On the Future of Security in Darfur

By Eric Reeves, The New Republic and The Guardian

August 3, 2007 — Tuesday’s unanimous passage of UN security council resolution 1769 has
received mixed, if generally positive, reviews. This was inevitable,
given the nature of the resolution, which authorises (under chapter
seven of the UN charter) some 26,000 civilian police and troops, with a
general mandate to protect civilians and humanitarian operations.

Given the dramatic failings of the current African Union (AU) force in
Darfur (which will be folded into the new “hybrid” AU/UN force), and the
self-serving and expedient posturing of so many international actors,
it’s hard to quarrel with what appears to give promise of a significant
improvement in human security.

But the shortcomings of the significantly weakened resolution have also
been noted: it has no mandate to seize weapons in Darfur that have been
introduced in violation of previous security council resolutions; it has
no mandate to halt aerial attacks on civilians by Khartoum’s savage
military machine; and it was stripped of language that condemned
Khartoum for its relentless war of attrition against humanitarian
efforts over the past four years, efforts that have undoubtedly cost
tens of thousands of lives. Nor is meaningful action contemplated to
staunch the flow of ethnic violence into eastern Chad or north-eastern
Central African Republic. Moreover, the “hybrid” command-and-control
structure seems a formula for confusion and disagreement.

But the biggest criticisms of the force, quite rightly, has been the
dilatory nature of the time frame for its deployment, and the inevitable
delays that can be expected in securing and transporting personnel for
the hybrid force.

The so-called “heavy support package” negotiated with Khartoum by
the UN and the AU is essentially a means of providing the logistics and
communications and technical resources for the large follow-on force.
The “heavy support package” is far from being ready, or having committed
support.

And then there is the key question of who will actually provide the
personnel for the hybrid force, especially given Khartoum’s demand that
it be essentially African in makeup. The AU is struggling to find 8,000
troops for Somalia, and has fallen behind at every stage of deployment
of its evolving mission in Darfur. To be sure, there are already some
volunteers, from Africa and elsewhere; but the numbers behind the offers
suggest how hard it will be to reach anything like 26,000 troops and
civilian police.

Nigeria may send another 700 troops, Senegal another 400 troops and
police, Malawi a battalion; but beyond this, there have been only
unspecific, and not especially promising, offers from Burkina Faso,
Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Cameroon. Other offers are expected,
but the requisite numbers are not in evidence, especially in the key
area of civilian police, where the AU has been weakest on the ground in
Darfur.

Non-African countries have also made commitments, though the number of
countries declaring they will not send troops (the US, the UK, Canada,
Germany) should give pause. France, the Netherlands, and Denmark will
contribute, though numbers have not been announced and are likely to be
in the low hundreds; Sweden and Norway are considering sending a joint
force (Norway has indicated it could deploy 200 engineers and military
logistics personnel by the end of the year); Indonesia has said it will
contribute between 100 and 150 civilian police.

A total of 26,000 troops and police seems a very long way off,
particularly if the essentially “African character” of the mission is to
be preserved. And this is what Khartoum counts on. For the regime quite
understands these difficulties, as well as the massive logistical
challenges to deployment in Darfur.

And it has learned over the past three years just how easy it is to
undermine the effectiveness of AU forces: denying (or commandeering)
aviation fuel, imposing arbitrary curfews, demanding pilot and aircraft
recertification in ways designed to diminish the number of aerial
patrols, and impeding investigations of atrocity crimes.

With such clear ambitions on Khartoum’s part, the most likely scenario
for the AU/UN hybrid is a painfully slow deployment of force elements,
along with insufficiently timely provision of logistics, aviation and
transport resources, and communications capacity.

And this is so without Khartoum playing its trump card: its insistence
that it be part of a tripartite committee (along with the AU and UN)
that determines the appropriateness of given deployments. This card is
unlikely to be played early on, but will certainly become significant if
the hybrid force threatens to become the dominant source of authority in
Darfur.

Presently, chaos reigns supreme in Darfur, and this debilitating
insecurity chiefly threatens the acutely vulnerable African tribal
populations (though Arab groups are increasingly victims of violence),
as well as humanitarian relief workers and their operations, on which
some 4.7 million people in Darfur and eastern Chad now depend.

Between the regime’s own military attacks – including indiscriminate
aerial assaults on civilians – the ongoing predations of the brutal
Janjaweed militia, the internecine violence that has emerged from splits
within the rebel ranks, and opportunistic banditry, Khartoum’s earlier
and more conspicuously genocidal violence has led to a grim “genocide by
attrition.”

For more than four years, Khartoum has been guilty of “deliberately
inflicting [on the African tribal groups in Darfur] conditions of life
calculated to bring about [their] physical destruction in whole or in
part” – a key term of reference in the 1948 UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This is how genocide
in Darfur is now sustained.

We also have explicit documentation of efforts to “change the
demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes.” This particular
directive was sent to no fewer than three of Khartoum’s ruthlessly
efficient “intelligence services.” And we should be aware that
Khartoum’s effort to “change the demography” of Darfur continues,
despite the passage of resolution 1679.

A recent internal UN report, leaked to The Independent, finds that
Arabs from Chad and Niger are entering Darfur in “unprecedented”
numbers. As many as 30,000 ethnic Arabs have entered in the last two
months, bringing their flocks and belongings, and have been greeted with
Sudanese identity cards, even citizenship. They are, predictably,
settling on the lands of those African tribal groups that have been
displaced (total displacement is now in the range of 2.5 million, more
than a third the prewar population of Darfur). Such resettlement could
spark extremely dangerous violence as people seek to return to their
former lands and villages.

All of this Khartoum is orchestrating, as it will orchestrate
conditions ensuring that violence threatens any deploying hybrid force:
not by its regular forces, but by its various military proxies. Even as
the rebel groups now are most responsible for attacks on AU forces (more
than 15 AU soldiers have been killed), this will shift with a
significant UN presence in the new force. Khartoum will attempt in
various ways to put these new forces on the defensive and keep them
hunkered down in their barracks.

The view from Khartoum, then, is that while resolution 1769 is
thoroughly unwelcome, it is so belated, so hedged and weakened –
particularly in having no chapter seven authority to seize illegal arms
– and so unlikely to find the resources, human or material, that it will
make little difference to the regime’s genocidal ambitions. Indeed, a
year from now, Khartoum may welcome the force as a means of
consolidating demographic changes and the fundamental shifts in economic
ownership throughout Darfur.

What remains of the rebel groups will be happily left to confront the
hybrid force. Darfur and its troublesome African populations will no
longer pose a threat to the regime’s virtual monopoly on national wealth
and power. Indeed, the greatest concern Khartoum now perceives is the
expanding violence against and among Arab groups, and the move by some
Janjaweed forces to switch sides, having been used and abandoned by the
regime.

This is no argument against urgent deployment of 1769 as far as is
practicable. Indeed, there should be an emphasis on early deployment of
civilian police elements contemplated in the resolution – with adequate
military protection – particularly to the most unstable camps, such as
the enormous Gereida camp in south Darfur or the camps in the Tawilla
and Kutum areas of north Darfur, or outside el-Geneina in western
Darfur. Key civilian interlocutors among camps leaders and village
sheiks should be identified on both sides of the ethnic divide. The
command structure should be clarified as much as possible, and the
specific tasks to be undertaken under the chapter seven mandate should
be decisively identified for all troops.

But even such an effort will not disturb Khartoum’s conviction that it
can prevail – not without much greater international will and commitment
than is presently in evidence. Belated passage of resolution 1769 is a
start, but only just.

* Eric Reeves is a professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College and has written extensively on Sudan.