WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new policy toward Sudan, formally announced Monday, turns the spotlight back on where the troubled nation’s problems began: the split between the Islamic north and the largely animist and Christian south.
Although the world’s attention has been focused on the tragedy in the Darfur region of western Sudan, administration officials argued Monday that a faltering peace accord that ended Africa’s longest-running conflict needs to be repaired.
If that deal — brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 — collapses, officials and analysts say, then hope will be lost for a solution to Darfur. The two-decade conflict between north and south led to the deaths of 2 million people.
Alex de Waal, a Sudan analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said the emphasis on the north-south conflict is significant.
“What this document is saying is, it was a mistake to lose that focus (on the peace agreement). And we must get our priorities right,” he said. “Darfur is part of Sudan, and if the rest of Sudan falls apart, you’re never going to solve Darfur.”
Still, many analysts think the Darfur conflict spiraled out of control in 2004 because the United States was so focused on resolving the north-south civil war that it ignored signs that the government in Khartoum was secretly behind brutal clashes in Darfur that ultimately led to the deaths of more than 300,000 people.
Now the Obama administration hopes to avoid making the same mistake. A senior administration official, briefing reporters under ground rules of anonymity, said that “for quite some time, policy has been understandably focused on the urgent crisis in Darfur, and (north-south peace agreement) implementation fell behind.”
During last year’s presidential campaign, Obama campaigned on the promise of getting tough with the Sudanese government, particularly over Darfur. But activists and lawmakers complained that his administration has offered conflicting signals in recent months.
On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a policy that will feature rewards and punishments for Sudanese leaders based on whether they meet benchmarks in three areas: Darfur, the north-south agreement and counterterrorism.
Among the benchmarks Sudan will be expected to achieve are progress on election preparations, passage of a law to hold a 2011 referendum and finalizing the boundary between north and south, officials said.
