Why Khartoum Needs an Ambassador, Not a USAID Mission

The tragic loss of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff in Benghazi last week brought back all too vivid memories of USAID/Sudan’s loss of two dedicated staff in a terrorist attack on New Year’s morning 2008. (I was the head of USAID's Africa bureau at the time.) In the wake of last Friday’s attack on the US embassy in Khartoum, I’m pondering anew the rationale behind the official American presence in Khartoum and the Government of Sudan’s commitment to its safety. Sudan appears to be the only country that refused what the United States requested of it to ensure protection for its staff and property, prompting the State Department to remove staff from harm’s way. All but a skeletal staff has now left the country, including the entire USAID/Sudan mission. Before this week's drawdown, there was a USAID mission in Khartoum but no ambassador (the chief of mission is a charge d'affaires). As the former USAID/Sudan director who re-opened the mission there in 2006 after 15 years of being closed, my reluctant conclusion is that the United States should send an ambassador back to Khartoum when security permits, but not the full USAID mission.

Clearly, there is much work to be done in Sudan by both diplomats and development experts alike. South Sudan is now an independent country, though critical issues remain to be resolved between north and south. Both are on the brink of economic disaster. Peace and security are elusive in Darfur. More than 3.5 million people in Darfur and over 800,000 people in the so-called Two Areas of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states (bordering South Sudan) are in need of international emergency assistance. Yet the regime in Khartoum suspects ulterior motives behind American diplomatic engagement. It impedes or obstructs humanitarian assistance to civilian victims of conflict in every way possible--physically, administratively, and legally.

Presently, the basic criteria for a USAID mission do not exist in Sudan--neither a robust development program nor a cooperative (let alone legitimate) development partner in the host government. At the time USAID re-opened its mission in 2006, its largest development program (PEPFAR excluded) in sub-Saharan Africa was in southern Sudan. The program in northern Sudan was exclusively focused on emergency response and peace implementation (civil society support and democracy promotion). Indeed, development assistance outside of this was, and still is, expressly prohibited by US law. The premise, then, for opening the mission in Khartoum was the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between north and south, which provided for a Government of National Unity in Khartoum and an autonomous Government of Southern Sudan in Juba. With the south's independence, the Government of National Unity no longer exists and gone with it is the rationale for the USAID mission.

In a time of increasing pressure on the foreign assistance budget, USAID would do well to re-allocate the mission support costs of its presence in Khartoum elsewhere, as similarly recommended by CGD's Engagement Amid Austerity report. Certainly, USAID should continue to provide humanitarian assistance in every conflict-affected region of the country that its UN and NGO partners can access—Darfur, the Two Areas, and Abyei. (Sadly, the government obstructs humanitarian access to most of these locations.) And it should continue to support Sudanese civil society. But it can do this through a modest number of USAID staff in the embassy reporting back to and supported by USAID's East Africa regional mission in Nairobi. (This model is used for a number of limited or non-presence country programs across Africa.)

At the same time, I strongly believe it's long past time for the United States to send an ambassador back to Khartoum. Not to condone or reward in any way the behavior of the current regime, but to demonstrate American intentions to engage in serious and lasting relations with the people of Sudan (as Ambassador Robert Ford did in Syria), to support non-violent opposition to the current regime, and to deepen Washington's understanding of Sudanese politics so that we aren't constantly re-learning the same lessons and missing opportunities to influence Khartoum.

As odious as the current regime is, refusing to engage with the country in an enduring fashion only hurts American efforts to see peaceful, stable, and prosperous states in both north and south Sudan. Leaving Khartoum to its hard liners also risks returning to the days when the Sudanese government posed a serious threat to international peace and security. While a full-fledged development program is still premature, an embassy led by an accredited ambassador is not. When the US government can be assured of the basic safety and security of its officials, it should send an ambassador back but keep the USAID mission director home.