JEROME SHESTACK: Good morning. Welcome to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I'm Jerry Shestack, and I have the honor of chairing the Museum's Committee on Conscience. The Committee's function is to alert the national conscience to the offenses of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and those horrendous crimes that the world so often ignores. Arousing the national conscience is not an easy task. Too often one's conscience becomes one's accomplice rather than one's guide. Our principal function is not to resolve a policy, but to call attention to the need for the policy makers of this nation, and the international world, to resolve potential crimes of genocide, and crimes against humanity, and war crimes that have such disastrous and tragic effects in our history.
We are addressing the problems of a solution to the horrendous situation that has arisen in Sudan, with millions of people deprived of their lives and subject to abuses of the most horrendous kind. We are not recommending a policy, but we are recommending strongly that it is a situation that needs to be addressed in a world forum, and on a world scale, in a dimension that can solve problems, bring a just peace to Sudan, and end the crimes that are existing and taking place there on a daily basis.
We have a very distinguished panel today. We will have our opening remarks by John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and by Senator Bill Frist, and Congressman Frank Wolf, both of whom have been tremendous advocates on Capitol Hill for those suffering in Sudan.
We will then have a panel discussion chaired by Chet Crocker who is chairman of the United States Institute of Peace and a former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Then we will open the floor for discussion. We want to move on, and we want the audience to participate, and have the opportunity to ask questions, and to make short comments as well.
So, without further delay, it is my pleasure to introduce John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Hamre has a long and distinguished career of public service. Most recently, before assuming the leadership of CSIS, he served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 1997 to 1999. Dr. Hamre.
Opening Remarks:
JOHN J. HAMRE: Thank you very much. Good morning to all of you and thank you very much for coming today. I'm very proud that CSIS is able to present this program. I'm especially pleased that we're able to hold it here at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
If I might, just on a very personal note say, it's wonderful that this town has this Museum. But if all we do to remember those who were swept up and whose lives were lost in the Shoah is to have a Museum that would not be an adequate tribute to them. We need to undertake acts of remembrance every day. Not just remember every day, but do acts of remembrance every day, concretely doing things to try to address the little mini-Shoahs that are going on all around us. It is for that reason that we are so pleased that we can be here.
I would like to especially thank the leadership of the Holocaust Museum, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who is not able to be with us today. He is the chairman of the board. But, my sincere thanks. Jerry Shestack, who is the chairman of the Museum's Committee on Conscience, so crucial as part of the whole program for the Holocaust Museum. Jerry Fowler, Tom Kuney, and Linda Lesar have been just fabulous in working with us.
Let me especially say thank you to Senator Frist and to Congressman Wolf. It's not possible for me to tell you how unusual it is to have this sort of leadership coming from these two national figures. Most members of Congress come and they spend their day, understandably, working for those issues that matter to back home. That's why we hire them. That's what we want them to do. But, we also expect them to be national leaders.
In some rare instances, people choose to be international leaders. These two gentlemen have done that in an area, that, frankly, there's not a vote to be made, in looking at Sudan. Not a vote to be made back home, and yet, they've taken upon themselves in a very serious and dedicated way to make this an effort on behalf of the entire government, to try to bring sense. And I want to thank both of you. Not just for being here today, but for being leaders in a town that frankly needs this quality of leadership. We're very, very grateful to have you here.
I would also like to thank Chet Crocker and the U.S. Institute of Peace. They were instrumental in getting this program working. I also have to say that Chet Crocker is one of our great alumni. He is one of the brighter stars in the firmament at CSIS, having been the chair of the Africa Program and really the founder of the Africa Program there many years back, before he became Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.
I would also like to thank Francis Deng, Roger Winter, Ibrahim Elbadawi, and Steve Morrison and Jennifer Cook for their remarkable service here. We're looking forward to what they have to say.
I am the least qualified person here to talk about the substance of this program. I'm also probably emblematic of the problem. I probably am like 99.8 percent of most Americans who don't know a darn thing about Sudan and frankly don't care. Until I got into this job, I didn't know anything about the Sudan. I didn't know anything about the problems. I became like so many Americans, who became very comfortable with simply treating it as one of those bumper stickers. It's one of the T-7 terrorist states you know and that's the only time you think about it.
