Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, not least on her tenacity, and other noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, I hope that they will forgive me if I wince and say, “Yet another debate on Sudan”. Those of us who have been there often will feel it the most acutely. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, used the word “anger”, to which I subscribe. There have been more years of conflict and more than 1 million additional people have been affected in the past two years. There are 190,000 more Sudanese refugees in South Sudan. There is further conflict and differences between different groups on political objectives, including between the herders and other farmers. There is, I suppose, conflict between settled communities and those who see very little relevance in being settled because they move with their herds and because borders are not particularly relevant to them.

Two months ago, mass demonstrations about the cost of living and the economy of the country were met by a brutal regime with live ammunition and tear gas, and with mass imprisonment. Negotiations on the safe demilitarised border zone have gone into reverse. Nothing is safe. Nothing is demilitarised. No border zone has been agreed. An African Union peace initiative, through the African Union Peace and Security Council, was twice rescheduled amid sharp African Union criticism once again of the Government of Sudan, and was not responded to by that Government. There was a rather better report on the Government of South Sudan, but none of it yet is making a difference.

It has to be said that South Sudan is both a source of and a destination country for men, women and children who have been subjected in some cases to forced labour and sex trafficking, including women and girls from Uganda, Kenya and the DRC. Inter-ethnic abductions continue but at least the South Sudanese Government have recognised the issues and are trying to intervene. The economies of South Sudan and Sudan, with their high level of interdependency, are continuously disrupted by border disputes and oil transmission fees. I understand that oil reserves are set to halve within 10 years if no new fields come on stream. Exploration of new fields is of course almost impossible amid the military clashes.

War crimes are committed with virtual impunity. There has been no action to enforce international criminal arrest warrants. A large United Nations operation, with at least 4,000 troops in Abyei and 7,500 in South Sudan, has had far too little impact. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford said, instability is spreading right through the region—through the DRC, and to a lesser extent in Uganda, and the Central African Republic. Uganda’s help for South Sudan historically has been the basis for the Sudanese Government’s sponsorship of murderous groups, including the monstrous Lord’s Resistance Army and now other groups which have taken its place.

I suppose that, with a feeling of some desperation, we are tempted to ask what is new. There is little point in demanding a great deal more intervention from the UK Government, much as I would wish to. I think that the Government lack the means or the local alliances to do much, and I fear that they lack the will. Of course there will be protests and those protests are important. There will be realism about humanitarian aid. I urge the Government to find alternative routes for aid rather than those through Khartoum. That will not do any longer. Is there more that could be done? Are we destined to return to this debate again and again, to these issues with no real answers? I am one of life’s optimists but this would be a dismal prospect for all of us and I ask if there is new ground we could break. Let me make a modest attempt.

First, of course African issues will be resolved ultimately in Africa for the most part, and by Africans. That must make us focus on the African Union and its machinery and on the sub-continental regional bodies. The issue of capacity in those bodies is critical. It has been for years. The problem is not just money or a lack of outstanding individuals, because there are some outstanding individuals, and it is not just the presence of a mass murderer at the head of the Government of Sudan. Would the Government consider, as a European initiative, a joint EU-AU review of the financial and skills needs of the African Union, carried out routinely at intervals of not more than three years, with a report on the outcome of those discussions and an annual report on the milestones? Then we at least could see some machinery and assess whether it works.

Secondly, would the Government, through the Security Council, advance the case for a standing arrangement—I am not saying a standing force—that can call into existence a peacekeeping force much more rapidly, rather than with the delays during which many more people die? Will the Government, through our multinational treaties, alliances and membership organisations, seek the full commitment of everyone in those bodies to act on the arrest warrants in all the jurisdictions that they cover? Al-Bashir is a wanted mass murderer. Will Her Majesty’s Government introduce targeted sanctions? The response in the Chamber to a question just a few days ago was that we had talked to the Nigerians about this without any indication of what happened next—that truly will not do now. It will not do.

Thirdly, will the Government, through its aid programme in the multi-national infrastructure initiatives, look for economic developments which would make a much greater difference? There has been a wider discovery of oil far from ports and from infrastructure. Most of it would be transformational but the countries involved need to co-operate in order to make any difference. Will we assist them to make a difference and give some economic hope?

