2004-8-

THE EU AT WORK

Back in 1990 the EU took some punitive measures against warmongering Sudan. It
stopped transmitting a subsidy that was meant to stabilise the value of Sudan’s
exports and stored the funds in a bank account. Over time the capital earned some
interest and by 2003 it had grown to Euro 200,000,000. Because now at long last there
was a cease-fire between the SPLA and the Khartoum regime and to add another
incentive for the parties to make real peace the EU decided that 25 % of this amount
would be made available to NGOs for ‘the recovery of the productivity sectors’ of
Sudan. The only condition for the release of the money was that Khartoum and the
SPLA would sign the peace agreement – a condition that at the time by many
outsiders was thought to be a question of days rather than weeks.

But there was more naivety involved. The EU appeared to be under the impression
that Sudan in its entirety had been hit by a natural catastrophe that in one way or
another had destroyed the entire productive sector. At least it stipulated that the
money should be spent in equal proportions in all regions of the country. -- As if there
had been no twenty years of war in the South that, indeed, had lost its whole
infrastructure. As if the North was not enriching itself from the oil it was pumping out
of the South. As if Sudan was a harmonious country in which everybody shared in
equal measure the donations from the outside. As if at the very same moment the
Khartoum government was not preparing a new catastrophe, this time in the West of
the country.

More than a year after the EU had decided all this, there was no peace yet but the EU
was still confident that an agreement was around the corner. And so, in August 2004,
anybody interested in these funds was called for a meeting in either Khartoum or
Nairobi.
The Nairobi meeting took place on a cool Friday morning in the biggest room the
Lenana Conference Centre could boast. About 50 representatives of NGOs had taken
the bait and were eager to find out in what way they could lay their hands on some of
the money. This was explained by a team of EU and UNDP staff who were
accompanied by a consultant for the donkey work. It soon transpired that this team
had reserved over Euro 5 million for its own functioning so that only 44 mio. was
available for the projects. But by way of comfort the NGOs were told that they too
would be allowed to reserve something for their own overheads; of course not as
much as the EU itself but still a comfortable 7 %.
While everybody was busy calculating what might be coming their way, the EU
people suddenly but respectfully got up from their chairs. Two Arab-looking
gentlemen had entered the room. At the beginning of the meeting the EU people had
presented themselves but had not found it worthwhile to get to know the NGO staffers
who had accepted their invitation. But apparently the new gentlemen deserved to be
known. One of them proved to be the deputy National Authorising Officer (NAO) of
the Khartoum government. When the explanations continued it gradually became
clear that this NAO was to chair the supervising committee of the whole project.
The deputy NAO did not have much to say except that the peace agreement could
now be expected in October or at the latest in November. Soon after this reassuring
statement he left again. If his boss, the NAO, was of the same calibre Sudanese
productivity could indeed look forward to a bright future.
The EU people now went into the nitty-gritty of their scheme. NGOs were required to
pool their specialisations in a consortium so that all problems in an area could be
tackled at the same time by the various members of the consortium. The EU would
deal with only one member of the consortium that then would be the contracting
partner. I wondered what the founders of the NGOs would have thought of this
bulldozing. But their grandchildren now were busy thinking up clever questions for
the EU team: in the jockeying for positions that had started already it would not hurt
to attract some attention to oneself.
Any specialisation (agricultural development, health, education etc) was welcome in a
consortium, the EU mandarins held forth. But each proposal should have a mine-
clearing component in view of the seriousness of this problem. I thought of the road-
construction project in our area that had started work together with a mine-clearing
company. But the latter was so slow that the road builders just abandoned the mined
part of the old road and simply made an entirely new one leaving the old one to return
to bush – and making the work of the mine sweepers irrelevant. Maybe this was only
a first small example of how Sudanese reality could clash with Brussels theorising.
By lunch time it was clear that the NGOs had no compunction to give in to the
dictates of the EU. It could only be hoped that the future Southern government would
less easily submit to the EU and its NAO.