A two square mile patch of grassland on the border between Thailand and Cambodia, surrounding the 11th-century Hindu temple of Preah Vihear, has been a regional flashpoint for decades. The skirmishes have escalated in recent years and both countries maintain hundreds of troops along the border. But the fighting could quiet down soon if the sides agree to a ruling today by the U.N.'s International Court of Justice. The court declared that a demilitarized zone should be established immediately in the region surrounding the temple, outlined here in diagrams from the Bangkok Post. The two countries have indicated they would abide by the decision. 

With the U.N. ruling, the area surrounding Preah Vihear joins a handful of other demilitarized zones around the world. The most famous of these has divided North Korea and South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. The zone has played an important role maintaining the uneasy peace between the two countries, while also serving as a surprisingly effective wildlife refuge for a number of northeast Asia's endangered species. A similar phenomenon has emerged in the buffer zone established under U.N. control in 1974 between Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a breakaway region recognized only by Turkey.

Israel also deals with its share of DMZs -- one at the Golan Heights, where U.N. forces have maintained the ceasefire between Syria and Israel since 1974, and one at the Sinai Peninsula. But the latter now contains Egyptian soldiers deployed with Israel's permission during the chaos of the Arab Spring, after Bedouin tribesmen started bombing gas lines in the region to protest their treatment at the hands of the Egyptian government. Israel imports 40 percent of its gas from Egypt.

Looking for the next emerging DMZ? The two Sudans agreed in late May to set up a demilitarized zone along their border, but the details are still very much in the works. Conflict continues to brew over the contested region of Abyei, which lies in the middle of the border. Without a resolution to the dispute, the DMZ there could be a long ways off.

 

 

South Sudan's independence celebrations tomorrow look set to bring leaders from the world over: 30 African heads of state, plus Ban ki-Moon and a number of other senior Western diplomats. The presence of so many global bigwigs is wonderful news for the world's youngest country, but it has already made arrangements for the event a little more complicated. The Washington Times reports:

Sudanese President Omar [al]-Bashir's decision to attend South Sudan's independence celebrations in Juba on Saturday has created potentially awkward situations for delegations from countries that have been pressing for his arrest on a war crimes indictment...

A senior Western official in Sudan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said southern officials have assured the diplomatic corps in Juba they will do everything to avoid any embarrassments.

"The government is sensitive to these concerns and is going to do everything possible to make sure there are no embarrassments of any sort, on any side, on that day," the official said. "They are conscious that this might be awkward to Bashir as well."

A special seating arrangement has been worked out to minimize the possibility of blushing faces.

The International Criminal Court's March 2009 indictment alleged that Bashir was responsible for war crimes in the ongoing conflict in Darfur. Recent violence in border states Abyei and South Kordofan hasn't endeared him to the international community either. Bashir and rebel leaders pledged in late June to pull troops out of Abyei before the referendum, but Bashir's ambassador to Kenya reaffirmed yesterday the north's claim to the region. Bashir also backtracked yesterday on the June 29 peace accord between government officials and pro-southern rebels that promised to quell the fighting in South Kordofan.

Meanwhile, Jacob Zuma will be donning his superhero cape again on his visit to confront Bashir about recent violence in Sudan.

George Clooney's "anti-genocide paparazzi" seems to be dominating nearly every transmission coming out of south Sudan this week. Clooney, along with the Enough Project, Harvard researchers, and some of his wealthier Hollywood friends, have hired satellites to monitor troop movements along the north-south border, particularly the oil-rich region of Abyei. Clooney, active for years in the Save Darfur movement, has also become something of a celebrity spokesperson for the independence referendum. Naturally, the international humanitarian blogosphere's snark brigade is out in force.

Laurenist: "If you're anything like George Clooney, you lounge around on your yacht off the coast of Italy thinking up ways to save Africa."

Texas in Africa: "While John Prendergast, George Clooney, and other advocates who don't speak a word of Arabic have been raising fears about violence for months … the likelihood that a genocide or war will break out immediately seems to me to be slim to none."

Wronging Rights: "Clooney has described it as 'the best use of his celebrity.' Kinda just seems like he's trying to recruit a mercenary for Ocean's Fourteen."

Troubling as this morning's border violence is, there seems to be good reason for skepticism about the satellite project. The imagery the satellites provide isn't all that clear, showing about 8 square miles inches [Corrected.] per computer-screen pixel, making it difficult to figure out just what's going on on the ground. That level of imprecision can be dangerous when trying to assign guilt or innocence in crimes against humanity. There's also the question of how much of a deterrent this type of monitoring really is. Laurenist again:

In 2007, Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science launched “Eyes on Darfur,” a satellite project that monitored developments on the ground in Darfur. As you’ll recall, mere months later, Darfur was saved after millions of people updated their Facebook statuses with a link to blurry photos of sand.

