Examination of Witness (Questions 20-39)
DR SULIMAN
BALDO
29 NOVEMBER 2004
Q20 Mr Colman: You have pointed out that
China has said that they would veto any sanctions. The only reason
why China has not vetoed the actions on the Ivory Coast is because
the African Union have asked for those sanctions. Why do you not
support, if that is the way you would lead, a request from the
African Union to the Security Council saying, "Please, please,
support this oil blockade" that my colleague Mr Bercow was
mentioning, because that would, if you like, jolt up the Government
of Sudan to say: one, we must listen to the AU; two, we must listen
to the world community?
Dr Baldo: I would definitely support
such a position by the AU, but haven't seen it coming so far,
and obviously this is a direction that we should consider. At
the same time, the lack of initiative by the AU on this particular
issue should not be an excuse for the Security Council to fail
to face its responsibility of maintaining peace and human security
in Darfur. They are really failing in that region to meet these
responsibilities.
Q21 Mr Colman: What more do you think
the international community should be doing to help the African
Union force on the ground, to ensure that peace is maintained,
that the people on the ground are protected? Are you suggesting
there should be military intervention from the United Kingdom
or from the United States or from France?
Dr Baldo: That would not happen
because of the deficit of political will from the international
powers to be involved in African conflicts.
Q22 Mr Colman: I am asking if you would
think it was a good idea?
Dr Baldo: It is not going to happen.
I am a realistic observer of the international scene and I do
not believe that the international community or these powers would
act in this fashion. In fact, that is one reason why the AU is
being propped up to play the role of peacekeeper or mediator in
various countries on the continent. In Darfur this is a fully-fledged
operation that they are undertaking at this moment in time. I
believe the international community has helped the AU this time
in planning for this operation with logistics and resources. In
particular, the input from the European Union has been considerable,
from the Member States and from the UK. What the African Union
needs more of is help with military planning, with command line
improvement, with the headquarters in Addis Ababa. They really
need to build many of these institutions from scratch.
Q23 Mr Colman: In your report is an initiative
that Libya is leading on. I have never heard of that before. Could
you give us a few sentences about what Libya is doing to try to
get this resolved?
Dr Baldo: Libya is facilitating
an initiative by a few hundred leaders in Darfur from across the
various groups—traditional tribal leaders, modern people,
students, intellectuals and professionals—to bring them
together to consider the crisis and come up with solutions. Libya
has helped them by hosting the first meeting in Tripoli, by chartering
flights for them to go to Abuja during the talks to speak to the
rebels and the government delegations. The next meeting is scheduled
for 5 December. There is a consensus emerging from these parallel
discussions, which are people-to-people peace negotiations between
these communities to arrest the conflict and stop the trend of
deterioration. I would not call it a Libyan initiative but a Libyan
facilitation of a home-grown initiative by local groups.
Q24 Mr Bercow: Dr Baldo, I am sorry to
press you but it does seem to me that my colleague Mr Colman did
raise this very important question: to intervene or not to intervene.
I know that you are telling us that it is not going to happen,
there is not support for it. Simply as a matter of establishing
your preference, and perhaps the ICG's preference, I would like
to press you. It does seem, does it not, that there is a grave
danger that if the international community does not think that
it can ever be worth intervening in any circumstances, no matter
how great the scale of the ethnic cleansing and the genocide,
people who feel for the victims in Darfur will conclude that the
international community does not give a stuff because these are
black African lives that are being lost and if it was justified
to intervene in Iraq, are there not circumstances in which it
would be here? In your own evidence you talk about "twice
in the last two weeks the government raided al-Geer displaced
camp, as well as Otash camp" in clear breach of commitments
the Government of Sudan has already made. The African Union had
to stand by and observe apparently—I suspect in daylight,
but whether it was in daylight or night, I do not know—all
this happening.
Dr Baldo: That was in front of
BBC TV cameras.
Q25 Mr Bercow: Dr Baldo, I am asking
you and the ICG if morally you think that there would be a case
for a substantial intervention of a peacekeeping character, as
opposed simply to an intervention of a monitoring sort that we
have at the moment. Would you personally favour intervention?
