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34–716PDF 2007

CURRENT SITUATION IN DARFUR

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 19, 2007

Serial No. 110–53

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

TOM LANTOS, California, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BILL DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DIANE E. WATSON, California 

ADAM SMITH, Washington 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee 

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

DAVID WU, Oregon 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

JIM COSTA, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

VACANT 

VACANT 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado 

RON PAUL, Texas 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

THADDEUS G. MCCOTTER, Michigan 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina 

LUIS G. FORTUN ̃ O, Puerto Rico 

ROBERT R. KING, Staff Director 

YLEEM POBLETE, Republican Staff Director 

PEARL ALICE MARSH, Senior Professional Staff Member 

GENELL BROWN, Full Committee Hearing Coordinator 
(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Ms. Mia Farrow, Actress, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador .................................. 8

Mr. John Prendergast, Senior Advisor, International Crisis Group ................... 13

Alex de Waal, Ph.D., Director, Social Science Research Council, Lecturer, 

Harvard University .............................................................................................. 23

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Mr. John Prendergast: Prepared statement .......................................................... 16

Alex de Waal, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ............................................................. 25

APPENDIX 

The Honorable Mike Pence, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Indiana: Prepared statement .......................................................................... 55
(1)

CURRENT SITUATION IN DARFUR 

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:37 a.m. in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Lantos, (chairman 

of the committee), presiding. 

Chairman LANTOS. Just after this hearing, Congress will solemnly commemorate the Holocaust as it does every year in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. To many, the events of the Holocaust seem to be part of a very distant past, a discrete event with 

a definite ending. But, unfortunately, their echoes resonate with us 

today. They haunt us with another inconceivable genocide: The 

slaughter of as many as 400,000 people in the Darfur region of 

Sudan. The Sudanese Government has been allowed to perpetrate 

a shocking campaign of terror for far too long. And complacent governments around the globe have stood on the sidelines for far too 

long. So today the question faces us: Will we again fail to recognize 

the profound message of the candles we shall light in a couple of 

hours to commemorate the Holocaust? 

I have been saying for over 3 years that the international community has not been doing nearly enough about Darfur. Signs of 

progress emerged this week, even if it has come too late for the 

dead. The Sudanese Government agreed to let a 3,000-person 

United Nations peacekeeping force join the African Union troops 

who are already there. It made the decision under pressure and 

only after months of unnecessary backtracking and delay. But the 

brutal Sudanese Government has resisted the efforts of the United 

Nations to send some 20,000 peacekeepers to Darfur. I have no 

doubt that they will continue to try to procrastinate. 

Let me be clear: The difference between a small force and the 

substantial deployment is no mere sticking point. It is absolutely 

essential. 

It is essential to stop the Arab militias from continuing to carry 

out the government’s dirty deeds. It is essential to clearing the 

path for crucial food and water and health supplies to reach the 

disparate refugee camps. And it is essential because injustice is 

only really addressed when it is obliterated, not when it is slowed 

to a painful trickle of displacement, harassment, and disrupted 

lives. We must have that bigger U.N. force in Sudan without any 

additional delay. 

Let me just digress for a moment from my prepared comments. 

The President’s speech yesterday at the Holocaust Museum focuses 
2

attention again on this matter. And I wish there would have been 

action, immediate action, connected to that speech. But the Secretary General of the United Nations, our friend, Ban Ki-Moon, requested few additional weeks to attempt to gain cooperation from 

the Sudanese Government, and the President chose to give it to 

him. I want to serve notice on the President of the United States 

that while we can go along with 2 or 3 weeks of delay, this committee and this Congress will not rest any longer and we are demanding action. 

To ensure smooth coordination between the African Union command and the U.N. deployment, the U.N. ought to send in a transitional force. These troops would also stop Khartoum from disrupting the new peacekeeping force. The presence of this transition 

force would not be subject to negotiation with the Sudanese, and 

it would need to be deployed in the next 2 weeks. 

Those of us who have been in the forefront on the Darfur issue 

worry that the Sudanese Government simply wants to complete the 

horrific job of eliminating the minority there. New evidence surfaced this week that the government is undermining the fragile 

calm in Darfur by trying to inject violence. An unpublished U.N. 

report alleges the Sudanese Government is delivering arms and 

military equipment to its murderous minions in Darfur. Just as 

disturbing is their claim that they are painting their own military 

airplanes white to disguise them as U.N. or African Union aircraft. 

There is proof that at least one plane had the letter ‘‘U.N.’’ painted 

on it to complete the deception. The report says Khartoum is doing 

next to nothing to stop the Arab militias, which are still terrorizing 

the individuals in the Darfur countryside. 

All of these insidious actions are in direct violation of Security 

Council resolutions. The Sudanese should and will be held to account. I propose a no-fly zone that would prohibit any Sudanese 

military planes from taking to the air. If they violate this provision, 

we need to destroy their Air Force. It is as simply as that. I think 

this would put a stop to their aircraft shenanigans. 

There is a larger issue here, one that should be illuminated by 

the candles we light to remember the Holocaust. In conflicts where 

we witness slaughter on a grand scale, we have a tendency to believe the situation has stabilized when violence has ebbed from its 

most vicious moment. We think there is no grave and imminent 

danger. But as long as the dynamics that led to murder and displacement and abduction are still in place, as long as those who 

flee are starving and unsettled and bullied, a real danger for increased bloodshed exists. 

The government in Sudan cannot be trusted to enforce agreements when it has ignored its commitments in the past. And the 

leaders in Khartoum cannot be believed when they say they are 

ready for the United Nations when all they have done is to stall. 

The United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council 

must demand that Sudan not only welcome the initial 3,000 peacekeepers, but permit without delay a full 20,000-person force—now. 

Sanctions are not enough. 

Every since the Holocaust many in our society have routinely 

pledged ‘‘never again.’’ But here we are, in a different time, in a 

different place, but with motives and brutality no less sinister. 
3

Time and again, recalling my own experience as a genocide survivor, I have called on this government and the United Nations to 

intervene. Today again, I urge our own Government and the 

United Nations to stop the genocide in Darfur. I am hopeful that 

the latest concession by Khartoum will lead to a larger force that 

will finally put Sudan on a road to peace. 

I am more hopeful than I have been for a long time. But from 

this hearing room I will go to the Rotunda, to help light the candles 

and again wonder if we will let them flicker out before we truly 

honor their meaning. 

Now I would like to turn to my good friend and distinguished college, the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana 

Ros-Lehtinen, who has just returned from an important mission to 

Darfur with our Democratic leaders, Steny Hoyer, and I welcome 

any remarks she would like to make. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank 

you for your eloquent statement this morning. Certainly the United 

States is no more valiant a fighter for human rights than Chairman Lantos. Thank you for that moving statement. 

This Congress has devoted a great deal of time and attention to 

the genocide in Darfur, and as the chairman pointed out, I just got 

back from an opportunity to witness firsthand the humanitarian 

and the human rights catastrophe that has engulfed this troubled 

region. 

Over the course of our delegation’s visit, we met with people who 

had lost their homes, their livelihoods, and their loved ones. We 

met with women who had been raped, and with children who had 

been orphaned. We met with AID workers who work tirelessly to 

ease the suffering in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and threats to their very own personal security, and we met 

with the African Union personnel who endeavored to create an environment of stability dispute the fact that they are severely undermanned, underfunded and outgunned. 

The most rewarding time of the visit with our congressional delegation was when we distributed toys that I had collected in my congressional district through different humanitarian groups, temples 

and churches to the camp of El Salaam for internally displaced persons, and I thank the generosity of my constituents of south Florida for making that a reality, and such a simple act of compassion 

and charity by those who participated, and the efforts that are ongoing daily throughout the United States is really something that 

should be congratulated. 

I know that there are Darfur movements on many college campuses because my two daughters are quite involved in their colleges in this movement as well, and I took heart in knowing that 

the United States does indeed have a presence in these camps, and 

that our aid is being felt. We provide tents and housing for internally displaced person with the USAID logo on it. We saw medical 

care. Humanitarian assistance that is being provided thanks to the 

contributions of the United States. 

And this body and the administration of President Bush already 

have devoted many hours and tremendous resources in an effort to 

mitigate this conflict. We have provided over $2.6 billion in humanitarian assistance to Darfur and Eastern Chad between the years 
4

of 2005 and 2006 alone. We have trained, transported, and maintained African Union peacekeeping forces deployed in the region. 

We have led efforts at the African Union and at the United Nations 

to get larger, more robust U.N. peacekeeping missions deployed in 

Darfur. We have negotiated, we have cajoled, we have compelled, 

and just prior to our delegation’s arrival in Sudan we were briefed 

on a comprehensive set of actions that the President was planning 

to take known as Plan B. 

As the chairman pointed out, implementation had to be delayed 

following a specific public plea by the United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-Moon for more time to let the negotiations work. 

The administration reluctantly acceded to this request and dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte to make a final, 

last-ditch effort to get an agreement on a hybrid peacekeeping 

force. 

Now it seems that these efforts might have paid off, but we have 

been there before. We have seen those agreements signed, been 

there, done that. Unfortunately the same result. 

On Monday, the Khartoum Government of General Bashir sent 

a letter to the Security Council accepting the U.N.’s provisions of 

heavy support package for AMIS, including the helicopters they 

had objected to just last week. And while this is a positive development, this is no substitute for a final deal on the transition of this 

peacekeeping force into a more robust peacekeeping mission as envisioned under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 

1706. 

Furthermore, the Khartoum Government has a long history of 

signing and then ignoring or violating the agreements, not to mention, as the chairman pointed out, their latest despicable efforts to 

disguise their violations of U.N.-imposed arms embargo by painting 

planes white and putting the U.N. insignia on them while the 

planes were carrying weaponry into the Darfur region, and this reaffirms the fact that this is not a trustworthy government. 

As President Bush said yesterday, if Khartoum balks at commitment to the heavy support package, or if it blocks forward moving 

on a hybrid AU/U.N. peacekeeping mission, we are prepared to 

take a number of additional steps to help bring an end to the crisis 

in Darfur. 

But my question is where is the rest of the international community. Responsible nations must work in concert to pursue several 

avenues, all of which are mutually reinforcing. 

First and foremost, we must place greater emphasis on implementing the Bashir plan—the agreement that Bashir has agreed to 

and signed, the comprehensive peace agreement in the south. If 

that agreement fails, any hope for a political solution in Darfur will 

be lost. 

Secondly, implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement must 

begin in earnest while a single unified political process is revitalized; and thirdly, while political dialogue is the key to ending the 

conflict, in the long term the hybrid AU/U.N. peacekeeping mission 

must be deployed without further delay. 

Those who have been displaced in Darfur and eastern Chad cannot afford to wait for security while long, drawn-out negotiations 

take place. They need security now. If other nations, which have 
5

influence in Sudan, choose to look the other way, or act as obstructionists to peace, then we should reevaluate our relations with 

those governments. It should be made clear that governments allied with the Khartoum regime and they continue to provide an 

economic lifeline to the regime are complacent in an act of war on 

civilians, and the immeasurable human suffering that is occurring 

in Darfur. 

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your remarks. You are so correct 

when you say that the time for lamenting is over. It is time for all 

responsible nations to take concrete individual or multilateral steps 

to help assure that a resolution to the crisis in Darfur comes to an 

end. 

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman LANTOS. I want to thank my friend and colleagues 

from Florida for a powerful and eloquent statement. 

Pleased to call on the chairman of the Africa Subcommittee who 

has done so much over so many years to relieve suffering on the 

entire contingent, Chairman Payne of New Jersey. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank 

you for calling this very important and timely hearing on the situation in Darfur. As we have heard, President Bush spoke about his 

intentions related to Khartoum’s action in Darfur yesterday at the 

Holocaust Museum, and we are hoping that his speech will move 

the Sudanese to act. 

I am glad that he has broken his silence about Plan B, but I wish 

he had announced that it is being implemented rather than telling 

the world that we are giving the Sudanese yet another chance so 

to speak. 

I just returned from a trip to the People’s Republic of China. 

During that meeting, we had an opportunity meet with the vice 

premier of the PRC. In no uncertain terms I indicated to him that 

their behavior in and lack of support for a solution to the Darfur 

situation was abominable, and indicated to him that there was talk 

about a boycott of the Olympics. We talked about the fact that the 

PRC is making overtures to Africa, but at the same time allowing 

dictators and brutal people like Bashir and Mugabe to have their 

way, and that that is unacceptable. 

If the news is accurate, they said that the Chinese did help to 

garner Sudanese’s permission for the 3,000 troops. However, this 

is not enough. It is a positive development, but once again Bashir 

says things but he does not necessarily honor them. 

I am both skeptical about Khartoum’s intentions and frustrated 

with its empty promises, and I believe others are as well. This is 

one reason that prominent voices such as Ms. Mia Farrow, one of 

our distinguished witnesses here today, are advocating for meaningful action by the Chinese, and I am so pleased that she is here, 

of course, with our long-time friend John Prendergast who has 

done tremendous work in this area concluding that China’s recent 

efforts must continue and must be expanded; calling for a boycott 

of the Olympics in Beijing will, I hope, grow, and that the Chinese 

will see that they must use their considerable leverage in stopping 

the situation in Darfur. 

Mr. Chairman, despite what might appear to be good news, we 

must keep several things in mind: First, Khartoum has yet to con-
6

sent to the deployment of all the troops authorized by U.N. Secretary Resolution 1706, and secondly, the deployment of peacekeepers, while necessary, is not sufficient to address the problems 

of Darfur. The Darfur Peace Agreement must still somehow be revived. Millions of people remain displaced and are not getting help 

because Darfur is throwing bureaucratic hurtles in their way, and 

the spillover of violence into neighboring Chad, And the Central Africa Republic has not fully been addressed. 

Finally, the lack of implementation of the comprehensive peace 

agreement between the north and south Sudan is putting that 

agreement in jeopardy. I remain concerned as we all are, and we 

all should be about these issues. 

Once again, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the hearing, and I 

once again commend you for calling it. 

Chairman LANTOS. Thank you, Mr. Payne. 

I am pleased to recognize for an opening statement the distinguished former chairman of the Asia Subcommittee, my friend from 

California, Mr. Royce. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I just 

wanted to share just a personal observation. I had the opportunity 

to go into Darfur, Sudan, into a town named Tina, and John 

Prendergast, who is here today, was with us on that trip. In that 

particular town, which was bombed into near oblivion, formerly 

30,000 residents were reduced to several hundred. And in talking 

to the personnel from the African Union who had an opportunity 

to monitor some of the attacks, including one that occurred on the 

day we were in Darfur to the south of us, they reported to us, debriefed us on the fact that this was not just the Janjaweed, and I 

think this is something that needs to be put in the record and remembered. 

The Janjaweed may be follow up, but they follow up after the Sudanese troops go in, and start the killing, and I talked to a young 

boy, he was missing a hand. I asked him what had happened to 

him. He said the Janjaweed had cut it off. His siblings drew pictures of what had happened in that village, and those pictures that 

they drew were of planes that clearly looked to me like Antonovs, 

dropping bombs on the village, followed by regular troops going 

into the village, followed by pictures of Janjaweed on horseback or 

camel slashing the villagers. 

When the ICC prosecutor takes 20 months of investigation to 

come up with a finding and announces the indictment of the former 

interior minister of Sudan, and says there are reasonable grounds 

to believe that Ahmed Muhammed Haroun bears criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity 

and war crimes, and when the U.N. reports recently that humanitarian and human rights actors are increasingly targeted, killings 

of civilians is widespread, large-scale attacks, rape and sexual violence are widespread, and systematic torture continues, it is time 

that we understand that no matter how many times we ask the 

United Nations to take action here China is going to block us. 

For those of us that have been working on this for a number of 

years, and have passed resolutions out of here and findings of genocide and so forth, we need to speak frankly about this. Just as 

China sold the machetes to the Hutus to be used against the Tutsis 
7

as part of their effort to try to extend their influence there, so they 

sell the weapons now used by Janjaweed and used by the military 

in Sudan. 

So when we get to the United Nations. We are not going to be 

able to convince China to back our play. We need to take the actions here, and that is why I am going to second the recommendations of a no-fly zone. I hate to disabuse some of our members of 

the notion that we are going to be able to convince the international community here to back our play, but if we are going to 

stop a genocide, the United States has got to continue to lead. We 

have taken the opening steps of that in passing our resolution, and 

now we should follow up with some serious action to drive the consequences home to the Sudanese Government of what is going to 

happen if they continue to orchestrate this, and we might as well 

quit the fiction that the Janjaweed is separate from Khartoum. 

They are an extension of the government in Khartoum. 

Thank you very much, Your Honor. 

Chairman LANTOS. Thank you. It was my intention to recognize 

the chairman of the Africa Subcommittee, and in the absence of 

Mr. Smith to recognize the former chairman on the Republican 

side. Mr. Smith was unavoidably detained and without objection I 

would like to give him an opportunity to make an opening statement. 

Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that indulgence, and thank you for your leadership on this issue, and as 

we saw just recently on the issue of Zimbabwe where there are continued egregious human rights abuses being committed by the 

Mugabe regime. Your resolution put us clearly on record in opposition to and deploring those actions. 

Mr. Chairman, President Omar Hassan Bashir has proven that 

he considers the people of Darfur to be merely pawns in a game 

that he is playing with the international community. Even as his 

representative is sending a letter to the U.N. Secretary-General accepting the heavy support package that is supposed to lead a joint 

U.N./AU protective force in the region, we are receiving news report that his government is flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur under the disguise of U.N. and AU aircraft in 

order to fuel the conflict. 

The gulf between Bashir’s actions and his words is as wide as the 

callous attitude I encountered when I met with him personally in 

Khartoum, and had a very contentious meeting with him, and the 

disparate, deeply grave look on the faces of the refugees I met with 

in Mukhtar and in Kalma Camp in Darfur. 

It is time for the global community to stop considering Bashir as 

a legitimate negotiating partner, and to start treating him as he 

is—the despotic tyrant responsible for more or upwards of 450,000 

deaths and 2 million people displaced from their homes in Darfur. 

That is in addition to the 2 million dead and 4 million who were 

displaced during the war in the south. 

I welcome President Bush’s announcement yesterday that our 

Government will be taking several new steps if the Sudanese Government does not meet its commitments. I strongly associate myself with your remarks, Mr. Chairman, which I heard, as well as 

that of the ranking member and other members of this committee, 
8

and I urge the President to make this window of opportunity extremely short for Bashir to finally follow through on his word. 

Bashir has long since lost any entitlement to 1 day more, and 1 

day more is absolutely necessary; more people die each and every 

day that we procrastinate. 

Finally, in order to be effective, the efforts of the U.S. must be 

joined by those of the international community. We must all decide 

that now is the time to end this crisis. Our partners on the U.N. 

Council should agree immediately, and I think my friend Ed Royce 

makes a very good point about China. 

