Washington, D.C. — Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester A. Crocker, who served during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, held the post for eight years - longer than anyone in that position before or since. He is now a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. The Bush Administration had asked professor Crocker to become a Special Envoy to Sudan for the U.S. government. Last week, Crocker turned down the task citing "personal reasons". But speaking with allAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr., Professor Crocker also expressed doubt whether the warring parties in Sudan are ready to work out a peaceful settlement to the 18-year-old conflict. He was also skeptical about the solidity of the bi-partisan coalition that has formed on Sudan in Washington. In this first part of an interview that will be continued Monday, Professor Crocker also offers comments on the conflicts in Congo and Sierra Leone.
Why didn't you take the position of special envoy to Sudan?
A mix of factors was in my decision - mostly personal factors. I have full time employment and a lot of commitments as it is and this might have been a situation where I might have had to drop certain things to do this and I didn't see this as a long-term assignment so that raised some questions for me in personal terms.
A second factor is that I am not personally persuaded that the situation in Sudan proper and around Sudan is all that prospective for a substantive peace process. There's been a lot of play-acting, a lot of pretence, a lot of posturing about peace and a lot of meetings and there are several peace processes already out there but they don't have traction; they are not serious and I'm not personally persuaded that the situation is all that ripe for getting such a peace process going at this moment. That's my analysis of the parties and that's where I come out.
And a third factor is that I think that the situation inside the beltway here in Washington is not a strong basis for the conduct of a serious engagement in a peace process. It's a rather strange alliance - let's put it that way - and I'm not sure it's a very solid basis for an American lead role. So I had some misgivings about that and that's the mix of factors that were in my mind.
There was specific opposition to you coming from the left and the right. The evangelical right, an important part of the Bush administration constituency, feeling that you weren't "right" enough and the left still feeling hostile because of "constructive engagement" when you were assistant secretary of state for African Affairs and your association with that policy toward South Africa.
I really can't speak to what the opposition might have been. If it was stronger it might have persuaded me to take the job. I'm a stubborn sort of person and there were times during the 1980s when I was assistant secretary where people would say, 'Why do you stay there; it's not exactly an easy road you're on?' and I would say to myself if there weren't so many people pushing me to leave, I might have. No, this wasn't a factor in my thinking because I was asked to do this. I don't work for 500 people. I would be working for the Secretary of State and the President if I had said yes.
Some would say that the kind of bi-partisan coalition we have "inside the beltway" as you described it earlier is so unusual when it comes to African issues in particular that it would be a good sign as to the prospects of an effective American role and working toward some kind of peace settlement.
History will decide of course. My own reading is that this bi-partisan coalition that you refer to is on one side of the issue and implies that we already know who the good guys and who the bad guys are and it's just a question of finding a way to impose our view of their situation on them. Well, that's not the way the world is organized; we don't have that capacity. There are certain realities and I think that we have to recognize that there is more than one voice for the south; there's more than one voice for the north in Sudan. Getting the government in Sudan to be seriously tested - which has been hard to do - is going to require that one be able to put ideas in front of them which would clarify the uncertainties in their own ranks. It's not all that clear how unified the Khartoum government is. Nor is it that clear the extent to which one voice speaks for the south or that voice in fact is looking to answer some of the uncertain questions that have been hanging around for some years now about which way to go on the peace process. So, I think for those reasons I'm a little bit skeptical.
But when it comes to the situation in Washington it's going to be a difficult road to walk for any envoy on this - to decide how much of what we do is basically to keep interest groups happy on a domestic political basis and how much of what we do is based on the foreign policy merits. That's a tough line to walk. And we'll have to see how it plays out. It puts any envoy in a particularly exposed position in light of the other point I'm making about Sudan itself.
Do you think the administration itself has made up its mind about where it wants to go in Sudan? My sense is that there are two conflicting directions, one lodged in the White House and the other in the Department of State when it comes to Sudan.
I think that there's a fair degree of coherence at the top levels on this. Naturally it is the State Department's job to try and make the foreign policy work and it's the White House staff's job to try and make the domestic policy work. So you're bound to have that tension; that's built into the situation on most any issue, not just on Sudan. But I think, insofar as I've been able to figure out, that secretary Powell and the President are on the same page when it comes to trying to find a way to get peace. Without peace you don't get anything. We can give all the sermons we like standing back here about the need to stop this and that, wind up all these hideous abuses that are going on in Sudan, but sermons are not going to bring about peace. And without peace you don't get to a different future with a different constitution and respect for human rights and the rights of everybody - a different Sudan. You can't get there without peace.
