Still, at the end of the visit, Gration maintained a strikingly different perspective. He had seen signs of goodwill from the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, he said, and viewed many of the complaints as understandable yet knee-jerk reactions to a government he trusts is ready to change.
“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration, who was appointed in March. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”
-Stephanie McCrummen in the September 29, 2009 Washington Post
The shocking conclusion of Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration — i.e, that the U.S. needs to use diplomatic “gold stars” and “smiley faces” in order to change the Sudanese government’s behavior — has already generated a lot of incisive criticism and anger within the Sudan activist community. We won’t repeat the whole of these criticisms here. If you want to get up to speed, please see the following:
- The original Washington Post article, “U.S. Envoy’s Outreach to Sudan Is Criticized as Naive”
- The official reaction from Enough, Save Darfur Coalition, and Genocide Intervention Network.
- Some very thoughtful commentary by Rebecca Hamilton.
We’ll only add a few thoughts.
Recently, we’ve come across some instances of a theory that goes like this: In public, General Gration has been sending conciliatory signals to Khartoum, based on his sincere belief that a talking-without-sticks approach will change the behavior of the Sudanese government. In private, however, the Obama administration has pegged an end-date for experimenting with this strategy: if it doesn’t work, it is ready to bring down the hammer (through multilateral condemnation, sanctions, and military action).
There’s no way to definitively confirm if the Obama administration has really committed itself to the above path. That said, it’s clear that the U.S. Sudan Envoy is headed in the wrong direction. At the very least, General Gration’s external diplomacy has alienated an entire community of stakeholders.
Based on our conversations with Darfuri leaders and our reading of first-hand sources, it’s clear that General Gration’s public statements so far — untouched by media or activist coloring — have already eroded his position within Sudanese civil society and the Sudanese diaspora. And arguably, this is no surprise. If the U.S. is serious about securing the buy-in of a long-suffering Darfuri people for a real Darfur peace process, then it needs to stop emphasizing its use of “smiley faces” (read: negotiating without economic and military pressures) in its courtship of an International Criminal Court-indicted genocidaire.
