Pursuing an illusion of peace in Darfur
By Julie Flint, The Daily Star
May 23, 2006 — Several hundred thousand people have died in Darfur, one of Sudan’s most oppressed and most neglected regions, since rebellion erupted there early in 2003. Another 3 million are in need of food aid, many of them beyond the reach of aid because of insecurity and government obstacles to humanitarian relief. With a donor shortfall of $389 million, World Food Program rations cut by half and murderous, government-supported Janjaweed militias still uncontrolled, the conditions of life in the wretched displaced camps of Darfur will soon deteriorate, lethally, as the rainy season sets in.
And yet the people in those very camps are rejecting, in significant numbers, the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) that was signed in Abuja on May 5 between the government of Sudan and the faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) that is by led by Minni Minawi. So, too, is Abdul Wahid Mohammed al-Nur, chairman of the SLA and leader of the largest SLA faction (although not perhaps the strongest, in purely military terms). The message is clear: They do not believe this peace will work. On May 15, Abdul Wahid won from the African Union (AU), which mediated the Abuja process, another two weeks in which to sign the DPA – or be damned and subjected to punitive sanctions under Security Council Resolution 1591. But the AU, under the leadership at Abuja of Salim Ahmed Salim, has thrown in the towel and the international community is falling over backward to do nothing to alienate the two parties whose signatures are on the bottom of the agreement – parties that are ruled by small, tribally based elites, which run ruthless security apparatuses and which do not have the confidence of even a fraction of the people in whose name they have divided the spoils of war.
With the AU mediation leaderless, there is no process today even to attempt to bring Abdul Wahid around – a difficult task, certainly, but a vital one when the alternative is, at best, the probable failure of the DPA and, at worst, a descent into chaos in which the man who created the rebel movement, inasmuch as any one person did, will be portrayed as the villain and the genocidal Sudanese government that made rebellion necessary as a disappointed partner in peace.
Abdul Wahid’s support for the DPA is what is needed to change the opinion of the displaced camps and villages of Darfur, if not the intellectuals in Khartoum and the diaspora. For most Darfurians, Abdul Wahid, not Minni Minawi, is the symbol of the “revolution.” If either of the two factional leaders has a political vision it is Abdul Wahid, no matter how poor his leadership skills and how chaotic and unreliable his negotiating style. Minawi’s Zaghawa are at most 8 percent of the population of Darfur and are themselves divided; Abdul Wahid’s Fur, historic rulers of the sultanate which gives Darfur its name, comprise 26-30 percent and are more cohesive. If either man has support outside his own tribe, it is Abdul Wahid. Not one of his key negotiators at the inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja was Fur; Minawi’s, by contrast, were all Zaghawa.
Senior diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic admit privately that Abdul Wahid’s demands are reasonable – an increase in the pathetic $30 million (6 percent of its annual oil revenue) that the government has put in the Darfur Compensation Fund; better safeguards for Darfurians attempting to return to their villages, many of which have been occupied by settlers from other tribes; and more seats in Darfur’s three state legislatures so that those who were excluded from the Abuja talks – most importantly the Arab tribes from which most Janjaweed are recruited – can be brought into the peace with less incentive to disrupt it from outside. But Abdul Wahid has been told, in no uncertain fashion, that the DPA cannot be reopened. The process, in other words, is more important than the peace.
The SLA chairman is being ordered to make a leap of faith – not because the peace agreement cannot be improved upon, but because it has been decided that the time for talking is up. The DPA has many strong points but it also has several weaknesses – any one of which could prove fatal. There is insufficient detail about the implementation of a number of key issues; a reliance in many areas of implementation on a government that no one trusts; an absence of any accountability mechanism or human rights monitoring. In essence, Abdul Wahid and the people of Darfur are being told to put aside these concerns and to trust in assurances that the international community will ensure implementation.
But why should they trust the international community? Why should they be impressed that Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party has just committed to disarm the Janjaweed for the seventh time in two years? Why should they believe that we will punish Khartoum for violating a seventh agreement when it has done nothing to punish it for violating the first six? What is different this time around?
Abdul Wahid may perhaps not be forgiven for assurances given and then retracted at Abuja, but those outside states participating in the Sudanese peace process must understand why he doubts their good faith now. They must also remember the lesson of Iraq: Without the people, the peace they are seeking to impose will not be real peace.
On May 16, two courageous human rights lawyers – Adam Mohammed Shareif and Mossaad Mohammed Ali, the coordinator of the Amel Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Nyala, the state capital of South Darfur – were detained by the Sudanese National Security Agency and were held incommunicado, at risk of torture, for four days, even though the authorities are supposed to allow the United Nations unrestricted access to all detainees in Darfur. Khartoum is already violating the DPA. In the days since the agreement was signed, severe new restrictions have been imposed on journalists seeking to report from Darfur. What is it that Khartoum is attempting to hide from the world now? Presumably not diligent implementation of the DPA.
The silence of the international community on Khartoum’s latest abuses is deafening. Is there any wonder that Abdul Wahid, himself a lawyer who worked in the field of human rights before taking up arms, trusts us as little as we, apparently, trust him?
One week remains before the AU’s latest deadline expires and Abdul Wahid is either in or out of the peace. If he is out, there should be no doubt that many – perhaps most – Darfurians will be out with him. If he is in, there is still no guarantee that the agreement will bring a lasting peace. The government in Khartoum today is the same government that launched a genocidal holy war in the Nuba Mountains and killed many tens of thousands of people in southern Sudan in order to satisfy its lust for oil dollars with which to arm itself against its own citizens. Western leaders who have decided to let the SLA chairman stew are no doubt hoping that some of those dollars will be used to attempt to buy his support for peace. If they are wrong and he cannot be bought, they, more than he, must be held responsible for the many deaths that will follow.
* Julie Flint has written extensively on Sudan. She is the author, with Alex de Waal, of “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War.” She wrote this commentary for The Daily Star.