Newsline Special Report: Sudan

Sudan trip raises questions, brings unexpected hope.

Jim Hardenbrook, Annual Conference moderator, and Phil Jones, director of the Brethren Witness/Washington Office of the General Board, were part of a small interfaith delegation that met with Sudan's President El-Bashir and many other officials and organizations during a visit to Sudan June 6-15. The group spent time in the capital city of Khartoum and in North Darfur State, and visited a refugee camp in Darfur.

The trip was made to support the peace process between the northern government and rebels in the south of Sudan--the Comprehensive Peace Agreement scheduled to take effect July 9--and to offer support and encouragement to the people of Darfur. Atrocities such as killings, rapes, the burning of homes and villages, and the destruction of crops in Darfur, are blamed on militias supported by the government and in some cases are blamed on rebels, according the "Christian Science Monitor" in a recent report. The Monitor said that at as of June 10 at least 180,000 people have died in the violence in Darfur, and nearly two million are homeless.

The delegation was sponsored by the National Black Leadership Roundtable and the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. Hardenbrook and Jones were Christian representatives on the delegation, which also included Muslim and Jewish members and was led by Roundtable president the Hon. Walter E. Fauntroy.

In addition to the president, the delegation met with officials of the government in Khartoum and state officials in Darfur; nongovernmental organizations based in Khartoum; officials of the African Union, an organization of African nations with "peacekeeping" troops in Darfur; officials of the United Nations, which is responsible for several refugee camps in Darfur and is enforcing the north-south peace agreement; representatives of the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) from southern Sudan; and representatives of groups in Darfur considered outside the government. In most official meetings the group was accompanied by two representatives of the Sudan government. "It would be fair to characterize the trip as flavored by the government of Sudan perspective," said Hardenbrook.

The visit to the El Fashir refugee camp in Darfur was "a very short and in some ways very unsatisfactory visit," Hardenbrook said. Some 70,000 people live in the camp. "This might be the government's show camp," Hardenbrook said, although the group visited the camp without government accompaniment. Hardenbrook said there was a sense of peace and security and the delegation saw that wells, schools, and food were available but there was no electricity.

"It was exciting to greet a friend from the New Sudan Council of Churches in our meeting with the SPLM," said Jones. Awut Deng Acuil, who spoke at the 2001 Annual Conference, is now a member of the SPLM leadership team with special focus on women and children. "She reminded me of the close and important ties that the Church of the Brethren has with the south of Sudan," Jones said. "It seems most critical that the Church of the Brethren continue this strong relationship and give special focus and direction in support for the rebuilding of this great but war-torn nation."

The trip was preceded by a briefing with Charles Snyder, US State Department undersecretary of state for Sudan. "One of the things that Snyder said that was reiterated by others is that we're looking at spiritual and moral issues, not at political and humanitarian issues" in Sudan, Hardenbrook said. "Sharing wealth and power is a moral and spiritual issue." The comment was confirmed by a member of the SPLM, who told the delegation that in the peace agreement, "all we have is ink on the paper." As an interfaith group, "we could speak to those moral and spiritual issues," Hardenbrook said. Because of its interfaith make up, "this may be the most important delegation from the US ever sent to Sudan," Snyder told the group.

"I'd love to go back in a month with my list of questions," Hardenbrook said, "and to be more forceful in saying God's not happy with how his children are being treated" in Darfur. The trip raised more questions than it brought answers for Hardenbrook, who said he also has been disconcerted by the fact that he came away hopeful.

The sense of hope came despite finding that the situation in Darfur "is awful, it really is," Hardenbrook said. "It is bad, people are dying.... But it might not be genocide. Underline the word `might,'" he added. "The UN is not using that term." The delegation's conversations led him to a new understanding of the roots of the conflict, in longterm ethnic and lifestyle tensions in the region.

"Having made this important trip I am less comfortable using these terms today," said Jones referring to "genocide" and "racism." He has heard these terms used to characterize the violence in Darfur in numerous visits to the US State Department and congressional offices over two years of advocacy for US policies ensuring the end of the violence, he said. "Clearly the Sudan government has been heavily involved in the violence of war these past many months in the west, and many years in the south. Just as clear, though, is that movement has been made in recent months to pull back from this. International awareness and pressure have been key in this transition."

The peace agreement with the south "has also moved the current government to a different place," Jones said. "President El-Bashir indicated the wear that war bears on a nation and its people in his comment that, `Peace with secession is better than unity with war.'" Jones said that the peace agreement gives the south the right of secession at the end of six years, if so determined by the people of the south. "Part of our reason for going on this trip was to clearly speak to those involved on both sides of the violence that a window of opportunity is here. Do not let it pass," Jones said.

Whether the violence in Darfur is genocide is among many open questions, Hardenbrook said. "I think the first thing that I would like to do is repent of my willingness to believe the absolute worst of Sudan," he said, citing many ways in which the situation is very complicated. Policies of the government "have been the cause of the conflicts in the west and the south," he said, but the delegation learned that many southerners move to Khartoum because "it's better to live in a refugee camp near Khartoum than to live in the south in the conditions created" by the government and rebels. The group also heard that life in refugee camps in Darfur is better than ordinary life for many people in Darfur who are not directly affected by the violence.

Another open question for Hardenbrook is whether a western style of justice is appropriate for Sudan, "because there is an African style of justice." The International Criminal Court, which this month launched an investigation into possible war crimes in Darfur, "may not be the answer here," he said. The delegation met with a group of four chiefs from Darfur who have been brought together through a Sudanese process of reconciliation. "I don't understand (the process) very well," Hardenbrook said, but it "could be very effective," he added.

The meeting with President El-Bashir was a surprise for Jones, who last fall was arrested in front of the Sudan embassy in Washington, D.C., during a rally calling attention to the violence in Darfur. "I never envisioned that I would be given complete access to the president of Sudan in his Khartoum office," Jones said. "The message was the same there as here, the Church of the Brethren holds dear the sacred life of all people and implores nations and their leaders to seek peaceful means to the many things that divide us. The injustices of violence that lead to death and destruction must end."

The delegation made a practice of asking to pray together at the end of each meeting, Hardenbrook said. President El-Bashir accepted the group's offer and they joined hands as Fauntroy prayed. "That was very powerful," Hardenbrook said.

The delegation plans to hold a press conference at 1:30 p.m. eastern time on Monday, June 27, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The press conference may be televised nationally by C-SPAN. A full report of the delegation's trip is available; e-mail Phil Jones at pjones_gb@brethren.org or call the Brethren Witness/Washington Office at 800-785-3246.

Source: 6/24/2005 Newsline
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