Dr Baldo: I would favour intervention
from the perspective of the right to protect. When a government
attacks its own civilians, when a government massively breaches
international humanitarian law and human rights law and fails
in its primary duties of protecting its own civilians, the international
community has that right and duty to step to the fore and intervene
to stop these massacres. The steward for intervention is now the
African Union ceasefire observers on the ground in Darfur. That
is not enough. They do not have sufficient number, the required
capabilities or the right mandate. A first step therefore would
be to strengthen all these components of the operation on the
ground by making sure that the African Union is given a mandate
to protect civilians specifically and a second step, which again
would send a strong message to the government in Khartoum, to
have stand-by tactical support capability to intervene in situations
where civilians are under direct attack. This should be a capability
provided by an international partner nation, again to send that
message to Khartoum and to show that under these conditions the
world will not stand by while civilians are being massacred.
Q26 Hugh Bayley: Are you arguing that
there is a right for people from outside the Sudan to protect
the people in Darfur or a responsibility to protect them?
Dr Baldo: I am calling for the
responsibility to protect them.
Q27 Hugh Bayley: How do you assess Britain's
response to this crisis, and perhaps in particular to the five
points which our Prime Minister put when he visited Khartoum last
month? What is Britain doing that is right and what is Britain
doing that is wrong?
Dr Baldo: The response has been
within the parameters that we have discussed of the international
community's response to the crisis. Therefore, it is one that
has suffered from the same limitations, not really going far enough
to indicate resolve and a willingness to push for biting measures
and biting resolutions of the kind for which we are calling. Britain
has been involved bilaterally with the government and under the
EU initiative—for example, in the deployment of phase two
of the African Union forces to Darfur, in funding and providing
resources and capabilities for the humanitarian operation in Sudan.
At the level that addresses the root causes of the conflict that
would really achieve a reversal of this situation, for example
a reversal of the ethnic cleaning, guaranteeing the return of
the IDPs to their home areas in safety and dignity, there is a
lot yet to be done by Britain, other members of the European Union
and the international community.
Q28 Hugh Bayley: You were speaking a
moment or two ago about how important the African Union's military
presence is, that it is important in its own right and a test
for the African Union, but is it enough and is Britain right in
policy terms to rely upon the African Union to provide a military
presence or is the African Union never in fact going to be able
to mount a significant enough, mobile enough, military presence
to prevent the conflict?
Dr Baldo: The whole concept of
the operation is really to protect civilians by presence, what
they call proactive protection. Just by being there, the African
Union, with the international community behind it, is hopeful
that this will provide a deterrent and dissuasion from attacks
on civilians. This is not going to happen because of the cynicism
and the daring and provocative nature of the initiatives by government
forces on the ground and by aligned militias and now increasingly
rebel groups on the ground. Therefore, in many of the recent incidents
of attacks and forcible evictions of people from IDP camps, no-one
was hiding; it was happening in broad daylight before BBC televisions
cameras, as I was saying, and the African Union was standing by
without being able to intervene. It does not have the mandate
to protect civilians, to use force for the protection of civilians.
It needs to be provided with such a mandate. There are insufficient
numbers. Darfur, it is often said, is the size of France. Currently
the force should be 3,000; they are building to that level but
it is not yet the case. They will need a lot of mobility and therefore
helicopters and four-wheeled drive vehicles are making their way
to Sudan. It will take over a month to get them there. Therefore,
things are happening but at a very slow pace and even this limited
idea of protection by presence is not yet effective or taking
place. What we are calling for is a real re-thinking, a reinvigoration,
of this shot that we have on the ground, the African Union; supply
of logistical communications; mobility facilities; and then a
stand-by tactical support unit from a military force of an advanced
nature, therefore definitely from an industrial country. We do
not have any preference provided the capability of that nature
is provided.
Q29 Mr Davies: All my questions are going
to be under the heading of what we have got to do now, what we
ought to be doing now. We have gone over a lot of that ground.
