President's Corner: The Bush Sanctions--Speak Loudly and Carry a Little Stick

After months of Hamlet-like consideration, President Bush announced his long-threatened sanctions against three people and 31 companies in Sudan. The new measures, which I describe and analyze on the Refugees International website, are designed to stop what the President has called genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Don’t hold your breath.

The sanctions are designed to hurt companies that help finance the war effort by barring them from interaction with the U.S. financial system and stopping them from participating in dollar-denominated transactions.

An official at the Treasury Department said that enforcement would depend on aggressive monitoring and intelligence gathering. I hope that our government is up to this, but a look at the list of the 31 Sudanese companies added to the U.S. sanctions list raises some questions.

First, the Treasury provided email addresses, websites and street addresses for some of the companies. I tried them all, and here is what I found:

• The email addresses for five of the companies--almost 16% of the total--don’t work.


• The mail addresses for five of the companies--all sugar companies--are the same and three of them also have the same email, suggesting that this is one company with five names.


• According to the website of Hi-Tech Group--one of the companies on the sanctions list--it is the parent company for 13 of the other companies on the list. Several of them have the same mailing addresses.

Second, the sanctions announced yesterday are unilateral. They apply to dollar denominated transactions and dealings with American companies. But very few American companies (Coca-Cola, which is for sale throughout Sudan, appears to be an exception) can operate in Sudan or deal with Sudanese companies because of sanctions first imposed by the U.S. in 1997. Therefore, most Sudanese companies have a European, Middle Eastern or Asian orientation. A good project for President Bush at the upcoming G-8 economic summit would be to press other countries to impose similar sanctions.

Finally, the sanctions look too timid. A Sudanese businessman says that Sudan’s leaders are making large deposits of dollars in banks in the United Arab Emirates. If we want to take action that has a chance of forcing Sudanese leaders to change their policies, why don’t we attack their wealth more directly?

In referring to the violence in Darfur, President Bush said: “My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide. The world has a responsibility to help put an end to it.” Mr. Bush is right, but his half-measures are not.

Comings and Goings at RI

It's been a busy transition for me from the jungles of Malaysia back to the RI office. While doing follow up advocacy on the findings from the Thailand-Malaysia mission, I am also helping my colleagues prepare for their upcoming missions to Sudan, DRC, and the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan). During these missions, the advocates will be looking at both ends of the spectrum, from refugees fleeing Iraq to refugees returning to South Sudan. And also something in between - the ongoing displacement issues in eastern DRC. I look forward to hearing their reports from the field.

My colleague Kavita and I just issued three reports from our April mission which was focused on the humanitarian situation for Burmese refugees in Thailand and Malaysia. In Thailand, we followed up on Kavita's previous work on internal displacement in Burma. We found that there is ongoing conflict that is displacing civilians in eastern Burma, in fact it is the worst military offensive in 10 years.

While we were in Thailand, we also looked at the resettlement of Burmese refugees. Many Burmese are being resettled from the refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border, however some resettlement countries are only taking the most skilled refugees, while vulnerable cases like former child soldiers and those affected by sexual and gender-based violence slip through the cracks.

In Malaysia the biggest concern is the arrest, detention, and deportation of Burmese refugees and asylum seekers. The Malaysian government is not recognizing the protection needs of the Burmese population in its country. As a result, Burmese refugees face serious human rights abuses at the hands of local authorities, with few international or local organizations able to assist them.

Be sure to check back soon for reports from our upcoming field missions!

President's Corner: Helping Iraqi Refugees - A mixed picture

State Department officials predict that there will soon be a large increase in the number of Iraqi refugees qualifying for resettlement in the U.S. It’s about time.

Four months ago Secretary Condoleezza Rice established a special task force to address the problem of Iraqis displaced by violence. One goal of the task force —- to help the UN High Commissioner for Refugees expand its operations in Syria and Jordan, the home of most Iraqi refugees -- has been accomplished, although there is still more to do.

Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, the head of the task force, also said that the U.S. planned "to process expeditiously some 7,000 Iraqi refugee referrals in the near term" for resettlement into the U.S. So far that program has not gotten off the ground. Between last Oct. 1, when fiscal year 2007 began, and the end of April only 69 Iraqis had been resettled in the U.S. There are at least two million Iraqi refugees.

How could a program that seemed so ambitious and urgent when Ms. Dobriansky announced it in February be so slow to get off the ground? Refugees can’t be resettled until they are cleared by the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS has taken several months to draft its security procedures for Iraqis. Now, State officials say, DHS is on the verge of promulgating its new standards. About 500 Iraqis have already received conditional clearance to resettle in the U.S. Iraqis refugees should start resettling in the U.S. in much greater numbers in June and July. A total of 1,500 could resettle here by the end of September.