Finally, on occasions I have heard the aspiration to join the Commonwealth expressed in Juba. I do not know whether that is a workable concept—it may not be yet—but it would certainly provide skilled resources in training, including in health and in the treatment of polio. It would provide links to trade and expertise in all Commonwealth countries. It would provide local trade links, for example in Uganda, Kenya and the region, which might be fundamentally helpful in the development of South Sudan. It would provide a secretariat able to assess the capacity needs and the choreography for the provision of greater capacity; and it would tell the enemies of democracy that they face a worldwide community of democratic nations who will not let this pass.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an impassioned debate. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for pursuing this issue as she has done so vigorously over many years, and I know that the work of the Associate Parliamentary Group for Sudan and South Sudan also continues to do that.

The right reverend Prelate pointed out that what we see happening across the border between Sudan and South Sudan is also happening across Sudan and South Sudan’s borders with their neighbouring states. This is part of a set of regional conflicts which now sadly flow across the Sahel and central and east Africa. The Lord’s Resistance Army has just made another cross-border attack. As we know, it operates from Uganda, through South Sudan into eastern Congo. Recent events in the Central African Republic, where the Government have been overthrown, have reportedly been supported by groups from Darfur; groups in Darfur have very often obtained their weapons from Libya, Chad or the Central African Republic. Some of these groups move very easily across frontiers. We recognise that part of this is tribal, part of this is ethnic, part of this is racial, and part of this now, sadly, is also the militant Islamic ideology which attracts youths from across those countries. It brings in foreign fighters and foreign ideas of the sort that the right reverend Prelate commented on, breaking up what had been relatively peaceful relations between different communities and different faiths and raising severe problems for all of us, across Africa. I am happy that we will be debating the dreadful situation in eastern Congo in the not too distant future.

Within Sudan, neither the Government in Khartoum nor the Government in Juba control their entire territory. The Government in Khartoum have the advantage of armed forces and external arms supplies and, as we all know, are misusing them in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. There are linked conflicts across the border, with each Government claiming that the other continues to support the rebels within what they regard as their territories; and the border, as established under the comprehensive peace agreement, is not yet accepted by either side. We must recognise that the SPLM in the north refuses to recognise the borders as established.

We have heard a lot about events surrounding the demonstrations in Sudan, which Ministers have condemned both publicly and privately. We certainly want a more democratic space to open up in Sudan. We deeply regret that the Government of Sudan continue to get arms supplies from outside. We are not entirely sure which countries they are coming from, but they are clearly from the forces in what we used to call the Eastern Bloc. We have a fairly good idea where some of them come from. We meet regularly with opposition groups both within and outside the country. That includes meeting the leadership of the SPLM-North, although we do not support its stated aim of overthrowing the regime by force. We also recognise that the Sudan Revolutionary Front is itself a loose coalition of different bodies and not entirely cohesive in its operation.

I must say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, that we do not channel aid through the Government. We are co-operating with technical preparations for debt relief, but we have made it abundantly clear that debt relief will not be possible until the conflicts are resolved and that the benefits must flow to promoting development in Sudan.

On Darfur, we continue to look with horror at what is happening, while increasingly understanding that some of the militias are not entirely under the control of the central Government in Khartoum. We regret that the Doha document has not in any sense been adopted and that the situation in many ways continues to deteriorate. The question of what we can do about it on our own is difficult.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, talked about the comparison with Libya. It is much easier to enforce a no-fly zone, or even to intervene, in a country where almost the entire population lives within 50 miles of the coast than it is to enforce a no-fly zone a very long way from the coast—across the borders between South Sudan and northern Sudan—let alone over Darfur. We continue to work with others on the situation in Darfur. We continue to ask within the UN for an effective review of the not very effective UN force in Darfur.

We are doing what we can, but we recognise that it is not enough. Restrictions on access to Darfur are part of the problem. We all understand how appalling what is going on in South Kordofan and Blue Nile is. Local organisations, with support from international partners, are gathering evidence of abuses. We do not have access to those areas to gather evidence first-hand. Noble Lords will know that the two Presidents have met on a number of occasions. We hope that the recent improvement in relations between Sudan and South Sudan will help to resolve the conflict, but we all recognise that the conflict has a dynamic of its own.