Let me just clarify one or two of the points that you have already
made in answer to my colleagues. You have said that Great Britain
and the European Union's reaction is nothing like considerable
enough. There is a lot to be done, you have said that the African
Union does not have a sufficient mandate to solve the problem,
that it is not going to make any progress in solving the problem
with its present level of equipment or its present mandate. You
have said that the European Union, that is to say Britain and
France as members of the Security Council, cannot actually get
a better United Nations mandate in the form of a Security Council
resolution because China will always veto it unless the African
Union is supporting it. Let me ask again the question that one
of my colleagues put to you a moment ago. Is not the way we should
start in this conundrum to try to persuade the African Union themselves
to support such a resolution so that we get from the Security
Council the mandate that is required for the African Union to
increase its commitment, to extend its responsibility and its
role and, if they want additional support from advanced countries
in the form of logistics or fire power or radar for a no-fly zone
or what have you, we could then contribute those. The first thing
we have got to get, I think, on your analysis, is a Security Council
resolution. We only get that if we have African Union support,
am I right? So we should start talking to the African Union about
it? Is that where we start?
Dr Baldo: It did not take that
much for the Security Council to take a resolution in various
other types of crises.
Q30 Mr Davies: Yes, but they do not get
through in the case of Africa, they do not avoid a Chinese veto
in the case of Africa—you have already given us that testimony—unless
the African Union is going to support such a resolution. I think
what you are saying to us this afternoon is that it is a waste
of time for us in the European Union to start to try to draft
a new Security Council resolution. We have to get the African
Union to support an initiative; then we have a chance of getting
it through the Security Council without the Chinese veto and then
we can actually do the things you want us to do. Is that right?
Dr Baldo: This is not quite the
point of view I was trying to convey here, and I am sorry if I
did not explain myself well. Definitely I am not supportive of
the use of the African Union as an excuse for inaction by the
international community and the Security Council, and the permanent
members of the Security Council in particular. The African Union
is a young institution. It is only two years old. The Peace and
Security Council of the African Union was created only last July,
a few months ago. I do not expect the African Union to step into
roles that the international community is unwilling or reluctant
to undertake from different strategic considerations of the various
permanent members of the Security Council.
Q31 Mr Davies: Nobody is suggesting that.
Dr Baldo: It would be a very positive
step if the African Union understood that initiative of clarifying
what the Security Council should be doing about the situation
in the same fashion as they did in the Ivory Coast. As I said,
there is a different line of priorities now for the African Union.
I do not think they are focused along these lines.
Q32 Mr Davies: If Britain and France
draft a resolution and take it to the African Union at the present
time saying, "Look, we are all concerned about this, and
we all agree that the problem is getting worse rather than better.
We all agree you do not have a sufficient mandate to do any more
than you are currently doing and you need more forces to do it,
let us have a new resolution. We will draft a resolution for you,
if you like, but we would like you to support it", the African
Union would then say, "No, no, we are not sure we want to
go down that road because we are cutting across the Government
of Sudan." Therefore we cannot do anything because we face
a Chinese veto. That is the analysis you have given us this afternoon,
is it not?
Dr Baldo: In a way, I was trying
to give a realistic reading of the situation in the Security Council,
and therefore the reluctance of countries that are Permanent Members,
such as China, to side with the tough measures that are requested
and this is the situation. There is a need for countries to face
their responsibilities. With what is happening, there should be
a moment when people are required to take a vote, even at the
risk of a veto, just to show where they stand. If they are willing
to tolerate massive human rights abuses and violations of international
human rights law, then let that be the case. I believe if that
choice was given, that may be a dissuasive factor in countries
that are willing to veto a decision. Perhaps they would abstain
rather than put themselves on the spot like that. There are different
approaches to this situation rather than tying it to a blanket
cover from the African Union.
Q33 Mr Davies: That is very helpful.
That is clear. I think we see now how we can try to break out
of this circle. You are saying that really it should be for the
Permanent Members of the Security Council to take that initiative.
Let us look at other ways that we can move forward at the present
time. You have already referred to making people accountable for
the atrocities that have taken place. How do we do that? In the
case of Kosovo, we set up an international court. In the case
of Rwanda, we had a mixture of international and national legal
systems put in place to bring to justice the people who had been
responsible for these terrible atrocities. Are you suggesting
the same kind of thing or a different kind of initiative for Darfur?
How do we make progress in achieving what you have said this afternoon
ought to be an urgent objective?
Dr Baldo: In the case of Darfur,
the policy that was adopted, the counter-insurgency policy, was
engineered by top security officials in the Government of Sudan,
sometimes against the good advice of colleagues in the regime
and in the ruling party, probably because someone spoke out after
the fact. These people have pursued that policy, basically setting
up the Janjaweed militia and unleashing them to attack civilians
with total impunity. An international investigation is underway
now to establish the extent of these crimes and try to define
those who are responsible; this is one aspect of the mandate.