Resettlement is important for Iraqi translators and others who risked their lives by working for the U.S. military and other American organizations. Because they are seen as collaborators with the occupying forces, many may not be able to go home safely for a long time. For them resettlement makes sense, and, I believe, the U.S. has an obligation to resettle them.

But resettlement, no matter how ambitious, will only be available to a small number of the two million refugees. For the rest, the U.S. and its allies must find a way to help ease the burden the exodus from Iraq is putting on receiving countries. The size of the refugee flow is huge and potentially destabilizing. Iraq has lost 7 percent of its population. The one million refugees in Syria have increased Syria’s population of about 5 percent, while the 800,000 refugees in Jordan have boosted that country’s population by 14 percent.

Schools, hospitals and other social services are overwhelmed. People left Iraq to escape violence, but in Syria and Jordan, they face a bleak future. Many, both children and adults, are traumatized when they arrive, and there is little to divert them. They can’t work legally in either country, and many are running out of savings. Although children can go to school, the schools in Syria are overcrowded and in Jordan they cost too much.

The U.S needs to work constructively with the UN and host governments to meet the needs of the refugees. If another generation of refugees grows up without hope in the Middle East, the U.S., the region and the world, could be paying a price for decades to come.

The Long Way Home to South Sudan

Most of the world’s attention on Sudan is focused on the crisis in Darfur in the western part of the country. But there are also serious humanitarian needs in southern Sudan as a result of the 20 year conflict which displaced around 4 million people, both as refugees to neighboring countries like Kenya and Uganda and as internally displaced people who fled to other parts of the country.

Since the peace agreement was signed in 2005 between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in the south, reconstruction projects have been paving the way for the return of those displaced. However the process has been slow going, and more than 2 years after the peace agreement many displaced are still concerned about the conditions back home.

Even before the conflict, there was little development in the south. The ravages of two decades of war have forced local people to become dependent on outside food and assistance. Those returning place an additional strain on the few local resources that are available, and the international community has had the difficult task of ensuring that assistance is provided not only to returnees but also to the receiving communities. This recent article highlights some of challenges facing those in the south, including the threat of landmines and the presence of Ugandan rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

RI senior advocate Andrea and peacebuilding associate Erin will be traveling to South Sudan at the end of the month to assess the return and reintegration process. Andrea and Erin will be following up on RI's last mission to South Sudan in 2006 which found that more international assistance and protection was needed for the returns. Andrea and Erin will also be focusing on the role that the UN Mission to Sudan (UNMIS) is playing in protecting civilians and supporting the returns.

Peace remains a fragile thing in South Sudan and it is vital that the return of displaced people is sustainable so that there are no future conflicts that could lead to more displacement.

Be sure to check back soon to read reports from Andrea and Erin while they are in the field.

President's Corner: America in Iraq -- Who’s In Charge?

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it became an occupying power with responsibility for the security of the Iraqi people and the stability of the country. For the last four years, the U.S. has worked hard to build Iraqi institutions to take over those responsibilities, but those efforts have yet to bear success.

To escape the violence in Iraq, some two million Iraqis have fled the country. This massive outflow represents 7 percent of Iraq’s population. About one million have gone to Syria, where 5 percent of the population is Iraqi, and some 800,000 are in Jordan, where 14 percent of the population is Iraqi. Remarkably, current and former U.S. officials argue that the U.S. has no responsibility for the exodus, or for the burdens the refugees are placing on their host countries. Perhaps, that's why the U.S. has done so little to ease the crisis.

The May 13th New York Times Magazine carried a cover article entitled "The Flight From Iraq." The author, Nir Rosen, quoted me as saying that the U.S. has an obligation to help displaced Iraqis, both the refugees who have left and another two million who have been displaced internally. But John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and two current State Department officials, both responsible for dealing with the Iraqi displacement crisis, argue the opposite.

Here is what the article said about Bolton:

John Bolton, who was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush administration, and later ambassador to the United Nations, offers one explanation for this lack of recognition: it is not a crisis, and it was not triggered by American action. The refugees, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with our overthrow of Saddam.

“Our obligation... was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.” Bolton likewise did not share the concerns of (Ken) Bacon and others that the refugees would become impoverished and serve as a recruiting pool for militant organizations in the future. “I don’t buy the argument that Islamic extremism comes from poverty,” he said. “Bin Laden is rich.” Nor did he think American aid could alleviate potential anger: “Helping the refugees flies in the face of received logic. You don’t want to encourage the refugees to stay. You want them to go home. The governments don’t want them to stay.”

