On September 6, 2001, President Bush named former Republican Senator John Danforth as his special envoy for peace in Sudan. Senator Danforth’s mandate was to determine whether the government and rebel groups in Sudan displayed a genuine commitment to work toward peace, and to recommend what role the United States should play in the peace process. Danforth’s most prominent step so far has been the unveiling of four "tests of good faith" for the parties to the conflict last November. These confidence-building measures consisted of: allowing humanitarian access to the Nuba Mountains region; arranging temporary halts in the fighting elsewhere called "zones and days of tranquility"; ending the practice of taking prisoners into slavery; and halting aerial bombing of civilians.

The following assessment of Senator Danforth’s mission is an edited excerpt from a recent report of the International Crisis Group, Capturing the Moment: Sudan’s Peace Process in the Balance (April 3, 2002). The report was written under the direction of John Prendergast, Co-Director of ICG’s Africa Program.

A Catalyst for Progress

The most important achievement of Senator Danforth’s mission as U.S. President Bush’s special representative has been the six-month, internationally monitored cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains agreed upon in mid-January 2002¹. Civilians in this region have been among the worst hit by the war, so this respite, even if temporary, is welcome. Beyond provision of relief items there is a larger benefit as trade begins to open up and people move back. High-ranking Sudanese officials acknowledge the popular swell of enthusiasm for a larger peace that has greeted the cease-fire. The day after it was signed, one government peace advisor remarked that "people have almost lost hope" and the Nuba Mountains cease-fire may "reverse this despondency".

Besides instilling hopes for a larger peace, the cease-fire has also refined Khartoum’s view of the Americans. The government has long considered the U.S. partial to the SPLA and questioned its standing to mediate. But the cease-fire negotiations, which were conducted in Switzerland, seem to have changed this perception. One government participant noted, "What encourages us actually is during the cease-fire negotiations [the Americans] displayed themselves as an even-handed, efficient mediator. This opens our desire for them to continue".

Furthermore, the cease-fire resulted from serious negotiations facilitated by the U.S. and Switzerland. "The government learned the difference between a declared agreement and a negotiated agreement", said one official familiar with the talks. This provides limited evidence that a negotiated agreement can hold better than the unilateral commitments that the government has repeatedly made and broken over the last year.

In short, the agreement suggests that U.S. involvement, if backed with sufficient political will, can be a catalyst for progress on broader issues. "The Nuba Mountains agreement was reached because the U.S. was involved", according to Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail. A Sudanese analyst concurred: "This proves the vital role of the U.S. in resolving the Sudan conflict".

Another positive result has been the growing convergence of European and American approaches to the pursuit of peace. Some critics worry that this is at the expense of U.S. human rights advocacy but events seem to indicate that European action in this regard may be strengthening. The response to the helicopter gunship attack in Bieh (see below) was more uniformly critical than at any time since shortly after the 1989 coup. "This incident is no different than other things that have happened frequently, but now the world is up in arms, eager to hold the government accountable", pointed out a Sudan analyst. Nevertheless there remain significant differences of view and emphasis on the questions of cease-fire, self-determination and the long-term human rights agenda.

Problems of implementation

As expected, the government has continued to obstruct relief operations, even those that formed part of agreements forged with the Danforth team. "The government hasn’t given anything", said one discouraged senior aid official in February. "They’re nickel-and-diming us to death on the zones of tranquility…They did the Nuba Mountains [agreement] because it was in their military interest. Whatever is positive cannot be generalized into anything else".

The SPLA has also not been as forthcoming as aid officials had hoped. For example, after the government finally allowed non-food items to go to opposition-controlled areas of the Nuba Mountains, the SPLA temporarily withdrew its permission. However, by March, with the government under pressure to demonstrate its cooperation after the condemnation it received following the Bieh helicopter attack, Khartoum began to cooperate fully with humanitarian efforts related to the Danforth initiative. The same aid official said a month later, "Both sides are working with the aid community. There is good cooperation".

Overall, battles with the government over the implementation of humanitarian measures have distracted the U.S. from the construction of a credible, unified peace process to end the war. Instead of pressing for "days of tranquility", Senator Danforth should have emphasized blanket access for humanitarian aid. Failure to gain this allows the government to continue to manipulate aid deliveries.

It also appears that key supporters of the Danforth initiative want to use the Nuba agreement to expand the cease-fire throughout southern Sudan². This represents a fundamental misreading of SPLA intentions. The military card is the only one the SPLA perceives it has, and it will not give it up until negotiations have proceeded much further.

The Helicopter Attack at Bieh

There is a flip side to the Nuba Mountains cease-fire. Released from that front, government and SPLA forces have repositioned for offensives in the oilfield areas, with serious repercussions for the civilian population and for the peace process. Most destructive has been a series of attacks against civilian targets. On February 9 the government bombed Akuem, killing two civilians. On the same day an attack on Nimne killed four, including an employee of Médicins Sans Frontières.