Another huge area of administration interest is the Congo - the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What is your reading of that situation? From here it looks as if they are inching up to this inter-congolese dialogue although there are lots of question marks that still hover over it.
I think we have begun to get a little bit of traction in that situation because we have in a fairly balanced way - which is essential - gone after the various parties which are intervening as well as the government and said that look everybody has to do certain things if the other side is to be asked to do certain things. In other words it's got to be a package deal. So I think that we have some credibility at this early stage of a new administration to try and push this thing forward. We're not the ones who are alone driving it. There are a lot of other players. It's a very complicated situation with a lot of different parties - a lot of different outside parties too, with interests. My own judgment is that the only way this can work is if you - by you I mean in general the third parties who are involved - create a unified game. In other words, you don't give the directly warring parties an out. You force them to respond to a unified set of suggestions, proposals, initiatives, pressures, incentives and so on. And you don't encourage this forum shopping which is so typical in these lower profile international conflicts where parties will say they'll meet and talk to anybody who comes to town but they're not serious because they're not facing a unified game. You have to create a unified game. What that means is that we, the secretary-general of the United Nations, the British, the Tanzanians, the South Africans, the French - we've all got to be on the same page. Ultimately, if that's the way you approach it you might be able to get somewhere.
Is everybody on the same page?
I don't think so yet.
And would that include the Kabila government, the central government?
It would certainly include the Kabila government. It would include other Congolese parties - armed and not armed. We can't only have a peace process dominated by armed entities and neighboring armies. It's got to be a peace process that includes voices of broader Congolese society. But it certainly includes all the intervening neighbors as well.
Do you think a Congo is even viable at this point? Groups outside of Kinshasa have such autonomy. Its hard to imagine them either surrendering any of the authority they've accumulated through armed struggle or even political struggle in deference to some central entity that may emerge. Why not have three separate states? Or more?
It's one of the most basic questions that affects African statecraft in general. I think the post-cold war environment, if we can still use that term, has raised that issue in a new light During the cold war it was an easier question to answer. My take on it would be, there are plenty of African states as it is. And most of them are microstates with micro- economies. If you're thinking about it from the standpoint of African interest as well as the interest of foreign investors and foreign partners the last thing that Africa would need is more balkanization. That is one point that we do need to respect. Some of the economies of the smaller states Africa are of less significance than the economy of Gaithersburg, Maryland. If you want to try and get Africa on the map economically, and join the global system, it's awfully hard to do that if your states are on that scale.
Having said that the real issue about breaking up the Congo I suppose, is how it would be done. You could perhaps make the point that if it were negotiated, and if it were legitimized and there was some participation by credible people in the process of redrawing boundaries then it has a certain legitimacy and it doesn't just look like it's the rule of the gun. If it's just the rule of the gun then you're asking to destroy the African state system. That is not good for Africa and it is not good for Africa's friends. So, I think an awful lot would depend on the environment in which any such decision to look at the boundaries was taken.
I was really asking - or stating - that for all practical purposes isn't Congo broken up now into states or regions that are essentially independent of Kinshasa? And that what prevails in those regions are big fish in little ponds.
You're talking about the de facto situation. And I'd been giving you a somewhat de jure answer. De facto you obviously have a huge country and you have a lot of groups who have taken the law into their own hands. You also have some non-armed groups that basically are in charge in some areas They are not specifically armed movements or rebel movements. The Congo is not the only place where this goes on. There are other parts of Africa where it goes on. That's a different point. What we're talking about here is a kind of decentralization, or a state system that consists of states with governments that have less of a dominating role - central governments recognize their limits and maybe they cut deals and maybe they negotiate understandings with regional players such that there is something of a federal of confederal reality. That's fine but its got to be negotiated. There's got to be some basis for legitimacy. If you don't have a basis for legitimacy what you have is rule by the gun. And there is far too much of that across the African countryside today. It's a dangerous situation. Africa is awash in guns. There's a changing balance of power in my assessment, in which young men and boys with guns are gaining the upper hand in too many societies vis a vis everybody else in those societies.
That brings immediately to mind another arena of African conflict: West Africa. In my mind I almost mark the beginning of this unraveling in West Africa with the Doe take-over in 1980 or whenever he took over. Liberia's collapse seems to have led to a decade and a half of conflict. There was extreme reluctance on the part of the United States - The Reagan White House - to intervene in Liberia which really secured the power of Doe and everyone else who came after him.