Here is what it says about current State Department officials:

When I read John Bolton’s comments to Paula Dobriansky — the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs — and her colleague Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and igration, they mainly agreed with him. Sauerbrey maintained that “refugees are created by repressive regimes and failed states. The sectarian violence has driven large numbers out. During the Saddam regime, large numbers of Iraqis were displaced, and the U.S. resettled 38,000 Iraqis. We would take 5,000 a year at given points in time. After 2003, there was great hope, and people were returning in large numbers. The sectarian violence after the mosque bombing in February 2006 is what turned things around. The problem is one caused by the repressive regime” of Saddam Hussein. She did add, “We take the responsibility of being a compassionate nation seriously.”

There was only one category of Iraqis toward whom both Dobriansky and Saurbrey did acknowledge a specific American responsibility: interpreters and facilitators. “We are committed to honoring our moral debt to those Iraqis who have provided assistance to the U.S. military and embassy,” Dobriansky said.

If the current exodus is being caused by “a repressive regime” in Iraq today, as Assistant Secretary Sauerbrey says, who is responsible for that regime?

President's Corner: Is the U.S. a Reliable Ally on Refugee Protection?

Two seemingly disconnected challenges for the U.S. refugee protection program raise an important question: Is the U.S. a reliable ally to people who risk their lives to advance American goals? From the perspective of Iraqis and Vietnamese Montagnards, the answer right now appears to be No.

More than two million Iraqis have fled violence in their country to seek safety elsewhere, mainly in Syria and Jordan. Among them are many thousands who risked their lives by working for the U.S. government or private contractors to advance American goals of democracy and stability in Iraq. (Read an interview with a former Iraqi translator on PBS' NOW.) They are now being targeted as collaborators with an occupying force, and many are leaving the country, hoping to come to the U.S. But the U.S. has been slow to help them. As the end of April, the U.S. had admitted only 68 Iraqis, even though the State Department said it is prepared to accept as many as 25,000 Iraqis for resettlement in the U.S. this year.

Why the slow response? The most immediate reason is that the Department of Homeland Security, which must clear all refugees before they resettle in the U.S., has not come up with procedures for doing so yet. At a time when lives are at risk, DHS is acting as if it has forever to draft and implement its procedures. But the bigger, more disturbing reason for the delay is that President Bush has not made the protection of Iraqi refugees a moral or policy priority, even though the refugees are fleeing violence triggered in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Many Iraqis who risked their lives working for the U.S.—and many American soldiers and diplomats who worked with the Iraqis and want to protect their Iraqi colleagues--
see Washington’s failure to protect them now as an act of betrayal.

Vietnamese Montagnards have reason to feel betrayed as well. During the Vietnam War many Montagnards, an ethnic group that lives Vietnam’s Central Highlands, fought with U.S. special forces against the Communist Vietnamese forces. Since the war, the Montagnards have received harsh treatment from the government, in part because they sided with the U.S. and in part because many of they are Christian.

Despite their support for the U.S., last month the State Department ended a small but important program that protects Montagnard refugees from Vietnam from the threat of persecution for religious and other reasons.

Since the war, several thousand Montagnard refugees have resettled in the U.S., and small numbers of Montagnards continue to leave Vietnam, sneaking across the border to Cambodia, where they seek protection from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

UNHCR interviews them in Phnom Penh to determine if they qualify for protection as refugees. Those granted refugee status become eligible for resettlement in the U.S. or other countries. For several years, the U.S. has given those who didn’t get refugee status from UNHCR a second interview and a second chance. In 2006, the U.S. interviewed 75 Montagnards who had been denied refugee status by UNHCR in Phnom Penh and granted refugee status to 33. The year before the U.S. granted refugee status to 20 of 25 who had been denied this status by UNHCR. Under the so-called Lautenberg Amendment, the U.S. applies more lenient standards than UNHCR to certain groups of concern, including Vietnamese Montagnards.

Starting on May 1, the State Department ended its policy of granting second chance interviews in Phnom Penh to Montagnards rejected by UNHCR. Instead, those Montagnards will be sent back to Vietnam and told to meet with State Department officials in either Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. The State Department’s own findings suggest that the new policy will close a crucial safety valve for Montagnards because travel within Vietnam is sometimes restricted. The State Department’s latest human rights report says: “Local authorities required members of ethnic minority groups to obtain permission to travel outside certain highland areas, including in some cases travel outside their own villages.”

The new policy weakens protections for Montagnards, undermines congressional intent, and possibly exposes Montagnards new problems when forced home. At best they will face additional delay in seeking refugee status; at worst, they could encounter discrimination and harassment from Vietnamese authorities.

I don’t think we are helping American credibility by failing to protect our allies.