Darfur, the ultimate test of G8’s proposed pan-African army
GLASGOW, UK, June 13, 2004 — As the G8 summit wound up last week in the sultry confines of Sea Island off the coast of Georgia the delegates had Africa on their minds. The leaders of the world’s richest countries stopped short of introducing a workable system of debt relief but as part of the G8’s ongoing African Outreach programme they agreed to speed up the development of vaccines against the Aids epidemic which is now claiming over 6000 lives a day. They also took the first steps to create a 75,000-strong pan-African peace-keeping army which should be up and running by 2010 under the auspices of the African Union.
If it ever comes into being as a workable force the new army would have no harder task on its hands than the pacification of the bitter tribal fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan. A statement from Sea Island called on the Sudanese government to disarm the militia groups responsible for the carnage and to look for a political solution but as one French official put it, the time has come to start taking action before it is too late.
Within the coming fortnight the rainy season will begin in Sudan and that will dramatically worsen the plight of the thousands of people made homeless by 15 months of internecine fighting. According to Human Rights Watch, disaster is just over the horizon: “Food security, always precarious in Darfur, is already seriously affected by the events, and with more than 750,000 persons internally displaced – the bulk of the region’s farming community – this year’s harvest will decline. There are increasing signs that Darfur could face a man-made famine if no intervention takes place, adding thousands of lives of men, women and children to the unknown number of victims the government of Sudan has already destroyed.”
It is not yet a fully blown tragedy with thousands starving but the intensity of the ethnic fighting in the region is on a scale that would daunt even the most experienced commander of peace-keeping forces. Not only is Darfur strategically awkward – it is bordered by Libya in the north, Chad in the west and the Central African Republic in the southwest – but it is home to a population made up of sedentary farmers and nomadic and semi-nomadic cattle and camel herders. Many live in the Jebel Marra massif and for years, despite tensions, the Arab and African inhabitants lived together in reasonable harmony. When disputes did occur they were usually clashes over cattle rustling, watering rights or land ownership. Cattle would be surrendered, goods would be bartered and that was usually the end of the matter.
The current round of hostilities involves the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement, (SLA/M) founded in February 2003, to “create a united democratic Sudan” and the government-backed militias, which fight under the general title of Janjaweed, meaning “a man with a horse and a gun”. Allied to the SLA/M are the Justice and Equality Movement which is made up largely of Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups. In the middle are the local farming communities in the Jebel Marra whose land has been grabbed, forcing them to flee from Janjaweed fighters who often wear military uniforms and are supported by government helicopter gunships. During the fighting small farming communities have been wiped out, women have been raped, the infrastructure has been destroyed and in many places emergency supplies have been looted.
Given the difficulty of entering the region exact figures of casualties will perhaps never be known but UN agencies estimate the death toll could be as high as 300,000 with twice that number made homeless. At least 110,000 have fled into neighbouring Chad which is devoid of the facilities and personnel to cope with them. Last week the US Agency for International Development warned that unless the aid agencies are granted immediate access a further 100,000 refugees will die during the forthcoming rainy season. It is hardly surprising the G8 leaders ended last week’s summit by issuing an urgent appeal to the UN to “avert a major disaster” before it is too late.
Ideally peace-enforcement forces should be deployed to guarantee a US-brokered ceasefire, which was agreed in April and could lead to power in the south being devolved prior to a referendum. Under its terms the SLA/M would be responsible for self-governance and the creation of a constitutional framework but a sustainable peace needs external military support. Unless that is given said a UN source, there will be a return to violence: “There is a lack of real understanding of how to translate their liberation and democracy theory into practice – and with some senior people of willingness. Old ways die hard.”
With the world’s armies stretched by operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq and no appetite for intervening on the ground, Darfur shows every sign of going the same way as Rwanda, which fell victim to similar atrocities 10 years ago. If that is the case, Darfur might be a lost cause. Giving evidence to the US House Subcommittee on Rwanda last month, General Romeo Dallaire, who had been the commander of UN forces there, admitted the Rwandan massacres did not trouble the world because the only thing the country had was people: “That was not sufficient to influence the UN to come in and stop what had become the start of a genocide within a civil war.”