History would indicate that Doe came in during the Carter administration. And one of the first decisions that my predecessor made was to provide some support for Doe and for elements of his military as a gesture that although we didn't like military coups we understood that this was the indigenous population speaking. And that was the first government that Liberia ever had - warts and all - and it wasn't much of a government -- that was led by an indigenous Liberian as opposed to an Americo-Liberian. And that distinction at the time was seen as significant. We looked very carefully in the Reagan administration at what our options were. We could have walked, I suppose, although it would have been an invitation to hostile forces to come in and replace us. This was the cold war era that we're talking about. And it would have been either an opening to the Libyans or to the Soviets or to the worst kind of French maneuvering to replace the American position in Liberia - we had a very substantial position there and there would have been empty seats to fill. Somebody would have filled them; they don't just stay empty. So we did what we could, working with a very limited man - Sam Doe - and with his colleagues, some of whom were much more capable and worthwhile to keep them from self-destruction. By the end of the 1980s - and this history I'm talking up to the point when the White House actually did make a decision not to act -- it became clear that there was something going on. And that something was led by an escaped convict from a Massachusetts jail who went to Libya and then went to Burkina and then got in touch with French interests in Côte d'Ivoire and marched into Liberia with the knowledge of all those elements including the Ivorian security services, the French security services, French commercial interests, Libyan backing and training - a whole network. So what we saw in late 89, 90, and 91 was, in fact, a very substantial change in the situation. Charles Taylor came in. We didn't act. We decided that we would not act on that occasion. I was not in government at that time; I left office in early 89. I was appalled frankly, that we didn't act. I thought we should have.
But why do you think the administration didn't act?
I think because there was so much else going on in the world. Because it was post cold war or it was becoming the post cold war era, the cold war mentality we had to do something because Liberia was our ally - I think that had somewhat dissipated. I know my successor - Hank Cohen - was very, very unhappy with the outcome of repeated efforts that he made to try and get Liberia on the agenda and to do something before the entire society was traumatized as it was. So now if you fast-forward ten years later we're sitting here with a traumatized Liberia, a traumatized Sierra Leone and a regional cancer in West Africa which is centered in Liberia with its leadership. And the connections - the nexus between that leadership and other neighboring elites in other countries - I've touched on some of them. There are some in my view in the Ivorian government. There are without any question some in the Burkina government. And there's obviously the Libyan factor. This is not something that can just be settled at the Sierra Leone level. It's a broader problem.
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At what level then? Are you positing a pan-African approach? Some kind of multi-lateral approach that is even larger than the continent itself?
Of course you have UNAMSIL moving up to 17,500 troops. That's a big effort. You have the Brits in there with whatever it is, 600 to 1000 of their best saving the UN's bacon initially and now doing a lot of training of the Sierra Leone forces. You have a lot of Africans in that force. You have some Pakistani's coming to beef up that force. So it is already not just a West African ECOMOG situation, it's a UN situation.. It's multilateral zed and its got the U.S. supporting what I would describe as a British lead on the ground in Sierra Leone.
But when I say "a broader level" I think we have to think of the analogy of a serpent. When you want to get rid of a serpent you have to smash the head of the serpent. And the head of the serpent is not inside of Sierra Leone. So we've seen the effort to go after Taylor and his allies and his assets through a sanctions program. That's probably not a bad start but if I were doing it I would like to see us go beyond that.
Well how much further can you go beyond that short of a direct military intervention and plotting the overthrow of Charles Taylor?
Well there are some things that people don't talk about a whole lot. We do have ways of finding out about his international connections. Who he talks to. Who he relies on. Who he's fencing the stuff that he captures to. Who he's using as his export conduits. Where his banks are. How he provides overflight and clearance rights for illegal flights into rebel held areas in Sierra Leone. Who are the pilots for those planes? Where do they come from? Where do they refuel? I think you get my drift. We are in a position if we want to shut that sort of thing down, if we are prepared to make the effort and really engage. That's what I call "engagement." It would mean also I think working to decide if it's possible to get some French cooperation on this. The French are still going through a transition in their own African policies. This West African morass of issues that we're talking about has to be an embarrassment for them. And if they won't work with us on it I would not hesitate to make them a little bit more uncomfortable. But I think we could get some cooperation there if together with the Brits and the Secretary General we take the right approach.
Do you know if this is a discussion in the current Bush administration?
I can't speak for what they're doing on it. I know they're very focused on it. They see the risk of what could go further wrong in terms of this thing spreading to not just Sierra Leone but we've spillage across the border into Guinea. It could go further afield. It could in fact play a role in destabilizing the politics of Côte d'Ivoire, which is already in a fairly dicey situation.
Interview With Chester A. Crocker (Part 2): Southern Africa Two Decades Later