You kind of memorize the formula, you know, to criticize them. What we've done in the process of that is -- I've done -- I won't say anybody else -- I have done this. I have let somebody else do my thinking for me, rather than do my own thinking about the problem. I let somebody else define it, because I wasn't that interested. They decided what I thought.
Well, that's wrong. I need to have the responsibility to think through these issues. I should have the obligation to think through these issues. Frankly, one of the great problems in Washington today, is that we're too content to let a small community define an issue for everyone else, and the rest of us just tag along, and we don't think about it ourselves.
Well, that's what CSIS is trying to get at -- this central problem when it comes to the Sudan. We're not going to try to advocate one solution or another. But, we have to have a debate -- an open debate where everybody is involved intellectually in trying to come to the right answer on the Sudan. Not simply let other people decide for me, and for you, and for every other person in America, what we think about this subject. But, instead, to get actively involved ourselves. Unfortunately, we decided to cast the Sudan as simply being one of those rogue states. The rest of us stopped thinking about the problem. Unfortunately for now 18 years, we've had what you could only call a genocide underway in the Sudan.
Once you look at the facts, you're embarrassed to see what's been going on, and how little we've known about it, or how little we have cared about it as a nation. We've got to break out of that mindset where somebody else has decided what we're going to think about it, and start thinking for ourselves. That's what today's session is about.
That's why you're going to see a cross range of views represented on this panel. This is not an advocacy panel with one point of view. We're going to try to get other people's perspectives to the table so that we can all do our job, which is to think about this policy ourselves, freshly. Not simply repeating the mantras of the past that we've inherited as the only solution, but to think about what would we do if you were to sit this afternoon with the President of the United States and tell him what should we be doing for American policy in the Sudan. It's your responsibility and this session today is designed to try to help us think that through.
I thank you all very much for coming. It's enormously important and gratifying to see so many people here. Let me again say how deeply thankful we are to you Congressman Wolf, Senator Frist, for your national leadership in being willing to take us into this area that all Americans ought to think through. Thank you very much.
JEROME SHESTACK: Our next speaker is Senator Bill Frist from Tennessee. You know the various professions that emerged from the Middle Ages were the clerical profession which was destined to deal with healing the soul, the medical profession with healing the body, and the legal profession with dealing with healing the justice system.
In Senator Frist, we have a combination of someone who has all his life been healing the body, and now is also trying to heal the body politic. He has been an unstinting voice on Capitol Hill for those suffering in Sudan. He has been through Southern Sudan where he worked as a medical missionary with Samaritans First.
Unlike the many who pass the wounded man on the side of the road, he has been a Samaritan, certainly in the cause of Sudan. He used his skill as a physician to treat patients in areas that have been devastated by the cruel and unending war. He is chairman of the Africa Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a staunch defender of human rights and the dignity of individual persons. He's a person who has been motivated by his conscience to do the right thing in world affairs. Senator Frist.
BILL FRIST: Jerry, thank you. It indeed is a real honor and a privilege and an opportunity for me to join you and see so many good friends today. I look forward to a lively discussion, one that will be informative, which will bring into focus many of the thoughts and the ideas that so many of us have had, but have not been able to articulate in a way that is powerful enough, I believe, to really change the direction of the attitude of the United States in participation in the Sudan issues.
I want to add my thanks to the many people who have been mentioned thus far today, and for the excellent work in putting together this report. I know, because I've heard from many people, that a lot of the specific points and issues of this report will bring an element of discomfort to some people, and that there will be, indeed, profound disagreement among many people in terms of either the points that are made, the findings, or the recommendations. But, the fact that we have this report, and that it can serve as a nucleus, a focal point for discussion, as well as deliberation, on the many, many different issues that we have seen in personal ways in Sudan and from the body politic -- I think our greatest virtue will be this focus, this nucleus this point, this platform upon which we can discuss these many issues.
