{"id":75004,"date":"2016-06-13T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=75004"},"modified":"2016-06-12T15:30:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-12T14:30:16","slug":"new-nation-long-war-hillary-clintons-state-department-gave-south-sudans-military-a-pass-for-its-child-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/06\/new-nation-long-war-hillary-clintons-state-department-gave-south-sudans-military-a-pass-for-its-child-soldiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton\u2019s State Department Gave South Sudan\u2019s Military a Pass for Its Child Soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nick<\/a>Read Part 2<\/a> of this series.<\/em><\/p>\n

New Nation, Long War<\/strong><\/p>\n

9 Jun 2016 – <\/em>I met a few\u00a0of them in the town of Pibor last year. These battle-tested veterans had just completed two or three years of military service. They told me about the rigors of a soldier\u2019s life, about toting AK-47s, about the circumstances that led them to take up arms. In the United States, not one of these soldiers would have met the age requirements to enlist in the Army. None were older than 16.<\/p>\n

Rebel forces in southern Sudan began using<\/a> child soldiers long before seceding from Sudan in 2011. The United States, on the other hand, passed a law in 2008 that banned providing military assistance to nations that use child soldiers. The law was called the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, or CSPA, but after South Sudan\u2019s independence, the White House issued annual waivers that kept aid flowing to the world\u2019s newest nation despite its use of child soldiers. President Obama stated<\/a> in 2012 that the waiver that year was in \u201cthe national interest of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s move was criticized by human rights activists and others. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Republican from Nebraska and the author of the CSPA, described<\/a> the use of child soldiers as an \u201cunthinkable practice.\u201d The U.S. \u201cmust not be complicit in this practice,\u201d he said. \u201cThe intent of the law is clear \u2014 the waiver authority should be used as a mechanism for reform, not as a way of continuing the status quo.\u201d Because of the requirements of the law, the waivers were issued by the White House rather than the State Department, so Obama was the target<\/a> of most of the criticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state when the first waivers were issued, was apparently never asked to comment on them, and the State Department never provided any explanations about its role. Clinton had spent years\u00a0vowing<\/a> to defend the rights of children worldwide \u2014 in 2012, she\u00a0railed<\/a> against \u201cmodern-day slavery\u201d in the introduction to a State Department report on human trafficking that took aim at the \u201cunlawful recruitment or use of children\u201d by armed forces. Yet she does not appear to have publicly explained her role in allowing South Sudan and other countries to receive military support despite using children as combatants. In fact, the State Department played a central role in issuing the controversial waivers, according to two sources, including a former State Department official.<\/p>\n

\"Boys<\/a>

Boys sit with their rifles at a ceremony for demobilizing and reintegrating child soldiers in Pibor, South Sudan, on Feb. 10, 2015.
Photo: Samir Bol\/Anadolu Agency\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

As a presidential candidate, Clinton has made her foreign policy experience a centerpiece<\/a> of her campaign. Under scrutiny, however, Clinton\u2019s acumen has been consistently called into question \u2014 from her vote, as a U.S. senator, for the Iraq War (which led to the collapse of that country into near failed-state status) to her relentless push<\/a> to intervene<\/a> in Libya (which led to the collapse of that country into near failed-state status); not to mention her handling of the Russian \u201creset<\/a>,\u201d the so-called pivot to Asia<\/a>, and the Arab Spring<\/a>, among other issues.<\/p>\n

Until now, however, there has been little of mention of Clinton\u2019s handling of South Sudan. With strong U.S. support, South Sudan became an independent country while she was secretary of state \u2014 and soon spiraled into a disastrous civil war that involved large numbers of child soldiers. The CSPA waivers and the broader panoply of military and diplomatic support that was extended to South Sudan and the government of its president, Salva Kiir, failed to prevent a descent into violence that has cost more than 50,000 lives and forced more than 2.4 million people to flee their homes.<\/p>\n

\"Secretary<\/a>

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with President Salva Kiir at the Presidential Office Building in Juba, South Sudan, Aug. 3, 2012.
Photo: Jacquelyn Martin\/Reuters\/Newscom<\/p><\/div>\n

At\u00a0a major conference\u00a0on South Sudan in 2011, Clinton spoke about \u201cthe opportunity to make it possible for [South Sudan\u2019s] children to envision a different future.\u201d Yet in that same year, the Obama administration used a technicality to gain a CSPA exemption for South Sudan, since the list of countries subject to the law that year was created before the new nation became independent. There would be no \u201cdifferent future\u201d for South Sudan\u2019s child soldiers in 2011, nor the next year, when the White House issued a waiver<\/a> for South Sudan, as well as for now war-torn Libya and Yemen.<\/p>\n

