Keeping Darfur Peace
On the Price of Peace & Toll of Conflict in the Land of the Fur
By Ambassador Hassan A. Gibril
May 29, 2007 — As the world marks Peacekeeper’s Day this week, the African Union and the UN mourn the loss of yet another fallen Peacekeeper. The family and friends of Ehab Nazih grieve the loss of a father, a husband, a son, a brother and a loyal, generous friend.
It is the ultimate price peacekeepers know they may have to pay to restore life to a land and people who have endured unimaginable suffering for far too long.
We strive to ensure the job is done well enough and swiftly enough to contain the damage: before wounds run even deeper; before the trail of destroyed lives produces a generation of the displaced and the orphaned, the ones who saw it all, lived through it all – but were not left unscathed.
Between January and March 2007, over 110,000 people were displaced throughout Darfur, some 80,000 in South Darfur alone. A recent UN report puts the total number of internally displaced people within Darfur at 2.1 million. Some of those forced to flee had been displaced for the second or third time. More than 200,000 Darfur refugees are also sitting in camps in neighbouring Chad.
I glimpse the silent terror and devastation in eyes ravaged by evil and pain – beyond the years and comprehension of its owner: a barely clad child who owns nothing and aspires for nothing more than a morsel and a drink of water. Poverty at its cruelest is not the only trail of war.
I see an across-the-border generation born and bred in violence, bloodshed, loss and abandonment – in Sudan, Chad, Central Africa, Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and other war-torn regions.
Will this generation – brutally weaned on the darkest side of humanity – grow to build a better world? What may the future hold for them … and they for the future? Can this be the prelude to a dark new age whose seeds of human degeneration we sowed and watched grow?
Ehab, like others before him, was killed by kids in arms.
While I have faith his soul will rest in peace, I wish I had the certainty the living will enjoy the same in this life and age.
This is not to say that, as peacekeepers, our resolve is shaken. It is not.
With every fallen brother and sister we know we must persevere, nurse our wounds and push forward. We know but too well that peace is not a strategic choice. It is a necessity and a historic responsibility.
We know we are working towards the day when we give back to those devastated the future they lost. When we take back the arms from the child soldier and hand him back his childhood.
As we mourn lives lost, we celebrate lives well spent in the service of peace. I bow in respect and pay tribute to peacekeepers all over the world.
It is the political process, and not military might, that is bound to end the conflict in Darfur. Stakeholders need to sit around the table to agree on the way forward.
Keeping the peace goes hand in hand with this process. This is why it is crucial to strengthen and reinforce the African Peacekeeping mission operating in Darfur and to give it the necessary means to allow it to effectively carry out its arduous task. The partnership between the African Union and the United Nations, in this regard, is a first without precedence. The implementation of the support packages should therefore proceed without hindrance.
For meaningful negotiations to take place around Darfur, a common platform among the rebel factions must be achieved. Special Envoys for Darfur, Salim Salim and Jan Eliasson, were tasked by the International Community to put together a mediation process based on intensive consultations with the parties – those who have signed the Abuja Agreement and those who have not – in addition to civil society, women’s groups, tribal leaders and representative of the IDP camps. The cooperation of regional actors was also sought. It is a comprehensive process full of promise.
The road ahead is not a smooth one. As Salim has put it, “there is a lot of pain, mistrust and suspicion. But there is also an overwhelming desire of the people of Darfur for Peace”.
Meanwhile, peacekeepers on the ground will continue to deliver humanitarian aid, protect the helpless and do what they do best … keep the peace.
* The author is the Deputy Head of Mission, The African Union Mission in Sudan, El Fasher-Darfur.