China has enabled the genocide for years. Not only have they 

provided the money and the wherewithal and some sense of legitimacy, the money that they have derived from oil and the weapons 

that they have provided have made them complacent in these 

crimes against humanity. It is my hope, too, that the Arab community will finally at long last step up to the plate and say no to this 

ongoing genocide. 

Again, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership 

on this important issue. 

Chairman LANTOS. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. 

I would like to ask all of my colleagues if they have prepared 

statements to enter them into the record so we may now turn to 

our extraordinarily distinguished and qualified witnesses. These 

are very committed, strong, and determined people who have 

braved the cross-fire in Sudan to bring real relief to the worst surviving victims, to negotiate a peace, and to raise the global profile 

of this horrible matter. 

Many of you know our first witness, Mia Farrow, as an extraordinarily accomplished and exciting and successful actress, but she 

has emerged as an important advocate for human rights worldwide. Her work as a special United Nations International Children’s Force Goodwill Ambassador has brought much-needed attention to the genocide in Darfur. Most recently she has undertaken 

a campaign to press the Government of China to halt its support 

for the Sudanese regime, a big trading partner for the Chinese. 

She has brilliantly tied the issue of the Beijing Olympics next 

year and to China’s desire to police its image ahead of the game, 

branding them the ‘‘Genocide Olympics.’’ Last week, thanks in no 

small part to her pressure, the assistant foreign minister of China 

called for Sudan to accept U.N. peacekeepers. 

Ms. Farrow, we are delighted to have you and you may proceed 

any way you choose. 

STATEMENT OF MS. MIA FARROW, ACTRESS, UNICEF 

GOODWILL AMBASSADOR 

Ms. FARROW. I am obviously not an expert. We have them here, 

and I look forward to hearing from them. I have, however, traveled 

into the region of Darfur four times as a UNICEF Ambassador, 

once on my own. I went into Darfur first in 2004 as a UNICEF Ambassador, as a mother, as an actress. I came out of Darfur a mother 

and a witness. 

The mantra of my family is with knowledge comes responsibility. 

I have since 2004 done my very best to inform myself and to find 

out what my utmost is because nothing less than my utmost would 
9

be the appropriate response to what I learned in Darfur and to applying myself toward ending the suffering there. 

I have, and with permission, some photographs that I would like 

to show. I think it is appropriate to bring some people into the 

room who, unfortunately, could not be here at the hearing today, 

the people of Darfur. These are photographs that I have taken over 

my four trips into the region. 

First, though, I think my function here is to underline the precariousness of the humanitarian situation in Darfur as well as 

keep the focus on China, but this first. In a joint statement on December 17, unprecedented statement from all 14 U.N. agencies 

working in Sudan, we heard—I will just read a few excerpts to 

place the context of the photographs that you will see. 

In the face of growing insecurity and danger to communities and 

AID workers, the U.N. and its humanitarian partners have effectively been holding the line for the survival and protection of millions. In the last 6 months alone more than 250,000 people have 

been displaced by fighting, many of them fleeing for the second or 

third time. Villages have been burned, looted and arbitrarily 

bombed and crops and livestock destroyed. Sexual violence against 

women is occurring at alarming rates. This situation is unacceptable; nor can we accept the violence increasingly directed against 

humanitarian workers. Twelve relief workers have been killed in 

the past 6 months, more than in the previous 2 years combined. 

The humanitarian community cannot indefinitely assure the survival of the population in Darfur if insecurity continues. Solid guarantees for the safety of civilians and humanitarian workers is urgently needed, at the same time those who have committed the attacks, harassment, abduction, intimidations, robbery, and injury to 

civilians, including IDPs, humanitarian workers, and other noncombatants, must be held accountable. 

If not, the humanitarian agencies and NGOs will not be able to 

hold the fragile line that to date has provided relief and a measure 

of protection to some 4 million people in Darfur affected by this 

tragic conflict. 

If I could have the first picture. I don’t know how this works precisely. The first image will be of a map. Could I turn down the 

sound? 

I take these images from university to university, campus to 

campus, event to event, with the hope that with knowledge will 

come responsibility. 

If we can see the map clearly, the Darfur region there in the 

western part of Sudan, it borders Chad, and we have seen what 

has happened to Chad, what has been feared and is now happening. My first visit to Chad was in November. It was a week 

when 60 non-Arab villages were attacked by Sudanese Arab militia, now also known as Janjaweed who have joined with Chadian 

Arab militia in a massive rampage of human destruction. Sixty villages, countless people had fled their burning villages, and I found 

them clustered under trees dazed, terrified, without food or water, 

and surrounded by their attackers. 

I recently returned from a second trip to eastern Chad and a 3-

week tour that included the Central African Republic, which is also 

profoundly affected. We have a disparate plea from the Central Af-
10

rican Republic saying world food program can scarcely meet the 

needs of the almost quarter of a million people so recently displaced, and hiding in terror in the bush where I found them. 

May I have the next image, please? This is a typical village I 

took from a helicopter crossing Darfur. You see the fruit trees, the 

walled gardens where there would be animals, and crops, a way of 

life. 

The next picture, please. This, in 2006, the same area approaching Gereida IDP camp, I believe the same village, an all too familiar sight as one crosses Darfur now. 

The next picture, please. A burned village, this village of 

Lavoutique and very near the Darfur border in eastern Chad. 

The next picture, please. Mr. Joseph Omar, I met him, he had 

returned to the still smoldering ashes of his village in search of 

anything that could be of service that he could bring to his family 

that had sought shelter, and they did not know where, under trees 

somewhere. 

The next picture, please. This is how some 2.5 million people are 

now forced to live. This is Kalma Camp in west Darfur. When I 

was there in June, the population of 90,000, I believe that has now 

swollen to some 120,000. Not a tree nor a blade of grass. The U.N. 

assessment team I met while I was on that trip to Darfur, and that 

was nearly a year ago, said the deforestation around an average 

camp was 10 miles, meaning a woman must walk for 20 miles to 

gather food. Food as we now know—I don’t mean food—I mean firewood. Firewood is needed to cook the sorghum provided by the 

World Food Program. It requires some 2 hours cooking on an open 

fire. Firewood has therefore become not only crucial means of survival, but a kind of currency within the camps. 

The next picture. This Gereida, the largest camp in Darfur. 

Again in June, population 147,000. I believe that population is now 

swollen. It is the largest camp in the world. 

Next picture, please. This is Zamzam in north Darfur, population 

50,000. Here there was one doctor. Humanitarians were evacuated 

from the larger camp because of an attack in Nyala, and I believe 

there are only seven now addressing the needs of 147,000 people. 

No doctor. 

Next picture, please. Women on their mission of wood gathering. 

The women gather the wood, well, traditionally, but also because 

if the men were to attempt such a thing, they would be killed, and 

the women risk rape, and it is an overwhelming and common occurrence on this task of wood gathering, a daily task for the women 

of Darfur and eastern Chad. 

The next photograph, please. This is a woman gathering wood in 

north Darfur, and I don’t know if you can see on your screen there 

is an Antonov bomber crossing the skies behind her. I took this in 

2004. 

The next photograph, please. This is a child, a victim of torture 

from Kalma Camp. There could be a little bit of sound if you would 

like. 

The next picture, please. The women of Kalma Camp. The 

woman in the center, her name is Halima, and she gave me this 

gre-gre that I wear today. She described the day her village was 

attacked. She had been holding her infant son when the Janjaweed 
11

came at her village from two sides, and she felt compelled to tell 

me how she had struggled to hold onto her son as if somehow had 

she held him better he might not have been torn from her arms 

as he was and banding in front of her eyes. 

Three of her five children were similarly killed on that day, and 

her husband too. Janjaweed, she told me, she cut them and threw 

them into the well. Halima clasped my hands and said tell people 

what is happening here. Tell them we will all be slaughtered. Tell 

them we need help. My moral mandate was clear if it hadn’t been 

from that moment on. 

The next picture, please. This is a child that is very much in my 

mind always, 10 years old, and you can see the pride in her face. 

She was so proud that she had saved the life of her baby sister 

there on her back on the day their parents were killed. When their 

village was attacked by Janjaweed, the 10-year-old had covered the 

baby with her own body, but the baby has not made a single sound 

since the day their parents was killed, and their village destroyed. 

It is a completely traumatized population after more than 4 

years of living in terror. I don’t know how long the people of Darfur 

can sustain this level of terror. From across Darfur, everywhere the 

plea was the same. Even above the plea for more water, the wells, 

food which was insufficient, the plea for protection was above all 

from all over Darfur, echoed from every camp and village, from 

every woman I spoke to. 

Next picture, please. This is a woman; we call her Howa, because 

she is a victim of rape. She described being raped by 20 to 30 men 

who put cigarettes out upon her face while that was happening. 

I have to say there are times when I simply could not raise my 

camera to my eye. Yet I also felt, and I feel today that it should 

not be easy to turn away from this suffering. 

The next picture, please. Women showed me brandings they suffered while they were being raped. Tendons sliced, and how they 

have to hobble now when they go to fetch the wood. 

Next picture, please. This is SLA Mini Minawi. By the time I 

reached Darfur—this is in north Darfur—the SLA Mini Minawi 

had joined the Janjaweed in committing the same kinds of atrocities. 

Next picture, please. Also SLA Mini Minawi. 

Next picture, please. Women, north Darfur, they had assembled 

to request a well. 

Next, please. A Janjaweed. 

Next picture, please. A Janjaweed now have vehicles and rocketpropelled grenades. They are heavily armed and capable, and 

thanks to the Government of Sudan. These children I met very 

near the Darfur border in eastern Chad. Honestly, from the Darfur 

border to the town of Goz Beida in that week that 60 villages were 

attacked, under trees I found people just dazed, clustered, hungry, 

terrified, surrounded by their attackers, not knowing which way to 

turn, no protection anywhere. They were literally running when I 

encountered them. 

Next picture, please. To me this is the picture of grief. It is an 

older woman who had lost everything. She was under a tree without even a mat to sit on. Her village had been burned and too 

many had been killed. 
12

Next picture, please. This woman, her three children had been 

thrown into her own burning home. She was just there dazed, and 

I think empty of tears. 

Our next picture, please. No food 9 days this child near the 

Darfur border in Chad. 

Next picture, please. People were—sometimes they were able to 

carry things on their back as they fled when their villages were attacked. 

Next picture, please. And other times they had nothing, just 

their children that they were able to bring, overwhelmingly, women 

and children. 

Next picture, please. And here you see a group without even a 

mat to sit on or a pot to cook on. No grain, no water, no prospects. 

Next, please. The children speak more eloquently than I could 

possibly—not doing well. 

Next picture, please. In the tiny Goz Beida medical center I 

found three men, their eyes gouged out by Janjaweed. 

Next picture, please, next, and next. A little boy, 13 years old, 

who stood with his elders to protect his village with his bow and 

arrow. No match for Janjaweed with their Kalashnikovs and machine guns. This child did not survive. 

The next picture, please. A wounded child. 

Next picture, please. A woman who had been thrown into her 

burning hut. The Goz Beida medical center just has five rooms and 

one doctor, and the wounded just poured right across the sand as 

far as I could see. I met this woman among the wounded. 

Next picture, please. Here she had been bandaged but flies 

were—I could only give a mosquito net. Flies were covering her 

wounds and they were clearly infected. 

Next picture, please. A young mother, she was actually praying. 

Next picture. A little girl, it could be any of our children, and the 

children of Darfur, the philosophy of my family, and we are not 

most of us related by blood, but by something much deeper, by love 

and deepest commitment, and our belief is that we are members 

of a human family, a larger human family, and this could easily 

be my child. The orange hair is a sign of malnutrition and I just 

urge everyone to think of the children who are suffering in Darfur, 

in eastern Chad and Central African Republic, and in such peril. 

They are our children. 

Next picture, please. Next. This child had lost both parents and 

the village attacked 3 days before. 

Next, please. Next, please. A dying child. 

Next. A family but no father and no mother. 

Next, please. Next, please. I call this a child of hope because in 

that child’s face is all the promise of the future and everything she 

deserves, and if ever I feel dispirited that after 4 years no protection has come for Darfur’s people, I think of this child, and I think 

as long as one child is surviving in Darfur, then it is incumbent 

upon all of us to do our utmost, and I don’t know how many would 

have been killed had there not been the focus that has now come 

to Darfur. 

Next picture, please. Children of Central African Republic who 

emerged from the bush when I was traveling on a dirt road. We 

had not encountered a single car for 4 days, and out of the bush 
13

I was told that if they could see that we had no machine guns, we 

were unarmed, that perhaps the populations whose village—we 

were numbed by seeing the burned village, burned village after 

burned village—that if they saw that we were unarmed, perhaps 

they would emerge, and indeed after perhaps 20 minutes, two of 

them, then 10, then 50, then 100, then 400 people came from out 

of the bush in remnants of clothes, and just gray with dust, and 

mothers said, ‘‘Our children are dying here,’’ and there are hundreds and thousands of people in Central African Republic that 

must not be forgotten. 

In Darfur, we have now 13,000 AID workers who are trying to 

sustain the lives of more than 4 million people, but in Central African Republic, we don’t have that assistance, and we hope that they 

are not forgotten when we speak of Darfur and the violence that 

has spilled in Central African Republic. 

Next picture, please. And no one is safe. 

Next picture, please. And the final plea, overwhelmingly the plea 

for protection, and real protection. What is so needed is to get that 

AU/U.N. hybrid force deployed immediately. The agreement for 

Phase 2 is not a substitute for Khartoum’s full compliance for the 

hybrid force and for the Phase 3 effective protection force that is 

so desperately needed, and of course, a comprehensive peace agreement that is deemed to be just by the people of Darfur has to be 

in the works, and the experts here, I am sure, will address those 

crucial issues. 

Thank you very much. 

Chairman LANTOS. Well, Mia, we are deeply in your debt. It is 

perhaps not a coincidence that your powerful and moving testimony is taking place the day we remember the Holocaust, and I 

think all of us share a very powerful sense of responsibility of preventing this genocide from continuing an additional single day. We 

are most grateful to you. 

I would like to call on an internally renowned human rights activist, John Prendergast, who has written extensively on Africa. He 

has appeared as a TV commentator on all the major networks, and 

produced shows on some of the most difficult conflicts in Africa 

such as the Congo. He served as an advisor to the White House 

and the State Department under President Clinton’s administration, and he is currently a senior advisor to the International Crisis 

Group where his work on Darfur has helped stir a powerful international outcry. 

He and actor Don Cheadle authored a recent book, Not on our 

Watch, about the Darfur genocide. We look forward to hearing from 

you, Mr. Prendergast. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, SENIOR ADVISOR, 

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Thank you very much esteemed members of 

this committee for allowing Darfur to enter this hallowed hall 

through the eyes of Mia Farrow. This committee has so many 

champions for Sudan’s people. I dearly wish you all could be placed 

in charge of United States foreign policy to Sudan for a few 

months, the Constitution of the United States notwithstanding. 
14

Mr. Chairman, barking without biting is the diplomatic equivalent of giving comfort to the enemy. Each time the United Nations 

Security Council and this administration has issued an empty 

threat over the past 3 years and not enforced it the Khartoum regime has been emboldened, escalated its obstruction and destruction in Darfur. If there is a Guinness Book of World Records entry 

for most threats issued with no follow up, Darfur is likely setting 

a new standard. 

After living there and studying and working in Sudan for the last 

22 years, and having negotiated directly with Sudan’s leadership 

during my time with the Clinton administration, I can tell you that 

the regime no longer takes our speeches and our threats and our 

deadlines seriously, and will continue to flout international will 

until there are specific and escalating costs to their actions. 

The preponderance of evidence shows during the last 18 years of 

this government’s military rule the regime in Khartoum has only 

responded to focused international and regional pressure. Three 

times during these last 18 years the regime has reversed its position on a major policy issue, and each of those three times the 

change resulted from intensive diplomacy backed by serious pressure, two ingredients sadly and shockingly missing from the responsive Darfur today despite the stirring speeches. 

The three cases are the regime’s support for international terrorist organizations during the early to mid 1990s, its support for 

slave-raiding militias in southwestern Sudan during the 1990s, and 

its prosecution of a war in southern Sudan in the middle of the 

country that took 2 million Sudanese lives. 

I placed the evidence of these policy changes in the three cases 

in an appendix to this testimony, and ask that it and the entire 

statement be placed in the record. 

Chairman LANTOS. Without objection. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Thank you. Once the recent policy history, I 

believe, is reviewed and the real lessons learned from the 18 deadly 

years this regime has been in power, the answers become clear and 

they become obvious. Continuing to ignore or defy these historical 

precedents may condemn hundreds of thousands of Darfurians to 

death in the year 2007. 

What we need now is a firm deadline and a real Plan B. First, 

the credible time line is absolutely crucial. One empty threat after 

another must be replaced with a firm deadline that will trigger 

automatic action. I join with the Save Darfur Coalition in calling 

for May 1 to be that deadline. Though further delay is in fact abhorrent, there is a silver lining. The Bush administration’s current 

Plan B, the measures that President Bush was going to announce 

yesterday at the Holocaust Museum is in adequate and must be 

buttressed in very specific ways. There is time. 

May 1 thus gives the administration a little bit extra time to prepare a real Plan B, a set of punitive measures that have teeth. A 

real Plan B, I think, would have four immediate components. 

The first, target Sudanese officials multilaterally, not unilaterally. We should work to impose U.N. Security Council targeted 

sanction, the asset freezes and travel bans against the people that 

are responsible for crimes against humanity in Darfur. The 

planned U.S. effort now would target three individuals. That num-
15

ber must be much higher and continue to widen with each atrocity 

perpetrated. It is a scarlet letter, a spotlight that goes on the shirts 

of those people, and that we will not turn it off until they stop the 

deeds they are committing in Darfur. 

Second, we need to target Sudanese companies multilaterally. 

We need to work to impose U.N. Security Council sanctions against 

the list of Sudanese companies that we already target unilaterally 

by the United States that the Sudanese are circumventing, and establish a U.N. panel of experts to further investigate which companies are conducting the business necessary to underwrite Sudan’s 

war machine. 

Third, we need to press international banks to stop doing business with Sudan. Just like we are doing with Iran, United States 

officials should engage with a number of international banking institutions to stop doing business with Sudan, with the implication 

being that if such business continues, then all transactions by 

those banks with United States commercial entities would be 

banned. 

Forth and finally, we need to support the ICC indictment process 

though this administration will not sign the International Criminal 

Court treaty, we understand that, we can provide information and 

declassified intelligence to the International Criminal Court to help 

accelerate the process of building indictments against senior officials in the regime that you have talked about and that Congressman Royce talked about for their role in orchestrating mass atrocities in Darfur. The U.S. has the most such intelligence and should 

come to agreement with the ICC with what information to share. 

To supplement this real Plan B, we need a diplomatic surge. It 

is not enough for the United States to have a part-time special 

envoy and occasional visits by high-level officials. We need to have 

a team of diplomats working full time around the clock and globally to secure the following prerequisites for Sudan stabilization. 