But what about Clooney's presence itself? The actor's use of the paparazzi and basketball as analogies for horrific human rights violations might be grating to those who study these issues seriously, but isn't it worthwhile to bring attention to an often overlooked conflict? Here's UN Dispatch's Mark Leon Goldberg:

I know some people (cough, cough, Bill Easterly, cough, cough) have hangups about celebrity activism.  But does anyone really think that Sudan’s upcoming referendum would be covered on a National Sunday morning broadcast without George Clooney’s handsome face to greet viewers?

(Interestingly, Bono-basher-in-chief William Easterly doesn't appear to have weighed in yet.) 

Clooney has his own words for the haters:

“I’m sick of it,” he said. “If your cynicism means you stand on the sidelines and throw stones, I’m fine, I can take it. I could give a damn what you think. We’re trying to save some lives. If you’re cynical enough not to understand that, then get off your ass and do something. If you’re angry at me, go do it yourself. Find another cause – I don’t care. We’re working, and we’re going forward.” 

This kind of "at least I'm doing something" rhetoric drives development scholars absolutely bonkers and for good reason. But for now at least, it's hard to see how Clooney's presence as a cheerleader is really hurting. Once the referendum is over however, I hope he heads back to Lake Como. In international negotiations, a certain degree of obscurity can often be just as helpful as the media spotlight. Making a new country is a messy business anywhere, and in Southern Sudan, it's going to involve some very ugly compromises. (I wonder, for instance, what Clooney thinks about the Southern Sudanese government expelling Darfuri rebels in what seemed to be a conciliatory gesture to Khartoum.)

In the difficult weeks and months ahead, Southern Sudan will certainly need international help, but it should come from people with a slightly more extensive background in the situation. Most of all, it's probably not helpful for celebrities and the media to promote a narrative of the Juba government as the "good Sudan." Even in the best-case scenario, it's bound to be shattered pretty quickly.  

In any event, the Southern Sudanese themselves seem pretty nonplussed about Danny Ocean's presence in their midst:

“Who is that man talking?” a Sudanese journalist asked, gesturing to a white man with a group of reporters around him. When told it was George Clooney, a movie star, the Sudanese journalist looked confused and walked away.

For more on Southern Sudan, check out Maggie Fick on the dangers of referendum euphoria, view a slide show of Juba on the eve of independence, and read Robert Klitgaard on how the region's leaders are preparing to crack down on corruption.  

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley today defended the administration's decision to send a consulate officer as a representative to the inauguration of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, currently under indictment for war crimes: 

Crowley acknowledged that the level of US representation was even below that of other nations, who sent their ambassadors or deputy chiefs of mission to Thursday's inauguration.

"It was a reflection of our relations with Sudan," Crowley told reporters.

When asked whether sending someone at all gave support to Beshir, who faces war crimes charges, Crowley replied that the United States had work there as it pressed for full implementation of a fragile 2005 peace deal.

He also said the inauguration was not just for the president but also for the first vice president, Salva Kiir, the chairman of Sudan People's Liberation Movement, who holds the post under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

So if it was too embarrassing to send someone higher up, why send anyone at all? Sending a consulate officer just gives Bashir some measure of legitimacy while making the U.S. look like it's trying -- unsuccessfully -- to avoid embarrassment. 

In the Foggy Bottom office meeting room of U.S. Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration, the walls are covered with maps. Then, squarely behind the seat at the head of the table, is a wipe-board with two important "count downs:" 148 working days Sudan's elections and 346 before the referendum that will decide whether South Sudan will go independent from the North.

"That's not a whole lot of time," Gration said this morning at a blogger roundtable which I attended. There is much work to do.

I'll mention some "breaking news" now, and blog more in depth thereafter: 

1) Gration said that "last night," the administration did "reach and agreement on the overall broad framework on what we call incentives and pressures" that will govern  a long-awaited Sudan policy release (a document that will lay out the approach of the new administration). A vote from the "principals" is still necessary, but Gration was confident that an internal government consensus had been reached. Sudan, he said, is a high priority for the administration. He has "weekly" meetings with the White House, and has had "daily" contact recently to finalize the policy release.

