by Susan Rice
Late in my tenure as assistant secretary for African affairs, I took up a defiant challenge from Sudan’s foreign minister to “Go see for yourself” whether there is slavery in southern Sudan, which Khartoum always vehemently denied. In November 2000, I flew unannounced on a small U.N. World Food Program aircraft from its hub in Lokichoggio, Kenya, to a barely visible dirt strip in southern Sudan. I met with women in the southwestern village of Marial Bai who had escaped slavery and rape at the hands of northern militia and visited an American missionary hospital in Lui that suffered regular bombing by Sudanese aircraft, including just hours after I left. Additionally, I spent the night in the town of Rumbek, a small hub of economic activity and base for U.N. agencies.
When I returned to Nairobi to report to the press the horrific personal stories of abuse I had documented, the Sudanese government protested vehemently that I had violated their sovereignty. I didn’t care. The truth of their ongoing atrocities had to be told, and I was not going to be intimidated into silence. On the record, I sharply condemned Khartoum’s rampant bombings of civilian targets and expressed my outrage after hearing firsthand accounts from women and children who were abducted, beaten, raped, tortured, enslaved—atrocities committed by militia at the direction or with the support of Sudan’s government.
That trip in 2000 reinforced my abhorrence of the Khartoum regime and underscored the desperation, poverty, and oppression suffered by the people of southern Sudan. The region was the place that time forgot. It was almost biblical. No roads, no communications, no functioning economy beyond small-scale subsistence agriculture, no schools, no nothing. Southern Sudan’s leader, John Garang, viewed by some as the George Washington of South Sudan, was an American-educated smooth talker. But his people suffered like none other on earth and his undisciplined, marauding Sudan People’s Liberation Army were among those who most brutally victimized them.
The Bush administration properly sustained a focus on Sudan, investing significant effort in brokering the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, by which Sudan agreed to allow the south to conduct a referendum on independence in January 2011. This landmark agreement faced innumerable obstacles in implementation but laid the foundation for the eventual establishment of South Sudan. However, on another front, Khartoum turned its killing machine west to the Darfur region of Sudan, where dissident ethnic groups challenged central government authority. The ensuing genocide, directed by then-president Omar al-Bashir and conducted by the Sudanese army, took over 300,000 lives at its peak between 2003 and 2005. While Secretary of State Colin Powell rightly insisted that the U.S. call the killings “genocide,” I argued as an outside policy expert that the Bush administration’s response amounted mainly to hand-wringing. Instead, I urged that the U.S. consider an air campaign and a naval blockade to halt Khartoum’s killing. In sum, my opposition to the cruelties of the Sudanese regime had continued unabated prior to taking up my post at the U.N.
Khartoum did not look forward to the arrival of the Obama administration. In addition to my own stance, as senators, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as Hillary Clinton, had all taken tough lines against Sudan—especially on Darfur. Soon after I arrived in New York, the International Criminal Court indicted Bashir for war crimes and genocide in Darfur and issued arrest warrants, making him the first sitting head of state to face such charges. The Bashir regime responded by expelling thirteen international aid organizations that delivered well over half of the critical humanitarian assistance to the desperate millions of internally displaced persons in Darfur. The Security Council was paralyzed, unable to condemn Khartoum, because Russia, China, and Libya shielded Sudan from censure. It was an early low point that foreshadowed the divisions that would only deepen in the Council on Sudan.
In March 2009, President Obama appointed retired Major General Scott Gration as his special envoy for Sudan. I had come to know Scott during the campaign when he was an early Obama supporter and frequent campaign surrogate. An affable former Air Force general and the son of missionaries, Scott and I got along fine personally. Nonetheless it soon emerged that we had stark policy differences over Sudan. Scott favored a more accommodating approach to Khartoum, cast public doubt over whether genocide persisted in Darfur, and recommended in testimony before Congress that the U.S. preemptively ease sanctions and lift the State Sponsor of Terrorism designation. Referring to how to engage Khartoum, he said, “We have got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries, they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” Gration’s approach alarmed me as well as many in Congress and the NGO community.