Regardless of the many short comings, the specific merits of the report itself, I think it's this debate, this deliberation, that is absolutely critical to people such as Congressman Wolf and myself, to elected officials, to those who are entrusted with the responsibility for the policy of the United States of America.
Though I expect that despite specific, even profound disagreements, underlying this event is a common bond, is a common agreement, on the one very basic, very, very critical point. That is, that historically the United States' policies, leadership, and level of commitment with respect to this conflict in Sudan, does not sufficiently reflect our potential to be a force for good and a force for change. And that the current Administration must seek to maximize our effectiveness in bringing about a lasting and a just peace in Sudan. I believe that's the common -- the focal point -- that's the common agreement.
Now, how we get there I think we'll hear about in our discussion today. I think we will hear a lively debate. We may diverge and we may never completely agree on how to accomplish this goal. But, it's this disagreement, this discussion, this deliberation on strategy and operations that I believe is important, although it cannot distract us from maintaining this common vision and common goal.
One final observation that I think is important to this event and the perspective that we walk away from this event. We're here in the United States Holocaust Memorial for a reason that I and others have had the opportunity to personally witness in our visits which, by necessity -- although it can be repeated time and time again -- are short term, but have been witnessed by so many of you in the room. Two million have seen it, but have not lived to tell about it.
Behind all the discussions and the deliberations is that remarkable capacity to destroy human life. The ability to use God-given talents and intelligence for evil purposes must never, ever be underestimated. This venue alone, today, in this Museum, is testimony to that fact. Our presence here is testimony to the fact that the Sudan should not be viewed as a type of boutique issue.
But just as humans can use these talents for evil purposes, so -- and we'll hear it today -- can they use them for good purposes -- to seek justice and to make good on the pledge of "Never Again."
So as we deliberate on this report and on the differences regarding what means we use to get to that common good, we must always be mindful of that common vision and that common goal -- from not being lost, not allowing it to be lost in the debate on strategy and operations. Again, thank you for this opportunity to participate, to listen, and to learn as we look at this report today.
JEROME SHESTACK: Our next speaker, Congressman Frank Wolf, comes from Virginia. His constituency is nearby. He has been a committed and powerful force on Sudan in the House, nationally and, indeed, internationally, not only on Sudan, but on many human rights issues. He recently became chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which has been a major force in Congress for its highlighting and acting on human rights issues. He's been in Sudan 4 times in the last 11 years. Just recently, last month, brought back some riveting and tragic testimony about the continuing abuses that are taking place there every day. Currently Congressman Wolf is chair of the Commerce, State, and Justice Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Please welcome Congressman Wolf.
FRANK WOLF: Thank you very much Jerry. I want to thank you. Also, I want to thank the Holocaust Museum for hosting this and having this. This is very important. Hopefully some day you could develop a program where young people and college students could come and participate, to carry the torch forward on issues like this.
I also want to thank CSIS for its work. There will be differences as Senator Frist said. But, on its work on focusing the issue at this time, and this year, on this very important issue to hopefully, as Senator Frist said, bring peace, but with justice.
Also, I lastly want to thank Senator Frist for his work on the Senate side -- working with Senator Brownbeck in keeping this issue alive. I know his knowledge and his credibility can make a big difference, particularly with a new Administration here in town.
In this hallowed place, we are both forced and we are blessed to confront the best and the worst in each of us. In the halls of this Museum we not only witness, but literally feel the clash between good and evil that has defined the world's history. To be in the Holocaust Museum, among its piles of moldy shoes, and it's photographs of centuries old communities extinguished in an evil moment of time, is thus to be placed on a deep personal obligation to do all within our power to insure, in the old Scottish phrase, "that right be done." To be here is to know that our very moral standing as human beings compels us never, never again to be silent witnesses to the mass enslavement, the mass starvation, and the mass murder of people. It is thus not only fitting, but actually mandatory, that we gather today to discuss what now reigns and grows in Sudan.