2) Responding to a query about his active engagement with a government whose president, Omar el-Bashir, has been indicted for war crimes, said: "I've not met with Bashir, nor do I have plans to meet with him. But I'm not ruling it out if we have to do it to move the process forward." Gration defended his strong engagement with Khartoum, for which he has been criticized by some advocacy groups. Such ties were the only real viable way to move peace forward in both Southern Sudan and Darfur, he said. "We would like to be able to fix Darfur and the South and the Chad conflict, the proxy war, we'd like to bring regional stability wihtout ever having to go to Khartoum. I'm serious, it would be wonderful." But not feasible.

3) Gration generated much controversy in late August by his comments suggesting that some sanctions on Sudan should be rolled back. Today, he spoke of keeping sanctions in place but applying for exemptions for certain projects that are, today, being hindered by strict regulations. "Some of the sanctions that we have in place are actually hindering our ability to do the humanitarian mission and the development mission -- and in some ways, even the security mission."

4) Finally, Gration plans to head back to Sudan later this month -- a visit that will begin in Juba, in Southern Sudan, to nail down still contested points of the peace process between North and South. The two sticky issues? The conduct of an upcoming census (a touchy issue with big political stakes for the voter rolls) and the actual details of the law that will govern a 2011 referendum in which South Sudan votes for unification or independence from the rest of the country. In short, Gration is going back to sort out some very fundamental issues. "If we can't get the refendum law right, if we can't get the process right, if there's violations or irregularities, this could really be bad...so we are working extremely hard to make sure that the process is transparent[.]"

More to come...

ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

Sudan's president has allegedly replaced Salah Gosh, the veteran chief of the country's National Intelligence and Security Services, with the organization's deputy general manager.

It's not clear why the switch was made; the BBC reports only that Gosh has now been named President Omar al-Bashir's "adviser."

Gen. Mohamed Atta al-Mawla is in his early fifties and holds a degree in engineering, according to one Sudanese newspaper. In 1992, Mawla signed on with the country's national security bureau and has been working in government ever since, even serving a year-long stint at the Sudanese embassy in Kenya.

His most curious position? "Peace advisory secretary-general."

Leading up to today's meeting of the African Union in Libya, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been a sore point for Sudan's president Omar Bashir, who was indicted by the ICC last July for war crimes related to violence in Darfur. His indictment has led to protests against the court in Khartoum like one pictured above on May 27, 2009.

Bashir, along with other AU leaders like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi have criticized the court's focus on Africa, and even gone as far as to propose in advance of the AU meeting that states should withdraw from the Rome Treaty which established the court.

Pushing back, however, have been advocates of the ICC including former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times, he defended the court against its African critics:

One must begin by asking why African leaders shouldn’t celebrate this focus on African victims. Do these leaders really want to side with the alleged perpetrators of mass atrocities rather than their victims? Is the court’s failure to date to answer the calls of victims outside of Africa really a reason to leave the calls of African victims unheeded?

Moreover, in three of these cases, it was the government itself that called for ICC intervention — the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Uganda. The fourth case, that of Darfur, was selected notby the international court but forwarded by the U.N. Security Council.

The I.C.C. represents hope for victims of atrocities and sends a message that no one is above the law. That hope and message will be undermined if the African Union condemns the court because it has charged an African head of state. The African Union should not abandon its promise to fight impunity. Unless indicted war criminals are held to account, regardless of their rank, others tempted to emulate them will not be deterred, and African people will suffer.

It doesn't look like the AU will actually decide anyone should withdraw, but the ICC is still under fairly heavy fire from other areas.  A recent article in the World Affairs Journal bytwo Darfur experts, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal blames the ICC's controversy and dysfunctional dynamics on its Argentine lead prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. In particular they criticize his handling of the Bashir indictment and his continuing to push for a genocide charge that was rejected as too thin by ICC judges. As the Washington Post's Colum Lynch reported yesterday, there is significant concern that Moreno-Ocampo's efforts could undermine peace negotiations in Sudan.

Regardless of whether Moreno-Ocampo remains in charge, the dilemma of the ICC in the foreseeable future is to figure out how to position itself as an arbiter of international law, not political jockeying. In an interview last year in Uganda, ICC Registrar Silvana Arbia addressed a similar question to that now being asked in regard to Sudan: Shouldn't the ICC be willing to be flexible to give peace agreements their best chance of success? Like her boss, she argued that allowing such machinations would undermine the legitimacy of the court, noting that "the warrants issued by the ICC cannot be used as a condition to negotiate a peace agreement."

But with so much scorn and a suspect arrested for only one of its outstanding warrants -- former Congo rebel commander Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo -- the ICC needs help if it is to accomplish its mission of discouraging impunity. Even if no one withdraws (and Chile joined this week), few governments have thus far been willing to take much actionon the ICC's behalf. For now, it remains stuck with limited funding and no enforcement mechanism.