We need to be supporting rebel unity around a common platform 

for negotiation. We need to be supporting a real peace process that 

can get us a Darfur Peace Agreement that addresses the root 

causes that Mia talked about. We need to support diplomatic support for addressing the spillover impacts in Chad and the Central 

African Republic that have been so destructive. 

We need to support the comprehensive peace agreement that 

Congressman Payne talked about that ended the North/South War 

but is at a grave risk of deteriorating and falling apart with absent 

additional support and attention. We need to help support the process to end the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the 

Government of Uganda because the LRA is part of the dynamic 

that is churning and undermining stability in Sudan, and we need 

to support international diplomacy for an effective civilian protection force that everyone here agrees with very, very strongly. 

Finally, as the chairman pointed out and as demonstrated by the 

successful case studies, the three case studies that I cited earlier, 

the credible threat of military action will help alter the calculations 

of Khartoum officials very rapidly. 

In terms of coercive military measures, there are two for which 

accelerated planning processes should commence now within the 

NATO framework, with the understanding that any action would 
16

at least seek United Nations Security Council approval and only 

act in its absences, as Congressman Royce said, if the situation deteriorated dramatically and all other avenues had been explored. 

The first is obviously the no-fly zone. The second is non-consensual force deployment, ground force deployment. If you are going 

to talk about a no-fly zone, it is irresponsible to not also prepare 

for a ground intervention in the event that Khartoum cuts off humanitarian aid and attacks IDP camps if we in fact install that nofly zone. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, there is hope. The growing constituency in the United States focused on countering the atrocities 

in Darfur is expanding by the day, led by students, by Jewish 

groups, by Christian groups, and by African American organizations all over this country. Elected officials who ignore this crescendo of activism, though it is not usually on the front page, do 

so at their own peril. 

This Congress, and particularly this committee, I will finally say 

will do a great service to all of history’s genocide victims on this 

day of the Holocaust remembrance if you make it politically costly 

for this administration or any future one to stand idly by while 

atrocities such as those in Darfur are being committed. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prendergast follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, SENIOR ADVISOR, 

INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of this esteemed Committee, for the opportunity to share my views on the world’s hottest war and what our role should 

be in ending it. 

Yesterday morning, the auditorium at the Holocaust Museum was tense with anticipation. President Bush was there to make what was to be a major announcement 

on U.S. policy towards Darfur. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was invited to be with 

him, underscoring the gravity of the event. And the administration had been leaking 

for months about its threatened ‘‘Plan B’’ policy. 

Had the refugees and displaced Darfurians in Mia Farrow’s photographs been sitting in the audience yesterday, their disappointment would have been crushing. Instead of finally announcing what every activist and member of Congress has been 

demanding for the last three years—measures that would punish the regime for its 

orchestration of what the Bush administration repeatedly calls genocide—President 

Bush instead issued another set of dramatic warnings, another threat without a 

specific deadline for action. 

Barking without biting is the diplomatic equivalent of giving comfort to the 

enemy. In this case, though, it may be even worse. Each time the administration 

has issued an empty threat over the past three years and then not enforced it, the 

Khartoum regime has been emboldened to escalate its destruction and obstruction 

in Darfur. If there is a Guinness Book of World Records entry for most threats 

issued with no follow up, Darfur is likely setting a new standard. 

After living in, studying or working in Sudan for the last 22 years, and having 

negotiated directly with Sudan’s leadership during the Clinton administration, I can 

tell you that the regime no longer takes our speeches and our threats seriously, and 

will continue to flout international will until there are specific and escalating costs 

to their actions. 

I do not tell that to you on a whimsical hope that it might be true. In these matters, I would much prefer to rely on empirical evidence. The preponderance of evidence shows that during the 18 years of its military rule, the regime in Khartoum 

has only responded to focused international and regional pressure. Three times the 

regime has reversed its position on a major policy issue, and each of those three 

times the change resulted from intensive diplomacy backed by serious pressure—

two ingredients sadly and shockingly missing from the response to Darfur today, despite the stirring speeches. The three cases are the regime’s support for international terrorist organizations during the early to mid 1990s; its support for slave-
17

raiding militias in southwestern Sudan throughout the 1990s; and its prosecution 

of a war in southern Sudan that took two million Sudanese lives. 

I place the evidence of policy change in these three cases in an appendix to this 

testimony, and ask that it and the entire statement be placed in the record. Once 

the recent policy history is reviewed and the real lessons learned from the 18 deadly 

years this regime has been in power, the answers become clear and obvious. Continuing to ignore or defy these historical precedents may condemn hundreds of thousands of Darfurians to death. 

WANTED: A FIRM DEADLINE AND A REAL PLAN B

Nearly everyone agrees on the necessary ingredients for the stabilization of 

Darfur:

• a peace agreement that addresses the remaining issues of the non-signatory 

rebels and broader Darfurian society; and

• an effective civilian protection force, the starting point for which is the ‘‘hybrid’’ AU–UN force which the entire world supports, except the Khartoum regime.

The disagreement begins around how to secure those two critical peace and protection objectives. These are the first two ‘‘P’s’’ of what the ENOUGH Campaign 

calls the ‘‘3 P’s’’ of crisis response. The third P is punishment: imposing a cost for 

the commission of mass atrocities and building leverage through these measures for 

securing the peace and protection objectives. 

First, a credible timeline is crucial. One empty threat after another must be replaced with a firm deadline which will trigger automatic action. I join with the Save 

Darfur Coalition in calling for May 1 to be that deadline. The U.S. told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that U.S. and UN Security Council sanctions would be 

delayed two to four weeks from the Secretary General’s April 2 request to give diplomacy more time. 

Though further delay is abhorrent, there is a silver lining. The Bush administration’s current Plan B, the measures that President Bush was going to announce yesterday at the Holocaust Museum, is inadequate and must be buttressed in very specific ways. May 1 thus gives the administration enough time to prepare a real Plan 

B—a set of punitive measures with teeth. 

Most of the measures the administration was prepared to announce were full of 

implementation holes and too minimalist to make a major impact on the calculations of regime officials in Khartoum, or on intransigent rebel leaders. After ten 

years of U.S. unilateral sanctions, the Sudanese government and its commercial 

partners have easily figured out how to circumvent any unilateral U.S. measures. 

With little support and cooperation from the CIA because of our close counter-terrorism cooperation with the very same Sudanese officials who are architects of the 

Darfur policy, U.S. policy-makers are largely in the dark about how the Sudanese 

government transacts its oil sector business, and can not identify most of the major 

Sudanese companies owned by regime officials and doing business throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We simply don’t know the names of the dozens of 

subsidiaries of existing Sudanese companies that can conduct transactions using 

U.S. dollars with total impunity. 

What is needed is an intelligence surge from the CIA and an enforcement surge 

from the Treasury Department. Without new staff, none of the measures will be 

able to be enforced with the existing burdens related to other sanctions regimes. Intelligence and enforcement surges will at least bring the U.S. up to speed on who 

is doing what and how to effectively implement any punitive measures. And without 

a clear strategy of rapidly escalating pressure through a variety of economic and 

legal measures, then the deadly status quo will no doubt prevail. 

The point is not simply to punish for punishment’s sake, although if the Bush administration’s characterization of the atrocities in Darfur as genocide were meaningful, it would fulfill the Genocide Convention’s requirement to punish the crime. Punitive measures are essential to building the leverage necessary to gain Khartoum’s 

compliance for a durable peace deal for Darfur and the deployment of an effective 

international force to protect civilians. Similar measures should be imposed against 

leading rebel commanders and political leaders if they are deemed to have committed atrocities or are obstructing real and balanced peace efforts, which so far do 

not exist. 

Any of the measures that the Bush administration is considering will be exponentially more effective if they are done multilaterally. The U.S. government already 

has strong unilateral sanctions in place against Sudan, barring U.S. companies from 

doing business with the National Congress Party (though allowing U.S. businesses 
18

to work with the Government of South Sudan), freezing assets in the U.S. of the 

Sudanese government and some Sudanese companies and individuals, and blocking 

financial transactions of companies registered in Sudan. These measures, enacted 

by the Clinton Administration in 1997, did affect the calculations of the regime in 

pursuit of policy objectives at the time, but have since run their course as the Sudanese regime circumvents U.S. institutions in its commercial dealings. Therefore, if 

these measures were applied multilaterally and expanded they would have a much 

bigger impact on the pocketbooks of those responsible for crimes against humanity. 

Moreover, the Government of Sudan will have a much more difficult time scoring 

propaganda points when the U.S. is not acting alone. 

The following additional punitive measures could be implemented immediately 

without major cost, but it would require a strong diplomatic effort to rally multilateral support and significant increases in staffing and resources to ensure aggressive 

implementation.

• TARGET SUDANESE OFFICIALS MULTILATERALLY: Impose UN Security 

Council targeted sanctions—including asset freezes and travel bans—against 

persons responsible for crimes against humanity in Darfur. The existing U.S. 

effort would target three individuals. The number must be much higher. Such 

sanctions have been authorized in previous UNSC resolutions, and called for 

in multiple reports from the UNSC Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts.

• TARGET SUDANESE COMPANIES MULTILATERALLY: Impose UN Security Council sanctions against the list of Sudanese companies already targeted unilaterally by the U.S., and establish a UN Panel of Experts to further 

investigate which companies are conducting the business necessary to underwrite Sudan’s war machine.

• PRESS INTERNATIONAL BANKS TO STOP DOING BUSINESS WITH 

SUDAN: As is the case with Iran, U.S. officials should engage with a number 

of international banking institutions to strongly encourage them to stop doing 

business with Sudan, with the implication being that if such business continues then all transactions by those banks with U.S. commercial entities 

(and those of other countries willing to work with us) would eventually be 

banned.

• SUPPORT THE ICC INDICTMENT PROCESS: Provide information and declassified intelligence to the International Criminal Court to help accelerate 

the process of building indictments against senior officials in the regime for 

their role in orchestrating mass atrocities in Darfur. The U.S. has the most 

such intelligence and should come to agreement with the ICC about what information to share.

Punitive measures will demonstrate to those committing atrocities and those undermining peace efforts—whether a part of the government or a rebel group—that 

there will be a cost for their actions, and that cost will increase with each major 

human rights or diplomatic violation. 

WANTED: A SERIOUS DIPLOMATIC STRATEGY

It is not enough for the U.S. to have a part-time Special Envoy and occasional 

visits by high level officials. The U.S. needs to have a team of diplomats working 

full time and globally to secure the following prerequisites for Sudan’s stabilization:

• Support for the development of a common rebel negotiating position;

• Support for the negotiation of amendments to the Darfur Peace Agreement 

that address the reservations of the non-signatory rebels and broader 

Darfurian civil society;

• Support for addressing the spillover impacts of the conflict in Chad and the 

Central African Republic;

• Support for the implementation of the peace deal that ended the north-south 

war, a deal that is increasingly put at risk by Darfur’s deterioration;

• Support for negotiations to end the war between the Ugandan government 

and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which threatens to undermine peace 

in Sudan;

• Support for the international diplomacy (particularly with China, the EU, and 

the Arab League) necessary to see an effective civilian protection force deployed to Darfur, the starting point for which is the ‘‘hybrid’’ AU–UN proposal 

that Khartoum has not accepted. 

In order to be successful, the White House needs to put forward a clear strategy 

and exert itself in the interagency process to improve cooperation and coordination 
19

between the government agencies with roles to play in implementing it. Intelligence 

officials must be put at the disposal of the peace efforts; Treasury Department officials must be planning and staffing for expanding punitive measures; Defense Department officials must be engaged in accelerated contingency military planning 

with their colleagues in NATO, the EU and the UN; and the White House should 

be aggressively tasking various agencies and ensuring that the effort is taken as seriously as that of North Korea, Iran, and other important foreign policy priorities. 

WANTED: MILITARY PLANNING AND ACTION FOR PROTECTION

As demonstrated by the successful case studies cited in the Appendix to this testimony, the credible threat of military action will alter calculations of Khartoum officials. 

Newsflash: the emperor has no clothes. Until there is recognition of the nakedness 

of the current international strategy to protect civilians, Darfurians will have no 

hope of getting that protection. To that end, pressure must be escalated on Khartoum to accept phase three of the UN/AU hybrid plan, the UN has to be pressed 

to prepare for the immediate implementation of phases one and two, and the Bush 

administration’s budget (and the budgets of other major contributors to UN peacekeeping) must include adequate funding to resource the mission at full capacity. The 

President’s current budget request is insufficient and suggests skepticism on the 

part of the administration that the mission will ever deploy. Finally, every effort 

should be made to amend the mandate of the existing and future mission to be one 

that prioritizes the protection of civilians. 

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, one of the largest troop contributors to the 

current AU force, told me recently that the hybrid force could be effective if sufficient resources were provided with a clear mandate. Regarding civilian protection, 

he said, ‘‘We would take on additional tasks if we had the resources and the mandate.’’ In frustrating meetings about the impotent response of the broader international community, the Rwandan government has not ruled out withdrawing its 

troops from an increasingly toothless mission. ‘‘If we had more troops, the proper 

equipment, the right mandate, and a no-fly zone to paralyze the air force,’’ President 

Kagame told me, ‘‘We could protect the civilian population of Darfur.’’ With the 

proper logistics and resources, Kagame would be willing to consider doubling the 

number of Rwandan troops in Darfur, and concentrate them in areas immediately 

under threat. He said it was crucial that any military pressure be backed by a 

strong international policy of pressure and sanctions. ‘‘We don’t want to be left 

hanging,’’ he warned. 

This is why UN Security Council financing of an enhanced Darfur deployment is 

key. With a stronger mandate and more funding for the critical logistical and equipment gaps that exist currently, more African troops would be offered to the AU mission, and the force on the ground would be much more effective. 

The UN Security Council also should accelerate the deployment of protection elements to the border regions of Chad and Central African Republic, with mandates 

to protect at-risk communities, IDP settlements, and refugee camps. However, there 

is no military solution to Darfur and its spillover: a peace deal in Darfur is a prerequisite for a peacekeeping force to be effective and genuine political dialogue in 

Chad and CAR should accompany any deployment of international troops or police 

to those countries. Further, we must acknowledge that international troops or police 

in Chad and CAR will have little impact on the situation in Darfur. Only a political 

resolution in Darfur will help defuse the political tensions in Chad and CAR, not 

the other way around. 

In terms of coercive military measures, there are two for which accelerated planning processes should commence within the NATO framework, with the understanding that any action would at least seek UN Security Council approval and only 

act in its absence if the situation deteriorated dramatically and all other avenues 

had been explored.

• No Fly Zone: absent an enhanced ground component this option is questionable and fraught with potential negative side effects. However, it is important 

to press ahead with planning an enforcement mechanism for a No Fly Zone 

as the Sudanese regime continues to use aerial bombing as a central component of its military strategy and its civilian displacement objectives. If the 

mandate would be strengthened and more troops deployed to protect civilians, 

neutralizing the Sudanese regime’s one tactical advantage will be essential.

• Non-Consensual Force Deployment: although few nations are likely to volunteer in the present context, if the situation dramatically deteriorates in 

Darfur (large-scale pullout of aid agencies, increasing attacks on camps or AU 

forces, etc.), the debate could shift quickly and credible plans need to be in 
20

1The appendix and other sections of this testimony are adapted from ‘‘The Answer to Darfur,’’ 

a publication of the ENOUGH Campaign (www.enoughproject.org). 

place to move troops into the theater of war quickly with a primary focus on 

protecting vulnerable civilian populations.

Credible military planning should commence immediately for both options to demonstrate to Khartoum that decisive military action is possible in a short timeframe. 

Further planning should also be undertaken for the kinds of targeted military actions argued for by Congressman Donald Payne, Anthony Lake, and Susan Rice, 

and reinforced by Dr. Rice in her testimony last week in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This planning is both a practical necessity, and a means to build 

and utilize leverage against the regime. 

CONCLUSION

The U.S. must move away from its current policy of constructive engagement 

without leverage (with gentle persuasion being the preferred tool) to a more muscular policy focused on walking softly and carrying—and using—a bigger stick. 

Unfulfilled threats and appeals should be replaced quickly with punitive measures 

backing a robust peace and protection initiative. We may not know the names of 

the victims in Darfur, but we know the names of the orchestrators of the policy that 

led to their deaths. 

There is hope. The growing constituency in the U.S. focused on countering the 

atrocities in Darfur is expanding by the day, led by student, Jewish, Christian and 

African-American organizations. Elected officials who ignore this crescendo of activism—though not usually front page news—do so at their own peril. This Congress 

will do a great service to all of history’s genocide victims—on this day following the 

Holocaust Remembrance Day—if you make it politically costly for this administration, or any future one, to stand idly by while atrocities such as those in Darfur 

are being committed. 

APPENDIX

LESSONS FROM HISTORY: POLICIES THAT CHANGED KHARTOUM’S BEHAVIOR 1

Since the ruling National Congress Party (NCP—formerly the National Islamic 

Front) came to power in a 1989 military coup, sound policy choices by the international community have forced the regime to reverse abusive or threatening policies on three separate occasions. The three cases examined here are the regime’s 

support for international terrorism, its pursuit of a military solution in Southern 

Sudan, and its unleashing of militias that led to the resurgence of slavery. Understanding why regime officials made these U-turns is critical to constructing a successful strategy for Darfur. 

1. Support for Terrorism 

As soon as it usurped control of the country in 1989, the NCP began to cash in 

on its alliances with terrorist organizations (including al-Qaeda), inviting them to 

Khartoum, allowing their leaders and operatives to travel on Sudanese passports, 

and providing space for them to develop safe havens and training camps. Osama 

bin Laden himself lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996. Today, however, the U.S. considers Sudan to be a valuable partner in the global war against terrorism. 

There were two phases in their shift from a major state sponsor of terror to a cooperative partner in the global counter-terrorism effort. First, during the latter 

years of the Clinton administration, the regime began to abandon most of its alliances with and support for terrorist groups. The regime kicked bin Laden out of the 

country, turned over Carlos the Jackal, dismantled much of the al-Qaeda commercial infrastructure, revoked passports of terrorists, and shut down terrorist training 

camps. Second, during the period after 9/11, regime officials became much more cooperative with U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, providing information on suspects 

around the world based on their extensive links with these individuals and their 

networks. 

The question is why? What mixture of policies led the regime to drastically 

change tack—from supporting terrorist networks to actively sharing intelligence 

with the U.S. government? Three key tactics were at play: 

a) Aggressive Diplomacy 

The U.S. led diplomatic efforts in both phases to press the regime to change. 

Without such deep and extensive diplomatic engagement, both with regime officials 

and with other global counter-terrorism partners, other pressures would not have 
21

born fruit. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration worked assiduously 

through the UN Security Council and with its allies to place multilateral pressure 

on the Sudanese government to cut its ties to terrorist organizations. During this 

decade, the Bush administration has worked closely with the Khartoum regime to 

move beyond simply severing its links with terrorist groups to also providing intelligence on suspects. 