What role was played by Clinton and the State Department?<\/p>\n

Daniel Mahanty, who served in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under Clinton, confirmed that the State Department, in consultation with the White House, controlled the process. The State Department drafted all waiver materials and all recommendations to the president were made on behalf of the secretary of state and with her full approval. \u201cWe will have already drafted the letter from the president to Congress that says what waivers he\u2019s going to invoke,\u201d Mahanty told me. \u201cSo it goes up to the secretary [of state], then over to the White House, and from the White House out to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jo Becker, the advocacy director of the children\u2019s rights division at Human Rights Watch, has closely followed the process behind the waivers and also believes Clinton\u2019s State Department played a central role. \u201cIt\u2019s the State Department that gives the recommendations to Obama on who he should waive,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n

Contacted by The Intercept<\/em>, key officials at the State Department at the time of the waivers did not respond to requests for comment, and Clinton\u2019s campaign staff failed to provide information about her role. The Intercept<\/em> reached out to Johnnie Carson<\/a>, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Clinton, but he did not make himself available to speak. Other officials who did not comment include Cheryl Mills<\/a>, Clinton\u2019s chief of staff and counselor at the State Department; Jake Sullivan<\/a>, formerly the director of policy planning at the State Department and deputy chief of staff to Clinton; and Karen Hanrahan<\/a>, who served as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.<\/p>\n

The State Department claimed it was unable to provide any information about Clinton\u2019s role. \u201cI don\u2019t have any record of Secretary Clinton\u2019s discussions,\u201d a State Department spokesperson said in response to my inquiry about whether she had provided guidance to the president or expressed any reservations about the waivers. \u201cWe are looking forward rather than rehashing the past, much of which is difficult to determine,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe do not comment on internal deliberations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House was similarly opaque about the waivers, although it gave a tacit nod to State Department involvement. \u201cIt\u2019s an interagency process,\u201d a White House official told The Intercept<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>

President Salva Kiir, center, poses for a photo with members of the presidential guard during a meeting in Juba, South Sudan, on Dec. 28, 2014.
Photo: Photo by Samir Bol\/Anadolu Agency\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

On July 9, 2011,\u00a0South Sudan\u2019s Independence Day, President Obama issued a statement of strong support despite the new country\u2019s use of child soldiers. \u201cI am confident that the bonds of friendship between South Sudan and the United States will only deepen in the years to come,\u201d he announced<\/a>. \u201cAs Southern Sudanese undertake the hard work of building their new country, the United States pledges our partnership as they seek the security, development, and responsive governance that can fulfill their aspirations and respect their human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clinton was equally effusive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m betting on South Sudan, and I don\u2019t like to lose bets,\u201d she said at the International Engagement Conference for South Sudan, which was held in 2011 in Washington, D.C. It was, she said, her honor to welcome President Kiir to America. \u201cWe have a chance to raise up the first generation of South Sudanese who have not known and, God willing, never will know war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama and other supporters of South Sudan were hoping that their toleration of child soldiers, as well as other problems in the country\u2019s military and government, would be a short-term compromise. As Nate Haken, a senior associate at the Fund for Peace, described the situation, \u201cThe rhetoric was very rosy at the time. Everyone was caught up in the euphoria \u2026 and trade-offs were being calculated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the contrast was jarring \u2014 quietly supporting a military that used child soldiers while loudly decrying the use of child soldiers.<\/p>\n

In a September 25, 2012,\u00a0speech<\/a> before the Clinton Global Initiative, Obama spoke about an issue that he said \u201cought to concern every nation. \u2026 I\u2019m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name \u2014 modern slavery.\u201d The president added, \u201cWhen a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed \u2014 that\u2019s slavery. \u2026 It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.\u201d Applause predictably followed.<\/p>\n

Three days later, and with much less fanfare, the president issued a CSPA waiver for South Sudan.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, the Obama administration believed it needed to issue waivers, allowing South Sudan to get on its feet before making demands of its military.<\/p>\n

\u201cA waiver allowed the United States government\u2019s continued delivery of necessary assistance to ensure security sector reform,\u201d according to the White House official. \u201cThis assistance, which provided training on human rights and protection of children, was also designed to help increase the military\u2019s command and control capacity, which in turn increased its ability to prevent and eliminate child soldiers in its ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the latter<\/a> never happened \u2014 child soldiers remained in the military as U.S. aid kept flowing<\/a> to the Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Army, or SPLA, and into the coffers of President Kiir\u2019s government, almost $620 million<\/a> in U.S. assistance in 2012. In 2013, U.S. aid topped out at more than $556 million<\/a>. That September, Obama issued another CSPA waiver \u2014 this time in the form of a memorandum to new Secretary of State John Kerry.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A U.S. Special Forces trainer supervises a military assault drill for a unit of the Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Army, conducted in Nzara, South Sudan, on Nov. 29, 2013.
Photo: Andreea Campeanu\/Reuters\/Newscom<\/p><\/div>\n

