*Sudan's Bloody Crackdown on Civilian Protestors: **Does the U.S. have
anything to say?*
Eric Reeves, 5 October 2013
(See also the most recent, and highly detailed update (October 4, 2013)
from the *African Center for Justice and Peace Studies*,
http://www.acjps.org/?p=1663; see also most recent reports from Amnesty
International <http://www.amnesty.org/> and Human Rights
Watch<http://www.hrw.org/>
)
The title the widely distributed Agence France-Presse wire dispatch became
inescapable, however often it may have appeared elsewhere with a different
heading. *"Kerry avoids criticizing crackdown in talks with Sudanese
foreign minister"* (e.g., the important on-line Arab news source *Al-Arabiya
*<
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/africa/2013/10/01/Kerry-avoids-criticizing-crackdown-in-talks-with-Sudan-FM.html
>,
September 30, 2013). And indeed the most important news within the AFP
account was both conspicuous—and outrageous: "US Secretary of State John
Kerry Monday met with his Sudanese counterpart Ali Karti in Washington *but
failed to repeat strong U.S. criticism of the deadly crackdown on
protestors.*" So that there was no ambiguity, AFP further reported from
Washington:
On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki blasted which she called
a "brutal crackdown" by Khartoum on the protestors, adding it was
"heavy-handed and disproportionate." *But in Kerry’s meeting with Karti at
the State Department on Monday, the crackdown was "not a topic," Psaki said.
*
And yet this was the day after a long and bloody weekend in Khartoum,
Omdurman, Wad Medani, Port Sudan, and elsewhere in Sudan. Public
statements by professional groups on the ground (including medical staff
and those working in mortuaries), as well as by a wide range of
intensifying and expanding social media communications, make it clear that
well over 200 people <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article48306>
have
been killed and hundreds more wounded or injured, some very
seriously. Most of these occurred during the time following the U.S. State
Department readout of Friday, September 27 (describing Khartoum's crackdown
as "brutal" and declaring that the use of force has
been "excessive"). Even last week Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, the Sudan Centre for Justice and Peace Studies and others all
offered authoritative accounts making clear just what instructions were
given to security personnel: "shoot to
kill<
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/27/sudanese-protesters-attacked-march-fuel-subsidies
>
."
More than 1,000 have been arrested—perhaps many more, but it is difficult
to collate and tabulate the immense number of reports that I've seen, many
from sources on the ground. Since Khartoum has entirely shuttered both
newspapers and the broadcast media (which it has always controlled), it is
difficult to get public accounts with any independence. In a telling move,
on Wednesday September 26 Khartoum temporarily cut off Sudan's access to
the world's Internet <http://allafrica.com/stories/201309301410.html>. The
shutdown proved more newsworthy than the events that were being suppressed,
so the outage lasted only a day. Next time it will be longer—much
longer. There is, in short, a complete news black-out; foreign
correspondents are experiencing strange outages of mobile phone service;
travel restrictions have been tightened; and outrageous efforts are being
made by the security services to obscure the evidence of what has happened
and what is ongoing <http://allafrica.com/stories/201309300654.html>.
So what had changed between Friday, and Monday's meeting between Khartoum's
Foreign Minister, Ali Karti—a man with a great deal of blood on his own
hands—and the U.S. Secretary of State, nominal architect of the Obama
administration's foreign policy? Why had this not become for Kerry the
ideal occasion on which to inform his counterpart that the U.S. was
outraged over the "brutal," finally murderous tactics by which his regime
had put down protests throughout Sudan (the vast majority of gunshot wounds
have been to the head and chest).
Why not use this occasion to make clear that the U.S. would do all in its
power to support non-violent freedom of expression in Sudan—and that this
necessarily entails liberalizing Sudanese political culture? That culture
has badly eroded during 24 years of tyranny by President Omar al-Bashir and
his National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime; it has brooked
no meaningful political opposition, and to ensure it monopoly on national
wealth and power, the regime has conducted three genocidal
counter-insurgency wars: in the oil regions now predominantly in South
Sudan, in Darfur, and presently in Blue Nile and South Kordofan—and
particularly the Nuba Mountains, which were the site of yet another
campaign of human annihilation during the 1990s.
Only powerful reform can allow Sudan to emerge from present barbarism, and
yet Kerry had nothing to say to Ali Karti on the matter.
Political organization as it currently exists in Sudan will not able to
sustain this uprising without further popular support; even so, I hear
daily from Sudanese sources making clear that more and more families are
losing loved ones. Many believe that fear has finally been overcome by
anger <http://allafrica.com/stories/201310010367.html>, and that the regime
can delay but not de-rail political reformation. To be sure, there is much
that is unorganized; this is to be expected, in part because as political
power shifts, there are many contestants—some of which would do much to
continue Sudan's nightmare. The old sectarian parties have lost their
undeserved status as "the loyal opposition"; and opportunists like Sadiq
al-Mahdi, head of the Umma Party, are willing to put their own interests
before those of the people of Sudan, including the many marginalized
populations of this still vast country. Young people at the forefront of
the uprising are at once at once a strength, armed with democratic zeal,
and a weakness, lacking understanding of how difficult a task it will be to
bring down the regime. And finally, if the rebel military coalition known
as the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) takes a political rather than a
supportive role in events<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article48238
>,
calculations become even more difficult.
So why was Kerry unwilling to offer even the most meager support for
Sudan's fledgling efforts at democratization during this critical moment in
the country's history? Why did he not at least reiterate the State
Department outcry of Friday: Khartoum's security actions were "brutal" and
"heavy-handed"? It was already a disappointing understatement on Friday;
on Monday, Kerry's silence had become the voice an expedient *Realpolitik.*
With a real commitment to liberalize Sudan's political culture, what
threats might the U.S. pose, given the layers of sanctions that have been
imposed on Khartoum over the years? Congress could clamp down on companies
that trade on the New York Stock Exchange and do business with the regime
and its many cronies. The U.S. could also tighten even further "monetary
sanctions," the ability of the U.S. to make international banking
extraordinarily difficult, depending on what measures are taken (not all
have been taken against Khartoum).
And finally, make bluntly clear that the U.S. will energetically veto any
IMF plan to offer debt relief to Khartoum, which in addition to its other
severe economic woes, has run up external debt of more that US$42
billion. Much of this was given over to profligate military expenditures
over the past two decades; much of it funded gross self-enrichment
schemes. Yet, bizarrely, Khartoum has come to count on international debt
relief <http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/details.html?rsnpid=226637>,
despite its behavior throughout Sudan, including ongoing genocide by
attrition in Darfur. Germany<
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article40466>
, Italy <http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/details.html?rsnpid=227692>, and
Britain <http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/details.html?rsnpid=227649> are
cited as supporters of a "plan," the regime-controlled Sudan Media Services
have claimed. If there is any truth to this, the U.S. should push hard on
Berlin, Rome and London to disabuse Khartoum of this presumptuous vision of
its economic future.
But none of this answers the question, "Why would Secretary of State Kerry
remain silent over events in Sudan, given the extraordinary opportunity
provided during a meeting with the regime's foreign minister?"
There are a range of
answers<
http://www.sudanreeves.org/2011/10/10/what-really-animates-the-obama-administrations-sudan-policy/
>;
none of them flattering to the Obama administration.
* *
*[Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and has published extensively
on Sudan; his most recent book is *Compromising With Evil: An archival
history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012, *available at no cost: **
www.CompromisingWithEvil.org* <http://www.compromisingwithevil.org/> *]*
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