There was a dedicated clarity to both efforts. In the former case, Clinton administration officials demonstated that cooperation would result if a unified set of nations 

pressured the regime in Khartoum to break its links. In the latter case, the Bush 

administration closely engaged the regime and received some important information 

in return, according to intelligence officials. 

b) Multilateral Sanctions and Condemnation 

When the UN Security Council imposed a series of very light sanctions on the regime (restricting diplomatic travel of senior officials and international flights of Sudanese-owned aircraft) for its ongoing support for terrorism (the last straw being 

Sudan’s involvement in the assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa), Khartoum reacted immediately. NCP officials did not then—

and do not now—want scarlet letters placed on their shirts. They do not want the 

restrictions on their travel and assets spotlighting them as international pariahs. 

As history has shown, this regime responds to targeted punitive measures. 

c) U.S. Military Threats 

Though distasteful, especially against the current global backdrop of Iraq et al., 

it is important to revisit the effect of U.S. military threats on the regime’s calculations. The U.S. bombing of the al-Shifa factory in 1998 was not supported internationally, and further complicated U.S. efforts at supporting a peace deal in southern Sudan. However, it sent the signal to regime hardliners that the U.S. was willing to use force against Sudan if its interests were threatened. After 9/11 and the 

U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, memories of the al-Shifa bombing made the few choice 

comments from senior U.S. officials about whether Sudan should be the next target 

resonate even more strongly with regime officials. The NCP quickly intensified its 

intelligence cooperation efforts. The implication: coercive military force should not 

be ruled out as a means to achieve compliance with a rogue state like Sudan. 

2. Civil War in Southern Sudan 

Five times as many people died in Southern Sudan’s civil war than the highest 

estimates so far for Darfur. Indeed, the war between successive governments in 

Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) lasted five times as long 

as the NCP’s scorched earth counterinsurgency against rebels and civilians in 

Darfur. Major interests were at stake in the South: most of the country’s oil reserves 

are there, and the SPLA was much more powerful—militarily—than the rebels in 

Darfur. Nevertheless, in January 2005 the regime and the SPLA signed a major 

peace deal that effectively ended the war—for now. 

Again, the question is why? What mixture of policies led the regime to stop prosecuting the bloody war and sign a peace deal? 

a) Rebel Unity 

Perhaps the most important reason for Khartoum’s reversal was the unification 

of a badly splintered rebellion. In 1991, Khartoum had helped engineer a deadly 

split in the SPLA. It took years of southern Sudanese reconciliation efforts and extensive U.S. diplomacy to finally pull the SPLA back together. Once they posed a 

serious military challenge to the regime that brought about a stalemate on the battlefield that, in turn, made an accord possible. Under the late John Garang’s leadership, the SPLA was developing alliances with Sudanese opposition movements in 

the north and what was believed to be simply a ‘‘north-south civil war’’ was transforming into a revolution of the periphery against the center. The military threat 

posed by that unity, when combined with international pressure and high-level engagement, pushed the regime into genuine negotiations with the SPLA. 

b) Intense and Sustained International Diplomacy 

The peace process which resolved this war was a product of extensive diplomatic 

efforts led by Washington over two administrations, bringing together the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the regional organization for the Horn 

of Africa, with a tight coalition of international actors, including the UN and key 

governments. There was one process, led by an African envoy, and closely backed 

by a leverage-wielding quartet of states: the U.S., UK, Italy and Norway. Khartoum 

was not allowed to ‘‘forum-shop’’ for another process in order to divide the internationals, despite the best efforts of Cairo and Tripoli. This model has proven to be 
22

effective in Sudan and elsewhere, but four years into the Darfur war it has not been 

replicated. 

c) White House Engagement 

President Bush and key cabinet members were personally supportive of the peace 

process. They made calls, sent letters, and met key combatants at critical junctures. 

The administration also made an exception to its usual distaste for envoys and 

named an influential former senator, John Danforth, as its Special Envoy to bring 

heft to the process. Khartoum got the message. 

d) Christians and Congress 

Two U.S. groups were instrumental in driving the peace process to its successful 

conclusion. Conservative Christian groups and a number of highly motivated and invested members of Congress demanded action from the administration. They also 

provided U.S. diplomats with additional leverage with the Sudanese government by 

demanding more radical measures to which U.S. officials could point as possible consequences of the Sudanese regime’s intransigence. 

e) Divestment 

One of the early tools that American activist networks employed was a citizens’ 

campaign—initiated by Smith College Professor Eric Reeves—to demand that state 

and university pension fund holders sell their stock in Canadian oil company Talisman, which was a primary investor in Sudan’s oil sector. A concurrent effort in Congress threatened to de-list any company on the various U.S. stock exchanges that 

was conducting business to the benefit of the Sudanese regime. This form of indirect 

pressure influenced investment decisions and increased the potential cost to the 

NCP if it failed to make peace with the SPLA. 

3. Slave Raiding 

In the 1990s, one of the regime’s principal war tactics was to support ethnic-based 

Arab militias in attacking the villages and people of non-Arab Dinka descent, a precursor to its current support for the janjaweed militias in Darfur. Khartoum’s proxy 

militias were ‘‘paid’’ in the form of whatever booty they stole during their attacks. 

The militias captured Dinka Southerners by the thousands and enslaved them, fostering a modern day market for human beings. By the end of the 1990s, the raids 

had stopped and most of the slave trade was shut down. 

Yet again, the question is why? What mixture of policies led the regime to stop 

its support for the militias and effectively end the state-supported slave trade? 

Three factors combined to bring about this change. 

a) Global Campaigning against Slavery 

Across the U.S. and Europe, anti-slavery and human rights organizations relentlessly shone a spotlight on the heinous practice and its facilitators in Khartoum. 

Through a variety of awareness raising tools—including protests and arrests in 

front of the Sudan embassy, buying the freedom of abductees (which was not without significant controversy), and fundraising drives by schoolchildren—the temperature was turned up on the regime for its role in supporting the resurgence of slavery. The global campaigning by civil society organizations and human rights activists around the world embarrassed the regime and forced it to re-think its war strategy. 

b) Vigorous Diplomacy 

U.S. and European diplomats strongly engaged the Sudan regime for its role in 

arming the militias. What often resulted was a good cop-bad cop strategy in which 

the U.S. publicly hammered the regime for its practices while the Europeans quietly 

but firmly pressed Khartoum on the issue. The combination, though it could have 

benefited from better coordination, allowed for the building of multilateral pressure 

against one of the regime’s central war strategies. 

c) U.S. Military Threats 

Near the end of the 1990s, U.S. officials examined possible initiatives to help protect civilians in Northern Bahr al-Ghazal, the region of Southern Sudan which experienced the heaviest slave raiding. Though the policy deliberations were confidential, they were leaked to the New York Times and were the subject of discussions 

between the SPLA and U.S. officials visiting Southern Sudan. Sudanese government 

officials were unnerved by these consultations, as any efforts to support the SPLA 

would potentially have given the rebels a tactical advantage, even if the objective 

was to protect civilian populations. Though the discussions were serious, the threats 

never materialized into actual decisions to provide assistance. The regime’s support 
23

for the offending militias ended, soon followed by the end of the practice of slave 

raiding.

Chairman LANTOS. Thank you very much for your powerful 

statement, Mr. Prendergast. 

I am please to call on Alex de Waal who is a leading thinker on 

Africa. He currently serves as a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University, and as Program Director at the Social 

Science Research Council in New York City. He has been focusing 

on Sudan as far back as the mid 1980s, when he was writing about 

the famine there for his thesis at Oxford University. Most recently, 

he served on the African Union mediation team for Darfur. 

We look forward to your comments, Mr. de Waal. 

Can you pull the microphone closer to you, please, and push the 

button. 

STATEMENT OF ALEX DE WAAL, PH.D., DIRECTOR, SOCIAL 

SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL, LECTURER, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. DE WAAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the 

privilege of being able to address this committee. 

I submitted a written testimony, and I won’t attempt to summarize it. 

Chairman LANTOS. It will be entered in the record without objection. 

Mr. DE WAAL. Thank you. I want to just make a few points. The 

first is that ‘‘ought’’ implies ‘‘can.’’ Our experience is that our leverage in Sudan is sadly limited. The capacity that we collectively, we 

the international community, especially the United States, have for 

making the Sudan Government act in certain ways is limited. 

Let me make a couple of comparisons of the situation today with 

10 years ago when some of the instances that my old friend and 

colleague John Prendergast was referring to occurred. 

Ten years ago the Sudan Government was regionally isolated. It 

did not have the support of Arab countries, especially because 

agents from Sudan had tried to assassinate the Egyptian President. It did not have the support of its neighbors, and the Ethiopian Government actually had several tank divisions in Sudanese 

territory threatening and actually capturing towns, and that was 

pressure that really forced the Sudan Government to change its 

ways. China was not on the scene in a significant way, and the national budget of the Sudan Government in the late 1990s was in 

the region of $900 million per year. 

Today, Sudan is not regionally isolated. There is no neighbor 

that is going to put a tank division on Sudanese soil. China has 

become a major supporter, and the national budget of the Sudan 

Government is $11.7 billion. 

So I would argue to start off with the Sudan Government feels 

a lot more confident today than it did 10 years ago, and consequently our leverage is comparably diminished. I would like to 

draw a couple of lessons from what was a very frustrating, painful, 

and often disillusioning experience in the African Union mediation 

for the Darfur peace talks over the last couple of years, and especially on the security track. 
24

My particular role was facilitating the discussions on the security 

arrangements exactly this time last year. We concluded, in fact, a 

year ago today. The first is I absolutely agree, and I think everybody agrees that a deployment of an effective peacekeeping force is 

essential, but let us not have inflated expectations about what that 

force can achieve. 

The 20,000 troops mandated by U.N. Security Council Resolution 

1706 was derived directly from the implementation plan that the 

team drew up in Abuja, including U.N. and United States military 

officers as AU officers. What that force could do according to that 

plan, according to the resources given to it were to monitor a cease 

fire, to monitor the ban on offensive military flights, and let me 

just make two small points. 

More than 1 year ago we were given evidence that the Sudanese 

Air Force was painting helicopters and aircraft with AU insignia. 

This was an act of perfidy that was brought to the attention of the 

African Union by, amongst others, myself, and we confronted the 

Sudan Government, and there is a paragraph on the Darfur Peace 

Agreement that specifically refers to this—I don’t have it in front 

of me but I can refer you to it—in which the Sudan Government 

undertook specifically that it would not undertake such acts of perfidy again. 

In addition, the Darfur Peace Agreement provides for the ground 

monitoring of the ban on offense military flights. It provides for 

monitors to be at airfields in order to ensure that no offensive military flight takes off. That has not been enforced but it is there already in the peace agreement. I, among others, made sure that 

that was written in and agreed to. 

So a force could do that, could actually monitor that. Enforcing 

it is a different question. It could monitor the measures to neutralize and disarm the Janjaweed. It could protect humanitarian 

supply routes, and it could monitor the disarmament—the demilitarization—the demilitarization of IDP camps with the agreement, 

consent, and cooperation of the parties. 

What such a force could not do, according to our military experts, 

including officers from the United States and the U.N., is it could 

not police Darfur. It could not disarm the Janjaweed. It could not 

protect the majority of civilians in the event of an eruption of violence. 

Now, we know the history of U.N. peacekeeping forces in that regard, and I think we must be realistic in that respect. A peace support operation is a support to a peace process, not a substitute for 

it. 

What has been lacking in this discussion, I think, is the development of a real concept of operations for such a force. A mandate 

gives it the limits on what it is entitled to do legally, the numbers 

and the armaments give it the capacity, but the concept of operations and the leadership provide it with a plan for how it will operate during the estimated 5 to 7 years—now let me repeat—5 to 

7 years for which such a force is likely to be needed. 

My second point is on the peace process. I absolutely agree with 

John Prendergast that unity among the rebels is desirable. I 

worked very hard to try and achieve that. Let me report that honestly I don’t think it is going to be achieved in the coming months, 
25

possibly not in the coming years. The rebels will remain disunited. 

Their leadership has been, frankly, disastrous. The government has 

very little reason, very little incentive to negotiate with them. Chad 

and Eritrea are meddling, and the mediation as it exists now has 

very little clout and very little credibility. 

But one thing we could do, we could contemplate is what actually 

was done a year ago in Abuja. The parties in Abuja were not seriously negotiating. Neither side was adjusting its position, and in 

response to that the African Union, partly at the prompting of the 

United States and the U.N., put a paper on the table. There are 

many problems with that paper, which we could go into, but it was 

a paper for discussion which ultimately became the text of the 

Darfur Peace Agreement. 

A year on we can see many flaws, many valid criticisms of that. 

Is not the time arising when we should actually return to the substance and actually put specific proposals, political proposals on the 

table, which we can be confident would be accepted by the rebels 

and actually shortcut what is likely to be a very painful, drawn out 

process of trying to corral these people together? Herding cats does 

not do justice to the difficulty of organizing such talks. 

Lastly, I would like to emphasize a Darfur Peace Agreement only 

makes sense if there is a comprehensive peace agreement that is 

working, that has the confidence of the Sudanese people. If the 

Darfurians see the CPA as a ceiling on their ambition or worse 

still, as a sinking ship, they have absolutely no reason to join it, 

and I think given the limited leverage, the need for good, accurate 

analysis and prioritization, I would argue very strongly that we 

must make the faithful implementation of the CPA, especially its 

measures for democratization, an absolute priority. 

I thank you very much for allowing me to be here. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. de Waal follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALEX DE WAAL, PH.D., DIRECTOR, SOCIAL SCIENCE

RESEARCH COUNCIL, LECTURER, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

PROSPECTS FOR PEACE IN DARFUR TODAY

Congressman Lantos, members of this Committee, 

It is a pleasure to be invited here to testify at this hearing and to present some 

of my views and analysis on the situation in Darfur, a part of the world that I knew 

intimately in the 1980s, and whose travails I have followed closely since then. 

I will focus my remarks on two major points. One is that Darfur today is different 

to the Darfur of 2003–04, when, on the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, 

the conscience of the world—and notably this House—was awoken to condemn the 

massacres, dispossession and rape as ‘‘genocide.’’ Many realities in Darfur have 

changed and we need an accurate appraisal and analysis of the situation if we are 

to take the right decisions. The crisis in Darfur has been characterized as ‘‘genocide,’’ as ‘‘war’’ and as ‘‘anarchy.’’ None of these descriptions does justice to the complexity of the situation and the changes in the political and military landscape, especially in the last year. I submit that in order for us to respond appropriately, it 

is important to recognize the realities—notably that Darfur today cannot be described as a conflict between Arabs and Africans. 

My second point is that the essential test of any policy for Darfur—or indeed 

Sudan—is that it should work. ‘‘Ought’’ implies ‘‘can’’: in framing our actions we 

should be aware of what can succeed. 

In that regard, I draw upon my experience as a member of the AU mediation 

team in Abuja, when I was tasked with mediating a comprehensive ceasefire for 

Darfur and convening a task force to draw up an implementation plan for AU or 

UN forces. We must be aware of the considerable limitations on what international 

forces, such as are proposed under UN Security Council Resolution 1706, can 

achieve in Darfur. What they can do is to monitor and selectively enforce a ceasefire 
26

including demilitarization of displaced camps and humanitarian access routes. What 

they cannot do is to police Darfur, disarm the Janjaweed or provide protection to 

the majority of Darfurian civilians in the event of an eruption of major violence. The 

proposed UN troop deployment could not fulfill these latter tasks, even with a workable ceasefire, and certainly cannot undertake them in the middle of ongoing hostilities. 

The current political alignment is not favorable for a rapid peace settlement for 

Darfur. Nonetheless, without the warring parties having confidence that there is 

progress towards such a settlement, the task of any international peacekeeping or 

protection force in Darfur will be infinitely harder. Our immediate aim should be 

a robust and monitorable ceasefire. In turn, a credible political peace process for 

Darfur requires putting Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement back on track, 

and restoring Sudanese confidence in that peace agreement. I urge the U.S. government to keep this primary aim clearly in focus. 

My Personal Involvement in Darfur 

I lived and worked in Darfur from 1985–87, when I conducted research for my 

PhD thesis. Of the villages and nomadic camps where I lived, three are completely 

destroyed—one of them occupied by Janjaweed—two are partly destroyed, one is a 

government garrison, and one a stronghold of the SLA, which was attacked and 

bombed by the government. Another—where I stayed as a guest of Sheikh Hilal 

Abdalla, father of Musa Hilal—is a camp for the Janjaweed. One day I hope to return to these places and document what has happened to the people I knew who 

lived in each of them. 

During the 1990s, and during the period of the peace talks between the Sudan 

government and the SPLM during 2001–04, I focused much of my energy on the 

question of the marginalized peoples of northern Sudan—including the Nuba, the 

Beja and the peoples of Blue Nile. International attention to the plight of the South 

tended to overlook these people, who on occasions were suffering from massacre, 

systematic rape and forced displacement every bit as horrendous as that inflicted 

on the people of Darfur during the peak of the counter-insurgency campaigns by 

government army and Janjaweed in 2003–04. I was concerned that the North-South 

focus of the Naivasha peace talks would leave the marginalized peoples of northern 

Sudan politically short-changed and vulnerable. I also followed Darfur and brought 

Darfurians into the various fora I helped organize, though their effective participation was always hampered by their internal divisions. 

When Darfur erupted into large-scale violent conflict in 2003 I was saddened and 

angered, but not entirely surprised. The pattern of the violence in Darfur replicates 

in most respects the experience of other Sudanese peripheries. In an article I wrote 

in 2004, entitled ‘‘Counterinsurgency on the cheap,’’ I described the atrocities as 

‘‘genocide by force of habit.’’ We can learn much about the conflict in Darfur by placing it in the context of the previous wars in Sudan and the sadly consistent methods 

used by the government of Sudan to pursue its war aims. 

I spent much of 2005 and 2006 as an advisor to Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, the African Union’s chief mediator for the Darfur conflict, dealing with many of the places 

and some of the people I knew from my years in Darfur. My principal role in the 

peace talks was facilitating the negotiations on security issues. The main focus of 

this was working on a text of a comprehensive ceasefire and final status security 

arrangements—a text that was subsequently enhanced in certain details by the efforts of Deputy Secretary Robert B. Zoellick and his team on May 2–4, 2006. I am 

happy to say that all the three leaders of the Darfur armed movements judged the 

security arrangements section of the Darfur Peace Agreement acceptable at that 

time, with the sole objection coming from Dr. Khalil Ibrahim, President of the Justice and Equality Movement, who demanded that his troops be paid salaries from 

the government budget during the interim period. 

My role also included overseeing an implementation task force, consisting of military officers from the UN and AU, who designed the ceasefire implementation modalities, a plan that in turn was the basis for the troop strengths and tasks envisioned in UN Security Council Resolution 1706, which calls for the dispatch of UN 

forces to Darfur. 