The attack on women and children in Bieh³ awaiting food from the World Food Program that was so widely witnessed occurred eleven days later. It killed at least 24 and injured many more. The helicopters did three surveillance runs, according to eyewitnesses. No rebels were in the area, and no conflict within 30 kilometres. The gunships then hovered ten metres off the ground before firing rockets and machine guns.

This attack led the U.S. temporarily to suspend its dialogue with the government and produced near-universal condemnation in Europe. U.S. involvement in further peace efforts hangs in the balance, as harder-line elements in the administration (particularly in the Defence Department and National Security Council), Congress, and the advocacy community press for more stringent measures against the government. At the same time, debate in Washington about the next steps in the war on terrorism has resulted in the development of options that include military action against the Sudanese government.

The attacks have also led to belated questions about war tactics. For three years, human rights researchers and activists have alleged that such attacks are part of a policy aimed at clearing populations out to facilitate further penetration by oil companies⁴. Alex de Waal of Justice Africa has argued that "if Khartoum were to forego attacking civilians it would have to abandon its current military strategy in the oilfields. Its entire strategy is based upon displacing the population that lives around the oilfields"⁵. Government representatives dispute this. "This kind of action only undercuts us", said one high level official. "This only hurts the government".

Given that air dominance is Khartoum’s principal battlefield advantage, it is unlikely to refrain from using it⁶. Whether attacks like the Bieh incident continue, however, will have a major impact on perceptions of the conflict. "If this attack is not government policy, then it would create disincentives for these kinds of actions in the future", said one Sudanese analyst. "If no one is punished, we would have to assume there is a green light for such attacks".

The Bieh tragedy has also led to questions about the chain of command. As one Western diplomat put it:

"If President Bashir is a general in a military regime, and he pledges an end to aerial bombings, which he has done on a number of occasions during the past year, then how do we account for the bombings when they occur? Can we negotiate with the President? Is he in charge? Can a low-level helicopter captain undermine his orders and get away with it? If they don’t take orders, then the forces are no longer an army, they are a gang. If they do, then what is the policy?"

From Atrocity to Co-operation

Despite the threat posed by the growing international condemnation, particularly EU-U.S. unity, the government initially maintained a hard-line stance, imposing a blanket flight ban on the areas where the attacks occurred. According to the UN, the government at first doubled the number of locations to which aid workers were denied access, cutting off 345,000 Sudanese civilians in need of immediate emergency assistance. Given the precedent of blanket flight bans in areas of heavy fighting – which contributed to famines in 1987-8, 1993, and 1998 – this policy elicited further outcry from the international community, non-governmental organizations and the UN. Most importantly, the U.S. maintained its pressure on the government, including several strongly-worded statements by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Khartoum, recognizing that U.S. involvement in the peace process was in jeopardy, moderated its posture and scrambled to control the damage.

On February 28 2002 the Sudanese foreign minister sent a letter to the U.S. State Department "acknowledging the tragedy…[and indicating] a number of concrete steps the government intended to take to ensure that there was no repeat of such attacks, including moving the approval process for all military flights to the Khartoum military command," in the words of a State Department briefing. By March 4 the government had engaged in talks with UN officials of Operation Lifeline Sudan to reverse the blanket flight ban in parts of the South; the next day a deal was achieved. A week later it allowed aid workers to vaccinate approximately 189,000 children for polio in southern Sudan.

Most significantly, the international condemnation provoked by the Bieh attack forced the government to accede to one of Danforth’s key confidence-building proposals: protection of civilians during the war. An initial call for the government to cease aerial bombardment of civilians has been transformed into what – when signed – will be a broader agreement consistent with the Geneva Conventions for an end to all attacks on civilians, either by the government or the insurgents. International observers are to monitor this agreement. According to the U.S. State Department, there will be two teams of monitors; one in the North, one in the South. The agreement is for one year and renewable.

Sudan’s Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mutrif Siddiq, optimistically described the monitoring agreement as "in the final analysis, a gradual process for stopping the war"⁷. But he was also quick to add, "The proposal is a comprehensive one that covers protection, from war-related harm, of not only civilians but also civilian installations and other civilian aspects". The government considers the oil sites in the South "civilian installations"; thus it is attempting to expand the agreement beyond its original intent in order to protect oil facilities. The SPLA has cautiously accepted the agreement, although not the government’s interpretation regarding the oil installations. It says it is willing to implement the pact only after negotiations are held with the government to discuss the specific details and provisions.

The tragedy in Bieh and the international outcry have accelerated the government’s cooperation on a number of important humanitarian issues. The fact that the government continues to accept Danforth’s tests shows a willingness to move on with negotiations for a comprehensive peace. Now is the time to create a unified peace process – combining the Kenyan-backed IGAD initiative, the Egyptian-Libyan Joint Initiative, and greater international involvement – in order to assess whether those positive signals from Khartoum can translate to progress on the difficult substantive issues.

Politics or Human Rights?

