Engaging with a Hostage-Taker

Obama's administration finally, on Monday, October 19, unveiled its new Sudan policy As a policy, on paper, it sounded like there is something for everybody.

Many dictators in Africa had a good sleep that night. They never had such relaxing sleep since they saw on television some years back, one of their own fellows handcuffed and shipped to The Hague to stand trial on war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yes, every one of them saw his nightmare come true in seeing Charles Taylor, the ex-dictator of Liberia, hunted down, handcuffed, and taken to the International Criminal Court prison in the Netherlands waiting to be tried on crimes he had committed against his own people. A dictator in handcuffs was strong message to the rest of the dictators that, finally, accountability is on the way.

Omer Hassan Al Bashir, the dictator of Sudan, is a fugitive and wanted by international justice. The International Criminal Court has indicted him for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

What did Al Bashir do to force the international community (mainly the U.S.A.) to bargain with him? He took 3 million people of his own people in Darfur as hostages and confined them to miserable camps across Darfur in deplorable living conditions. Experience through years and around the world shows that it is a bad idea to give in to the hostage taker's conditions and demands, let alone offering them incentives, cookies, or carrots. That is a wrong message from the Obama Administration to both the people and dictators of Africa.

The greatest incentive is already enjoyed by the regime in Khartoum: to be allowed to stay in power.

The favorite strategy (or game) of Al Bashir's regime is that of a thug who steals your wallet or purse from you, and at the peak of your panic, he appears as your savior and returns your wallet and purse to you. Of course you would feel relieved when you account for your credit cards, driver's license, and other important stuff. You feel so relieved that you find yourself reaching in your wallet or purse and handing him some cash as a reward. The thug is the one who has created the problem, but in the final analysis he is the one who is rewarded for the problem.

The Government of Sudan is the root cause of all the problems of Sudan, including the genocide in Darfur. Yet now, instead of being held accountable for the crimes and problems of its own creation, the regime in Khartoum is grinning in hearing words like carrots, cookies, and incentives.

The weakest link in this new Sudan policy is the Special Envoy to Sudan Major General Gration.

After the expulsion of 13 humanitarian aids on March 4^th following the indictment of Al Bashir by the International Criminal Court, the regime agreed after talks with the Special Envoy General Gration to allow four humanitarian aid groups in Darfur. This is a set back rather than a progress. Humanity lost seven humanitarian aid organizations. Yet Khartoum played successfully the thug's game with the Special Envoy to Sudan.

I find it disingenuous for the Administration to say that it will not engage with Al Bashir himself but is ready to engage with the individuals around Al Bashir. The individuals around Al Bashir are not less ruthless than Al Bashir if not worse. Each and every one around Al Bashir has bloods of innocents on his hands. These are the architects of the civil war in the South and the ongoing genocide in Darfur. That is how and why they are close to him. The irony is that the Administration knows very well that these assistants of Al Bashir are middlemen between the administration and Al Bashir. Every move or action has to be approved by and cleared with Al Bashir himself.

The three top foreign policy officials of the Administration in their announcement of the new Sudan policy uttered as a mantra: Verify then trust.

The regime in Khartoum is not executing the atrocities in Darfur as a concealed uranium enrichment operation. Rather, it carries out its military and security operations in Darfur openly. At one time during the recent attacks on Korma and villages around Jebel Marra, a Darfuri on the roadside leading out from El Fasher to Korma counted 263 vehicles in a military convoy heading towards Korma and Jebel Marra. Residents on the hilly side facing the airport in El Fasher can see clearly military airplanes (Antonoves and Hilicopter gunship) take off and land repeatedly day and night during the same period of military operations. Needless to say that UNAMID airplanes and helicopters share this airport. UNAMID is headquartered in El Fasher. It is impossible for the UNAMID officials and pilots not to notice the ordinance loading and take-off of the government Antonoves and Helicopters.

Engaging with Al Bashir is immoral, wrong, counterproductive, and dangerous. It is immoral to negotiate with a government that United States has labeled the crimes committed in Darfur by the regime in Khartoum as genocide. It is wrong because negotiating or engaging with a government that still involved in an on-going genocide and oppressing its own people will send the wrong message both to the rulers of Africa and the people of Africa. That accountability may be pushed aside to give room for deals similar to those took place with many dictators around the world during the cold war in the decades of 1960s and 1970s.

It is counterproductive, given the track record of the regime in Khartoum of evasion and stonewalling. Al Bashir and the individuals around him are masters of deceit and professionals in brinkmanship policy. It is dangerous because time and lives in Darfur and the South will be wasted before any fruits may be realized.

I find myself asking this question: Is it lack of commitment or creativity that the officials in Obama's Administration are trying to convince us that there is no way for a solution to the problems of Sudan without appeasing (engaging) the same government that is the source of the very problems in Sudan?

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons: Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, listens to a speech during the opening of the 20th session of The New Partnership for Africa's Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Jan. 31, 2009.]