Within South Sudan, there are also problems of internal conflict. The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, talked about the conflict in Jonglei, which the South Sudanese Government claim is being supported by the Khartoum Government. We have to recognise that these have aspects of ethnic conflict between tribes. I am tempted to say that some of these are cattle raiding with AK-47s. Unfortunately, with AK-47s you can kill an awful lot more people than you could with spears. There are elements there where government as such—the idea of a settled state—has not developed. In Abyei, as we all understand, the conflict between the Misseriya and the Ngok Dinka has elements of Cain and Abel about it. We are talking about settled tribes versus nomadic tribes. There again, once the weapons are freely available, the challenge is very clear.

On Abyei, we do not recognise the outcome of the unilateral referendum held by the Ngok Dinka community held last week. However, we understand the frustrations that led to it taking place and the extent to which external forces and pressures imposed an extra layer on what were traditional local rivalries and conflicts. Almost three years have elapsed since the referendum should have taken place simultaneously with the wider referendum for South Sudan, but we have seen, as we all know, repeated failure to move forward by honouring existing agreements.

What are the UK Government doing about that? We are no longer an imperial power within the region. We have to work with others. We are working as closely as we can with the African Union and the high-level panel. We are certainly providing the support that we feel will help in the circumstances. We are also, of course, working through and with the United Nations. We are doing our best to make the EU a more active player than it has been. The United Kingdom and France are pushing our EU partners to be more engaged across the whole of northern, eastern and central Africa. It is not a message that all our EU partners are yet willing to hear. The British and the French continue to be by far the most actively engaged. We have to recognise that, as people like me go round other capitals, we have to try to explain to them why our interests are engaged in some of these areas because the problem of refugee migration across the Mediterranean is not entirely disengaged from what is happening across the Sahel and elsewhere.

We wish that the Arab League was more active—the Arab League of which Sudan is a member. The Doha agreement was after all moderated by the Qataris, but we would like to see stronger Arab League involvement. We would like to see more active Chinese involvement. The Chinese have real interests at stake in the supply of oil from South Sudan through Sudan. I am told that the Chinese have now become something of a moderating influence, but I think we all understand that the Chinese Government are reluctant to get too heavily involved in outside intervention.

DfID has a major commitment to South Sudan. I have not been to Juba or Khartoum but I have talked to a number of people working in the aid field in Abyei, Darfur and Juba itself. We are working to try to build the capacities of that very new and undeveloped Government. We saw the change in the Cabinet as being a positive development, and we continue to support them in every way that we can.

The two Permanent Secretaries of DfID and the Foreign Office visited the two capitals in October, and my honourable friend Mark Simmonds is going to Juba at the end of this month, so we are and remain actively engaged. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, asked for a joint EU-AU review. That is a highly desirable development and I will take that back. As I said, we have to work hard to make sure that all our 27 partners in the EU are committed to this and we have to recognise that the AU has some severe limitations on its own capacities. Going towards a standing arrangement of a peacekeeping force may stretch the AU further than it is yet able to go.

We should recognise that there are AU forces in place—Ethiopian forces in Abyei and Ugandan forces in Somalia—and a brigade under UN auspices in eastern Congo. So a number of African countries are now quite heavily committed. They lack transport, intelligence and logistics. The Government in Juba are pretty dependent on UN helicopters for transport around the country.

[Lord Triesman]

I understand only too well the point that is being made about the AU. My suggestion was that the discussion should happen under the auspices of the Security Council because it is possible for other kinds of forces—for example, as we found with Scandinavian police forces in Darfur—to have a very significant role in peacekeeping.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take that point and of course the UN also has to have a large role. With regard to the Nordic countries, I also recall that the three guarantors of the comprehensive peace agreement were the United Kingdom, the United States and Norway. We continue to raise these issues regularly within the UN Security Council. It is a matter of continuing discussion and we will continue to push very hard. I sincerely hope and trust, and am confident, that noble Lords here, including the noble Baroness herself, will continue to push us to maintain that pressure. Having answered, I hope, most of the points raised in this debate, I will conclude my speech.