Peace v Justice: Lessons from Northern Ireland

African Union soldier outside aid camp near El Fasher, South Sudan, 2005

On one of my final visits to Khartoum I was discussing the gnarly old peace-versus-justice debate with a diplomat, who used a comparison with a peace process closer to home. She was making a point about the utility of issuing a warrant for the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir even as negotiations continued for independence for Southern Sudan… (taken from Saving Darfur)

“It would be like arresting Martin McGuinness during the Good Friday negotiations.”

I was reminded of this by David Aaronovitch’s column in the The Times on Thursday (I’m afraid those of you who prefer not to pay for your journalism will not be able to read it) in which he sets out the dilemma by comparing one family’s desire for justice in Northern Ireland for their dead relative, with the benefits of sweeping such cases under the carpet, those benefits being:

It is that the peace process has succeeded partly because we have not sought too assiduously to examine who did what in the bloody recent past.

Not only have terrorists been released and pardoned, but it was also decided not to seek extradition in many cases of terrorists who had fled abroad on the ground that, as Charles Clarke put it when Home Secretary, it was “neither proportionate nor in the public interest”.

We hear much about the competing demands of peace and justice, but usually with reference to Sudan or Kenya and during the Arab Spring in Libya or Syria. But the debate rumbles on in the UK and Ireland too. And of course it must be desperately difficult for anyone who has lost a relative to see men they suspect of murder taking on positions of responsibility.

Aaronovitch spells out the dilemma without drawing a conclusion.

But reading again about how setting aside horrendous crimes in the north of Ireland was seen as an important part of finding peace, I’m reminded again that vantage point matters. How easy it is to try to impose lofty ideals of justice on faraway lands; how much more difficult to do it at home, where bombs and bullets can affect our loved ones.

My own position changed during the 2008 violence in Kenya. A shoddy peace deal rewarded government thugs who rigged an election and opposition figures who launched a wave of ethnic violence with ministerial positions for both. There was no justice in that. But it stopped the killing. And – for me – it was killing that had happened in the streets close to my house. Maybe justice will come now as the ICC decided whether to try six Kenyan suspects for their alleged roles.

In that case the right decision was made. And in Northern Ireland. But too often, a noisy Western lobby continues to push for justice before peace when it comes to conflicts elsewhere, places they have often not bothered to visit – despite claiming to speak for the voiceless.

So here’s my point. If we have set aside questions of justice in order to secure peace at home, shouldn’t we do the same for Sudan, Syria and the rest?

Saving Darfur is now available for kindle

It’s a couple of years since I left Nairobi. I spent five years living there and travelling around east Africa. And this past week I’ve watched (for the umpteenth time) Pole to Pole, Michael Palin’s trip from north to south, taking him through Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania filmed in 1991 which made me a little homesick for the place.

At that time no-one had heard of Darfur. But everyone knew about the civil war in the south. Palin’s trip almost comes off the rails when Khartoum says his route is too dangerous, forcing a detour east into Ethiopia.

That was all 20 years ago. But one of the many things that made me smile (in a sort of weary way) was Palin reading from his guide book’s description on Sudan. I forget exactly how it went, but it was something along the lines of: “Sudan is a land ravaged by drought, famine and civil war.”

That description could pretty much have been written at any time in the 40 years before Palin’s visit or the 20 years since.

His trip through Ethiopia is similarly fascinating. There, the hated Mengistu had just been toppled yet Palin is baffled by the way that most Ethiopians are far from jubilant, perhaps sensing that the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front may not quite be the answer to everyone’s prayers.

What’s my point? I don’t know really. But it was fascinating to watch a travelogue of a place that I came to know later, which was still going through violent upheaval two decades later. Back then such wars tended to go on unnoticed and untweeted.

Darfur, I suspect, may be the first of a new kind of war, one that followed our disastrous failure in Rwanda. Now we feel a responsibility to try to prevent crimes against humanity in the rest of the world – whether it be campus marches, warplanes over Benghazi or checking the sourcing of mobile phone components.