I have been to Sudan on a number of occasions. I've seen the death. I've seen the famine, the disease, the destruction. I've heard the stories about women and children taken from villages to be enslaved in the year 2001 -- not something that's in the movie Amistad, but something that we could all fly to in 24 hours and be and see slavery in the year 2001. I've seen the fear in the faces of people when the Antanov bombers come over the villages overhead. 2.2 million died as a result of this genocide.
What is being done to the people of Southern Sudan, I believe, is so brutal that there is no question of moral equivalency between the two sides. The situation in Sudan is rapidly getting worse. It must be forcefully dealt with this year lest Khartoum's escalating scorched earth policy reach Final Solution dimensions.
As we speak, major international oil companies are initiating and expanding operations in Southern Sudan that unless stopped in their tracks will generate billions of dollars of annual revenue for the Khartoum regime. This oil revenue, once secured, will powerfully insulate Khartoum from world pressure to end its brutal policies. This revenue, Khartoum has openly pledged, if you read the news reports, will be spent and is being spent on modern bombers and helicopter gun ships and other weapons that will enhance its war against the people in the South.
The fact is that we heard reports of helicopter gun ships flying along this last month -- along the pipeline route -- and clearing people out of the oil areas. The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom has bravely called on the President to limit oil companies that finance this regime from access to U.S. capital.
Here in this Museum, in the shadow of exhibits of the slave labor practices of many of German companies, in the face of what we know about the victimization of Jews at the hands of European banks, and insurance companies, and art galleries and other institutions, a clear message must be sent to the oil companies that are doing business: Talisman of Canada, the China National Petroleum Company, Petronas of Malaysia, and others, such as Lundeen of Sweden, and OMV of Austria, and others who are thinking of moving into the South. Enter into oil contracts with the genocidal regime in Sudan, produce revenue for it, only at a great risk of losing, not only financially but otherwise, far more than they can gain from those contracts. There is an additional step, wholly within the power of the President to take. That needs to be done immediately.
It relates to the 100 million per year in food aid that the United States provides as humanitarian aid for the people of Sudan. This aid, as Senator Frist was the first one to force the Congress and the government to recognize, is currently being made subject to the "no go zone" veto authority of the Khartoum regime. The regime has used this authority, with passive complicity of the United Nations food distribution agencies, to selectively starve Christians and animist populations in Southern Sudan.
It is remarkable that we are called upon to insist that U.S. food aid in Sudan should be distributed on the basis of need and hunger, and not politics. Here at the Holocaust Museum, of all places, it must be made clear that U.S. taxpayer dollars intended for compassionate purposes cannot be used as weapons of war against people whose only crime is that they are the wrong faith or the wrong creed.
There is a single step that can be taken by this Administration, by the President of the United States, that will send a clear signal to Khartoum that it's time has finally run out with regard to the cries of the victims -- the cries will no longer be muffled by the white noise of world events -- that it must reform itself immediately, or face the prospect of becoming a pariah state on the order of South Africa's apartheid regime.
The appointment of a nationally distinguished leader, a special envoy, for Sudan would be such a step. I intend to ask President Bush to take it. I would urge the President to appoint a person of the caliber of former Secretary of State James Baker, or former Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke, or even, former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore.
A ceremony at the White House designating this envoy -- not by a press release over a Labor Day weekend -- but at the White House designating this envoy, attended by such leaders as Kweisi Mfume, head of the NAACP, Cardinal Bernard Law, Franklyn Graham, Chuck Colson, Elie Weisel, and others who have spoken out eloquently about events in the Sudan, will tell the world that America stands united in its understanding of the lessons taught in and by this building.
Sudan, I believe, has become the litmus test of America's commitment to human rights. Saving its lambs from further and escalated slaughter is both a moral imperative and an act in America's national interest. Failure to act as we should will strengthen the hands of the radicals who now seek to hijack the great faith of Islam from its historic traditions of art, and music, and literature, and mathematics, and hospitality to strangers.
If on the other hand, we act honorably toward the people of Sudan, clear messages of hope will be sent to the House Church Christians in China, Falun Gong practitioners in China, the Muslims in China who are being persecuted in the northwest portion of the country, and the gravely beset communities in Indonesia, and Pakistan, and Vietnam, and elsewhere, where religion is practiced only at the risk of persecution.