As the administration conducted its first review of Sudan policy, I argued strenuously at the Principals’ table that we should not give rewards to Sudan without concrete, irreversible changes in their policies and actions. Unfortunately, my differences with Scott were reported widely in the press, I trust through no fault of his and I know through none of mine. We were both loyal members of the Obama administration; neither of us had an interest in our dispute being aired publicly, which only heightened the difficulty for the president, who had to make the final decision. As the review progressed, I sensed that Secretary Clinton might be sliding into a more accommodationist camp, leaving me increasingly isolated as a proponent of maintaining a conditional, action-for-action approach. Unusually, I perceived that some in the White House may have been mischaracterizing my views on Sudan to the president. Thus, I took what was for me the rare step of invoking my privilege as a principal and member of the cabinet to write a memo directly to the president outlining my concerns about the direction of the policy review and explaining my recommended approach.
When the policy review concluded in October, and the president decided, I was satisfied with the outcome. No significant benefits would accrue to Khartoum unless their behavior on southern Sudan and Darfur changed substantially and irreversibly; moreover, we agreed to a significant list of penalties that would be imposed if Sudan’s behavior persisted or backslid.
Gration continued to pursue a rhetorical approach that worried me, but he deserves credit for gradually improving humanitarian access into Darfur in the wake of the NGO expulsions, helping to end the conflict between Chad and Sudan, and then turning his focus in 2010 to the upcoming referendum on an independent South Sudan scheduled for January 9, 2011.
As the referendum approached, there were many reasons for concern. Six years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, none of the difficult issues between north and south had been resolved. Electoral arrangements were way behind schedule, and fears mounted that Khartoum would renege on its promise to allow the referendum to proceed. When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proposed a foreign-minister-level meeting on the margins of the annual gathering of heads of state at the opening of the General Assembly in late September 2010, I recommended that President Obama attend and elevate the meeting to an important summit just about one hundred days before the scheduled referendum.
Obama’s presence attracted many key leaders from Africa and Europe and lent impetus to implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the crucial January referendum. In his remarks, Obama warned of “more pressure and deeper isolation” for those who violate their commitments. But he also offered improved relations between the U.S. and Sudan, enhanced trade and investment ties, and the exchange of ambassadors—if Sudan fully and faithfully adhered to its commitments, ended the violence and the humanitarian crisis, and ensured accountability for war crimes in Darfur. Obama’s intervention and the potential for improved relations with the U.S. most likely positively influenced Sudan’s decision to allow the referendum to proceed.
Two weeks later, I led a Security Council delegation to southern Sudan, Darfur, and Khartoum. The trip highlighted the continued suffering of the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in Darfur, who were trapped in dusty, barren camps with insufficient food and water. Their makeshift villages were constantly threatened by Khartoum-backed militia who rai
ded on horseback and burned the grass huts to the ground, killing as many as they could. In southern Sudan, we pressed the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement leaders to prepare to govern in service of their people rather than in the insular, corrupt fashion to which they had already grown accustomed. Finally, our meetings in Khartoum enabled us to reinforce the necessity of allowing the referendum to be conducted unimpeded.
Almost miraculously, three months later, on January 9, 2011, millions of southern Sudanese came peacefully and joyfully to the polls to express their long-suppressed desire for independence, voting 98.6 percent in favor of establishing their own country, South Sudan.
The postelection euphoria was short lived.
In the six months after the vote leading up to official independence, the many issues that remained unresolved between north and south again came to the fore. In May, I led a second UNSC delegation to Sudan and South Sudan to try and defuse tensions and smooth the path to independence now just two months away. The challenge was exacerbated by the fact that Sudan remained a bone of contention between the U.S. and Russia. Most, if not all of the time, Russia vigorously protected the brutal Khartoum regime against economic and other pressures, while it readily dismissed southern Sudanese aspirations for independence and was studiously indifferent to the suffering of its people.
