Advertisement

US seeks Rwanda’s help for an arms embargo on South Sudan

Saturday September 27 2014
237935-01-02

Rwanda President Paul Kagame addressing the UN General Assembly September 24, 2014, where he warned against tribe and religion-based ideology. AFP PHOTO | DON EMMERT

The United States is looking up to Rwanda and other African members of the UN Security Council to push through additional sanctions on belligerents in South Sudan and to press for a United Nations-backed international arms embargo on the warring factions.

President Obama’s special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan Donald Booth said on the sidelines of the UN Security Council meetings that the US was lobbying the three African members of the UN Security Council to support a ban on arms transfers to both sides in the conflict.

The thinking is that veto-wielding members of the council who sometimes oppose sanctions would be less likely to block an arms embargo if Rwanda, Nigeria and Chad — the African states holding rotating seats on the 15-member UN body — signal their support for that action.

A senior US official said the resolve for sanctions strengthened after President Salva Kiir skipped a high-level UN session last week on the humanitarian impact of South Sudan’s civil war.

America’s frustration

The US is clearly frustrated by South Sudan leaders’ unwillingness to end the country’s ruinous civil war and by East African mediators’ failure to make good on their threats to take punitive actions in response to that intransigence.

Advertisement

At his on-the-record briefing, Mr Booth noted that leaders of the eight-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development had threatened four months ago to implement punitive measures if the government and rebels did not reach agreement. “They have indeed let that threat go unfulfilled,” Ambassador Booth said.

Igad recently set another deadline for the peace talks, again warning of sanctions if an end to the fighting is not achieved. The latest make-or-break point is set for mid-October.

READ: Igad ‘forces’ protocol on Kiir, Machar to resolve political crisis

The US has already moved to punish additional military commanders in South Sudan. Washington recently levied sanctions against major generals on both the government and rebel side after taking the same action earlier this year against two other commanders.

READ: South Sudan generals face sanctions

But “the impact of these unilateral measures has been inconsequential since most South Sudanese elites’ wealth is concentrated in neighbouring states,” a US-based NGO said last week.

The Enough Project, which focuses on conflicts in East and Central Africa, added in a report that “massive state-corroding corruption” is fuelling the fighting in South Sudan.

The two sides are battling over who will have the ability to plunder the country’s wealth, the report said, noting that billions of dollars that should be used to develop one of the world’s poorest countries has been stolen.

“The US government should seek to identify, recover and return the assets stolen by corrupt individuals to the people of South Sudan through the expertise of the Department of Justice Kleptocracy Initiative,” the Enough Project urged.

During the UN meetings the heads of state of Rwanda and Uganda warned separately that ideologies based on tribe and religion are a threat to African nations.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni denounced “the pseudo-ideology of sectarianism of religion or tribe as well as chauvinism vis-a-vis the women” in his address to the UN General Assembly. “It is this pseudo-ideology that has fuelled most of the conflicts in Africa.”

“Only parasites revel in such schemes,” he said.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda spoke later in similar terms from the same podium. Due to weak national identities, he told the UN, “ethnicity, region and religion become the dominant currency of politics and nations are torn apart.”

International systems should encourage efforts to strengthen national identity, Kagame added.

“In Rwanda,” he said, “we have focused on building accountable government institutions and renewing our dignity as a nation.” And such efforts have proved successful, with Rwandans today “among the most optimistic and civic-minded people in the world,” Kagame declared.

Advertisement