After Assault on Abyei, U.S. Must Adopt a Consequence-based Sudan Policy: Rights Groups

Washington, D.C. -The U.S. government’s incentive-oriented policy toward Sudan has not achieved its objectives. The Khartoum regime has militarily occupied Abyei, escalated bombing and aid cut-offs in Darfur, and increased support for ethnic militias throughout the South. The process toward normalization between the U.S. and Sudan should be suspended and offered incentives should be supplanted by escalating consequences for government officials in Khartoum and any other party that commits human rights abuses and targets civilians, said Sudan Now, a campaign led by a group of prominent anti-genocide and human rights advocacy organizations.

Over the weekend, the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, utilized the pretext of an attack by a southern unit on a U.N.-escorted convoy to bombard and occupy the contested Abyei region along Sudan’s North-South border, prompting the entire population of the town to flee. Confidential reports seen by the Enough Project describe northern-affiliated Popular Defense Force, or PDF, militias fighting alongside the SAF, and the U.N. Mission in Sudan, or UNMIS has condemned “burning and looting” perpetrated by armed elements in Abyei town.

The northern army’s rapid seizure of Abyei using aerial bombardment and armored tanks is the result of careful planning and a massive military buildup documented by the Satellite Sentinel Project, or SSP. In addition to documenting the burning of villages in Abyei by northern affiliated forces, SSP documented attack helicopters and heavy tanks within range of Abyei, as well as the upgrading of roads and fueling capacity at airbases that enabled the rapid assault that occurred over the weekend.
 
John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project and Satellite Sentinel Project, says, "Through our satellite project and on-the-ground assessments, we knew that there was a massing of troop strength on both sides and a concentration of tanks and air power on the northern side. With Salah Gosh sidelined and ICC indictee Ahmed Haroun stealing the Kordofan governorship last week, along with his history of arming militias, all the pieces were in place for a conflagration.”
 
The assault on Abyei did not occur in a vacuum. Militia-instigated violence has escalated across strategic areas of Unity, Upper Nile, and Jonglei states in recent months, with a particularly sharp surge of violence in Mayom County, Unity State this past week. Unity State sits strategically adjacent to the Abyei region and both borders and hosts lucrative oil fields.
 
“The evident coordination between the SAF assault on Abyei and the upsurge in militia attacks in Unity suggests a deliberate effort to distract and divide the SPLA’s forces across multiple fronts to minimize the chances of southern forces retaking Abyei,” said Enough Project Executive Director John Bradshaw. 
 
U.S. and international policy toward Sudan has been premised on the willingness of the government in Khartoum to implement the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, accept the secession of the South following the self-determination referendum, and negotiate a settlement on flashpoint issues including Abyei’s status, oil sharing, and the demarcation of the border. This weekend’s assault on Abyei demonstrates that rather than honoring peace agreements, the regime has chosen once again to use military means to change the facts on the ground. This strategy relies upon the willingness of the United States and other international actors to acquiesce to its flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law.
 
Rather than premising U.S. policy on the false hope that normalized relations with the United States are sufficient to secure the cooperation of Khartoum, the Obama administration must seize this moment to develop robust consequences for this behavior.
 
"So it comes back to the central assertion of the embattled anti-genocide movement: if there is no cost to the Khartoum regime's commission of atrocities and to the dishonoring of agreements, then why would anything change in Sudan?” said Prendergast. “Darfur is deteriorating, Abyei is a war zone, and pockets of the South have been set aflame by Khartoum-supported militias.  It is time to impose serious consequences for the Khartoum regime's use of overwhelming military force to deal with every challenge it faces. We don't stand for it in Libya, Iran or Syria. Why then do these atrocities go unchallenged in Sudan?"
 
As a matter of urgency, the United States should immediately suspend progress toward normalization with Sudan, including the review of its status as a state sponsor of terror, as well as any steps towards review of debt relief or the lifting of sanctions. The U.S. should convene an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and propose the rapid establishment of a targeted sanctions regime for anyone responsible for violence against civilians in Sudan, and immediately impose unilateral U.S. sanctions on individuals implicated in violence on both sides of the border. Expanding and strengthening the existing U.N. sanctions regime for Darfur would be a means of accomplishing this, recognizing that the common denominator between Darfur and the South is the behavior of the government in Khartoum. The U.N. Mission in Sudan should accelerate planning for emergency steps to protect civilians from violence, and the U.S. government should begin planning for contingency scenarios for civilian protection in Sudan.
 
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Sudan Now is a campaign led by a group of anti-genocide and human rights advocacy organizations committed to bringing meaningful and lasting peace to Sudan and encouraging strong American leadership and action to achieve this goal. The campaign challenges President Obama, top U.S. administration officials, and the international community to live up to their promises to take strong and immediate action to help end the international crisis in Sudan and bring a lasting peace to Sudan’s people. Organizations participating in the campaign include Humanity United, the Enough Project at the Center for American Progress, Genocide Intervention Network/Save Darfur Coalition, Stop Genocide Now, Investors Against Genocide, and American Jewish World Service.  For more information, please visit www.sudanactionnow.org.