My final task in Abuja was to stay on when all the other members of the mediation team had left, in a last-ditch effort to persuade Abdel Wahid al Nur to join 

the peace agreement. I came close but did not succeed. 

How to Describe Darfur Today? 

Darfur’s nightmare continues. It is taking new forms. The violence today is different in both scale and nature to that of three years ago. Many fewer people are 

being killed than during the peak of atrocity in 2003–04, and many fewer are dying 
27

from hunger and disease. The humanitarian agencies have done a remarkably good 

job. 

The number of deaths should not be the sole or the overriding measure of the 

crime and tragedy in Darfur. Millions of people live in displaced camps, unable to 

return home. They live in fear. The legacy of the immense military campaigns of 

2003–04 is that significant areas of Darfur have been ethnically cleansed of their 

former population. This crime cannot be allowed to stand: one basic measure of 

peace is that it entitles and empowers displaced people to return to their places of 

origin, to resume their lives under a local administrative system of their choice that 

provides them with physical and legal security, including tenure over their land. 

Moreover, the capacity for renewed violence on a comparable scale has not diminished. Darfur is awash with weaponry. The army, paramilitaries, rebel groups and 

local self-defense groups are all heavily armed. Decades of experience in Sudan tells 

us that war consists of occasional sweeping campaigns in which the army, air-force 

and paramilitaries destroy everything in their path, followed by longer periods in 

which the violence subsides somewhat, but the underlying causes of conflict remain 

unaddressed. Any new explosion of violence rarely follows the same pattern as the 

previous peak in killing—the location may be different (for example in urban areas 

or displaced camps, or across an international frontier), and the belligerents may 

be configured differently (some militia may switch sides to join the rebels, some 

rebel factions may cut deals with the government). New armed groups may emerge, 

perhaps among the angry and politicized groups of displaced people, or in neighboring regions of Sudan. These patterns are familiar from Sudan’s long-running 

wars and it would be unwise to assume that Darfur’s violence will not surge again 

and take on new forms. 

I submit that we can no longer describe the conflict as ‘‘Arab’’ versus ‘‘African.’’ 

That was always an inadequate description, even during the height of the killing 

in 2003–04, when racial labels were particularly salient. The ethnic politics of 

Darfur are much more complicated now. Having armed numerous Arab militia, including the Janjaweed, the government no longer commands the loyalties of its erstwhile proxies. Army generals are fearful of the might of the Janjaweed, who in some 

locations are more numerous and better armed than the regular army. The generals 

know it is impossible to disarm the militia by force. Their greatest fear is that some 

of the Arab militia will desert the government for the rebels. This fear is not without foundation: many Darfurian Arabs are talking to the insurgents and making 

local pacts. In the other direction, one of the most unfortunate consequences of the 

Darfur Peace Agreement was the way in which some commanders of the SLAMinawi, most of them ethnic Zaghawa, became government proxies, to the extent 

that local people called them ‘‘Janjaweed-2.’’

There is no doubt that individual atrocities in Darfur continue to bear the hallmarks of ethnically-targeted genocidal massacre. But these atrocities do not follow 

any straightforward ‘‘Arab’’-‘‘African’’ dichotomy. One of my concerns about the use 

of the word ‘‘genocide’’ to describe these crimes is that it seems to imply that 

Darfur’s crisis consist of Arabs killing Africans. Such a depiction is inaccurate. 

Many Darfurians characterize the situation as ‘‘anarchy.’’ That is correct insofar 

as the institutions and mechanisms that maintained law and order have broken 

down or been dismantled, and the government is failing in its basic obligation of 

providing security. It is accurate insofar as much of the violence witnessed in the 

last year is localized conflict (including clashes between Arab tribes), fighting among 

rebel groups, and banditry. Describing the situation as ‘‘war’’ does not do justice to 

the complexity of the conflict and the extent of multiplication of armed groups. But 

‘‘anarchy’’ is also an incomplete description: it fails to capture the way in which the 

situation is manipulated by the strongest actor, the government of Sudan, which 

has co-opted many institutions for civil administration into its paramilitary structure. 

What is clear is that Darfur’s crisis is complicated and has changed. Last year’s 

solutions can no longer work. Last year’s labels may no longer fit. 

Prospects for Peace and Security 

The prospects for peace in Darfur are not encouraging. The political alignment for 

peace was most favorable in the first half of 2005, when there was enthusiasm for 

the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (just signed by Khartoum and the SPLM) and 

its promise of national democratic transformation. At that time, pro-peace figures 

in Khartoum such as vice president Ali Osman Taha were in the ascendant, the 

Darfur rebels had a semblance of political coordination, and Chad was still part of 

the solution, not part of the problem. 

That favorable alignment slipped during late 2005 and early 2006, and by the 

time the Abuja peace talks reached their denouement, the political context was be-
28

coming less favorable week-by-week. Peace in Abuja was missed by a hair’s breadth, 

but that slender miss was disastrous. The adverse trend has continued over the subsequent eleven months. 

I recall some tribal elders arriving at Abuja to encourage the rebels to sign the 

agreement, making the argument that if the chance for peace is not taken, Darfur 

faces the prospect of a war of all against all. That Hobbesian scenario may yet materialize. Local disputes are multiplying and the mechanisms to resolve them are too 

weak. 

Today, the Darfur armed groups are more fractured than at any time in their 

short history. The prospects for unifying them are remote. Arabs groups have 

emerged as independent actors and should be represented in any new peace process. 

External interference—by Chad, Eritrea and Libya—has intensified. The leaders 

of these countries see turmoil in Darfur as a means of furthering their own political 

interests. 

Implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement is farcical. Minni Minawi possesses no power, the key institutions do not exist or have no resources, and the National Congress Party is choosing the candidates to fill the ministerial and gubernatorial posts provided for the SLM. Contrary to the provisions of the DPA, the Security Arrangements Implementation Commission is headed by an army general, 

not a nominee of the SLM. The most important institution of all—the Ceasefire 

Commission—has become completely dysfunctional. The government is practicing 

‘‘retail politics’’—purchasing the allegiance or cooperation of individuals on a caseby-case basis, and describing this as fulfilling the requirements of the DPA. 

Credible mediation is needed, but the most important interlocutors face conflicts 

of interest. The African Union has the mandate to implement the DPA as it stands, 

and is also tasked with negotiating a new agreement with the non-signatory rebels. 

It is hard for it to do both. In due course the UN will find itself in a similar position—the UN Mission in Sudan is mandated to implement the Comprehensive Peace 

Agreement, and Special Representative Jan Eliasson is also tasked to mediate with 

Darfurian groups which demand that the CPA be revised to accommodate their demands. 

This points us to perhaps the most significant single challenge to peace in Darfur: 

any peace agreement for Darfur must be a buttress to the CPA. But most 

Darfurians see the CPA, not as a charter for national democratization, but rather 

as (at best) a ceiling for their aspirations and (at worst) a sinking ship. While such 

beliefs continue, there is little chance that they will be ready to make peace. Peace 

in Darfur is possible only if there is widespread confidence in the CPA among ordinary Sudanese, and at present this does not exist. 

In these circumstances, many advocate that the priority should be to send a 

strong international force to Darfur to protect civilians there, so that the Darfurian 

people who have already suffered enough do not continue to die while the politicians 

argue interminably about peace over the coming months and years. There is no 

doubt that a larger, better equipped and better mandated international force could 

improve conditions in Darfur. But we must also be frank and realistic about what 

such a force can achieve, both under the current circumstances of ongoing hostilities, and under any future conditions of a fully-signed up peace agreement. 

In facilitating the discussions on the security arrangements for the DPA, the African Union security team took advice from a number of senior and experienced military officers and security advisers from Africa, the UN and the U.S. The team concluded that a force of about 20,000 peacekeepers could police a ceasefire agreement 

between government and rebels, monitor airfields to ensure that the ban on offensive military flights is respected, ensure the demilitarization of displaced camps and 

humanitarian supply routes, train a community police force to provide security for 

displaced people, and monitor government efforts to neutralize and selectively disarm the militia. It could fulfill these tasks in the context of a fully-signed up peace 

agreement with the active cooperation of the parties. 

Even with a Chapter VII mandate and the consent of the Sudan government, 

what such a force could not do is to provide security for all, or even most, Darfurian 

civilians in their home villages. It could not disarm the Janjaweed. It could not remove the government army and police from Darfur and take over their functions. 

In the context of ongoing hostilities, the capability of a peacekeeping force would 

be even more limited, as it would need to devote much of its capacity to force protection. As we have learned from many other conflicts, international forces do not, as 

a general rule, protect civilians at risk during an explosion of violence. 

The main security discussion that is needed concerns the strategic plan and concept of operations for an international force in Darfur. This was a discussion that 

we began but did not conclude in Abuja. But in our truncated discussions, some 

basic principles became clear. 
29

A first consideration is time. Any international force dispatched to Darfur should 

expect to be there for a minimum of five years. It is not realistic to expect the region 

to be stabilized in a shorter period of time. 

Second, disarmament can only be undertaken by consent, in a staged and reciprocal manner across all armed groups. Arms control is primarily a political process, 

not a technical one. The government’s cooperation in this is also necessary. While 

Khartoum is most of Darfur’s problem, Darfur’s solutions must also come through 

Khartoum. 

Third, for an international force to be effective, it must devote the majority of its 

energy to political work and community liaison, with the threat and use of force 

comprising only a small part of its activities. 

And finally, the force levels envisaged for the implementation of the DPA security 

arrangements would be woefully insufficient to provide physical protection to all civilians at risk during any possible future eruption of violence. Other measures 

would be required to prevent such violence or protect civilians at risk. 

It is important to be soberly realistic about what the UN—or indeed any international force—can achieve in Darfur. Many Darfurians have exaggerated expectations that the UN will solve all their problems, and these false hopes deter them 

from engaging realistically with the political challenges they face. It is important 

for the U.S. and UN to give the right message: peace is the goal, peacekeeping is 

a tool. 

A comprehensive, robust and monitorable ceasefire in Darfur, and a political process leading to a peace agreement for Darfur, and a properly-implemented CPA must 

be the priority. Let us have no illusions that these goals will be easy to achieve. 

But a credible political process in this direction is essential and can create sufficient 

confidence that an international force can function effectively. 

The lesson of Sudan’s wars over the last quarter century is that peace is possible, 

if it is pursued relentlessly and with an international consensus. The lesson of Sudan’s peace deals is that what ever is on paper is never good enough: the challenge 

lies in the implementation. Sudan and its problems will be with us for some time 

to come: we must take a long view. 

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts.

Chairman LANTOS. Thank you very much, Dr. de Wall, and I 

want to thank again this extraordinary informative and courageous 

and significant panel. 

We will begin the questioning with the ranking member, Ileana 

Ros-Lehtinen. 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your 

leadership on this issue for many years. I would like to yield my 

time to Judge Poe or Mr. McCotter if they would seek the time to 

ask questions. Judge Poe or Mr. McCotter? Mr. McCotter is recognized. 

Chairman LANTOS. Mr. McCotter, the time is yours. 

Mr. MCCOTTER. Command performance. Thank you for being 

here and bringing this subject for more public recognition of it. It 

is an intrinsically evil situation, and I think that we in the United 

States have to become, as you put it, far more forceful in our approach. To simply rely upon the mechanisms of diplomacy will not 

work unless there is a concrete pressure that is applied to this regime to respect the inherent human dignity of its own people. 

My questions is, we have heard much about Communist China’s 

role in the perpetuation of this regime and thus its complicity in 

the genocidal acts that it has taken. Can you explore for me more 

of the rationale behind the Communist Chinese’s influence within 

this area, and why it constitutes a bar toward resolving and ending 

this genocide? 

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. If we could have the panelists touch on the 

subject of the engagement of the Chinese Government with the 

Khartoum regime. I know Ms. Farrow has been very active in that. 
30

Ms. FARROW. I could begin it anyway. What we know is China 

is meeting at least 10 percent of its massive oil needs in Sudan 

through oil in southern Sudan. It is a complex scenario, but what 

we are now seeing—we don’t know the percentage but it is a high 

percentage. I think Human Rights Watch, 2 years ago, said 60 percent of the revenues from oil is going toward military. This for a 

country that has no need for any self-protective military force to be 

used in the purchase of Antonov bombers, attack helicopters, small 

arms, arming and training the Janjaweed. That percentage is probably up from 60 percent now; some venture as high as 80 or more 

percent. I don’t know. 

But the point is China is now complicate in Darfur’s genocide 

through funding it. Without that oil money, it would be a very different story, and it brings us now to the issue of divestment, that 

we are now seeing states divesting, universities divesting, cities divesting, and individual, and you know by now my passion to do 

anything in my small way for the people of Darfur. 

Well, imagine my surprise in November when I asked my accountant—I have an accountant—do I have any money in Fidelity 

Mutual Funds, because I found out Fidelity, a chunk of Fidelity, 

millions and millions and millions, was being put in PetroChina 

and Sinopac, and to my horror I found out that my pension plan 

was with Fidelity, and I gave my accountant 5 minutes to get it 

out, and I wrote my letter of conscious, and I wrote a letter that 

I really sort of hope maybe Fidelity somehow didn’t know, and I followed it with a phone call to Fidelity, and somebody very nice on 

the phone gave me an e-mail number and I sent them material as 

to just how that money is being used. 

But then Fidelity issued a statement that they were not at all 

responsible for what happens to their money, that they hope that 

those responsible would be responsible, and that the responsibility 

was not theirs. 

Well, I assume responsibility for my money, you know, every dollar of it. It is not a whole hunk of money but it is mine and I don’t 

want it used toward killing innocent people. 

So I wrote another op ed. I, who never wrote an op ed in my life, 

I shirked interviews all my life, given about 2,000 since 2004, but 

I wrote an op ed about, you know, my complicity by having my 

money with Fidelity. 

So there is China and there are the oil companies, and then 

there is China with that unholy alliance. Sudan has purchased its 

own watch dog on the Security Council, which has rendered toothless every single resolution. 

So somebody else may wish to——

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Can I just add one thing to that, and that is, 

China does not want to be isolated internationally. Quick pop quiz: 

How many times have the Chinese vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on an African issue since the end of the 

Cold War? Never. 

If we press, if we push China, they will threaten to veto right 

up to the moment that the vote occurs, and then they will abstain. 

If we have the political will to press forward with a real Plan B 

multilaterally to change the Government of Sudan’s calculations, 

the Chinese will step aside. 
31

Ms. FARROW. Could I mention the idea of getting behind the 

Olympics? Would that be—well, it was not my idea. It is an idea 

that had already gone viral in advocacy groups, but my son Ronan 

and I did write an op ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, 

and to our astonishment, Beijing responded. Clearly we hit a nerve. 

How did they know I was am imbecile? They didn’t know who I 

was, but they said I was an imbecile. But my point being that this 

is sensitive to them, that there is one thing that they may hold 

more dear than their unfettered access to Sudanese oil, and that 

is their staging of the 2008 Olympic Games. 

So when I went to speak at Yale yesterday, students were wearing t-shirts that said ‘‘Genocide Olympics’’ and I suggested they 

have them with a question mark afterward as I wasn’t actually 

calling for a boycott. We were calling for China to take responsibility, either get behind the idea and say, you know, we like what 

is going on Darfur, we stand behind Khartoum and their actions 

in Darfur, or take responsible action to do everything within their 

considerable power, with their considerable point of leverage to do 

what needs to be done. 

So we are looking at, again, a point which is a point of some sensitivity that China, in its post-Tiananmen Square calling card to 

the international community ‘‘One world, one dream.’’ Well, there 

is one nightmare that China cannot be allowed to sweep under the 

rug, and that nightmare is Darfur. Thus the slogan ‘‘Genocide 

Olympics’’ with a question mark is fast replacing the ‘‘One world, 

one dream’’ slogan. 

Mr. PAYNE [presiding]. Thank you very much. The gentleman’s 

time has expired. 

Let me thank each of the witnesses, very compelling, and Ms. 

Farrow, watching your pictures, as you entered the camp and you 

would at least visit the children, did you find any schooling, or the 

children in general, how did they appear in their group? Sometimes 

they seemed to be oblivious how bad the situation is. They still 

smile sometimes and play. The ones that are sick, of course, lack 

energy and so forth. What was your general impression as a mother of children and women? 

Ms. FARROW. Well, I would have to distinguish between the children in Darfur and the children in eastern Chad and the children 

in Central African Republic. 

In Darfur, the efforts of the AID workers, the 13, there was 

14,000, many have withdrawn, are evident. The children are resilient. Their basic food needs at this point being met. It should be, 

say, 1 million are out of reach at the present time according to the 

Holmes report. AID workers cannot reach 1 million people. But in 

Darfur, fragile as it is, AID operations are working, and I didn’t see 

severe malnutrition. It was worse in 2004. You did see people coming in in very bad shape. 

But in June 2006, you could see people being sustained, and 

there was an attempt to provide security within the little—the 

schools that UNICEF—safe places that UNICEF would set up, 

drawings that were described, I saw those too. So clearly children 

were traumatized but children have a way of coping, and it was a 

joy to see them even in that setting. 
32

I did see a measure of despair had sunk in the camps since 2004 

among the adults. The women were despairing that no one would 

come. In 2004, there was hope U.N. would come. They would chant 

‘‘U.N., U.N.,’’ and by 2006, it was a sinking feeling that no one 

would come. 

In eastern Chad, the needs of the children are not being met. Too 

few humanitarian workers, it is way dangerous there, they are at 

Stage 4, U.N. Stage 4, which means pared down just before evacuation, no families, and a really, really disparate situation. The 

same is true of Central African Republic; the children are not doing 

well. The children are dying in large numbers, and no one is even 

counting the dead. We don’t know. Terrible levels of malnutrition 

both now in eastern Chad and in Central African Republic. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

In the President’s speech yesterday, John Prendergast or Dr. de 

Waal, there was a talk of the possibility of a no-fly zone. Actually, 

in 2005, I introduced a bill, H.R. 1424, which called for a no-fly 

zone, and prohibited entry into the United States, ships coming 

from ports of Sudan, and unfortunately the then chairman of this 

committee withdrew, although I had over 100 co-sponsors at that 

time, which leads me to the fact that as we continue to delay and 

postpone, and you know, the situation just worsens. 

I think the information you brought out about the strength of 

Sudan today as opposed to 10 years ago, from 900 million to 11 billion, as their GDP indicates, that they are going to continue to get 

stronger. 

So I guess my question is, either one of you, if you could just 

mention again three or four points that you think we should be 

doing today that would perhaps get the attention of Sudan. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Well, I would just say real quickly that we 

ought to sequence and rapidly escalate on the regime, and those 

rebels that are continuing to commit atrocities on the ground in 

Darfur. I really do believe the financial and legal instruments are 

the ones that will work, again because of the past experience in 

Sudan; that if we hit them with targeted sanctions, if we hit them 

with going after the Sudanese companies that are underwriting the 

genocidal actions of the government, and if we actually use the extremely important leverage that we have, all this intelligence that 

we have collected on who is orchestrating the atrocities in Darfur, 

by bringing that to The Hague and saying here is some information 

that will accelerate the indictment process for some of the senior 

officials in the regime. This will have tremendous leverage. 

