Sudan

Lord Sheikh Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Sheikh (Con)]

My Lords, Sudan lies at the heart of a troubled region. A number of terrorist groups are visible and active in the region, including Daesh, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda. It is of course imperative that we do all we can to support the Sudanese in this respect. However, we must also build our relationship with Sudan more widely. Issues such as poverty, lack of education, lack of employment opportunities and wider community underdevelopment can fuel the marginalisation and frustration of young people, which can lead to the formation of extremist ideology. It is therefore only right that we seek to help Sudan improve its stability and provide opportunities for its people.

Last year, I led a delegation from your Lordships’ House to Sudan. Following our visit, we have established the APPG for Sudan, and I am the co-chairman of the group. The APPG has met Tobias Ellwood and formed an excellent connection with the FCO and our ambassador in Sudan. As someone who regularly promotes bilateral trade, I believe that much can be gained by both sides from increasing trade links with Sudan. I am pleased that a trade mission from the Middle East Association visited Sudan in December, and that a further mission, organised with the co-operation of our ambassador to Sudan, is scheduled for April. However, our Government should now send a trade mission to Sudan. There is also a keen interest in Sudan in establishing educational links between academic institutions. Following our delegation, Sudanese links are already being established with two major universities in England.

I welcome the fact that the United States has now agreed to lift the economic sanctions previously applied to Sudan. This is due to Sudan’s progress in improving humanitarian access, ceasing hostilities and enhancing co-operation on counter-terrorism. On that note, we must bear in mind the steps that Sudan has taken, and continues to take, towards combating the extremist threat. Sudan has developed an effective re-education and rehabilitation programme to reintegrate former extremists into mainstream society.

We should also acknowledge some of the good work already taking place between the United Kingdom and Sudan. We are the second-largest humanitarian donor to that country. We support health and medical programmes, many of which help children and displaced persons. Our APPG is sending a delegation of women parliamentarians to Sudan to look at issues relating to the health of women in Sudan.

Sudan still faces a number of challenges to do with extremism and other matters. We must, however, acknowledge the progress already made and help Sudan advance further. Adopting a hostile and isolationist policy towards Sudan will only make the country more vulnerable, threatening its people and the wider region. We should engage with Sudan and establish greater links, to the benefit of both countries and to help establish peace and stability in the region. Finally, I ask the Minister: what progress is being made on trade links with Sudan?

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[Baroness Cox (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord for this opportunity to discuss issues related to Sudan and the relation of Islamist extremist nations with Sudan, and vice versa. Given that it is widely believed that neighbouring Islamist regimes support President Bashir because of his commitment to make Sudan a unified Arabic, Islamic nation, it is not irrelevant to focus on his Islamist extremist policies of the ethnic and religious cleansing of indigenous African peoples and Christians, traditional believers and Muslims who do not support his Islamist ideology. I would also mention that in Nigeria, it is widely believed that Sudan supports the Islamist Boko Haram.

I have recently returned from a visit to Sudan, and obtained first-hand evidence of the implementation of its genocidal policies. The Government of Sudan are blatantly violating conditions required by the United States for the lifting of sanctions by their total disregard of the ceasefire with continued fighting in Darfur, including the attack in Nertiti by the Sudanese Army under the command of Colonel Mohamed El Tayeb. The best estimate is that in that attack, 16 civilians were killed and some 72 to 75 civilians were wounded.

This is an intentional policy. On 22 December 2016, President Bashir delivered a speech at the military Merowe archery festival, in which he vowed to continue seeking a military solution for the internal conflicts and bragged that the unilateral cessation of hostilities would terminate within a week, irrespective of Khartoum’s declaratory policies. That has been proven true in Blue Nile, with the fighting in January 2017 a direct continuation of clashes started in early December 2016. There was no pause or reorganisation of Sudanese armed forces—that is, the ceasefire did not exist for them operationally. On 9 January, while we were in the region, the Sudanese army launched a major offensive on the SPLA-North forces in Arum, Blue Nile state, and villages were bombed sporadically.

In the Nuba mountains, there are numerous reports of continuing missile attacks on civilians, creating such terror that families have been forced to flee their homes and live in snake-infested caves with no medical care and acute shortages of food. Three weeks ago, I climbed one of those Nuba mountains to meet families hiding in those caves. I met a girl who had been bitten by a cobra; a woman dying of malaria with no treatment; and a man whose five children had been burnt alive when a shell hit the place where they were sheltering. People would not be living and dying in these appalling conditions in Sudan unless forced to do so because of continuing military offensives by Khartoum.

This highlights the crisis of humanitarian need: UN officials acknowledge that because of the ongoing disagreements over humanitarian access points,

“the civilians in the war-affected areas continue to suffer”.

The UN now estimates that over 600,000 people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance in the southern and western parts of the Nuba mountains and in Blue Nile state. This raises the issue of the continuing, urgent need for cross-border aid, an issue I have raised repeatedly with Her Majesty’s Government. But nothing has happened so far and people continue to die because of a lack of food and healthcare.

The international community has the responsibility to protect and to provide. It is manifestly failing on both counts by allowing the Government of Sudan to continue to slaughter their own civilians with impunity and by failing to ensure the provision of life-saving medicines and food for hundreds of thousands of civilians. Will Her Majesty’s Government at last take urgent action to ensure cross-border aid, and to end the impunity with which the Government of Sudan are continuing military offensives despite their alleged commitment to the ceasefire?

[Lord Sheikh]

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down—

[Baroness Goldie]

Order.