Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for her unswerving determination, and to other speakers, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter and the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Indeed, pretty much everybody has once again gone through the events of the past 10 years: the mass murders; the ethnic cleansing of black Africans and the attacks on their culture and language, which is a distinctive part of ethnic cleansing; the direct attacks, including aerial attacks, on civilians; the use of Chinese and Iranian munitions; and the displacements of very large numbers of people. The noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Avebury, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and, indeed, all of us may feel—I do not mean this in any frivolous sense—a certain “Groundhog Day” sensation about parts of this debate as we have been going round these issues for a long time.

I sifted out what I thought were the important notes made on visits to Khartoum, Darfur and Juba. The notes related to the first visits that I made in November 2005 and to Juba again later that month. With the exception of one leader of South Sudan, I do not think that I ever saw the same people twice. The turnover, and hence the difficulty in dealing with anybody, was absolutely monumental.

If I may say so, the issue is not just about Sudan: it is not that limited geographically. President Bashir’s impact endangers the entire region’s security right across a swathe of Africa. John Garang tried to stabilise the south and his death was a tragedy. The referendum seemed like a valid mechanism, but we all know that the outcome was always likely to lead to a further breakdown, whatever our aspirations for it, because of the contested oil rights and oil wealth in that area.

One edge of South Darfur was always impacted, in my experience. Blue Nile was always a problem. The Ugandans had never managed to successfully deal with their northern border. The Lord’s Resistance Army and Kony, its leader, routinely went into South Sudan and many other places. I always believed that President Museveni, for all the talk about what he would do, made no real attempt to make sure that security was there either. The people of north Uganda were driven from the land, frequently by people who were moving backwards and forwards out of South Sudan. The issues spread into the west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and into the Central African Republic; it spreads across borders in as much as there are borders.

Darfur, as we have heard today, is experiencing the 10th anniversary of an appalling war, which spreads across the borders, fairly routinely, into Chad. There, the Janjaweed gangs have been assisted by the Khartoum regime and have then gone on to wreak even greater havoc. The aerial terror that the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, illustrated so clearly is extremely important. I recall the offer made by Colonel Gaddafi, who said that he could understand the peoples of that region in a way in which he did not expect us to, and was perfectly prepared to intervene. I said that I thought it sounded like an offer to interfere and make things worse. Of course, there was always the prospect of things spreading across the Maghreb, through the northern borders.

The issues are in some cases realistic and need proper attention. It is not always about issues of wickedness, although goodness knows there is enough of that. However, the contestation between agriculturalists and herders for areas that are in any sense arable, as desertification becomes a problem of real economic consequence, is very important. There are many more issues in Darfur: voting rights, security, food and water have all been mentioned today.

I recall a couple of attempts by the African Union force to secure a degree of peace which were fundamentally undermined by President al-Bashir. The Canadians had provided armoured vehicles to protect the Nigerian peace force, who were in soft-sided vehicles. While I was there, six Nigerian soldiers were killed through soft-sided vehicles that were fired upon. Those armoured vehicles took ages to get into Darfur because they were in Dakkar and nobody would let them move forward. It took a special meeting in which Javier Solana, then the High Representative of the EU, took part to get them in. We got more or less no help from Russia, and occasionally just a little hint that there might be a more sympathetic response from some of the Chinese leadership.

These factors are all important, and are a very diverse set of factors to introduce at this stage of your Lordships’ debate. However, there is one constant among all of them: President al-Bashir. The issues for which he must stand trial, and for which there should be no impunity, link all the things that pretty much every noble Lord said in this evening’s debate.

I join others in asking essentially the same questions of the Minister tonight. The critical things are what we can do in these unpromising circumstances; whether it is possible to get the United Nations, through the operation of its committee of inquiry, or the Security Council to do what needs to be done—the letter should be an important stimulus to the Security Council in setting those things out; and whether we believe that we can have a greater impact in those areas.

Briefly, the role of the United Kingdom has sometimes been a little confusing. I do not know whether I should make an apology for it, but it certainly was between the FCO and DfID over a period of time. I found, quite often, that because DfID was in control of so much more of the money than the FCO ever was that DfID officials were the only people to whom anybody wanted to talk. It often meant that more standard forms of diplomatic and state intervention became more difficult. It may be that we need to rethink those things. I do not say this in a way that is at all aggressive. I just think that when we have identified things that really have not worked, it falls to us to think—as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, did when he made some other important suggestions—about how we might improve.

I conclude by saying that it seems absolutely clear that we have failed the people of this war-torn region. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, made this point very eloquently as well. What we have to do is identify how we can help generate the conditions in which there is a Sudan that is peaceful, democratic and prosperous, which respects human rights and the rule of law, and whose people share equally in the nation’s wealth and development, with all Sudanese people being treated equally, regardless of their race or religion, and in which Sudan is an active and benign member of the international community. The regional security issues are far too severe for us to do anything else.