These guys are not the Taliban. President Bashir is not Saddam 

Hussein. They want to play ball internationally. You stick a scarlet 

letter on them, you put the spotlight on them, and they will change 

their behavior. They have done it in the past repeatedly when we 

have actually had the political will to isolate them. 

While we are escalating on the legal and financial measures, we 

need to plan the military measures. It is very grave to talk about 

a no-fly zone. It is an act of war because it would involve destroying the air force of the Sudanese regime. We may well need to do 

that. I think we ought to try these other instruments first very rapidly while we plan a credible military effort because that military 

effort cannot be limited to the air. We need to be prepared with 
33

some ground element because if the Sudanese Government takes 

the first shot, allows their air force to be wiped out, and then stops 

all aid agencies from operating, it won’t just be a million people. 

As Mia said, it will be 4.5 million people that are not receiving humanitarian assistance, and that will be our responsibility. So we 

better have a ground force ready to move at least to some of the 

areas to protect civilians if we are going to deploy the air assets. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. 

Mr. DE WAAL. I think there is a great deal that can be done internally. We have a tendency to focus on the external pressures 

and action points. One of the things that has been sadly lacking, 

particularly in the last nearly 12 months since the Darfur Peace 

Agreement was signed and very, very inadequately implemented, 

in fact, hardly implemented at all, has been real engagement internally with standing up some of the key provisions which, if implemented, could make a huge difference. 

The Darfur Peace Agreement includes provisions for a security 

advisory team from a foreign country, I presume it wouldn’t be the 

United States, but it could be, for example, Canada or The Netherlands or a country like that, that has a great deal of authority over 

a whole raft of key security implementation issues with Darfur. It 

provides for very robust monitoring mechanisms through the Cease 

Fire Commission. 

There has been no assistance. There has been no effective U.S. 

engagement internally with making the Cease Fire Commission 

work, setting up a group that was agreed, which was a working 

group on disarming the Janjaweed. All these sorts of issues internally within Sudan could make a practical difference, and should 

be done anyway. They will have to happen at some point whether 

or not there is any external pressure. So I would put that as a first 

issue. 

The second is that I think we need to be clear about what is the 

long-term outcome. If President Bashir fears that he will share the 

same fate as Saddam Hussein, no amount of pressure is going to 

force him, compel him to change his policy. There may be regime 

change. You may decide to invade Sudan and change the government, but short of that, pressure only works if there is an outcome 

that is ultimately acceptable to the person whom you are putting 

pressure on. 

He may be compelled to do a lot of things he doesn’t want to do, 

but I think one of the—I am confident that one of the reasons why 

the North/South Peace Agreement, the Naivasha process, came to 

a successful conclusion was that there was an end point, there was 

a finishing line, which was at the end of this period a Sudan that 

the U.S. Government said it would support, it would recognize. And 

I think we need to recognize that we need also a long-term overall 

political strategy for Sudan, and that is essentially enshrined within the CPA. It may need to be revised or revisited, but I think that 

needs to be put on the table in order for any pressure to have any 

measurable result. 

Mr. PAYNE. Well, thank you very much. I agree with Ms. Farrow, 

too, that the divestment must continue. We have states that have 

divested, New Jersey is the first. We have it in Illinois. However, 

we do have the National Foreign Trade Council out of Chicago who 
34

put a suit on states to say that they don’t have the right to divest. 

We have, fortunately, under our new leadership in the Congress—

Congressman Barney Smith has legislation in the Banking Committee that will override the—Barney Frank, yes—the National 

Foreign Trade Council’s objection because of a change in the law. 

So, I think we are moving with some areas. 

In addition to the Olympics, you know, in Shanghai, China is 

proposing a World Expo and they want the world to come to Shanghai, so I think once again we ought to start to talk about the 

‘‘Genocide World Expo’’ also, and if we let China know that their 

decision has to be whether they are going to be considered a world 

power and respected, or whether they are going to be a rogue country, then these world events should be isolated, like South Africa 

was isolated from the world in those other days. 

And I couldn’t agree more with John Prendergast. I think there 

has to be some force. I think that no-fly zones, you know, we don’t 

have to use any boots on the ground. This can all be done without 

having any troops in jeopardy and in harm’s way, and I think that 

if the Sudanese Government continues to do what they do, that we 

should simply destroy their air force; just take the planes out with 

the equipment that we have as we had a no-fly zone in Iraq that 

prevented any of the Iraqi military from moving aircraft for decade 

in Iraq before the recent action. So they work, and I think also 

though that there needs to be a ground contingent ready to be deployed. 

Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, Ambassador Farrow, thank you for again bringing to 

the attention of the committee and the Congress, and by extension, 

the American people, the unbelievable and numbing, as you said, 

face of the people who have suffered so egregiously in Sudan. 

Like you, I visited Kalma Camp. I also got to Mukhtar, and met 

with many of the people inside the camps, and I was struck, too, 

by their extreme helplessness, their vulnerability. As you probably 

saw, they had smiles on their face, but it was largely a mask for 

the extreme trauma that they have suffered. You know, we talk a 

lot about PTSD in this country from 9/11 and from other—just recently the killings in Virginia Tech. They have lived with it for 

years, and I can’t even begin to imagine, like you, what they have 

suffered, and the young child that was saved that hasn’t talked 

since the murder of the child’s parents. So thank you again for reminding us of the horror. 

I do have a question with regards to when you said no protection 

anywhere. We know that, and I have visited with many of the AU 

troops that are deployed there, and at first their mandate, their 

rules of engagement were a joke, and yet they inspired a great 

sense of, you know, the cavalry is here, the troops are here, there 

is protection, but there is now at least a better mandate, a rule of 

engagement that allows for intervention. Of course, each commander has the flexibility and the call on that when there is imminent danger to civilians. 

We know the Rawandans have stepped up to the plate, and they 

have shown, I think, a robustness that perhaps is much better than 
35

their other counterparts, but perhaps you and the other panelists 

might want to speak to—we are talking about the hybrid force, 

21,000 plus. There are already seven deployed there. How well 

have they been utilized? 

I was struck, too. I met with Major Ajumbo from Kenya when I 

was there. He had been in Sarajevo, and we all know how feckless, 

despite the good intentions of the men and women on the ground, 

were the political decisions that were made for UNPROFOR, the ridiculous situation, horrible situation of Mladic, of clinging glasses, 

drinking champagne with the Dutch peacekeepers right before the 

8,000 were killed in Srebrenica. I see a sense of deja vu here, so 

perhaps you might want to speak to that rule of engagement. 

Secondly, Mini Minawi; like many of my colleagues, and like my 

friend and colleague Mr. Payne, we have all met with these individuals. I haven’t met with him since he seems to have turned to 

the dark side, or at least many of his rebels, but perhaps you could 

speak, Mr. Prendergast, you might give us some insights on that. 

Is he personally now part of Janjaweed or is it his rebels? Can 

you not control them? Maybe some insight into that. 

Mr. Prendergast, you mentioned ground intervention. You know, 

we are at a time in this country where exit strategy from Iraq is 

ever forward and people are always talking, all of us, how do we 

extricate ourselves without seeing a further deterioration on the 

ground, particular in Baghdad. You know, there is a sense of spent 

force, a military that is overextended, and I would be interested in 

knowing how many, you know, no fly perhaps as Chairman Payne 

indicated, may be a way of—as we did in northern Iraq, really in 

much of Iraq prior to our deployments on the ground there. Maybe 

that is the way to go. 

Your assessment of Natsios. You pointed out, and I think rightly 

so, Mr. Prendergast, that when there was White House engagement, when John Danforth got involved things happened, that led 

to the comprehensive peace agreement which obviously is put at 

risk by Darfur as Ihekire has told everyone of us and others have 

said it as well. But it showed that it works. 

We all pulled and called for a special envoy, Frank Wolf, and 

Chairman Payne, and myself, and many others. We got Andrew 

Natsios. He is a very competent man, I believe, and has a very 

good team. How do you assess his mission? How well is he doing 

or not doing? 

Finally, and I do have a number of other questions, but time permitting, we do have the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, clear 

provisions saying that there is a denial of entry at United States 

ports of certain cargo ships or oil tankers. Has that worked? You 

know, are we implementing that well or poorly to ensure—and Mr. 

Payne was right, that is a concern we all had—that we no facilitate 

wittingly or unwittingly by way of oil revenues this terrible war. 

We all know for a fact had it not been for China’s enabling, and 

they have enabled, they are the enables and chief of this genocide 

by their hand-in-glove relationship with Khartoum. We don’t want 

in any way to be a part of it, whether it be Talisman or anyone 

else. I remember when the Sudan Peace Act was going through my 

committee in the late 1990s, there was a provision in there that 

very clearly said de-list those companies on the New York or 
36

NASDAQ or any stock exchange in the United States. Unfortunately the administration then weighed in, as did others, to say 

take it out, and you know, there was a bipartisan support for it, 

and there was a bipartisan opposition to taking a clear, and I 

think, what would have been an effective way of really hitting 

them where it hurts, in the pocketbook, especially the PRC. 

So on those issues if you wouldn’t mind responding, and I thank 

my chairman. 

Ms. FARROW. In 2004, I visited the barracks in El Fasher, Sandy 

Barracks at the edge of town, and spoke to General Festis 

Okanguel, who begged for—there were less than 700 troops in an 

area, you know, the size of Texas or France. He begged for more 

vehicles, walkie-talkies, everything. Meanwhile the world was saying African solutions to African problems, great, it was a hot potato 

in the lap of the African Union, but the world failed to support the 

African Union in essential ways, as we all know. 

Now, since then 15 African Union troops have been killed. In 

2002, the Sandy Barracks is now more of a barricade with heavy 

barbed wire. There are 7,000 now in Darfur, but they are badly demoralized and with good reason. They had sent from El Fasher 

only two convoys a day of 16, and there were over 200 soldiers 

within the barracks. They were scared. They didn’t have enough 

support. They had not been paid in months. It was unfair of the 

world to leave them with this enormous task, and this commendable organization, which was deserving of our support, did not receive it. They had seized the wood patrols for the protection of the 

women. 

The mandate you referred to was, of course, a terrible one that 

they went into monitor a non-existent cease fire, but it was only 

expanded to allow them to interfere if they were in the vicinity and 

they had the capacity, so it was very easy to circumvent them, and 

the small numbers, even 7,000 is vastly insufficient. 

The President of Rawanda said he thought that the African 

Union could do the job if you had five times the amount that are 

there now, and we are talking big numbers. So I will leave the rest. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Thanks, Congressman, for your leadership on 

this issue. Again, the AU numbers, as Mia says, is declining. We 

don’t have seven. There are actually 5,000 troops on the ground 

now, so we would actually have to start ramping up from a point 

even more. The operations are decreasing. They are more and more 

hunkered in their bunkers. The attacks against them are increasing also. 

I just met with President Kagame in Rawanda when I was there 

last month. He said, ‘‘If we had more troops, the proper equipment, 

the right mandate, and a no-fly zone to paralyze the air force, we 

could protect the civilian population in Darfur.’’

I believe with the proper logistics and resources he would consider doubling at least his number of troops on the ground. President Museveni has said he would be willing to send half of the entire UPDF to the Uganda military to support a protection force. 

There are a number of other countries in Africa who are holding 

back, not going to give further troops to this AU mission while the 

United States and European Union do not fund it fully and give 

it the right equipment. 
37

If the U.N. Security Council takes the mission over and funds it 

and provides the right equipment, we are going to see an outpouring, I think, of volunteers that could actually make a difference in the way that Mia said, in terms of protecting people. We 

are not talking—Alex in some ways is setting up a straw man. Nobody is talking about invading Khartoum and Sudan and invading 

Darfur. It is protecting people. It is sending forces in strategic ways 

that military planners can help us understand so that they can 

protect civilians in the camps and other places where they are vulnerable. 

On Mini Minawi, as you know, the Government of Sudan has a 

long history of this Benedict Arnoldism. They pay people off and 

they go off, switch sides over and over. Riek Machar, now the Vice 

President of southern Sudan, was one of the guys that went over 

and came back. So there is this kind of a history for a long time. 

Mini is just the latest. His troops have committed atrocities. They 

have been verified by a number of human rights groups. 

The Government of Sudan’s divide and destroy policy for Darfur 

is the reason why we have so many—part of the reason why we 

have so many splinter factions within the rebellion. They are attempting to divide the rebels so that it appears that Darfur is turning on itself; that it appears that the tribes of Darfur are completely out of control and slaughtering each other. 

This was the plan from the beginning. You set a cycle in motion 

of dividing communities. You are dividing people, Arab versus nonArab, non-Arab communities versus non-Arab communities, you facilitate those kind of attacks on villages, and you get retribution, 

and it spirals out of control, and Khartoum throws it up its hands 

and say, look, it is anarchy. What can we do? It is not our fault. 

So let us not be fooled by that. Minim Minawi symbolizes this kind 

of a strategy. 

In terms of an exit strategy for ground forces, I really firmly believe after 22 years of working with this regime in and out of 

power—understanding what their calculations are, I think if we hit 

them with legal and economic instruments, and accelerate them 

rapidly, that that will be sufficient to change their calculations. 

But if it isn’t, and we have to go with air and ground force, of 

course, it has to be very clearly, again, not an invasion force, not 

a force that is attempting to stabilize Darfur, that is not going to 

be possible with the limited number of people we have available, 

excess troops we have in the world, it is just to protect civilian populations, by the way, 100 percent Muslim. 

Finally, you asked about the peace agreement and the peace 

process, and whether Andrew can do what we hope he can do. He 

is one person and he is part time. This is just simply an insufficient response for the United States Government. We need a cell 

of diplomats. We need a diplomatic surge. We talk about intelligence surges, which we need now if we are going to enforce sanctions against Sudan, we also need a diplomatic surge. You just reassign a few diplomats, senior diplomats, not mid-level people that 

they are not going to take seriously. The White House blesses 

them, sends them out to work the various agendas that are necessary to get a long-term peace and stabilization of Darfur because 

there really is no military answer to Darfur. There is going to have 
38

to be a political solution, just like there was in southern Sudan 

with the comprehensive peace agreement that Congressman Payne 

talked about earlier, and Andrew, himself, can’t do any of this part 

time. We need a full-time team working 24 hours, working on this 

because Khartoum is envisioning ways to circumvent our efforts for 

24 hours a day. We are going to have to do the same. 

Finally, Congress and the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act. 

So many of the important elements of that very important bill are 

not being implemented by the administration. I would urge the 

committee to have regular hearings with senior officials, just call 

them up, spend 30 minutes every 2 weeks, every week, and go 

through the list of things that you already passed, you have demanded that needed to be implemented, that aren’t being implemented, and say, when are you going to do this, when are you 

going to do this, and pass whatever legislation you have to have 

to force them to do it. 

Thanks. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I think that the time has 

more than expired, and there is going to be a vote coming up shortly, so I will ask the next witness, Ms. Woolsey, if she has her questions. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Actually, I was in China when Chairman Payne challenged the 

Vice-Premier about China’s role with Sudan and Darfur, and the 

Vice-Premier did not like it. He was really tense. But the conference we were a part of had government, high government officials as part of the conference, and the chairman kept repeating 

the same message, and they started to hear, so what they will do 

about it we will see. 

In my district, we have at least three ‘‘Dear Darfur, Love 

Petaluma, Love San Rafael, Love Marin County’’ groups, and this 

has been going on for 3 or 4 years now, and they are raising money 

and hoping that they are raising enough for the camps to at least 

have food for 1 day, but this is starting when the camps weren’t 

quite as large, so there is a lot of interest on the grass roots level. 

You know that. I know that. We know that. But I think it is this 

committee that has a huge responsibility to push things forward, 

and that is our job, and I know that. 

While I was watching your images, Ambassador, I kept thinking 

why as humans we don’t learn lessons from the past. You know, 

we have had the Holocaust, Rawanda, and here we are repeating 

again something this atrocious, and it gets worse every time, and 

I think that is because we don’t learn and we think humans—I 

don’t know why humans do these things—humans think, well, 

okay, I guess, it wasn’t so bad last time, we will just try to make 

it worse this time for one reason or another, and here we are in 

Iraq causing devastation to human communities when we should 

be instead paying attention to protecting the people in African, and 

I am sorry about that, and I think we have a lot more to do, of 

course, and at the same time we have to prevent future catastrophes. We cannot as human beings have this continue or we will 

be extinct, and we deserve to be. 

So my question to you, I had to say all of that, my question is 

what can the people in my district, what can the Dear Darfur, Love 
39

Petaluma people do that you think because that is what they are 

grasping for? 

Ms. FARROW. Doing. In the words of Edmund Burke, ‘‘All it takes 

for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.’’

Ms. WOOLSEY. True. 

Ms. FARROW. And I know, especially the young people, it is really 

heartening to see them all wanting to do. I mean, there is a list 

of things, if you go to my Web site, what we can do. It is there and 

it links to other sites, Genocide Intervention Network. There are 

suggestions from within every community. Even there are—in my 

kid’s local school they had a dance, Dance Darfur, and they raised 

something like $11,000. 

The State of Massachusetts, they had a No Prom for Darfur. 

They threw themselves a whale of a party, but the money they 

were going to spend on limousines and clothes and stuff like that, 

but also they can affect what their parents are doing, and how 

their parents are voting, and where their parents’ money are. It 

isn’t just the kids, but what are people doing. Check your own holdings. Make sure you are not financing the genocide. Call your leadership. Make sure they are on target, and doing the right thing. 

As John Prendergast has said, we are seeing the largest reaction 

to an African issue/atrocity since apartheid, but our voices have to 

be louder, and from all directions, and people in your county are 

off to a good start. Just let them keep raising their voices higher, 

and you can go to sites that recommend in local communities what 

to do. 

But in the large sense make sure you know what your money is 

doing. Make sure when voting time comes up that you vote for the 

candidates that are going to do something. Ask what they are going 

to do for Darfur’s people on this situation, and make sure that you 

agree with them, and that they are on target. 

You may have something to add to that. 

Mr. DE WAAL. I have one small point to add to that, which is 

when we look at the tragedy of Darfur we must not overlook some 

of the successes. One of the successes is that the humanitarian operation in Darfur, despite its constraints, has achieved two extraordinary successes. 

One is for the majority of the population that have been reached, 

and the general population that has been measured, the mortality 

and nutrition rates are normal, and have been at normal levels for 

more than a year now, in some places for longer, and that is extraordinary, and I think that is a huge credit to the humanitarians 

and that effort should be supported and indeed extended into Chad 

and CAR. 