In her memoir,\u00a0Hard Choices,<\/em> which was published in 2014, Clinton wrote a brief section about South Sudan that did not mention the controversial waivers on child soldiers. The passage did illustrate, mostly by omission, the failures in South Sudan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI flew to Juba, the new capital of South Sudan, to try to broker a deal,\u201d she wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt had taken years of patient diplomacy to end the civil war and midwife the birth of a new nation, and we couldn\u2019t let that achievement fall apart now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was August 2012, a little more than a year after South Sudan\u2019s inaugural Independence Day \u2014 the product, beyond any sort of American midwifery, of two brutal conflicts with Sudan that\u00a0raged from 1955 to 1972 and 1983 to 2005, leaving millions<\/a> dead and displaced. But it was also true that for more than 20 years, a bipartisan coalition in the United States\u00a0had championed the southern rebels.\u00a0And as the new nation broke away from Sudan, the U.S. poured in billions of dollars in aid, including hundreds of millions in military and security assistance.<\/p>\n

Now, the Sudans were at risk of another war \u2014 this time over oil being pumped in the south and processed in the north. The world\u2019s newest nation had cut off oil production and Clinton was there to get the tap turned back on. With the U.S. then attempting to economically strangle Iran by pressuring nations not to buy its petroleum, Clinton wanted to make sure South Sudan\u2019s oil remained on the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the new president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, wouldn\u2019t budge,\u201d she wrote in her memoir. \u201cI listened to him explain all the reasons why South Sudan couldn\u2019t compromise with the North on an oil deal. Behind all the arguments about pricing and refining was a simple human reality: These battle-scarred freedom fighters couldn\u2019t bring themselves to move beyond the horrors of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Picking her moment, Clinton wrote that she threw Kiir a curveball, pulling out a New York Times<\/em> op-ed<\/a> by a fellow South Sudanese and sliding it over to him. \u201cAs he began to read, his eyes widened. Pointing to the byline, he said, \u2018He was a soldier with me.\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 I replied, \u2018but now he\u2019s a man of peace. And he remembers that you fought together for freedom and dignity, not for oil.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Her gambit, she implied, paid off. Kiir quickly resumed negotiations and made a deal. Readers were left with little question that this was one of those signature Clinton foreign policy triumphs, the diplomatic experience that now makes her the logical choice for America\u2019s next president. It was a stirring tale, an example of how \u201chard choices\u201d can yield happy outcomes \u2014 except the story got much messier just before Clinton\u2019s memoir was published. Tacked onto her memoir\u2019s section on South Sudan is a sentence that reads like a last-minute addition: \u201cIn late 2013, tribal divisions and personal feuds erupted in a spasm of violence that threatens to tear the country apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those \u201ctribal divisions and personal feuds\u201d spiraled into a civil war pitting the forces led by Kiir \u2014 a member of the country\u2019s largest tribe, the Dinka \u2014 against those loyal to Riek Machar, the vice president he had sacked earlier in 2013 and an ethnic Nuer \u2014 the second-largest tribe in the country. Kiir said the violence stemmed from an abortive coup by Machar, but a comprehensive investigation<\/a> by an African Union commission found no evidence of one. It did find evidence that \u201cDinka soldiers, members of presidential guard, and other security forces conducted house-to-house searches, killing Nuer soldiers and civilians in and near their homes\u201d in Juba. From there, the war crimes spread across the country as Kiir\u2019s SPLA and Machar\u2019s SPLA-In Opposition, which was filled with SPLA defectors, made war on civilians in towns like Bor, Bentiu, and Malakal.<\/p>\n

The U.S. had lavished support on South Sudan\u2019s security forces, especially the SPLA, in the years leading up to the conflict. This included the training and equipping of the elite presidential guard; employment of foreign instructors to teach SPLA recruits; development of riverine forces; training of commandos by Ethiopian troops; establishment of a noncommissioned officers academy with training from private contractors and later U.S. military personnel; deployment of a \u201ctraining advisory team\u201d to guide the overhaul of military intelligence; renovation of a training center at the SPLA Command and Staff College; and construction of the headquarters of two SPLA divisions, according to a comprehensive report focusing on the years 2006-2010 by the Small Arms Survey at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.<\/p>\n

