Former envoy: Obama team in cover-up of Darfur aid documents

Ambassador Richard Williamson, the former US presidential envoy to Sudan, accused the Obama Administration of covering up internal US government reports on the humanitarian situation in Darfur.

In a piece published Thursday on the website Foreign Policy, which is owned by the Washington Post, Williamson disclosed the cover-up and detailed his further disagreements with the Obama Administration.

Recalling that the Government of Sudan expelled 13 international aid groups in March 2009, the ambassador wrote that “the Obama team’s response was weak.” Since then, “for more than a year,” wrote Richardson, “U.S. government reports of inadequate humanitarian aid to Darfur have been covered up in Washington, according to two people familiar with the documents.”Although the former White House envoy omitted to say which government organ was responsible for the reports, he was likely referring to the US Agency for International Development or the Office of the Special Envoy at the US Department of State. Reports from these offices possibly would have reached the desks of Obama’s aides Samantha Power, Michelle Gavin and Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor, since those are among the White House officials who are handling the Sudan file.

Washington’s status as top donor to the relief effort in Darfur gives it extensive insider access to unpublished reports by humanitarian groups that have been largely silenced since put under threat of expulsion in March 2009. For example, the UNICEF Country Director told Radio Dabanga last month that the UN agency has child nutritional surveys that it cannot publish because of Sudan’s objections. Using such unpublished data, US government officials can compile their own analyses of the situation.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stopped releasing public reports on Darfur in November 2009. The UN’s Joint Mission Analysis Centre compiles monthly data on violent fatalities in Darfur (which are not humanitarian data) and unofficially releases the results in summary form only, through the website of a UK critic of the International Criminal Court.

Williamson also criticized the Obama Administration for staying silent about the election, government attacks in Darfur, and the international arrest warrants against President Omar Al Bashir.

“When Khartoum has used its Sudanese Armed Forces aircraft to bomb villages and kill innocents in violation of various agreements, there has been no robust public rebuke,” wrote Williamson. “When the presidential election stipulated in the CPA was far from credible, the Obama administration was quiet.”

“When earlier this year the ICC issued a further arrest warrant for Bashir, this time for genocide, the same word Obama repeatedly has used to describe the Sudanese government’s violence against its own people — again there was no cry for accountability.”

Williamson served as special envoy to Sudan under US President George W. Bush. He followed the former envoy, Andrew Natsios, and served for about one year. The article on Foreign Policy website was titled “How Obama Betrayed Sudan.”