More than any other place in Washington, this Museum teaches us the folly and the sin of silence in the face of evil. A critical element of the responsibility that Congress placed on the Museum that is being carried out today, when it was first established was the mandate, and I quote, "That in any event of any outbreak of genocide, actual or potential, a Committee of Conscience composed of distinguished moral leaders in America will alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, stimulate world wide action to bring such acts to a halt." By this program, and its commitment to spend the balance of this year speaking out against what is taking place in the Sudan, the Museum, clearly, without doubt, honors its Congressional mandate, and as such, it both honors and obligates all of us who have been invited to be here today. Thank you very much.
JEROME SHESTACK: You know it's really heartwarming to find two national leaders in our Senate and Congress speak out in these ways on matters of principle, humanity, and conscience. We live in a world where, I suppose, too many of us have a cynical approach towards many of our political leaders. When we deal with places remote as Sudan, as far away -- a place that doesn't touch our daily lives -- it's so easy to be ignorant in the first place, and apathetic in the second.
When you hear persons of national stature and leadership speak out in this way, it's reassuring to the ordinary citizen, the person who has deep faith in America's leadership in this traumatic and turbulent world.
We will now have a panel which will be chaired by Chester A. Crocker, dealing essentially with the report that you have all received, I believe, when you came in, The U.S. Policy To End Sudan's War, which is the Report of the CSIS Task Force on U.S.-Sudan Policy. It's a very concise and forward-looking report.
I think we will all benefit from the discussion that will take place.
The moderator of the panel is Chester A. Crocker who is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University's Foreign Service and he's chair of the United States Institute of Peace. Mr. Crocker served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1981 to 1989. And he's a prolific author whose books include: Turbulent Peace: The Challenge of Managing International Conflicts. That's a book that will be coming out early next year. I'm sure it will make an important contribution to this field.
Now, we have four panelists here. Two of them are authors and I'll speak a little bit more about them. One of the authors is Francis M. Deng. Professor Deng is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and he is also a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institute. He graduated from Khartoum University. He received his LL.B. with honors. Then he received his LL.M. and his J.D. at Yale University. He has served as the Ambassador of Sudan to the United States, to Canada, and various Scandinavian countries. He was Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of Sudan. He was a human rights officer at the United Nations and he is a special representative of the Secretary General for internally displaced people. He has written some 20 books, 2 novels, dealing with conflict resolution, anthropology, human affairs, and what not. He's truly a Renaissance man, but one that has contributed in all of his ways to peaceful solutions and conflict resolution in this world. He is one of our panelists today.
The second author of the book, J. Stephen Morrison, also has a very distinguished history. He went to John Hopkins and Yale. He was with the Policy Planning Division of the State Department for a number of years. For four years, he was responsible for African Affairs, which included Sudan policy. In 1999, he led the State Department Initiative On Illicit Diamonds, and chaired an interagency review of U.S. Humanitarian policy. If you mention the countries of Angola, Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti -- he has been involved in the policy respecting all of those nations. He was a government advisor to U.S. Aid missions and to U.S. embassies in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Two other panelists also have distinguished biographies and vitae, but I will make a very abbreviated introduction. Ibrahim Elbadawi is the lead economist in the Development Economic Research Group of the World Bank. Currently he is managing a research project on the economics of political and criminal violence. The relevance to Sudan is, of course, obvious. Before joining the World Bank, with which he has been since 1989, he was a professor of economics at the University of Gazera in Sudan.
And our fourth panelist is Roger Winter, who is the executive director of the United States Committee for Refugees, and among the publications of that group is Follow the Women and Cows, Personal Stories of Sudan's Uprooted People, which came out in 1999, and Working Document II -- Quantifying Genocide in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. He has regularly visited Sudan and was there as recently as five weeks ago.
So, I'm pleased to introduce Mr. Crocker and our distinguished panel. If you'll take your seats on the platform, we'll proceed.
