Darfur peace deal has only created deep rifts among rebels
By Edmund Sanders
Aug 18, 2006 (NAIROBI) — With the Darfur peace accord stalled and the U.S. preoccupied in the Middle East, western Sudan is slipping back into a level of violence not seen for two years, diplomats and analysts say.
A much-touted peace deal announced in May has only heightened hostilities by splintering rebel groups. And although Darfur has been the Bush administration’s top priority in Africa, the point man on U.S. efforts to end the violence, Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, resigned in June, leaving those duties unfilled.
“The administration’s game plan for Darfur remains a mystery,” said J. Stephen Morrison, head of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This issue is getting lost.”
About 200,000 people have died since the conflict between rebels and the government began in 2003; 2 million others have been driven into refugee camps.
Morrison noted that the U.S., which has called the violence “genocide” against non-Arab tribes in Darfur, spends more on aid to Sudan than anywhere else in Africa, $1.3 billion annually.
“As a government, we are deeply invested in Darfur,” Morrison said. “There’s a lot riding on this.”
U.S. officials said they had not scaled back their efforts in Darfur.
“It’s not getting lost in the Middle East,” said Jendayi E. Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of State for African affairs. “There is no lack of attention. But we are at a critical moment in the effort to end the killing.”
Those in Darfur report that violence there is growing worse. Sporadic clashes between government troops and rebels have punctured the cease-fire agreement in recent months. After fracturing over whether to endorse the peace deal, factions in the Sudan Liberation Army stepped up their attacks against one another.
For humanitarian groups working to combat hunger and disease in the region, July was the bloodiest month on record. Eight Sudanese aid workers were killed in road ambushes, causing many humanitarian groups to review their operations in the region.
“It is going from really bad to catastrophic in Darfur,” U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said recently.
Critics say the peace deal, signed by the government in Khartoum and one faction of the SLA, remains unpopular with many rebels and refugees. They complain that the accord does not provide enough compensation or offer adequate protection against attacks by the so-called janjaweed, the Arab-dominated militias allegedly supported by Khartoum.
“The peace deal was dead on arrival,” said Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor and Darfur activist.
Minni Minnawi, leader of the only SLA faction to sign the agreement, recently accepted a job with the government in Khartoum. But he is widely viewed by other rebel groups as a traitor, causing what appears to be a permanent rift in the rebel movement.
Reeves said the Bush administration was hoping it could duplicate its success in brokering a 2005 peace deal between Khartoum and southern Sudanese rebels. But the process in western Sudan is more complicated and U.S. efforts in Darfur have lacked sufficient commitment and follow-through, he said.
“They just wanted to get a deal done soon so they could take Darfur off the diplomatic table,” said Reeves, who favors U.S. military intervention in the region. “We have called this genocide for two years now. This is Rwanda in slow motion. If we really believe genocide is occurring, it’s morally intolerable.”
Frazer called U.S. military action at this time “unrealistic.” She said the Bush administration remained confident that the peace accord would gain acceptance through ongoing negotiation and adjustments, such as increasing compensation for victims. The U.S. is working to help convene a conference of rebel leaders to work out their differences. “We think we can fix it,” Frazer said.
The May agreement was supposed to clear the path for the arrival of about 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops. Both the United Nations and the African Union, which has 7,000 troops in Darfur, agreed. But Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir refused to discuss a U.N. deployment before signing a peace deal with rebels.
After the agreement was signed, however, Bashir hardened his resolve against U.N. troops, a position he reiterated this week. Funding for existing African Union troops is set to run out by October, and attempts to use the U.N. Security Council to push Sudan into accepting the international peacekeepers have been stymied by Russia and China, one of Sudan’s biggest oil investors. Some permanent Security Council members have expressed unwillingness to pass a resolution on U.N. troops without Khartoum’s blessing.
“That’s unheard of,” Frazer complained. “We never allow a country that is a protagonist in the killing of its own citizens to have a veto on a resolution.”
The disagreement has emboldened Bashir, she said. “He can get away with it because the international community doesn’t stand united.” Frazer predicted that Bashir would soften his stance after the passage of the U.N. resolution, which the United States and Britain introduced Thursday at a closed Security Council meeting.
Some analysts warn against putting too much faith in U.N. troops, saying their deployment wouldn’t resolve the crisis if some of the political disputes on the ground weren’t resolved first. “It doesn’t appear that the political framework is strong enough to support peacekeepers,” said Tom Crick, an Africa analyst at the Carter Center.
Eltayeb Hag Ateya, director of the Peace Studies Institute at the University of Khartoum, said U.S. support for Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon has stirred anti-Western sentiments and bolstered opposition in Sudan to allowing international troops into Darfur.
“People here are not happy about what the U.S. is doing in Lebanon,” he said. “Now is not the right time to talk about international troops in Darfur.”
(The Los Angeles Times)