[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 37 (Wednesday, March 5, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E308-E309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                U.S. POLICY TOWARD SUDAN AND SOUTH SUDAN

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 5, 2014

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, last week, I chaired a 
subcommittee hearing on U.S. policy toward Sudan and South Sudan. The 
hearing was very important, and not only because the United States 
Government has been involved in Sudan and its various crises for the 
past three decades. Many of us first became interested in Sudan in the 
1980s because of the persistent reports of modern-day slavery, in which 
northern Arabs enslaved African southerners. My office helped to bring 
one of these unfortunate people to America for medical treatment after 
he was freed, and his story affected me deeply.
  Ker Deng had been kidnapped into slavery while still a child, and 
while he was an adolescent, the man who held him in bondage rubbed 
peppers in his eyes, blinded him and later abandoned him. Ker is 
studying here in the United States thanks to his benefactor, Ellen 
Ratner, and is awaiting a second operation to help him recover at least 
some of his eyesight. How many other Sudanese will never have that 
opportunity or even achieve their freedom? For example, Ker's mother 
has never been freed from bondage.
  We began supporting southern Sudanese efforts to end the oppression 
from the North in the mid-1990s. In 2005, we helped both North and 
South achieve the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, CPA, to end the long 
civil war and provide the steps for a mutually beneficial peace and 
productive coexistence. Unfortunately, the rebellion in the Darfur 
region distracted from efforts to fulfill that agreement.
  Khartoum's alliance with the Janjaweed Arabs resulted in mass 
killings and displacement in Darfur. An estimated 1.9 million people 
were displaced, more than 240,000 people were forced into neighboring 
Chad, and an estimated 450,000 people were killed. At the time, 
Congress insisted that this was genocide. Eventually, the Bush 
administration concurred, but the United Nations declined to go so far 
in their terminology, calling what happened in Darfur ``crimes against 
humanity.''
  A peace agreement between the main rebel force in Darfur and the 
Government of Sudan was signed in May 2006, but it did not last. In 
fact, no sustained agreement has been reached between the government 
and Darfur rebel groups--partly because these groups have continued to 
split and form offshoots, but also because the Khartoum government has 
not appeared willing to resolve the Darfur situation constructively. In 
June 2005, the International Criminal Court initiated an investigation 
that resulted in arrest warrants for Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and 
three other government officials and militia leaders. None of these 
warrants has been served, none of the four have been taken into custody 
and the Government of Sudan has refused to cooperate with the ICC.
  Meanwhile, the CPA remained unimplemented. In January 2011, South 
Sudan, which had been a semiautonomous region of the country since the 
signing of the CPA, voted in a referendum on whether to remain part of 
Sudan or become independent. Having been marginalized and mistreated 
for decades, it was not surprising that southern Sudanese voted 
overwhelmingly--at the level of 98.8 percent--to become an independent 
nation. On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became the world's newest nation. 
However, these unimplemented elements of the CPA would bedevil the new 
country from its birth.
  A referendum in the disputed Abyei region and consultations on the 
status of Sudan's Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states were never 
completed. In May 2011, Sudanese armed forces assumed control of towns 
in Abyei, quickly forcing at least 40,000 residents to flee. Within 
weeks, fighting spread to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states, as 
Khartoum sought to crush the Sudan People's Liberation Army--North, 
which had fought with southerners in the North-South civil war. 
Northern attacks on residents in those three areas continue unabated.
  Last year, Sudan and South Sudan engaged in a conflict over oil 
supplies from the South, involving allegations that Khartoum was 
undercounting the level of oil flow to cheat South Sudan, as well as 
the southern seizure of the oil town of Heglig. Again, this dispute was 
largely the result of unresolved issues from the CPA.
  South Sudan continues to be engaged in a conflict that began last 
December, despite a cessation of hostilities agreement. Thousands have 
been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced. Exact figures 
are constantly shifting because this conflict continues. I will soon 
introduce a resolution offering a sequenced approach to reaching a 
lasting resolution to this newest crisis. This conflict also

[[Page E309]]

is the result of too little attention paid to the warning signs because 
of preoccupation with one of the many crises in the two Sudans.
  Over the last three decades, I and other committee and subcommittee 
chairs have held numerous hearings on Sudan--from the North-South civil 
war to the Darfur conflict to the fighting in Abyei, Southern Kordofan 
and Blue Nile to the current conflict in South Sudan. All this 
attention is more than justified, but our approach to addressing them 
has been intermittent. Too often, each crisis is seen as a problem unto 
itself, unrelated to other issues in these two countries.
  In fact, successive administrations and Congresses, advocacy groups 
and humanitarian organizations have focused so much on individual 
crises and issues that no one has created a panoramic view which shows 
how all these individual crises interrelate with each other. This 
``stovepiping'' of government policy and public attention has meant 
that long-term solutions have been neglected while short-term eruptions 
have had to be dealt with. In reality, the two Sudans are inexorably 
linked and no crisis in either can be resolved successfully without 
taking into account the entire Sudan-South Sudan panorama.
  We must end this cycle of myopic policy formulation based on the 
crisis of the moment and adopt a long-term, holistic vision of what the 
best interest of the people of Sudan and South Sudan demands--indeed, 
what would be in the best interest of the entire region.
  As we learned in our subcommittee hearing on the Sahel crisis last 
May, Islamic extremists have their sights set on making inroads 
wherever there is conflict, across the belt of Central Africa 
stretching from Senegal to Sudan and beyond. Continuing unrest in the 
two Sudans only serves to provide training grounds or bases of 
operation for terrorists. Hardened ethnic conflict can spread to long-
term enmity that no peace agreement alone can resolve. Hopefully, this 
will not be the case in South Sudan, but that conflict is headed in 
that ominous direction.
  Two years ago, I held a meeting in my office with representatives 
from Sudan's Nubian, Darfuri, Beja and Nuba communities, who all 
believe that Khartoum is engaged in a long-term effort to exterminate 
non-Arab Sudanese. Have we missed such a pernicious campaign while 
hopping from one crisis to another as each appeared?
  The purpose of last week's hearing was to examine current U.S. policy 
toward Sudan and South Sudan to see how we can unify our policy in 
order to more effectively end long-running tragedies that appear get 
worse despite all the busy attention to which we pay them. This 
involves more than what the Department of State and other executive 
agencies do, or even what support Congress can provide. Advocacy and 
humanitarian organizations also must join government in seeing the 
forest and not just the trees, so to speak.
  We must develop, support and implement policies toward Sudan and 
South Sudan that make sense in the long term and not just produce 
temporarily satisfying peace accords that have no sustainability. Peace 
and prosperity for both countries are linked, and we must act 
accordingly. The hearing, we hope, will serve to highlight what must be 
done.

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