During one private argument on South Sudan, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin taunted me: “You think this new state will become independent, and all will be great. But I tell you, it will be stillborn and a mess for many years to come.” Certain he was wrong, I strenuously objected.
While Vitaly was always reluctant to travel overseas with the Security Council, preferring to send a deputy, he especially hated going to Africa, which I think he felt was uncomfortable and beneath him. Churkin, French ambassador Araud, and other colleagues complained more intensely when I led UNSC trips to the field, because I insisted that we get out of stifling meeting rooms in the capital and visit real people facing real challenges—in rural health clinics, desolate refugee camps, and remote villages that had seen recent conflict.
This time, since I was leading a particularly consequential and timely mission to Sudan, Vitaly made a point of coming along, I believe to try to check me. I knew Africa far better than he, so check me he could not, but bother me he did. One of my most vivid and not-so-cherished memories is of Vitaly walking barefoot past me down a long hotel corridor in Khartoum without speaking. He was wearing only a white hotel bathrobe that didn’t close properly at the belly, exposing too much of his pale chest. Apparently, something had happened to his suit. An image once seen, it is impossible to forget.
In the midst of our visit to Khartoum, fighting broke out along the soon-to-be north-south border, with Sudanese forces seizing the disputed Abyei area and moving troops into the Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan regions—southern areas of Sudan that border what would soon be South Sudan and have populations that resist Khartoum’s authority. Khartoum’s aggressive actions enraged me and most other members of our delegation, prompting us to deliver very tough messages to our Sudanese interlocutors. Sudan’s sustained bombing of these areas also led the U.N. to ramp up its efforts to defuse tensions and the U.S. to warn that improved relations were at risk if Sudan persisted. In the weeks just before South Sudan’s independence, we successfully pressed the two countries to pull back their forces and accede to an Ethiopian-led U.N. border force to demilitarize and monitor Abyei.
Tensions subsided sufficiently for South Sudan’s Independence Day, July 9, 2011, to be a raucous celebration. I was honored to be asked by President Obama to lead the U.S. delegation to the independence ceremonies. It was a distinguished group that included General Colin Powell—who as secretary of state had played an important role in paving the way for self-determination for the South Sudanese—along with Congressman Donald Payne, a fierce, longtime champion of the South Sudanese people, and General Carter Ham, the four-star general in charge of U.S. Africa Command. As head of delegation, I could bring one guest. I chose soon-to-be-fourteen-year-old Jake. My son has long been passionate about Africa—and not just the birds and the wildlife. We had visited Southern Africa previously, and he knew a lot about Sudan through me and his own study. He was thrilled to meet Colin Powell, ride on a U.S. Air Force jet, visit the U.S. military base in Djibouti, and talk Libya war strategy with General Ham.
In Juba, the South Sudanese capital, the U.S. delegation had a prime location in the shade near the stage, where I would speak along with several visiting heads of state and South Sudan’s new president, Salva Kiir. At some point during the hours-long, scorching ceremony, as I would later learn, Jake wandered around to stretch his legs and get some water, carrying his trusty long-lens digital camera and tripod (essentials for the avid birder he had become). He was some distance removed from our delegation’s seats when suddenly he was confronted by an angry security official who, as Jake would report, demanded, “You need to leave. No journalists allowed in the VIP section.”
Jake explained, “I am not a journalist. I’m here as a guest, and my mother is the American U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice.” But that explanation failed to satisfy the increasingly belligerent guard. Jake continued to protest politely to no avail. As the situation escalated into a near shouting match, with the guard preparing to take Jake into custody, a U.S. protocol officer arrived to plead Jake’s case, again without success. Finally, Ezekiel Gatkuoth, a six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound South Sudanese official, who served as head of South Sudan’s mission in Washington, saw what was happening. Recognizing Jake as my son, he intervened to validate his story and spare him a trip to Juba’s finest jail.