But as I came to find out there is a big difference between feeling a moral duty to help, and actually making a difference on the ground. That debate – about how best to help – is at the heart of my book, Saving Darfur. And all of this rambling is essentially to say that it is now available for kindle. You can read a bit more about it here and here.

Man Marries Goat (again)

Interesting analysis of Facebook’s seamless sharing by the FT last week. Hat tip @mikewhills 

Apparently, old stories are being rediscovered as they go viral for the first time…

Throughout this week, most or all of the “most shared” and, by extension, “most viewed” stories on Independent.co.uk have been from the late 1990s. Most are oddball stories with eye-catching headlines, including “Sean, 12, is the youngest father” (January 1998), “Eton pupil died in ‘fainting game’” (March 1999) and “Scotland’s ugliest woman honoured”(May 1999).The new prominence given to “most shared” is driving the “most read”, and the recent redesign of independent.co.uk is a complicating factor. This is just a short sample of data. But there are indications that the same “Facebook effect” is happening at other sites, too: the Guardian has seen a similar phenomenon, although older stories are less prominent in the most-read column, perhaps because it has a much larger online readership.

The Independent has not made any special effort to promote its archive content and its team are somewhat mystified as to what originally surfaced these older stories. One theory is that they have arrived via search but been absorbed into Facebook through the seamless sharing, then passed around through a combination of sensationalist headlines and absence of a timestamp to indicate their age.

But is this so new? I remember the man marries goat in South Sudan story from 2006. The story surfaced again on online news sites a year later, propelled by the fact it continued to rank as one of the BBC’s most-read stories. Bloggers and news editors assumed it was new. Such was the story’s longevity that the BBC suspected there may have been a co-ordinated campaign to keep it in the news.

A Fool and His Money

George Clooney’s Satellite Sentinel Project is beaming back information from the border between north and south Sudan. The first details provide a vivid insight into what is happening there that could have been obtained by, er, just asking someone who knows about Sudan

• SAF deployments near Muglad, Kadugli, Kharassana and other areas appear to be deployed at company strength, in groups of 75 to 225 troops, equipped with helicopter transport, light armor and artillery.
• Importantly, these troops do not appear to be preparing to move in the near future. SSP has documented roadwork near known and suspected military bases, but the images do not show major movement of fuel trucks, supply convoys, and troop transports consistent with imminent forward operations.
• The report documents checkpoints reported by the U.N. north of Abyei Town on the road to Diffra in the oil-producing northern part of Abyei’s territory.
• These images demonstrate SSP’s ability to monitor the movements and activity of armed actors. SSP is watching all actors in Sudan and both sides of the border.

No news yet on the arboreal toilet arrangements of bears.

Turabi’s Web

So Hassan al-Turabi is once more back in prison, something of a home from home for him since he fell out of bed with President Omar al Bashir. Still, it gives him a chance to catch up on his reading.

What got him into trouble was an interview with AFP in which he suggested that Sudan – where the Southern referendum is certain to end in secession, and with a president already wanted for war crimes – was ripe for a Tunisian-style revolution.

“This country has known popular uprisings before,” Turabi said, referring to revolts which toppled military regimes in 1964 and 1985.

“What happened in Tunisia is a reminder. This is likely to happen in Sudan,” he said, referring to the month-long deadly protests that prompted Ben Ali to take refuge in Saudi Arabia after 23 years of iron-fisted rule.

“If it doesn’t, then there will be a lot of bloodshed.”

Government security forces swooped hours later, claiming his party was planning protests. All trumped up of course. But one intriguing twist to this tale is the figure of Rachid Ghannouchi, exiled leader of Tunisia’s Islamist al Nahda party, who is watching events unfold from London as he considers returning to his homeland. Today he calls himself a moderate, progressive leader who has argued that women’s rights are central to modern Islam. Remind you of anyone?

