Scott Gration: Obama's Man in Sudan

The Obama administration's long-awaited Sudan policy, released Monday, calls for renewal of tough sanctions against the government behind the Darfur genocide -- with some "classified" incentives if the killings end and the Darfur people are allowed to live in peace.

This carrots-and-sticks approach is being met with skepticism by folks who do not want the United States to engage with a murderous regime led by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court. But the State Department says the Obama White House has no intention of working directly with Bashir, and that the new policy is consistent with the Obama doctrine of engaging with foes.

A key figure behind the new policy is Obama's special envoy to Sudan, J. Scott Gration, whom the president tapped for the spot on March 18. I first met Gration on Obama's 2006 Africa trip. At the time, Gration was winding down an Air Force career that started in 1974. He went on to stump for Obama during the presidential campaign and become a member of Obama's inner foreign policy circle.

Gration has one of the most intriguing résumés of any of Obama's senior advisers or Cabinet officials. I thought his international background -- an American raised in different nations in Africa -- helped him bond with Obama. On that 2006 trip, Obama visited a camp in Chad, near the Darfur border, filled with refugees fleeing genocidal attacks in Sudan.

The son of missionary parents, Gration was born in 1951, in St. Charles., Ill., a community in the northwest part of the state. He was a baby when his family sailed for Africa in late 1952. Gration spent most of his youth in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya -- the birthplace of Obama's father. Gration learned to speak Swahili as a young boy. His family returned to the United States after political unrest forced them to leave Africa. His father, John, is a retired professor at Wheaton College in the Chicago suburbs.

Though he would move around constantly during his adult life, he would always be drawn to Africa.

Gration received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Rutgers in 1974, joining the Air Force after graduation and getting his pilot's wings and flying fighter planes. He spent two years as an instructor for Kenya's Air Force.

His assignments have taken him around the globe: In 1995 Gration commanded the 4404th Operations Group in Saudi Arabia during the Khobar Towers bombing. In 1996, he was in Turkey and oversaw Operation Northern Watch, which enforced the no-fly zone over Iraq.

Gration was posted to the Pentagon in 2000 and 2001 as deputy director for operations in the joint staff and worked for the deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs. After a series of other commands, he ended his long Air Force career as director of strategy, plans and policy directorate of the U.S. European Command. Along the way he picked up a master's from Georgetown University in national security studies.

Maj. Gen. Gration retired from the Air Force soon after Obama's Africa trip. My takeaway was this: Gration wanted to continue to be involved in international development issues for third-world countries, and he was convinced Obama could make a difference in how the world viewed the United States.

Gration became CEO of Millennium Villages -- a project to combat Africa's extreme poverty -- and went on to the Safe Water Network, which focused on India, Bangladesh and Ghana.

During the presidential campaign, Gration stumped for Obama in Iowa -- vouching for Obama, who never served in the military -- and became a member of the foreign policy inner circle that flew to Europe, Jordan and Israel with him during the campaign.

The president's new Sudan policy may well be controversial in that engages more than isolates the government there. An estimated 400,000 people have died and 1.7 million have been displaced by a conflict that began to spin out of control in 2003.