At first glance, the White House press release announcing General Gration as the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan contains the standard litany of boilerplate U.S. policy on Sudan: humanitarian concern, support for peacekeepers, and urging implementation of the North-South peace agreement. But conspicuously absent from this list is any mention of the Darfur Peace Agreement, or DPA, the ill-conceived peace agreement manufactured by the U.S. government back in 2006 that was signed by only one of the rebel factions. Despite the fact that violence in Darfur actually increased following the DPA, it was regularly and reverentially referenced by the Bush administration, even amid some rather inappropriate situations. The absence of reference to DPA in this announcement and other recent releases from the Obama team suggests that their Sudan policy review is taking into consideration the wisdom of continuing to laud a dead-on-arrival peace agreement three years after the fact.
