Just weeks away from South Sudan’s independence, the Khartoum regime has been playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship. Khartoum has escalated major attacks in Darfur. Attacks on Abyei intensified in May; while an agreement between North and South Sudan to withdraw troops and allow a contingent of Ethiopian peacekeepers to take control of the territory was brokered last week, more than 100,000 civilians remain displaced and Abyei’s future is still uncertain.  The government of Sudan has also launched full-scale attacks against Nuba civilians in the state of South Kordofan. Credible reports have surfaced of door-to-door raids, summary executions, forced displacement, abductions of peacekeepers and intentional destruction and obstruction of humanitarian aid resources. The attacks on South Kordofan – which an internal UN memo called “ethnic cleansing” – are disturbing echoes of the genocide committed against the Nuba by the Khartoum regime in the 1990s.

The Obama Administration’s stated policy of incentives and pressures towards the NCP government in Khartoum has focused too exclusively on an incentives-only approach. What was expected to be a balanced package of carrots and sticks has only served to embolden the genocidal regime in Khartoum. On the verge of yet another potential genocide in Sudan – which would be Sudan’s fourth genocide in 20 years – Jewish World Watch strongly believes that US policy MUST include credible, coercive consequences for Khartoum.

While we recognize that the NCP government in Khartoum and the SPLM-North in South Kordofan and Blue Nile recently signed a framework agreement on political and security arrangements in those regions, most if not all of the provisions laid out in this framework agreement were already laid out, and agreed to by Khartoum, in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.  Khartoum has been steadily violating that Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Until these new measures are implemented, Jewish World Watch firmly urges the Obama Administration to move forward with implementing the package of consequences developed as a part of their Sudan policy.

These consequences should include, but should not be limited to:

• Expanding existing U.S. sanctions to target the individuals most responsible for the conduct of war in Sudan. Updating the existing sanctions regime to enable the sanctioning of anyone who contributes to violence along the North-South border, per existing measures focused solely on Darfur.
• Mapping the financial connections between senior NCP officials, the Sudanese military industrial complex, and their outside trade partners, financial backers, and intermediaries. Raising pressure with credible threats and, as necessary, implementing financial disruption and economic isolation measures on any party who contributes to the violence along the border, beginning with President Omar al-Bashir and his top advisor, Nafie al Nafie.
• Working with the European Union to lead multilateral efforts to block dollar and euro transactions against any party who contributes to the violence.
• Dispatching a senior Obama administration official to Beijing and to engage China to work on joint diplomacy in support of a peace deal and develop an understanding of the need for both carrots and sticks to leverage that agreement, including economic isolation and an international arms embargo.
• Providing UN civilian protection forces and a monitoring mechanism with access to Abyei, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile after July 9. Civilian protection forces could come in the form of a UN mission with civilian protection as a priority and access to the border regions backed by a flexible monitoring mechanism such as the Civilian Protection Monitoring Teams or Joint Monitoring Mechanism used earlier in the Nuba Mountains.
• Pushing for an independent UN Human Rights Council investigation into violence in Abyei and South Kordofan with possible referral to the International Criminal Court where cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing are identified.

The time is NOW. We know Khartoum’s M.O. – we know what they can and will do.  The Obama Administration MUST impose credible, coercive consequences on Khartoum NOW!