Darfur – outside help and internal talks are the key
Editorial, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
June 20, 2005 — It is possible to say with caution that there is some progress in the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
Darfur has been a very serious humanitarian and political problem for more than two years now. Thousands are dead and thousands more displaced. The problem has resisted resolution by all the parties who have grappled with it, starting with the Sudanese themselves, who have showed questionable good will in their efforts. A subregional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development; the regional African Union; the European Union; and the United Nations and individual nations, including the United States, have sought to bring both humanitarian relief and the peace that would have to go hand-in-hand with a political settlement to Darfur.
Various commentators have leveled severe criticism at the United States and President Bush in particular for having paid only lip service to resolution of the Darfur problem — words not accompanied by actions, which amounts to hypocrisy in the end.
There may be some substantive action underway now. The African Union has been willing to send troops to try to establish security in Darfur, to permit the efficient delivery of humanitarian aid and to provide the preconditions to meaningful peace talks between the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebel groups. At first it sent a few thousand, but now it has decided to up its presence to nearly 8,000 troops, including combat-experienced Rwandan forces. The AU lacks the airlift capacity to move them from their home countries to Darfur, but the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with the United States in the lead, has agreed to provide the necessary aircraft to carry out that part of the operation.
Whether 8,000 troops can establish security in Darfur, one of the most inaccessible points on the face of the earth, is another question, but the increase in AU forces is certainly a welcome development.
The second bit of positive news is the resumption in Nigeria of peace talks between the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebel groups. The negotiations, under the oversight of the African Union, have been an on-again, off-again affair, but they are now once again active.
Those who criticize the Sudanese, the Africans, the United Nations and the United States for the continuation of the festering sore that Darfur constitutes need to bear in mind its complexity. The contestants there are all Muslim; it is a civil war. Attempts to deal with the crisis take place against a backdrop of efforts to implement the peace agreement concluded at the turn of the year, which theoretically brought to an end a long internal civil war between the north and the south of Sudan, between Muslim and Christian and animist groups. Finally, Darfur is a dry and barren area, where survival in the face of the elements is difficult even in the best of times.
Bringing peace there is no mean feat. The new African Union and NATO actions are an important contribution to dealing with the problem. Internal Sudanese negotiations reflecting a will to agree remain the key to ending the affair.