The second point is that most humanitarian operations on this 

scale end up being co-opted, becoming part of a war effort. That 

hasn’t happened. There has been banditry, et cetera, but this operation has actually stayed out, it has stayed very neutral, and that 

is also very impressive, and I think continuing to support that and 

recognizing that it is important respects succeeding. Of course, this 

is not a solution. No one would call this a solution. But keeping 

people alive is quite creditable. 

May I also take the liberty of just responding briefly to Mr. 

Smith? 
40

I think one of the shameful omissions over the last 2 years has 

been the failure to support AMIS. AMIS has been crying out for assistance, crying out for a mandate, for funds, et cetera, and it has 

been allowed to stagnate, and that is really quite shocking. And 

even in the context of this hybrid force, AMIS is going to be there, 

so let us not forget that we need to boost that. 

I think we also need to recognize that forces are going to be there 

for a long time, and that whatever are the rules of engagement, the 

majority of the time that force is not going to be using force, and 

the majority of the armed groups in Darfur actually are not part 

of this conflict. Most of them are tribal self-defense groups that are 

neutral, and they should be our friends. These are people we can 

work with. 

So probably up to 90 percent of the work of an intervention force 

is actually community liaison, political liaison. Only 10 percent is 

force or use of force, and we must not forget that because if we do 

forget that then we will lead ourselves into a bunker mentality 

where when troops are there on the ground they don’t recognize 

their friends and their allies among the Darfurians. 

The last point is, to be quite frank, I fail to see how military action to destroy the Sudanese air force and to put non-consensual 

deployment of troops on the ground would be interpreted by Khartoum as anything other than an act of war. We may be doing it 

for humanitarian reasons, but I don’t think it would be—I confidently assert it would not be—interpreted as such by Khartoum, 

and I think to take that type of action could have literally incalculable consequences. It could lead, for example, to the shutting down 

of the AID operation. It could lead to becoming embroiled in a very, 

very nasty conflict in Darfur, and I would strongly counsel against 

that kind of military action. 

Ms. FARROW. Could I add one thing on the humanitarian front? 

As I read into the record before the joint plea from the AID agencies on the ground, it is true that they are sustaining the lives of 

more than 4 million people. It is also true that they are hanging 

by a thread, and it is also true that 1 million people are not accessible. And so where there are humanitarians, they are putting their 

own lives at risk. 

There are normal rates of nutrition where there are humanitarians able to keep the wells open. I mean, we had four AU soldiers shot and killed just a couple of weeks ago guarding a well. 

The wells break down if the AID agencies can’t get there to keep 

them functioning. Sanitation breaks down. We have cholera 

spreading. So it is a fragile operation, and while it is a tremendous 

success that they are able to sustain these fragile lives, it must 

also be said that it is extremely precarious, and those figures of 

normal nutrition are only where there are humanitarians there to 

address it, and document it. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

I agree that it is a very serious question when you talk about 

military assets. Have to remember though that it was 22,000 U.N. 

troops agreed to and Resolution 1706, then the 22,000 U.N. troops 

became 22,000 hybrid troops that became 22,000 AU troops, and 

now it is still down to 5,000 AU troops. So if this continues next 

year, it will be 4,000 AU troops, and there will be many, many 
41

more children dead, women raped, and we could wait 2 years from 

now, we will be down to 3,000 AU troops with hundreds of thousands of more people dead. 

So it is a serious question that the world has to deal with, and 

I don’t have the answer, but I think we are going to have to come 

up with a little better solution than we are talking about at this 

time. 

Mr. Royce. 

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

One of the reasons we had a no-fly zone in Iraq is because of the 

reporting on the genocidal acts committed against the Kurds. We 

had hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Shi’ia reporting on the Marsh 

Arabs, the culture there coming under genocidal attack by Saddam 

Hussein, and so I remember reading Christopher Hitchens on this 

sometime ago, and so as a consequence we put a no-fly zone into 

Iraq. This is an enormously complicated issue. 

But I guess one of the questions I would have is that if we send 

in a U.N. contingent, doesn’t that U.N. contingent have the right 

to expect protection in the sense that you would not have the Government of Sudan carrying out a bombing campaign in Darfur, and 

especially given the U.N. report that they are carrying out that 

bombing campaign by disguising the Antonovs and the attack helicopters as U.N. vehicles themselves? 

So I would think as they are moving troops and military material 

in disguised U.N. vehicles that are actually their military vehicles, 

and we are talking about an agreement that would put boots on 

the ground there as a deterrence, at some point you would have to 

get the point across to this regime that you are going to enforce—

that there is going to be some cost. 

The reason I say that is because this is a regime that came to 

power as a national Islamic front government that overthrew a 

democratic government. It is a regime that was, frankly, Osama 

bin Laden’s first choice, if you think about it. Where did he want 

to go? He wanted to go first to Khartoum because that was going 

to be the ideal state, and it was only under a great deal of pressure 

that we got him out of there. It was only under a great deal of 

pressure that we brought the wars that cost 2.4 million lives. 

When we talk about how much worse it could get, I would ask—

well, I don’t know. We have lost 2.4 million human souls there, 

probably 1 million Animists that were killed, 1 million Christians, 

and God knows how many Muslims who weren’t sufficiently fundamentalists to be in keeping with the ideology of the regime, and 

the regime found good reason. 

Slavery was only stopped there, if it has been stopped, by international pressure because this was a regime that read the Koran 

in a way, and which non-fundamentalist Muslims were considered 

proper to be taken as slaves. 

So it is going to take a concerted deterrent here, I think, on the 

regime, and I do see here where in the past pressure has managed, 

I think, to curtail behavior; not a great deal, and so that is why 

I again return to this question. If we are going to take the next 

step, then why wouldn’t we enforce a no-fly zone and why wouldn’t 

we attempt to extract a cost to these violations of the agreement 

on the part of Khartoum? 
42

Oh, and let me ask Ambassador Farrow a question too because 

I thought this was a concept that might work. We have talked a 

lot about the power structure in China trying to impact it. But I 

think you might have a more effective way of doing that. All of us 

have talked to the leaders in China about this problem. 

But the grass roots in China, the people who tune in Radio Free 

Asia or watch the television broadcasts that we do into China, 

there is a reason we stood up that surrogate radio broadcasting 

system, and that was to get news of what was actually happening 

in the world into the country. If you took your report that you take 

to universities, and you did it with a translator on these television 

stations that broadcast into China so that the youth of China could 

learn about what is happening as a result of policies, I, frankly, 

think, and I would ask you if you would consider doing it, but I 

think that it might be worth getting it out there on the internet 

in China and so forth there is a discussion, just as there is a discussion now about the environmental consequences in China to 

some of the planned projects there, and so those would be the questions I would pose to the panel. Thank you. 

Mr. DE WAAL. Thank you. The question of a no-fly zone is ultimately one of enforcement. It is the monitoring aspect. Now, what 

is peculiarly unfortunate, to say the least, is there hasn’t actually 

been any monitoring of the existing commitments that the Sudan 

Government has actually taken, including in the Darfur Peace 

Agreement, and they are in black and white about no hostile military flights, no perfidy, no painting of military aircraft in U.N. or 

AU colors. 

That has simply not been monitored. No one has actually gone 

and reported publicly and said this is what is happening. And so 

the very first recourse has never been taken, and I think it is true 

that if you catalogue all the threats that have been made against 

the government, they are huge and none of them has been followed 

through. 

What I think is called for is to be much more systematic and to 

ramp up the mechanism, starting with simply reporting, starting 

with saying this is what you signed, this is what our people have 

observed, these are the photographs, in this case going back to 

more than a year. We will take this to the U.N. Security Council, 

and we will expose perfidy and violation. 

Take it one stage at a time, and one can move fairly rapidly up 

those stages, but because there hasn’t even been that first stage of 

monitoring we simply don’t know how the Sudan Government will 

respond. 

Now, we can predict, and you know, they will start by responding 

with contempt, but I think for reasons of international politics it 

is worth going through those stages, even perhaps going through 

them really quite quickly, and it is worth recalling how the no-fly 

zone or the bombing was halted in south Sudan by Senator Danforth, when there was an incident, I think, in February 2002. Bieh, 

I think, was the name of the place, B-I-E-H, and the first response 

of the government was, well, this is rogue, this is a rogue attack. 

Well, actually every military activity needs to be authorized by 

general headquarters, and Senator Danforth said, ‘‘Well, don’t tell 

me, show me,’’ and very quickly it actually had the desired impact, 
43

and again this comes back to the question of speaking with authority and backing up, backing up statements. 

Ms. FARROW. To the second part of your question, in a heartbeat 

I would do—if you can hook me up with such a channel to speak 

to the people of China, in a heartbeat I would be there. 

I have heard a poll recently, of this week, saying an astonishing 

percentage, I think it was 40 percent, I don’t know if you saw that 

poll or what the percentage, but it was high considering how little 

information gets to them of the real kind, of the people of China 

were actually appalled at China’s complicity in Darfur and that 

they saw that, and support intervention, exactly so. 

Mr. ROYCE. Well, thank you, Ambassador Farrow. If we can arrange that, we will. Thank you very much. 

Ms. FARROW. Thank you. 

Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Costa. 

Mr. COSTA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to concur with the opening statements of the chairman and the ranking 

member. It, frankly, is incumbent upon all of us, I believe, to continue to act and keep the international spotlight in addition to our 

own efforts in Darfur. 

Two weeks ago today I was in El Fasher and in western Darfur 

with four other of my colleagues from this committee, and part of 

a bipartisan group that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer took to Sudan 

for an extended 3-day visit, and then to Egypt, and to see the 

issues that we have been discussing this morning, and I have similar pictures as you have of the hundred camps. We didn’t visit, obviously, all of them, but of the displaced persons, and to see the difficult situation facing those. 

It was, in a word, I would say grim. It is grim. And everything 

that has been testified this morning I think relates to the fact that 

once again we see man’s inhumanity to mankind once again exhibited. In the last 100 years, Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, 

Rawanda most recently, and now western Darfur. 

It even becomes more frustrating for, I think, those of us in the 

delegation who met with provincial officials in El Fasher when we 

talked about in no uncertain terms our desire to see the Sudanese 

Government cease its involvement in this civil war and this genocide, to have them explain to us that what was happening, in their 

view, was overblown and overstated by the international world 

community, and by definition, in their opinion, both by the provincial government as well as the Sudanese officials we met with in 

Khartoum, not—not genocide. 

Obviously, those statements, in my opinion and I think the rest 

of our delegation, are outrageous on behalf of not just the provincial leaders of that government but also those in Khartoum who 

bear direct responsibility for what is occurring there today. 

So certainly after 3 days, I think we all learned a great deal. I 

did. The situation facing the Darfurians will continue as you have 

testified, requires significant humanitarian aid, and I concur with 

you, it is an amazing effort that has taken place. It is the second, 

we understand, largest U.S. humanitarian aid effort that has taken 

place. I believe the tsunami 2 years ago in Indonesia was our largest. And the 12,000 plus AID workers are doing an amazing job. 
44

We met with them separately. The Sudanese Government continues to put roadblocks and make it difficult for them to perform 

their tasks, and they do it so, as you indicated, at their own risk. 

What I would like to focus on is the interim questions to the 

three of you, both on the interim solutions, and I think you have 

outlined a comprehensive road map that this committee should 

stay on top of on a bipartisan basis with the administration. Certainly enhancing the African Union Peacekeeping Force, they told 

us that—the general briefed us—they have approximately 5,200 

soldiers as you indicated in an area that is larger geographically 

than the country of France. 

I mean, it is extremely large geographical area, western Darfur, 

which leads me to believe that the—they indicated that 22,000 plus 

at a minimum of soldiers would be required, plus there are being 

out-gunned, as you indicated, and their checks are late, the payments for the current peacekeeping force there is not sufficient. 

That financial monetary commitment must be made. We must put 

pressure on the Europeans to make good on their word as we are 

attempting to do ours. 

I would also say that leverage with Egypt, but especially China, 

and I was glad to hear that our colleagues in their visit last week 

did do so with the Chinese, but I am wondering whether a fly zone 

logistically—it would be very difficult. I mean, it is a 2-hour flight 

from Khartoum to western Darfur. 

So my questions quickly, because my time is coming to a close, 

is the interim solutions, I think, need a comprehensive strategy 

and we must implement that, and I think we all have to get on the 

same page there. But the long-term solutions, I began to think, are 

going to be as equally as complicated. 

The 100 camps, if we can provide a truce and a resolution, I 

mean, these folks with their nomadic lifestyles for centuries is no 

longer sustainable in many ways, and I guess we are going to have 

to begin thinking about that as well concurrently as we think about 

how we deal with enforcing the Sudanese to act appropriately. 

I would like you to comment both on the interim and the longer 

term solutions if we are successful with the interim effort. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. The logistics of a no-fly zone are daunting, 

but I think that, unlike what we did in Iraq, I think this would be 

something that would be very different the model that is being discussed; that when an offensive military flight is to be determined 

to have been undertaken by Khartoum in defiance of the United 

Nations Security Council Resolutions, that the retribution would be 

the destruction of a single or multiple Sudanese air assets on the 

ground as they sit in the hangars of the airstrips around Darfur. 

Mr. COSTA. We saw one of the planes that was—Antonovs that 

was indicated to be used for those efforts. There is a reason why 

they won’t let us go in until after nine in the morning, and we have 

got to be out by six because they want to control the skies in the 

alternative times. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. So there is a logistical way to do it that 

wouldn’t require massive surveillance and prohibitive, basically, 

cost, and asset diversion from the primary theatres in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I think we could do it. The question is: Is it the first 

step? Is it the first thing we want to deploy? 
45

Again, I would say we need to sequence it and ratchet the pressure up in a series of moves, starting with the financial ones as we 

prepare the military ones if the military ones are necessary. 

Mr. COSTA. I think that is good advice. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Then in the longer term, and I think Alex can 

speak more to this, that we have to look at a larger plan. Once 

there is a peace deal, which is the prerequisite for stabilization in 

Darfur and significant protection so that people can go home, we 

have to look at these long-term questions of the viability of the ecosystem in that Sahara region, and so there has to be some pretty 

significant assets, resources put on the table for long-term development to address the needs both of agricultural and pastural——

Mr. COSTA. Is that being considered? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. We are so far from that right now. I think it 

is the kind of thing you have to—when you have a check list of the 

27 things you need to do, that is one of the things that has got to 

be put on the check list, and the United States Agency for International Development is the right agency to do that. 

Mr. DE WAAL. Briefly, one thing that I would implore as a shortterm measure is to actually map the different groups in Darfur because things change. The situation on the ground today is very different to a year ago. 

For example, throughout this conflict the majority of the Arab 

tribes has been neutral. They have not actually been involved in 

the war. As we speak, some of them are talking with the rebels. 

Even some of the Janjaweed are making local deals with the rebels. 

It would be very unfortunate if the consequence of U.S. policy 

were to drive the Arabs and the government back together into the 

same camp. There are fissures there. There are real differences between them. For example, the professional army officers are very 

nervous about the Janjaweed. They are outnumbered by them, 

outarmed by them. They are embarrassed by them as well, and 

there are a lot of complexities there that I think need to be fully 

taken into account in terms of any either political or military activities. 

At the moment what I see lacking, one of the main things I see 

lacking in United States engagement is the internal track, is actually ramping up the engagement with the groups inside Darfur 

with the institutions like the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, which, frankly, doesn’t really exist. 

Mr. COSTA. Right. But precisely because of the multiple factions, 

how do we in fact deal with each of them separately? I mean, it 

seems very difficult. 

Mr. DE WAAL. This is why I emphasize that the primary role for 

any peacekeeping or any peace support operation has to be a political or an intelligence or community outreach. You have to regard 

the communities of Darfur, all of which are armed, everyone is 

armed, as your friends, your allies, your assistance, your force multiplier, if a force of 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 50,000 goes in thinking we as 

a force can control the region, it is an illusion. It can’t be done. 

If on the other hand a force goes in thinking we are going to 

work with the tribal chiefs, with the militia commanders, we are 

going to take these people and say, if you behave responsibly, we 

will work with you, and we will isolate the elements that are vio-
46

lent, out of control, engaged in ethnic cleansing, engaged in atrocities, then you have the majority of Darfurians on your side, and 

you have a very different scenario. 

Mr. COSTA. It seems to me that is going to be a key in terms of 

implementing any lasting peace. 

Mr. DE WAAL. That is correct. 

Mr. PAYNE. The time has expired. We will now hear from Mr. 

Boozman. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Payne. 

I enjoyed your presentation, Ms. Farrow. I thought it was very 

good, and I think it is so important—I mean, you probably touched 

some—I know you did—touched some people here that saw that, 

but I think for us to solve this problem it really is going to take 

that, really making Americans and our European allies understand 

what is going on. So the movie, Blood Diamond, you know, had a 

tremendous impact. The movie not too long ago about the constant 

gardener, or something like that, again another movie that had—

so I would encourage you to encourage your cohorts that maybe 

something they could do along this line. 

One of the things that I am concerned about, and it has been 

eluded to all day, the no-fly and things like that. I guess I am concerned about stirring the pot and then creating a worse situation 

that we have got, and not have the wherewithal to finish that off. 

I think probably the first thing that we have got to do is get our 

European allies involved. 

You know, I hear a lot of talk from them, and I am on the NATO 

thing and I am with them all the time, but there is really not much 

action. So your values aren’t what you say, it is what you do, and 

I think they themselves are a little bit embarrassed that they 

haven’t stepped forward more than they have. So we have got to 

get them involved. 

But I guess somebody would have to prove that if you did the nofly that there would be less genocide, less killing by the fact that 

you didn’t have an air force, and I think you could probably argue 

that when you do that, that is an act of war, when you do the really critical sanctions. 

We learned yesterday that banking made a big difference in the 

North Koreans in their attitude, and I am very much in favor of 

that, or I am very much in favor of thinking that through, but I 

do think that we have to have the wherewithal that if the genocide 

starts again, and certainly there is killing going on now, but it 

could be at a much worse level. There could be much more punishment, that we have to have the ability to have a plan to step in 

and do something at that point. I don’t think we have that now. 

I don’t think we have the political wherewithal to do that. 

So again, can you comment on that a little bit? 

The other thing, you know, we talk about putting pressure and 

stuff, and I guess I was a little confused, Mr. Prendergast, in the 

sense that if you negotiate in good faith with somebody and you are 

trying to get these things done, and then one of the other things 

that you are doing is through the, and I am not saying we 

shouldn’t do this—again I am trying to think it through—but 

through the International Criminal Court you are trying to get 
47

them put to death or put in prison for life for a regime change, that 

really kind of limits your negotiating power also. 

I mean, if you have regime change on the table that way and you 

are going forward with that regardless of whether or not they behave or don’t behave, it seems like that is kind of a difficult thing 

to do. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Very briefly, I fully concur with your assessment on the risk of the no-fly zone. It needs to be thought through 

very, very seriously, but rapidly in accelerated military planning 

exercise with our NATO partners fully involving European assets, 

particularly French because of the proximity in Chad, and——

Mr. BOOZMAN. Well, no-fly, would that keep people from killing 

people? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. That is precisely the larger point, is that 

what would actually lead to an end to the horrible atrocities. It 

would be, I think, in the first instance the Sudan Government deciding that it will end it. It will dismantle the Janjaweed militia. 

