The road to peace in Darfur
By Alfred Taban
Mar 12, 2006 — Catastrophe in Addis Ababa over Darfur has been averted. The Sudan government has agreed that the AU mandate in Darfur be handed over to the UN once a peace deal is reached with the rebels of Darfur.
The government had completely rejected UN’s involvement in Darfur and threatened to turn Darfur in to a graveyard for the UN. The UN had decided to come in because Darfur had already become a graveyard for its people, something the international community found completely unacceptable.
The UN’s decision to get involved in Darfur has clearly worked. It has returned the government to the path of peace. That is significant because atrocities were and are being committed in Darfur due to lack of progress at the negotiating table in Abuja.
Now that the government has in theory agreed to bring peace to Darfur in the shortest possible time, the UN should now make sure Sudan is serious. It should ensure that the government does not use delaying tactics to drag on the peace talks indefinitely, thus, putting off the entry of the UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
It should work with the AU to set a deadline, say the end of next June, for the talks to be concluded.
The AU should be more involved in the talks and come up with its own proposals after studying the positions of the two sides.
The stumbling block to peace in Darfur, as indeed anywhere else in Sudan, is the reluctance of the government to surrender power and resources to the states.
The wars that have been waged in the south, and now in Darfur and eastern Sudan, are the result of the challenge put up by the people of these areas to the absolute monopoly of power by Khartoum.
The AU should understand that the negotiations in Abuja are about how much power can be wrestled from Khartoum.
The states want to be a decentralized power. They have experienced decentralized poverty.
Once Khartoum is brought to its rightful size, politically and economically, peace will be achieved and sustained, not only in Darfur but in all parts of Sudan.