Several options are open when such officials are named by such
an investigation. One is for the Security Council to refer the
case to the International Criminal Court. Sudan is not a member
of that. It has not ratified the Rome Convention that created
the International Criminal Court, and therefore there is little
chance of Sudan referring the case to the International Criminal
Court, particularly because these officials are at the heart of
the regime and the cornerstone of the ruling party and the regime
in Sudan. There may also be an option to establish special courts,
but this is unlikely because of the experience with the special
courts for Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia, and the slow processing,
the pending prosecutions for example because of sending civilians
to arrest and to hand to the court the people indicted who fall
under international law and the like. The most likely course of
action would be referral by the Security Council to the International
Criminal Court.
Q34 Mr Davies: As you have said yourself,
since Sudan is not a party to that Convention, that will be without
effect because Sudan can refuse to refer any of their citizens
to the International Criminal Court and there will be no progress.
Dr Baldo: The decision could be
taken but Sudan would have the option of not co-operating with
that decision. Again, that would have real weight.
Q35 Mr Davies: You think that would be
psychological weight?
Dr Baldo: It is legal because
these officials will be indicted under international law and would
be liable to arrest and presentation before the Court wherever
they go. The message would really have serious implications on
the Government of Sudan.
Q36 Mr Davies: The implication of what
you are saying is that the International Criminal Court can have
a jurisdiction even in a country which has not ratified the Convention?
Dr Baldo: This is provided for.
The preferred system is that of country referrals but the Security
Council has the mandate to refer cases when there are grave violations
of international law.
Q37 Mr Davies: Finally, quite a different
but more immediate matter, I think: what should we be doing on
the ground? You have already given evidence this afternoon that
the safe areas which were established have not worked at all.
What should we be doing—and I say "we" but what
should anybody be doing, NGOs, governments, EU governments, the
Government of Sudan—in order to try to improve the security
for the inhabitants of Darfur who live in terror of another attack
by the Janjaweed or some other militia or violent group? As we
have just heard, the safe areas are not working. What would have
a better chance of working?
Dr Baldo: The United Nations Secretary-General
and his representative in Sudan have recently reversed their position
on these safe areas. They have clearly indicated to the Government
of Sudan that it would not be given a green light to proceed with
the exploitation and manipulation of the concept of safe areas.
Therefore, there is containment of this issue by the government.
Since then, there have been all these other aspects: escalating
violence due to hostage-taking, increased banditry, attacks on
humanitarian convoys; cattle rustling and ethnic revenge as practised.
One way of improving security on the ground is to ensure a large
air force for the AU, a stronger mandate for the AU forces on
the ground, and that there is an international humanitarian presence
on the ground. By their mere presence in assisting the victims
of the conflict, the international humanitarian workers are providing
effective protection to many of the IDPs, particularly in the
controlled environment of IDP camps, and they are travelling between
IDP camps to provide neutral objective observation of developments
on the ground and early warnings. Khartoum is very aware of that.
Khartoum has never stopped trying to intimidate humanitarian workers.
I have seen in the news, but I have yet to confirm it, a decision
by the Government of Sudan to expel from Sudan the directors of
Oxfam UK and Save the Children UK, a decision taken yesterday.
There should be strong reaction when such actions are taken, a
denunciation and public diplomacy that Khartoum cannot continue
to manipulate humanitarian interventions for strategic and political
purposes, as is the case now. In this case, it is for diplomatic
purposes because they were angered by a statement that was perhaps
attributed to one of the agencies that there was a bombing near
a food distribution site. These are actions that could be taken
now to help to improve the security situation.
Q38 Mr Davies: May I take you up on that
final point? You say that action should be taken in response to
the expulsion of the leaders of NGOs and of Oxfam and so forth.
Do you mean action when you say "action" or do you just
mean a declaration, a statement? If you mean action, what kind
of action?
Dr Baldo: By "action"
I mean logistical support, as I have said, aid the AU mission
on the ground, and resources for AU to increase forces on the
ground.
Q39 Mr Davies: We should take these actions
in response to the expulsions. These are actions you are recommending
anyway, are they not?
Dr Baldo: Political action and
public diplomacy is also action when you speak out strongly and
forcefully.
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