Minawi must help Salva

Editorial, The Citizen

March 23, 2007 — As we prepare for the All Darfur Conference in Juba next month we must be realistic as to what can likely be achieved. To begin with, a deal between the Darfur armed factions and the National Congress Party is improbable. NCP wants the holdout factions to sign on to the Abuja agreement when it has not been faithful to that agreement. In fact, for all practical purposes the Darfur peace Agreement signed in Abuja last May 5th is dead. Minawi, the only faction leader to sign in Abuja, has been given no power or influence in his position as Senior Assistant to the President of the Republic, the Janjaweed are as wild as ever with NCP support and, on the hand, most, if not all, of Minawi’s commanders have deserted him. Yet, there are possibilities for some important achievements coming out of the planned Juba conference.

First of all the misconception that the Abuja agreement is still relevant must be dismissed once and for all That would be the first major step forward and no Darfurian can put the final nails in the coffin of the DPA except Mini Minawi. Minawi must stop playing amateur politics and join Salva Kiir in the high stakes politics of the Sudan revolution. He must consider that if Salva, with so much at stake, can confront President Al Bashir in public with the world looking on and tell him the truth of his bad faith towards the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, then he, who has gained nothing and therefore stands to lose nothing, must go to Juba and declare the Abuja agreement irrelevant as well as inoperative. Otherwise, there will be no moving forward. The international community will continue to refer to the Abuja agreement and NCP would find that quite to its liking as it buys time to persist with its genocide campaign in Darfur by claiming the essential problem is to get the holdout factions to sign on to the DPA.

The second step is for SPLM and the Darfurians to agreement on a symmetrical federal arrangement for the whole Sudan that would give Darfur what SLM, both Abdul Wahid’s and Minawi’s factions, were demanding before Minawi under duress signed the African Union proposition which gave deference to a presumed military advantage of the government rather than the aspirations of Darfur’s indigenous population. The Darfur people, like the Southerners, need their own armed forces, a vice president, adequate wealth sharing and a self governing region. Whatever impact this might have on the CPA should be considered by SPLM in advance of the Juba and discussed with Southern members of the Constitutional Review Commission, so that there is a clear idea of how SPLM on behalf of the South can promote the interests of Darfur without implying an abrogation of the CPA or a repeat of the way Nimeiri crushed the Addis Ababa Agreement.

The Darfur armed factions and delegates from the All Darfur People’s Conference held in Al Fasher in December 2005 must genuinely help the situation by agreeing on a short-term interim government in Darfur and early elections, so that the people will have a chance to democratically choose who among the array of competing political forces in Darfur they prefer to lead them and represent them at the center. It would no be a show of good faith if all the factions were to form a coalition and perhaps let Minawi, as a compromise, head the proposed Darfur interim-government and thereby nominated as Darfur’s man in the presidency, as a vice president, during the short-term interim period which would no doubt best be for no longer than a year, or even 9 months.

Thirdly, an appeal should be made to the international community to recognize the irrelevance of the Abuja Agreement and support any new proposition that comes out of the Juba Conference. The Juba Conference would no doubt, as expected, endorse the proposition of United Nations peacekeepers coming into Darfur to enforce ceasefire and disarm the Janjaweed. Again, Minawi must be very prominent in this advocacy, because he is presently, by refusing to declare to the world once and for all the reality about the Abuja Agreement, the stumbling block to progress on Darfur.

Obviously NCP is bent on defying the popular and legitimate aspirations of the Darfurians, which means that the proposals of the Juba conference would ultimately probably serve only as an indication to the international community of that the Abuja Agreement is no longer a valid reference and that essentially the Navasha Agreement should be extended to Darfur; therefore, what else might realistically be obtained as a result of the Juba Conference is a general amnesty for all Darfurians, whether armed faction leaders or suspected rebellion supporters, like Al El Haj, so that they cam come home and start campaigning for the promised general elections. This proposition too would need strong support from the international community if NCP is to be pressed to accept it in the absence of accepting to extend the Navasha Agreement to Darfur.

We should not end up with a situation like that of Eastern Front, where they started out insisting on terms similar to the Navasha Agreement and ended up, with the help of the Eritrean government, with virtually nothing, compared to what they originally demanded.

SPLM must assure that this conference is a success because the people of Southern Sudan would not like to see their government spend money, time and effort on such an undertaking without substantial results. Also, the Darfur movements and politicians must realize that there is no better place to come together and map out a way forward than in Juba under the auspices of SPLM and the First Vice President. While we cannot realistically expect NCP to accept the legitimate aspirations of the Darfur people, at least the Juba All Darfur Conference should produce the platform on the Darfur issue that would be included in the election campaigns of the New Sudan vision forces, especially those from Darfur. The concrete immediate result we might expect is an amnesty that would allow the Darfur political forces in exile to return home and start actively campaigning with the resolutions of the Juba conference as planks in their political platforms.