adding that the Sudanese government, which came to power by ousting a democratically elected government in 1989, "continues to mount a brutal military campaign against its powerless masses in the south".

He expressed regret that the US Senate had so far failed to appoint conferees in order to reconcile different versions of the Sudan Peace Act, which the US House of Representatives passed in June 2001 "in an effort to address some of the problems facing Sudan, to provide assistance to those fighting for democracy and freedom, and to punish those who trade in 'blood oil'."

The US special peace envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, recently concluded that "this is the time for a major push for a compromise settlement", and that was, indeed, the case, according to numerous speakers at Wednesday's hearing, including Sudanese born Francis Deng, a senior academic at the US-based Brookings Institution, Massachusetts, USA.

Danforth's "pragmatic approach and incremental achievements on humanitarian issues" had generated a momentum for peace within and outside Sudan, he said, but the situation now required more assertive US leadership to end the war.

"What is most needed now is a policy on Sudan - one in which the US is a central player, "Michael K Young, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, said.

Bringing into force the House of Representatives-approved version of the Sudan Peace Act (now languishing in limbo, reportedly at the behest of the US administration) was a crucial first step in such a policy, in order to provide leverage on oil companies involved in Sudan, and thus on the Sudanese government, he added.

That point was echoed by Eric Reeves, a vocal opponent of the Khartoum government, who said it would be unwise to see the confidence-building measures proposed by Danforth as a clear and decisive policy response, when what was needed was to hold the Sudanese government to "a clear timetable and set of benchmarks in a fully credible and unified peace process".

Too often the Danforth report had "put the cart before the horse", with the peace envoy "unwilling to see that many important issues [including humanitarian access, the safety of civilians and an end to slavery and abductions] simply cannot be resolved without first securing a just peace", Reeves added.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter H. Kansteiner testified that the Sudanese conflict had gone on too long, and that Washington was committed to pushing all the actors involved "to a serious, comprehensive and, hopefully, lasting peace process".

US strategic interests in Sudan involved denying it as a base of operations for international terrorism, working on a just and lasting peace, and pushing for unhindered humanitarian access, improved human rights and religious freedom, he said.

"We must now work diligently to demand deeds rather than mere words and, in this regard, the government in Khartoum will have much to prove," Kansteiner said. "The US considers the onus of ending the civil war rests squarely on the shoulders of the government."

He also emphasised the "inextricable link" between the search for peace in Sudan and gains in humanitarian access and human rights. [more details]

This was also a theme addressed by Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), who said the government of Sudan was erecting too many bureaucratic and operational barriers to the delivery of assistance to vulnerable populations, in a manner "so consistent as to amount to a deliberate strategy".

"The GoS [government of Sudan] continually obstructs the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the implementation of [rehabilitation and development] programmes in opposition areas. It delays operations, violates agreements, and denies access to humanitarian flights," he said.

In addition, the frequency of attacks on civilians was increasing, with credible reports from western Upper Nile [also known as Unity, or Wahdah, State] that the government military campaign was "directly targeting civilians and food stocks through intensified, high-altitude bombings and helicopter gunship attacks," Winter testified.

The government had restricted access to western Upper Nile, where an estimated 150,000 to 300,000 civilians have been displaced from their homes, and veteran aid workers have described the state of internally displaced people as "the worst they have ever seen," he said.

"Khartoum seems to be of two minds, poised on the edge between a peace and a war mentality," according to Winter.

The surest way it could now display its peaceful intentions to the US, which had committed itself to being a catalyst for peace, would be to "fully collaborate with US and UN humanitarian initiatives by providing unrestricted international humanitarian access to civilians in need", he added.