I doubt that President Obama expected it to play out like this when he appointed General Gration his Special Envoy to Sudan. Instead of easing the concerns of the international community that the Obama administration is going soft on Sudan and its President, Omar al-Bashir, Gration has inflamed Darfur activists and more then his fair share of politicians with statements that keep our administration and his own boss back pedaling.
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General Gration began his downward spiral by downplaying what is happening in Darfur by saying that what we are witnessing in Darfur are only the "remnants of genocide". This created a massive rift between himself and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN over whether Sudan is currently committing genocide or not. Rice, and the vast majority of the international community, obviously believe otherwise.
Gration decided to take his foreign policy folly on the road while on his most recent trip to the refugee camps. Apparently the international community and governments around the world have been misinformed and mislead because according to the General everything is safe now. You see General Gration told a group of refugees that they could return home to there villages. He said this as if everything was better all of a sudden. He told them to go back home to the very fertile lands they once farmed. He apparently didn't get he memo that this lands have been reoccupied by pro government Arab farmers, some of which have been brought across borders to occupy that very land. Essentially looking this group of refugees in the eye, Gration asked them to walk back into the hand of the very people that drove them out. Brilliant.
It is worth mentioning that countless activists and experts don't think that it's a coincidence that this reoccupation by pro Bashir farmers taking place during the census for what is suppose to be Sudan's first fair and free election in 2010.
But yesterday, General Gration really went above and beyond. In front of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, General Gration unleashed some verbal miscues that not only put President Obama and his administration in a bad light but enraged activists everywhere by all but confirming their fear of a weak, confused, and contradictory policy approach toward Sudan.
One of the many whopper that Special Envoy Gration let fly was...
"There's no evidence in our intelligence community that supports [Sudan] being on the state sponsors of terrorism. It's a political decision."Oh how I would have loved to see the Presidents face when he heard that remark. His hand picked Special Envoy, the man who was suppose to be the American face of peace in Darfur, throws him under the bus by implying that the only reason that Sudan is on the list of states that sponsors of terrorism has nothing to do with the fact that they support(ed) al-Qaeda and Hamas. but that there is a political agenda. There is a plus side to this statement however. If he was looking kiss up to Khartoum he scored major points.
"Sudan's U.N. ambassador (Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad) said Friday that his government was pleased with an American envoy's assertion that there is no evidence to support the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism."Assistant Secretary of State Crowley was doing some ducking and dodging at the daily press briefing Crowley got grilled during a exchange with a reporter when he could not answer a few simple questions with any definitive answers. The big question being is General Gration speaking for the President and his administration or is he speaking for himself. Is he part of the team or had the General gone verbally rogue?
He wants a "rollback" of sanctions that are in place against Sudan because he say they are essentially keeping him from accomplishing his job but when asked by Senator Feingold exactly what steps has the Government of Sudan taken to deserve being removed from the black list and having the sanctions lifted, General Gration feel almost as silent as when he was asked what kind of punitive measures, or "sticks" as Gration like to call them, where part of the administrations plan if the al-Bashir doesn't play nice.
My fellow blogger Mohamed E. Suleiman, a Darfur native living in the San Francisco Bay Area, summed it up perfectly when he wrote;
"The Government of Sudan has achieved its set goals when it unleashed the genocide in 2003. Now it is music to its ears to hear voices from inside the U.S. Congress and the Department of State questioning genocide, lifting sanctions, lifting the regime's name from the list of states sponsoring terrorism, telling villagers to go back, no one talks about armed janjaweed, no stress on accountability and justice, talk and talk about how things are getting better in Darfur. This is the "night of Gadri" to the regime in Khartoum (in other words " Christmas in July")."It is painfully obvious to everyone that General Gration isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. The fact is he has managed to burying this administration in a giant foreign affair nightmare. But the saddest part of this catastrophe is that Gration, and apparently this administration, is perfectly fine with throwing away the one thing that the people of Darfur are running out of. Time.
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