To preserve the ICC's relevance, the trial of Gombo will need to go very well, and some sort of progress will be needed on the Bashir case. What are the odds either of these will happen?

ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/Getty Images

Congratulations Omar al-Bashir! You have just been indicted by the International Criminal Court on five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes. You are the first sitting head of state to be wanted for arrest. Human rights groups, and even the ICC-skeptical United States, applaud the announcement. What are you going to do next?

There are two broad possibilities for how things might unfold. For the first time in history, the world will get to watch how a sitting head of state reacts to such damning charges.

First, there is defiance, and retaliation. The outcomes that Sudan watchers have feared are now on the table in the central African country. As the International Crisis Group writes in a statement today: 

Bashir’s regime has already issued veiled threats against the UN and AU missions in Sudan, the international humanitarian agencies operating there and Sudanese who support the ICC prosecution. It could also direct, or encourage, violence against the millions of displaced Darfuris living in camps in the war-torn region. There are signs that it may also declare a state of emergency and clamp down on internal political opposition, to show the Darfur rebel groups that they will not be able to use this development to their military and political advantage.

It could get ugly. In the worst-case scenario, experts see Bashir consolidating his power, kicking out aid workers, stepping up repression in Darfur, and even squashing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and South signed just a few years ago.

But then again, as Luis Moreno Ocampo, the court's prosecutor, told FP just a few weeks ago, "For people in Darfur, nothing could be worse [than it is now]." Justice, at least, puts pressure on Bashir's upper cadre, and shows the people of Sudan that their leader is no longer immune. Negotiations with Darfur rebel groups, which were reopened on Feb. 17, will have to find a new interlocuter, says Ocampo. But that could be a good thing.

Overnight, the stakes have changed in Sudan. Justice looks possible, impuntity looks over, and internal unrest looks likely. What next?

In a pointed gesture, the U.S. Olympic team has voted Lopez Lomong, a member of the track team who gained American citizenship in 2007 after fleeing Sudan and spending a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp, as its flag bearer for the opening ceremony in Beijing.

Lomong was abducted at age six by militiamen looking to recruit child soliders. He managed to escape with two other boys and was grabbed by Kenyan authorities after he unknowingly crossed the border. Lomong was one of the 4,000 "lost boys" of Sudan who were resettled in foster homes throughout the United States in 2001. Lomong is also currently a member of the Team Darfur activist group whose cofounder -- American speedskater and Turin gold medalist Joey Cheek -- had his visa revoked by Chinese authorities two days ago.

Lomong's selection is certainly a touching gesture from his fellow athletes, and the Sudanese-American runner is ecstatic, saying that Friday will be "the happiest day" of his life. What effect it will have on U.S.-China relations is uncertain, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that China will not be able to hide from its Darfur policy simply by putting on the world's biggest fireworks show and wowing foreign dignitaries.

I would be absolutely shocked if the Olympics pass without some sort of dramatic protest or political statement from an athlete or group of athletes, on a podium or elsewhere. One English basketball player, formerly with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic, has said that Olympians have an obligation to speak out against China.

It may not be 1968, but that doesn't mean the gloves won't come off.

Well, somebody's willing to step up and defend Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted for genocide last week. Yesterday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the International Criminal Court's prosecution as a colonialist effort to undermine Sudan's sovereignty:

Colonialist powers want to cut Sudan into pieces in their own ways, they want to prevent this country from having a constructive role in Africa and the Islamic world."

The comments were made at a meeting in Tehran with a Sudanese envoy who reciprocated his host's kind words by praising Iran's controversial nuclear program, saying, "This civilian technology would benefit the entire Islamic world."

I guess when you're under U.N. sanction, it can be hard to find someone who can relate.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is not pleased about last weekend's brazen attack by Darfur rebels. It was the first time fighting has reached the outskirts of Khartoum not just in the bloody five years of fighting in Darfur, but in  the decades of conflict in Sudan.

Bashir is so peeved that he's put an astonishing $250 million reward on the head of rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim (pictured). For reference, that's 10 times the reward for Osama bin Laden.

Why the enormous bounty? Perhaps Ibrahim's fighting words have Bashir concerned. Here's Ibrahim in an interview yesterday, according to the IHT:

This is just the start of a process, and the end is the termination of this regime...Don't expect just one more attack. This is just the beginning."