Yes, Ghannouchi considers himself a student of Turabi, the man who plotted the rise of an Islamist government to power in Sudan and who invited the world’s most dangerous terrorists to Khartoum, including Osama bin Laden.

All of that is largely historical. Turabi is clearly not the threat he once was. But it’s just a reminder of how far his web extends – and what a fascinating character he remains.

Stick to Basketball George

Sometimes, even I get sick of my own cyncism. Sometimes I make a deliberate effort to be more positive. I bite my tongue when a well-meaning gap year student tells me they’ll be digging latrines in Uganda, where manual labour is not in short supply. Or I applaud the notion of sending goats to a poor village, where they will help destroy the vegetation. And sometimes I say how wonderful it is that movie stars have decided to use their star power to help worthy causes.

And then something happens that just makes all my warm, woolly thoughts evapourate. Usually it is someone being pompous. And usually it is George Clooney…

“He’s very predictable. We know all the moves. If you play basketball with somebody three times, you know that they’ve got no left hand…. We know how Bashir acts. He helps arm one of the rebel groups that are in disagreement with other groups in the south and tries to foment violence to destabilize the government. That’s what he’s always done.”

Ah yes, George Clooney, who understands Sudan and Omar al-Bashir so well that in order to persuade the world to send peacekeepers (forgoing the prospect of a peace deal for at least two years) he either exaggerated or plain made up the possible death toll if they weren’t deployed. The peacekeepers didn’t arrive for a couple of years, and nothing like his 2.5m people died.

George Clooney, who is such an expert on Sudan, that he has repeatedly confused Darfur, Chad and South Sudan, and his visits there.

And when he finally did make it there, he was struck down with such severe diarrhoea he very nearly had to be flown out by an emergency helicopter. Nothing wrong with that of course – happens to the best of us – but getting your publicist to force Reuters to withdraw the story makes him look like a dilettante, using Sudan to burnish his image. Movie stars don’t get diarrhoea, presumably.

Anyway, the biggest problem is that Clooney emphatically does not understand Bashir. If he did, he would not have worked so hard to get Bashir indicted by the International Criminal Court or campaigned for peace keepers when the world should have concentrated on getting a peace deal.

He would have understood that criminalising Bashir would only provoke a bitter backlash and make it harder to remove him from power.

Had he understood Bashir better, then Sudan may well have had a different president by now. In 2008 Bashir was telling confidantes in the governing party and at least one other head of state that he was planning to retire. Now thanks to Clooney and his chums he is a wanted man – and still in power.

And it’s not just me who feels this way

Sometimes Bashir Knows What He’s Talking About

President Bashir arrives in El Geneina, West Darfur, 2008

Al Jazeera’s interview with President Omar al Bashir of Sudan just a couple of days before the South votes on secession is making headlines. In it he says that the South will face instability if it chooses independence from Khartoum

“The south suffers from many problems. It’s been at war since 1959. The south does not have the ability to provide for its citizens or create a state or authority.”

This will no doubt excite the pro-breakaway American meddlers, who have long seen independence for the South as the first step to regime change in the North. They will, ironically, accuse Bashir of interfering in the Southern vote. But what has he really said? Only exactly the same thing as any analyst who understands the place will tell you. Without support, cash and expertise the South is a failed state in waiting. Africa is littered with countries where rebel movements have taken power only to rule as if they were still in the bush: through centralisation, patronage and an iron fist.

Let’s hope the lessons of Ethopia, Eritrea and Uganda have been learned – just to cite a few countries in the region – and that South Sudan does not follow when it becomes the world’s newest country.