Some fear that the precedent of U.S. suspension of dialogue in response to the Bieh incident will provide an incentive to those who want to sabotage the peace process. One high-ranking Sudan government official predicted more serious incidents. Others worry that Bieh will distract from the central peace-making imperative. "Danforth came from nowhere to address the symptoms and not the disease", charged a Sudanese political leader. "People will waste time on who did what to whom in Bieh. That now becomes the issue, while the main issue is forgotten. We must plunge forward on the political issues if we are to address the human rights issues". Some U.S. officials agree: "The confidence-building measures are not moving the regime. The crucial issues are not being addressed. We have leverage, but are not utilising it".

This highlights a fundamental weakness of the Danforth initiative. By creating tests of the parties’ will that do not necessarily reflect the factors driving their calculations, "failures" are interpreted as a lack of political will for peace. Any viable test must assess whether peace is in the tactical or strategic calculations of the parties. The Danforth tests are not so constructed. They become, in effect, tests of the political will to implement humanitarian and human rights agreements, not of readiness for peace⁸.

Senator Danforth’s statements publicly and to the SPLA on self-determination have damaged the SPLA’s confidence in his efforts. He has repeatedly said that independence is not a realistic objective of self-determination, a position the SPLA and other Southerners find offensive. His comments have heartened the government, which believes the U.S. is moving toward its position. It remains to be seen whether his musings do indeed represent a shift in U.S. policy. His attitude reflects, however, a widely-held view that a referendum is ultimately a bargaining chip that can be traded for concessions on issues like state and religion or wealth sharing. This fundamentally misreads southern Sudanese conviction. With full support of rank and file, the SPLA will withdraw from any negotiation that seeks to trade away self-determination.

What should Danforth Recommend?

Danforth’s final – and perhaps most important – action will be to recommend to President Bush whether the U.S. should have a role in the peace process. Although Bieh was a slap at his confidence-building efforts, it is critical that he not conclude that there is no window of opportunity and that the Sudanese parties are not serious about making peace. That is precisely what the hard-line advocates of continued war on both sides would like.

The greatest threat to the results that Danforth, his team and his European partners have achieved so far would come from the lack of a follow-on diplomatic effort aimed at resolving the war. Seeing no linkages to a serious peace process would lead one or both parties to resume war as the first option, thus putting at risk those agreements that deal with the symptoms of the conflict.

Rather than letting the Sudanese government off the hook, Danforth should recommend that the U.S. press it to negotiate seriously in a credible, unified peace process that the U.S. would help construct and lead. He should also propose that the U.S. lead efforts to place further multilateral pressure on the government to respond to human rights concerns⁹. Walking away from the peace process now would betray those who died in Bieh and elsewhere.

Ultimately, though, whatever Danforth proposes will be vetted by the administration, and within the government there are already different perspectives on how – or even whether – to move forward on the peace front. Danforth’s recommendation will play a role in the debate, especially in influencing President Bush himself, but will not necessarily be decisive. Furthermore, there are indications that Danforth’s report may be more of a report card on how the parties responded to his four confidence-building initiatives than a proposal on the nature of U.S. involvement in the peace process. If so, the State Department will be the most important player in crafting the precise nature of U.S. engagement.

Editor's Note: On May 14, 2002, Senator Danforth's report to the White House was made public. The report found that "the Government of Sudan and the SPLM have given sufficient indications that they want peace to warrant the energetic participation of the United States in a long-term peace process."
The full text of the report is available here.

The full text of this report can be found on the International Crisis Group website.

1. The U.S. government has pledged $5 million in financing for the Nuba Mountains monitors, while seven other countries have granted $10 million to the operation. The 15-person monitoring unit arrived in Sudan to begin its mission in early March 2002. "U.S. pledges money for Sudanese monitoring mission", Reuters, 12 March 2002.

2. Diplomatic sources report that Danforth discussed this approach with the Egyptian government in Cairo. ICG interviews, January 2002.

3. Bieh is in Bloc 5A, south of Bentiu. An ICG field mission stayed there in December 2001, in the compound where the attack occurred, and can confirm the distance between the compound and any SPLA military presence.

4. See ICG Report God, Oil, & Country; Changing the Logic of War in Sudan (January 28, 2002) for a full analysis of these charges.

5. "Oil fuels flames of war in Sudan: Civilians pay price as Khartoum mobilises for showdown with newly united rebels", The Guardian, 7 March 2002.

6. See John Prendergast, "Senator Danforth’s Sudan Challenge: Building a Bridge to Peace". CSIS report, January 2002. One high ranking Sudan government official said that when the U.S. asked us to stop bombing, his response was "Why should we give that up"? ICG interview in Khartoum, 27 February 2002.

7. "Sudan signs US-brokered deal to protect civilians in war-torn South", AFP, 10 March 2002.

8. See John Prendergast, Senator Danforth’s Sudan Challenge, op. cit., CSIS report.

9. For example, the U.S. together with the EU should urge the UN High Commission for Human Rights to redouble efforts to establish monitoring field offices in Sudan under the Special Rapporteur.

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