It will pull back its military assets. There will be pressure placed 

on the rebels at the same time to do the same. 

If we take out the air force and the Government of Sudan still 

wants to continue with its killing, it will not largely affect the 

ground campaigns, that it could in fact accelerate if it wanted. That 

is why I said it would be irresponsible for us to pursue solely a nofly zone without a ground component in the planning stages, and 

it would also, I think, be irresponsible for us to lead with the monster Mike Tyson right hook when you have got all these jabs at our 

disposal. We should hit them with the significant and serious economic and legal measure. 

Now to your point about the legal measure, to the International 

Criminal Court and how I believe it would give diplomacy a better 

chance. Imagine the leverage a United States official would have 

if we quietly sent—we keep talking so much and doing nothing, we 

have got to do the reverse, we have got to stop talking—send a senior diplomat perhaps from the Defense Department, perhaps from 

the State Department, or from perhaps the White House over to 

meet with President Bashir or Vice President Taha that would 

carry a folder in their hands. 

The folder would include declassified intelligence about the specific actions that that individual has taken to orchestrate the mass 

atrocities that have been committed in Darfur, and we say to them, 

you know, we don’t like this ICC, and we are not signing this deal, 

we are not going to support it. However, you have defied the will 

of the international community and you have slapped us in the face 

so many times. We are tired of it and we are going to turn this information over in 60 days. If you want to be Milosevic or Pinochet 

and run for the rest of your life, be hounded for the rest of your 

life, we may not catch you in the next couple of years, but if you 

don’t stay in power forever, and no one does, you will end up in 

The Hague. It is your choice. Imagine the leverage we would have 

from that. 

Senator McCain has said the same thing with former Senator 

Dole in an op ed. Let us use what we have at our disposal to push 

and give leverage to the diplomatic effort to end this crisis, and we 
48

have all these tools and we are using none of them, and we are not 

using them because of our counterterrorism relationship. 

We need to pursue the end of what this administration and what 

this Congress has called genocide with the same vigor that we pursue the relationship we have with Khartoum on counterterrorism 

objectives. 

Mr. BOOZMAN. And I agree. You know, I guess I misunderstood 

in the sense that that was going on kind of as an aside and not 

being used as leverage, where that would go forward regardless of 

their behavior. So good. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Mr. Meeks. 

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank each 

and everyone of you for the work that you have been doing in trying to save people and save lives because I, too, like Mr. Costa and 

our ranking member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, went on this last trip to 

Darfur with the Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and what an education it was. 

But I come away very frustrated because all I hear while I was 

there and to a large degree, and I went to the President’s statement yesterday, is really excuses why people continue to die, and 

I don’t see the urgency as I have heard from you today, from many 

folks, to stop people from dying. 

While I was there, you know, everyone was talking about there 

has to be a peace agreement before they can stop the killings, 

which to me makes absolutely no sense, and at the same time they 

talk about the rebel leaders and these five rebel leaders who are 

supposed to be sitting there to work out peace. I understand that 

many of them were never even in Sudan. They are going around 

galvanizing in parts of Europe, places, getting money, and having 

an old good time. 

Why are we allowing—you know, if we are going to be together 

with our European allies, why are we allowing the rebels to go 

there at all? Why don’t we force them to be holed up in Sudan 

somewhere instead of them gallivanting all over the place? 

Why aren’t we now utilizing—you know, I have seen sanctions 

and divestment work one time basically, and that was in South Africa, and it worked because it was multilateral sanctions and divestment. In fact, I wish I could say we were the leaders there. We 

were the tail. We may have even been the China then, that people 

were saying we have got to get America to do because everybody 

else was there, and it was because we saw ourselves as being isolated by the rest of the world. We said we better get to it and jump 

on board. 

Well, here is our opportunity, and I am not going to blame China 

or anybody, of us taking the lead, of us saying now we are going 

to utilize the pressure that we have to make sure that everybody 

is on board, because what I see is taking place is we are giving excuses as opposed to using our leadership to make things happen; 

that I for one we have power right here in our hands and we don’t 

use it. 

All of these countries, whether they are European allies, whether 

they are from Northern Africa, whether they are from the Middle 

East and Egypt, we give all of them money. They all come here 
49

asking for military help, they ask for this or that. Well, that might 

be some leverage that we can use right now to get them to put the 

pressure on the Sudanese Government to say that we are going to 

disinvest and that we are going to have sanctions against this government and we are going to use whatever influence we have on 

Bashir to make him change, and the Sudanese Government to protect their folks as opposed to passing the buck. 

So my thing is it is time for us in the United States Congress, 

it is time for us and the United States administration to stop passing the buck also. It is time for us to pull up to the table and compel our allies, who we are with on all other things, to say that they 

are going to stand with us to stop this human annihilation of people, and I will just end of this. 

Thank you so very much for what you do because the way we do 

make the difference, forget about just with the—and I know the 

statement about we have got to go to the grass roots of the Chinese 

people—we need more grass roots, what you are doing right here 

of the American people so that we have our voices louder and clearer that we are ready to do what is necessary to show that we are 

not going to allow people to continue to be slaughtered while we 

just play with our hands and wait for some kind of solution to come 

from someplace else. But thank you for what you do. Thank you 

for your Web site. Thank you for your commitment. Thank you for 

your being here today because truly are making a difference in saving lives on this planet, and if we can stop it immediately here, 

then we can prevent it because I want to get to the point where 

we don’t have to continue to stop. I want to get to a place where 

we have prevented other atrocities like this from happening in the 

future. 

Thank you, and I yield back my time. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Watson. 

Ms. WATSON. I want to say to the panel that what you saw here 

was the choir and you are the preachers. These are people who are 

committed, who have been there, and I thank you, Mr. 

Prendergast, for your escort and your assistance when our group 

came, and we were with Don Cheadle and Paul Rusesabagina, and 

those images that we saw at the camp are burned into my memory. 

Ambassador Farrow, I have followed you for many years. In fact, 

I represent Los Angeles and Hollywood, so I was always interested 

in your career, and in the fact as a celebrity you chose to do the 

humanitarian job. 

I want to say this, that I think it is brilliant that you came up 

with the idea of the 2008 Olympics, the Genocide Olympics. We 

were there last week as well, and we raised this issue with the 

Chinese, and I do think that they are at a point now if we tie the 

two together like you have suggested that we might be able to push 

them a little bit. 

We did not get the kind of resistance that was described here 

earlier. There were three of us. Eni Faleomavaega was the leader, 

and then we had John Conyers who is the chair of Judiciary, and 

I think when the three of us were introduced that struck a cord 

with them too, and then when we mentioned their seeking the oil 

reserves and their growing, growing need to consume, smart people 
50

start to think, and you certainly have to give them credit for being 

smart. 

What I feel is really the issue, and the issue is that I have not 

seen a well-defined foreign policy out of this administration and the 

State Department on Darfur, and Mr. Prendergast, when we came 

back we went to the White House. We met with the President and 

the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I put my finger—sorry for 

being so blunt—a former teacher in Hollywood—I put my finger in 

their face and I said, ‘‘Listen, I want you to take a high-level delegation over to Darfur.’’

She did, but they just dropped it, and I don’t feel, as has been 

suggested here, that there are high-level people from the State Department riveting on the problem the world faces in the Sudan. So 

mine is more a comment, and then I want to probe a little bit with 

the Ambassador, that until we can get the attention, and you know 

all of our attention is going into Iraq, we are wasting billions and 

billions and billions of dollars there, and if we could divert some 

of those funds into other troubled spots, I think we would be appreciated a little more around the globe. 

So, my question to you, Ambassador Farrow, how do you perceive 

us really using this theme that you ingeniously came up with, the 

Genocide Olympics, how can we push that and maybe give some 

pressure? 

Ms. FARROW. First, I must respectfully correct you. I didn’t come 

up with it. It had been proposed actually by Professor Eric Reeves 

of Smith College. 

Ms. WATSON. Great. We will give him credit. 

Ms. FARROW. It started to go into advocacy groups, and I 

glommed onto it, and my son and I wrote that piece in the Wall 

Street Journal which seems to have brought it to an explosive level. 

I don’t have a tangible plan. I think people have to be imaginative and courageous here. Clearly, China has the most leverage of 

all the countries over Khartoum, and with those massive oil interests and—I mean, it has all the sticks and carrots that the United 

States has some of but not all of. I don’t know precisely where this 

will go, but I do know if the pressure keeps up one thing to direct 

it at is the sponsors. 

We saw this morning’s news that Rolls-Royce withdrew from its 

commitments in Sudan for moral reasons. If we would see the same 

from Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Nike, whoever, the sponsors 

who are going to be sponsoring the Olympic Games, if we would 

see Mr. Spielberg say, you know, my artistic cooperation will be reserved until such a moment that the people of Darfur actually realize security on the ground, until then, you know, it isn’t the games 

as usual. 

I mean, we need to see that, and from my position I can’t effect 

that, but if there is a groundswell, if this becomes a tsunami where 

these sponsors are actually tainted by their participation, and that 

is made loud and clear, China has really got to rethink its position. 

I already think they are over there, and I think it was you, John 

who said, you know, they are saying to Khartoum get these guys 

off our backs. So I mean, that is mobility. 

It seems a small thing, but it could be the small thing that could 

move a mountain. 
51

Ms. WATSON. Well, my time is up, and let me just say this. Since 

you have done your op. eds., if you might want to share with us 

some of the responses and you can get them to us, I think you will 

see delegations going back to China and putting pressure on them. 

I saw a little opening while we were there. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

Ms. FARROW. My op. eds. are at MiaFarrow.org. 

Ms. WATSON. Okay. 

Ms. FARROW. They are all there. 

Ms. WATSON. Thank you. 

Ms. FARROW. Thank you. 

Mr. PAYNE. We may just try to see if we can get the other members if you take about 2–21⁄2 minutes or so. Mr. McCaul and we 

might be able to finish. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief. 

Ms. Farrow, it is an honor to have you here, Mr. Prendergast. I 

saw that you are the mother of 14 children. That is an astounding 

accomplishment. I am the father of five young children, and I don’t 

know how you do that. That is wonderful. 

The first question is the leadership of the Government of Sudan 

has been openly sympathetic to forces like al-Qaeda. They are 

heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist organization. What is your realistic assessment in terms of a political solution with this government is my first question. 

You talked about a no-fly zone and a ground intervention. What 

do you view that ground intervention, the makeup of that ground 

intervention force being comprised of? 

Then lastly, would it be helpful if we divested the Thrift Savings 

Plan, which is a Federal employee thrift saving plan, divested the 

TSP from any investments that go toward the Sudanese Government? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. I think the possibilities for a political solution 

are high if the political will is there to create the leverage necessary to bring about that political settlement. We saw a 20-year 

war, again, that Congressman Payne and Congressman Royce and 

others here in this panel have dedicated much of their professional 

life to ending the war between the government and the southern 

Sudanese rebels, the SPLA, come to an end because of significant 

pressure that backed significant diplomatic leadership from the 

United States that ended a war that cost 2.25 million lives. 

We can do the same in Darfur if we put that kind of pressure 

and that kind of diplomatic leadership together. I don’t think there 

is a need to have ground intervention forces. I think there is a plan 

in place, there are options in place. The United States just has to 

take the diplomatic leadership to do it. 

The divestment issue is a crucial one. I wanted to second what 

Mia is saying referencing Rolls-Royce, referencing Siemens, the 

German company that also divested recently. The momentum is 

building. Iowa, the State of Iowa just divested, the eighth or ninth 

State to do so. 

The last I checked the pretty important State in the calendar, 

the electoral cycle, all of the members of the Iowa State Legislature 

are considering a joint letter to all of the candidates that are running for President from the Republican and Democratic side, in-
52

cluding Mr. Tancredo, that would ask them to do what Senator 

Brownback has done, what Mia Farrow has done, which is to divest 

their personal holdings. 

Imagine the force that could be brought about by Congress deciding collectively that each individual member voluntarily will do the 

same and divest all of their holdings, their retirement accounts and 

other accounts from Sudanese stocks. It wouldn’t cost anybody a 

nickel because you can buy Chevron or Exxon just as easily as you 

can buy China National Petroleum Company, and do this and just 

clean your portfolios, and all of the Members of Congress doing 

that would be a powerful act to be heard around the world. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Thank you. 

Mr. PAYNE. Ms. Jackson Lee. As a matter of fact, Mr. Tancredo, 

I recall you had capital market sanctions passed, so I am sure you 

will go along as the Presidential candidate with divested. Okay. I 

am not your campaign manager, but I know where you stand on 

that. 

Ms. Jackson Lee. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. There 

is no doubt of your leadership and the pain you have experienced 

but also the genuine effort that Chairman Payne has made and 

Chairman Lantos and many members of this committee. I join my 

colleague from Texas on the retirement aspect that Congressman 

Barbara Lee, a divestiture bill that we are all trying to see move 

very quickly. 

Let me thank you, Mr. Prendergast and Ambassador Farrow, 

and let me indicate that I have set down with the refugees from 

Sudan in the Chad camps. I have watched the deterioration. I have 

seen women turn their faces out of complete shame or inability to 

speak about the horrific-ness of rape, and though these are notes 

in pencil, all of the recounting of the violence that you have spoken 

of I have and I will continue to go to colleges as you have done. 

But let me just simply say that we have to stop being timid, and 

I am going to ask this question. Full embargo, I know it was not 

successful when President Carter tried to do it in 1976, but the 

threat of a boycott of the Olympics, the ceasing of taking any oil 

from Sudan, what you are saying to me do we value life over products. And I think we get more people understanding life versus 

products, friendship, diplomacy, even though we see a gain that 

has occurred with Bashir saying he will take the U.N. troops. But 

the time being what it is full embargo, boycott, strong measures, 

divestiture, I think is important, and I thank you for your presence 

here. 

I would just like to say in closing to my question, Mr. Chairman, 

is I wish that we had full disclosure. We had a slave bill here and 

we didn’t want to put language in it about the Durham—the South 

African racism conference, and it was valuable. We need to be telling the truth in this room. 

Madam Ambassador, full embargo, boycott, are these some of the 

things we should be thinking about? 

Mr. PAYNE. Before she answers, Mr. Scott, from Georgia if you 

would like to ask a question or get a comment in because, as you 

see, we have 1 minute and 30 seconds to get to vote. 
53

Mr. SCOTT. Yes. Thank you just quickly. It seems to me that a 

stumbling block of moving forward on this is that the Sudanese 

Government has a great fear of being prosecuted for war crimes. 

Would not it be beneficial someway in our diplomatic procedures 

that if this is on the table, to remove this out? I mean, if it is a 

way in which we could save lives, that perhaps that could be in 

some kind of way handled and erased. So if that is the big issue, 

couldn’t that be something that could be taken and put on the table 

to give to them so that we can move forward? 

Mr. PAYNE. You can answer both questions, either one of you. 

Thank you. John. 

Ms. FARROW. You go ahead. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Two quick ones. On the ICC, which would be 

the body that would deal with—the tribunal that would deal with 

war crime charges, I think the United States could play a tremendous role in providing declassified intelligence and information to 

the chief prosecutor to give leverage to the efforts to get a peace 

deal, to get a protection force, and they do fear it. In fact, they are 

very, very unnerved by this, but they believe right now there is a 

glass ceiling. They think basically the ICC has spent its bullets, 

that it doesn’t have enough intelligence and information necessary 

to convict the most senior people in the regime. 

We have the information. The United States Government has the 

kinds of intelligence and information that could be turned over, 

and that kind of a threat would give us tremendous leverage, and 

so I would second your proposal. 

On the question of embargo of the Olympics, there are nuclear 

options and non-nuclear options, and I think the Chinese, even 

with a very significant public campaign, as Mia said viral campaign all over the world that is pointing out that this government 

is not the government that it is presenting its face to the world as 

will have a significant impact on the Chinese Government’s calculations. 

Having the threat of a boycott and people with the stature such 

as yourself, saying there should be a boycott, I think it strengthens 

the hand of the campaigners and the activists around the world because there are people out there pushing for even stronger options. 

So I think it is really important at this juncture to float it, and put 

it out there and see how China responds to it. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Since there is no time left if we are going 

to get to vote, we probably need to go shortly, let me thank the 

panelists. You all were just outstanding. Any answers could be 

given in writing, but let me thank you, Ms. Farrow. As the Ambassador, you have done an outstanding job, and of course, John 

Prendergast continues to do excellent work. 

I would also like to acknowledge the Montclair-Kimberly Academy students from high school in my district, and I am sure that 

they have listened intently, and I am going to be very interested 

to visit the school to see what projects they are going to start, so 

that is something to think about. 

Once again let me thank all of you. I think we are going to have 

to really bring up the pressure on this issue. We cannot sort of fiddle while Rome burns like Nero did. We have much more to do. 

Thank you. 
54

The meeting is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 
(55)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MIKE PENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF INDIANA

Mr. Chairman, two hundred years ago, on February 23, the British parliament 

passed a bill that banned the British Empire’s involvement in the slave trade. This 

was due, in large part, to the diligent work and faith of a man named William Wilberforce. Young Wilberforce began is career in the English Parliament at the age 

of 21, and despite his eager aptitude and passion, campaigned for 20 years before 

his bill finally passed to abolish slavery. 

Mr. Chairman, Eric Metaxas, in his recent book Amazing Grace, describes Wilberforce as ‘‘a hinge in the middle of history: He pulled the world around a corner.’’ 

Wilberforce and his colleagues helped to change the very mindset of an entire society. Although slavery tragically still exists, the idea that it is good is dead, and the 

mindset that once accepted it as economically necessary and morally defensible, is 

gone. 

Often regarded as the ‘‘conscience’’ of Congress, Wilberforce found his purpose for 

ending slavery deeply rooted in his faith. He took courage from the Hebrew narratives of Daniel and Joseph in the Bible’s Old Testament, and pledged to honor 

God through his political position by defending the slave and reforming the manners 

of society. 

Mr. Chairman, a little known work of Wilberforce, entitled A Practical View of 

Christianity, reflects his understanding of the transforming power of Jesus Christ. 

Wilberforce knew that there would be no way to remove slavery from a society that 

had no respect for the sanctity of life. Mr. Metaxas writes that, ‘‘Slavery was as accepted as birth and marriage and death, was so woven into the tapestry of human 

history that you could barely see its threads, much less pull them out!’’ Mr. Wilberforce began his fight against slavery on his knees in prayer, and in the service and 

care of human rights. 

Wilberforce is remembered for his political wit, intelligence and even an amazing 

singing voice; but above all, he is remembered today for working out his faith in 

the service of the least and lowest in society. He is remembered today for fighting 

for human rights and dignity for all men. His work and life embodied what our 

founders believed when they said, ‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 

men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 

unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’’

Æ