Referendum Reading

Only a few days now to the referendum in South Sudan. Here’s a few things that I have been reading…

Clooney Falling into Bin Laden’s Trap – aside from the hysterical and silly language, there is a serious point here about US intervention. Something I’ll return to, I think

Peaceful Vote on Sudan Appears More Likely – if even my old chum Jeffrey Gettleman is talking down the prospect of war, then I think we can all assume it will pass of as peacefully as a tea dance

Rapper enlists global stars to work on south Sudan – Emmanual Jal. His story always makes me laugh at “Gangsta Rappers”. He’s tougher than any of them (And interesting that Reuters still does not cap up the s of south? why not. Surely the style should be a capital letter for well-defined regions…)

Tribe warns of war over Sudan vote – the Misseriya are the people likely to lose most in the referendum. Not wanted by the North, hated by the South and wondering how their nomadic lifestyle will be affected by an international boundary

Can Sudan Split Without Falling Apart? – Alex Perry, one of the most thoughtful of today’s Africa correspondents: “the surprising news from Sudan is that, so far, diplomacy is working”

Royal African Society – and pretty much everything else you might want to read is here

Sudan: Blimey it’s complicated

Heartened to read a piece in The Christian Science Monitor suggesting that the threat of war in Sudan may have been exaggerated in the run up to January’s referendum…

Having listed a series of hyperbollock stories, Maggie Fick, a journalism expert based in Juba, expands on her theory…

These news clips illustrate the tendency – rather, modus operandi – of the international media coverage of Sudan to highlight the worst case scenarios surrounding the key upcoming events instead of the best possible outcomes.

I couldn’t agree more. Although, the problem really lies with the advocacy groups which consistently use terms such as “slaughter” and “genocide” to describe a low-intensity conflict in Darfur and to raise the stakes ahead of the South’s referendum. Take this typical piece of guff from George Clooney, predicting thousands of deaths in South Sudan:

If you knew a tsunami, or Katrina or a Haiti earthquake was coming, what would you do to save people?

Clooney has, of course, become something of a mouthpiece for John Prendergast and his Enough organisation – sometimes called the shock troops of the Save Darfur Coalition and a headline-hogging group which will only be satisfied with regime change in Khartoum. Their ideology is often splashed across the column of Nick Kristof such as this, who regularly talks up the risk of war

“[W]e should all try to pay more attention to the risk of a catastrophic war ahead in Sudan. Everybody knows it may be coming, but until the bullets start flying, it simply isn’t going to get the attention it merits… behind the scenes the real question is whether the north-south civil war is going to resume.”

And then there were the dire warnings of violence around this year’s elections…

With the nationwide elections less than a month away, the chance that violence could break out around the polls is real, and fear among Sudanese like Ms. Lueth is warranted. The unpredictable nature of Sudanese politics and the goal of the ruling parties in both North and South Sudan to legitimize themselves through resounding electoral victories, combined with existing tensions along tribal lines in the South, could prove to be a lethal cocktail.

Lethal cocktail… nice.

But wait a minute, what’s this? Who is this Maggie Fick who wrote the last piece and quoted Kristof in an approving manner? Surely the Enough blogger and researcher can’t be the same one as The Christian Scientist columnist of the same name complaining about the media hyping the threat of war?

Or is that Sudan turns out to be a lot more complex when you get up close?

Sudan’s Groundhog Day

Sudan has reappeared briefly in the op-ed pages, first with Dave Eggers and John Prendergast urging US intervention to prevent a return to war following the South’s referendum on seccession. Now Marc Gustafson has responded with a pursuasive argument that once again the Sudan advocacy movement has exaggerated the risks and drawn the wrong conclusions…

If anything has been learned from the past decade of foreign policy, it is that doomsday predictions of inevitable destruction can easily grab headlines and persuade policymakers to make decisions based on fear rather than knowledge. In Sudan, the peace agreement, and by extension, the referendum, are products of many years of negotiation and involvement from local, regional, and international partners.

The best role for the American government is to continue using its financial and human resources to support the process of mediation, but not try to guide it.

I was recently upbraided by a high-profile Sudan campaigner for focusing too much on criticising the advocacy movement. But it does seem to me that the same mistakes are still being made by the activists, as Gustafson points out, and we haven’t learned the lessons of previous interventions.