Bashir also cut diplomatic ties with Chad on Sunday, accusing Chadian President Idriss Deby, who is from the same tribe as Ibrahim, of backing the attack. This is going to get worse before it gets better. 

UPDATE: If $250 mil sounds like an absurd amount (and it does), then that's because it is. When it was reported by the Sudanese state media yesterday, it came across as just another attention-getting ploy, and that if someone actually caught Ibrahim, Bashir and his cronies would make the bounty hunter an offer he couldn't refuse, and he'd go away with far, far less. But try three zeros less: Apparently, there was currency confusion in the Sudanese government. The reward of 500 million Sudanese pounds (the equivalent of $250 mil) was offered in new Sudanese pounds, according to state media. The country revalued its currency last year, and the new pounds are worth 1,000 times the old ones. But the information office came out today and said that they're using old Sudanese pounds for some reason, so we're talking peanuts for Ibrahim: $250,000.

European military commanders have formally approved an EU mission to Chad and the Central African Republic. The mission, to protect and aid refugees from Darfur, has a Security Council mandate and, by most accounts, could help stabilize a dangerous situation.

But there is a danger that France—and perhaps Europe more broadly—is developing a perverse specialty: cleaning up after crimes it doesn't have the will to stop. European peacekeepers labored for several hard years protecting humanitarian aid deliveries in Bosnia as ethnic cleansing proceeded around them. And remember that it was the French who sent a military mission to protect refugees after the Rwanda genocide. That mission, Opération Turquoise, saved some lives (including the lives of many who committed the genocide), but was a pale shadow of the rescue mission that should have been launched weeks earlier.

My fear is that the combination of feel-good war crimes prosecutions and post hoc band-aid operations like this new one in Chad have sapped the will to take the needed hard measures.  

The already beleaguered (if yet to be deployed) peacekeeping force for Sudan has drawn fire from an unexpected quarter. Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, reportedly dismissed the peacekeeping effort as irrelevant yesterday:

You could put the peacekeepers in there, they won't change one iota on the ground in terms of the grim realities of the harshness of life in Darfur," Sachs said, pointing to the need for clinics, schools, electricity and water holes. "I'm not against the peacekeepers, I just find them a waste of money," he said. "Unless the rich world is going to promise $2.6 billion for the peacekeepers each year, plus $2.6 billion for development, I'd say keep your peacekeepers."

The implication is that Darfur is an economic development problem rather than a problem of noxious political leadership and calculated policy. I wonder how far this reasoning extends; what other mass atrocities should be deemed development problems that cannot be addressed absent a massive aid program? Taken too far, this kind of economic determinism will suck the life out of international efforts to combat mass atrocities. And it's not as if the world needs another excuse to look the other way.

So, British teacher Gillian Gibbons is going to a Sudanese jail for 15 days for insulting religion by allowing her class of primary school children to name a teddy bear "Mohammed." (Since she has already served five days, she only has 10 left.) Gibbons escaped a far harsher potential punishment. If she had been found guilty of all three charges levied against her (the others were inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs), she could have faced 40 lashes and six months in prison.  

British Foreign Secretary David Milband has already hauled the Sudanese ambassador into his office to express "in the strongest terms" his concern about her arrest. During their meeting, he also spoke on the phone to Sudan's acting foreign minister.

Will Prime Minister Gordon Brown also get involved? This case reminds me of the infamous Singapore case of 1994, when American teenager Michael Fay was sentenced to a fine and six lashes with a cane for vandalizing cars and stealing road signs. Two dozen U.S. senators wrote letters to Singapore asking for clemency. But it wasn't until after President Clinton complained to his counterpart in Singapore that Fay's sentence was reduced to four lashes. 

At the time, Singapore protested that the United States shouldn't get involved with its domestic affairs. So far, the case of the British schoolteacher hasn't touched on the always-touchy issue of sovereignty, but will it? And should it?

It seems to me that in both cases, there's been a fair, but not necessarily satisfactory, result. In the case of Michael Fay, the laws were clearly laid out, the punishment was defined, and the sentence enforced, albeit at a softer level due to diplomacy. In the case of Gillian Gibbons, the laws may not have been laid out as clearly, but given the tensions between Islam and the West, Gibbons should have perhaps been more sensitive about what can be given the name "Mohammed" and acted more cautiously. Forty lashes and six months in prison—to say nothing of being shot, which is what some in Khartoum are calling for—would have been outrageous for an innocent mistake. But the fact that the Sudanese courts sentenced her to a few days in jail, given the alternative, seems to be an acceptable compromise that shows a modicum of respect for Sudanese sovereignty. Better yet would be if they would just release her right now and end this farce.