The celebration in Juba was a wonder to behold—jubilant dancers, musicians, military parades, ululating women, back-slapping African leaders, and champagne and canapés for VIPs under air-conditioned tents—an extravagance that foretold problems to come. I returned to New York in time for the flag of South Sudan to be raised at U.N. Headquarters on July 14, as the world’s newest country was admitted to the international body that helped birth it. The joy at the U.N. was almost as irrepressible as in Juba. That night, I hosted a loud, super-sweaty dance party on the twenty-second floor of the new U.S. Mission building where Americans, South Sudanese, African delegates, and many others boogied long into the evening. In that miraculous moment, it seemed like the dreams of millions might in fact come true.
Alas, for the long-suffering people of South Sudan, who have been betrayed at every turn, lasting peace proved too much to hope for. Soon after independence, Sudan and South Sudan turned on each other. Fighting erupted along the border over disputed oil-rich areas. South Sudan, which owned 75 percent of the oil of the original undivided nation, still depended on pipelines, refineries, and ports in the north. The economy of each nation was linked directly to the other; yet, after fighting resumed, South Sudan took the self-defeating step of stopping oil production, sending both countries into an economic tailspin. Within South Sudan, ethnic-based political factions contested for power, while brutally abusing their people and robbing them blind through corruption. South Sudan’s army raped, tortured, and killed many thousands of its own citizens, reflecting the example set by Salva Kiir, South Sudan’s hard-drinking, do-nothing, demi-dictator president, who has little regard for the welfare of his people and later came to blows with his vicious, self-aggrandizing vice president, Riek Machar.
By December 2013, it was clear: South Sudan was, in fact, stillborn. One of my most bitter regrets is having to admit that Vitaly was right.
For the duration of the administration, I along with top U.S. officials, including President Obama, continued to try to help the people of South Sudan achieve the promise of their independence. Yet, so long as the population of South Sudan suffers under such leadership, there will be little the U.S., U.N., or others can do to enable them measurably to improve their lives.
When it comes to South Sudan’s morally bankrupt leaders, I am reminded of the depressing adag
e, “You can’t help those who refuse to help themselves.”
14 The Arab Spring Comes to New York
It was St. Patrick’s Day 2011.
As we milled about on the floor of the U.N. Security Council waiting for all members to arrive to vote, I chatted with staff and fellow ambassadors. Many were sporting green ties in honor of the Irish, while I wore a green wool jacket. The color was not deep but almost a lime green, similar in hue, coincidentally, to the Libyan flag. Within a few minutes, I noticed that the South African permanent representative, Baso Sanqcu, a bald compact man, was absent. I didn’t want the vote to proceed without knowing how it would come out, so I dashed to the door of the Council to intercept Baso when he came in. Eventually, he arrived.
Presumptuously, I blocked his entry.
“Do you have instructions?”
“Yes,” he replied, clearly somewhat exasperated.
“What are they?” I pressed.
“We will vote yes,” he conceded but didn’t seem happy about it. I thanked him and moved out of his way so he could enter the chamber.
The subject of this crucial vote was Libya, a hot topic on the Security Council’s agenda along with several other matters stemming from the regional uprising known as the “Arab Spring.”
The convulsion in the Middle East began when a desperate street vendor set himself on fire in Tunisia in December 2010. Within two months, President Hosni Mubarak was deposed in Egypt, after three decades of both repressing his people and serving as a reliable regional partner of the U.S. In raging debates around the Principals Committee table about how the U.S. should respond to Mubarak’s violent crackdown on peaceful protesters, Secretary Clinton, Defense Secretary Gates, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Vice President Biden argued forcefully for standing by Mubarak, whom they had known for years. Younger officials, including Ben Rhodes, Tony Blinken, Samantha Power, and me, maintained that the U.S. should support the democratic aspirations of the youth in Egypt and across the Middle East.