During these years and afterward, members of the SPLA were implicated in myriad human rights abuses<\/a>, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, and torture. A 2012 report<\/a> by Clinton\u2019s State Department, for example, noted that in addition to recruiting child soldiers, South Sudan\u2019s security forces also committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, tortured and raped women, arbitrarily arrested and detained people, and \u201ctortured, beat, and harassed political opponents, journalists, and human rights workers.\u201d The SPLA also broke its 2010 pledge to demobilize all of its child soldiers by the end of the year, leaving children serving in the force.<\/p>\n

\u201cPost-2005, I think the lack of public criticism \u2014 by the U.S. \u2014 of the SPLA for its abuses and then the military assistance given to the SPLA by private contractors and others was silly,\u201d said Alex de Waal, the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University\u2019s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. \u201cIt was totally counterproductive. They should have found another way to try to professionalize the army. It was clear that it wasn\u2019t going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"South<\/a>

South Sudanese civilians flee fighting in the northeastern town of Malakal, where gunmen opened fire on people sheltering inside a United Nations base on Feb. 18, 2016.
Photo: Justin Lynch\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

After South Sudan\u2019s\u00a0independence, compromises were repeatedly made by the U.S. and yet the country did fall apart or, rather, was torn apart by the very leaders and institutions the U.S. supported. De Waal thinks the Obama administration was, in many ways, handcuffed by an intractable Congress. Still, Clinton\u2019s State Department was far from blameless for the descent into civil war. \u201cThere\u2019s a fair amount that they could have done to emphasize democratization,\u201d de Waal said. \u201cThey really put democracy in the background when they could have put democracy and human rights up front.\u201d<\/p>\n

A peace deal between the government and the rebels, signed in August 2015, and even Machar\u2019s recent return<\/a> to the government, has so far failed<\/a> to end the bloodshed from a war that fractured into a series of sub-conflicts<\/a> as well as from peripheral violence \u2014 including ethnic and tribal clashes \u2014 carried out by a plethora of armed groups with shifting alliances and a variety of aims.<\/p>\n

Nobody knows how many South Sudanese have perished in the war. The estimates run from 50,000 to 300,000<\/a>. Add to that 2.4 million<\/a> people forced to flee their homes and up to 5.3 million \u2014 almost half the population \u2014 facing<\/a> \u201csevere food insecurity\u201d in the months ahead. About 6.1 million<\/a> people, in total, need assistance. The number of children under arms also skyrocketed, increasing from hundreds to more than 12,000<\/a> serving in the SPLA, the opposition forces, or other militias.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. seems to make the same kind of mistake again and again,\u201d said Haken of the Fund for Peace. \u201cWe catalyze major change without understanding, or at least grappling with, the long-term implications \u2014 whether it\u2019s Iraq or Libya or whether it\u2019s South Sudan. We definitely need to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would presidential candidates Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, or Clinton\u2019s Democratic rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, do better?<\/p>\n

Warren Gunnels, a policy director for the Sanders campaign, told The Intercept<\/em> that the senator \u201cstrongly supports\u201d the CSPA and, as president, would \u201cfollow both the spirit and the intent of this law.\u201d Sanders, he says, also supports continuing humanitarian aid for the South Sudanese. The Trump campaign failed to respond.<\/p>\n

On child soldiers, permissiveness can have far-reaching effects, says Mahanty, who concluded his 15-year career at the State Department by creating and heading the Office of Security and Human Rights. \u201cThere are risks with continually providing a waiver,\u201d he said. \u201cCertainly you\u2019re undermining your own credibility when you\u2019re trying to engage in parts of Africa where they\u2019re not receiving a waiver.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed to a stronger application of the CSPA with countries like Myanmar as having made a real difference for children. \u201cWhen combined with other forms of collective action, it has had a tangible impact on progress in improving the prevention process or in weeding kids out of the ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what about a President Hillary Clinton, would she do better than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when it comes to South Sudan? It\u2019s hard to know. For more than a month, her campaign failed to respond to repeated requests for comment by The Intercept<\/em>. After The Intercept <\/em>contacted several top Clinton confidantes, campaign spokesperson Nick Merrill finally got in touch.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me get into this a bit,\u201d he emailed, after I sent a list of questions. After multiple follow-ups, he wrote, \u201cI haven\u2019t forgotten about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clinton campaign still has not provided any answers.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

Nick Turse<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part 2: \u201cWe Can Assassinate You at Any Time\u201d \u2014 Journalists Face Abduction and Murder in South Sudan<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reporting for this story by Nick Turse, who is the author of <\/em>Next Time They\u2019ll Come To Count The Dead: War And Survival In South Sudan<\/a>, was made possible through the support of Lannan Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The State Department under Clinton played a central and unacknowledged role in granting waivers for military aid to South Sudan despite its child soldiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}