Time for a second-best solution in Darfur
By Jean-François Thibault, The Globe and Mail online
Nov 23, 2006 — In the past few months, we have seen a serious deterioration of the situation in Darfur, which has now reached into neighbouring Chad. Massive militia attacks against civilians and displaced people have been reported, as well as indiscriminate aerial bombing of villages on both sides of the border.
Hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands of Chadians have been driven from their homes. Brutality is on the rise, partly because of the international community’s failure to assume its “responsibility to protect” the civilian population in Darfur.
But what was until recently a serious, yet limited, humanitarian crisis has now developed into a regional crisis threatening to extend farther into the Central African Republic and even, on the other side of Chad, to Niger, where Chadian rebels are seeking recruits to fight in Darfur. What we are facing, even in southern Sudan, where there have been recent reports of militia attacks, is the international community’s eventual failure to prevent a spillover of violence along with a serious worsening of the humanitarian crisis.
Relations between Sudan and Chad have deteriorated over the past year. On the one hand, the reason has to do with the presence of Darfurian rebel groups in eastern Chad that are backed by the Chadian government. On the other hand, it has to do with increased support to Chadian rebel groups by the Sudanese government and the government-backed janjaweed.
Hence, alliances are formed and mixed political motives fuel the conflict while exacerbating ethnic tensions. Civilians in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic are now caught in the middle of what is rapidly becoming a multifaceted crisis, with armed groups on all sides.
The consequence of this new situation on the ground is an imperative call for an international force deployed with a clear mandate to protect civilians in Darfur — something the African Union monitoring force in Sudan (AMIS) is not mandated to achieve, and is even less able to carry out, since it lacks resources and capacity to operate. Beefing up AMIS with foreign aid might be too little too late, since what is now urgently needed is a robust force that will also deal with the situation in bordering Chad, all the while trying to cool the growing tension between these two countries.
It is true that in the long run, the best solution is a political agreement. Unfortunately, the only one we have for the time being, the Darfur peace agreement signed last May, is dead. It is true that political efforts to re-energize the peace process should be pursued. Nonetheless, this might not be enough any more and a second-best solution ought to be considered.
It is true that the recent high-level meeting sponsored by the United Nations and the African Union appears to have broken through the “consent” deadlock, thanks to the hard work of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. If, however, the mandate of such a “hybrid” force does not include a clear responsibility for the protection of civilians, nothing will have been achieved.
It is delusional to think that the Sudanese government is now backing down — and it might be a great mistake to think that it will suddenly turn out to be more co-operative about the presence of a UN force. As Sudan’s UN envoy, Abdulmahmoud Abduhaleem, told Agence France Presse at the end of the high-level meeting, the fact that Sudan agreed in principle “takes [UN Resolution] 1706 to the graveyard.”
If Resolution 1706 is dead, what will be the mandate of this “hybrid” force? Not only are the conclusions of the high-level meeting vague on that, but Khartoum has not agreed to the presence of a “hybrid” force. (It did agree to UN technical support.)
By playing the Sudanese game of buying time, we risk waking up in a couple of weeks trying to understand, once again, what happened. Meanwhile, people in Darfur are pleading for help. For forceful help, not for some measures that take months before being implemented while they should have been put in place months or even years ago.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Darfurian lawyer Salih Mahmoud Osman, who works for the Sudan Organization Against Torture and was decorated by Human Rights Watch last year, asked for “direct action” to stop gross humanitarian abuses by the Sudanese government. This is precisely what the Responsibility to Protect — adopted by the World Summit Outcome Document at the UN General Assembly in September of 2005 — asked for when a compelling case for human protection comes up. That is, when a government, like the Sudanese government, is unable or unwilling to do something and is therefore manifestly failing to protect those who are under its responsibility.
* Jean-François Thibault is assistant professor of political science at the Université de Moncton and a member of the Francophone Research Network on Peace Operations (ROP) at the Université de Montréal. He can be reach at [email protected].