Darfur’s Minawi, a pawn of the oppressors

Zero Sum Game

Editorial, The Citizen

March 26, 2007 — In the light of the obvious non-implementation of the African Union brokered Abuja Agreement and the continual alliance of the National Congress Party regime and the terrorist Janjaweed, many questions are raised each time Sudan Liberation Movement’s Mini Minawi stands in the public and referring to his official post as Senior Assistant to the President of the Republic affirms his commitment to the pact he signed last May 5th, reportedly under duress. Word has leaked that former United States Undersecretary of State Robert Zollick brutishly intimidated Minawi and one of the AU officials from Nigeria is said to have done same.

In any event, the first question we must ask Minawi is what precisely is his job in the Republican Palace? Is he one of those pushing President Al Bashir to defy international demand that United Nations peacekeepers be admitted to Darfur to protect the civilian population from Janjaweed terror? Or, is the Senior Assistant to the President not consulted on such issues, or does he offer his advice only to have it overlooked? More specifically, what is Mr. Minawi’s input on the Janjaweed issue? Does he not press for their disbanding as stipulated in the agreement he signed, has he given up raising the issue, or has he become an accomplice to the genocide, along with all the Arabs and most of the Islamic world?

Also, we would like Mr. Minawi to tell us all what is his present military strength on the ground in Darfur, because the last we heard virtually all his commanders had abandoned him and formed the Great Sudan Liberation Movement. Then, why is he most of the time in Khartoum instead of Darfur where he is officially the head of the interim administration? Salva Kiir who has an experienced vice president spends most of him time on the ground in Southern Sudan, what about Minawi who has more work to do in Darfur and nothing doing that we know of in Khartoum. The lone signatory to the Abuja Agreement must make this clear because the whole world is using the agreement he signed as a reference for ending the Darfur crisis.

A few weeks ago Mr. Minawi remarked that NCP was not serious about implementing the Abuja Agreement and his spokesman and other leading members of his faction have been consistently forthright in accusing the ruling Ingaz clique of bad faith. If this is so, and it is obvious that there have been no tangible gains for Darfur from the DPA, apart from some superficial granting of titles and offices, we want Mr. Minawi to tell us what does he realistically hope to achieve by continuing to give the DPA a façade of legitimacy when he knows NCP shows no intention of implementing it?

After one year of increasing Janjaweed boldness and himself having virtually no impact on the national scene, what role does Mr. Minawi see for himself? What medium term future does he imagine for Darfur? It is clear that the DPA has become an obstruction to progress towards retirement of the Darfur crisis. First of all it never reflected the aspirations of the Darfur people, aggravating already problematic divisions. Yet it is still recognized by the international community as the basis for moving forward, with pervasive illusions that the holdout factions can be persuaded or pressured to sign it. The Americans, in particular, who allegedly succeeded in pressuring Mr. Minawi alone to sign a deal which AU officials admit reflected what they assessed to be the military advantage of the Sudanese government, have become a nuisance in the premises by backing off Security Council Resolution 1706, vacillating with their threatened Plan B and continuing to refer to the Abuja Agreement as the basis for ending the Darfur crisis.

The Europeans, who are hosting the original SLM chairman, Abdel Wahid Muhammed Nur, who is insisting on a better deal and that the Janjaweed be restrained from their genocide campaign before resumption of peace talks, appear ready to recommend that the NCP regime be prepared to amend the DPA, but with Washington and Khartoum’s Minawi still stressing the Abuja deal, the EU would not want to appear to be aggravating or complicating the situation by being bluntly realistic in the face of institutionalized illusions.

So, it is not just a matter of zero gains from the nearly one year old DPA, which is far less than what the South has gotten out of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was far more substantial to begin with; the point is that the Darfur crisis is further away from being resolved today than it was a year ago and yet the AU, UN, Washington and many people in Sudan are bloated with illusions to the contrary. In sum, the Darfur situation is worse and more hopeless than it has even been.

As for Minawi, he has entered the African revolution and managed to become a leader, but he has shown no indication of revolutionary substance. Garang would have never let Zollick or anyone else bully him into signing an agreement and indeed he defied Bush’s urging that he sign a deal with Khartoum ahead of the November 2004 U.S. presidential elections so that Bush might flaunt his achievement in Sudan on the campaign trail. Let us not mention the greats like Mandela, Nkrumah and Sekou Toure here; Salva Kiir is a patient man, hardly a radical, but he insists on calling a spade a spade and has absolutely no tendency to let anybody push him or his people around. These are African revolutionaries. If one is not a revolutionary he has no business in the revolution, because invariably he will be a pawn of the oppressors.