Ki-Moon-Darfur Conference: Which Way to Go?

National Collaborative Strategies for the UN in Darfur

By Mahgoub El-Tigani

September 10, 2007 — The UN Secretary General Mr. Ki Non followed his former colleague, Mr. Kufi Anan, in approaching Khartoum with high-level diplomacy trips to touch upon the situation of the displaced people of Darfur, and to urge the NIF-controlled Government of National Unity (GONU; hereinafter GOS) to move on the deployment of the international peace-keeping force in Darfur – a most important procedure to resolve the crisis – much far beyond bureaucratic elusiveness or double-standards behind diplomacy suits and black ties (not to mention the Chinese heavy trade-based protectionism).

At this point, Mr. Ki-Moon, following the professional tactics of his respectful predecessor Anan, managed to keep up the GOS “pledge and good intentions,” “a minimum standard” to end the hostilities with the Darfur armed groups; allow uninterrupted relief to the needy population; and ensure decent return of the displaced people to their dispossessed homes. Obviously, however, the goal-achievement of the UN adopted Way has not fully materialized in any practical terms.

Up to this day, not a single “pledge” of the GOS occurred in any visible amount to change the misery of the displaced people of Darfur. Nor has the GOS articulated with any tangible step “good intentions” towards the beleaguered population in the militarized localities, displaced camps, or warring borders. Adversely, the situation worsened since the ruling junta swelled with the harshest authorities made available to a Military General Command, which continued to manipulate and to abuse the oil-depleting Chinese-Russian war-making deals against the resisting citizens all over the land.

The major approach thus far implemented by the UN embraced the diligent engineering of the persistent crisis by the AU and the UN professional staffs supported by the displaced population of the region and their civilian and military supporters in and outside Sudan, in the hope that more effective approaches would perhaps force GOS to comply with the international norms and national obligations.

The GOS most zealous effort, nonetheless, aimed to protect the transgressing Janjaweed and their criminalized state-managers, rather than the victims of the century’s “most demanding humanitarian crisis,” former UN Secretary General Anan emphatically depicted. For many Sudanese observers, the failure of the external powers to bring GOS into “operative” compliance with the UN Security Council Resolutions, however, centered on the one-sidedness of the international efforts to get the GOS to honor the State duties.

Even in diplomatic terms, in the light of the GOS insistent reductionism of the UN/AU vitality, the “Way” the UN and the International Community have been diligently pursuing to resolve the crisis could hardly score a partial success as a result of the interrupted non-achieving pressure upon the GOS to apply its part in the enforceable agreements. In the meantime, GOS never ceased to apply an anti-UN/AU strategy to maintain the strongest grip possible on the region and the displaced citizens, irrespective of the confirmed agenda by the government to protect the civilians in the first place from attacks, as an essential measure to maintain national sovereignty.

Mindful of all these contradictory possibilities, the GOS has been elusively acting to distract the main issues of the negotiated settlement to end the crisis: For example, the Sudan TV showed daily favorite adds, especially a “religious oath” by Omer al-Bashir and his minister of defense ‘Abd al-Rahim Hussain “to make of Darfur a grave for all invading foreigners” – an oath further reiterated by Ali Osman Taha, the political icon of the ruling Brotherhood, even when the AU Salim and his colleagues had been celebrating an expanded get-together of a great many factions of the Darfur branching groups.

It is crystal clear to the Sudanese public, with all its diversity and opposition groups, that the NIF leadership would undoubtedly continue to confuse the displaced population and the public at large in and outside Sudan, with “uninterrupted interruption” of the GOS/UN/AU agreements. Such distractions have been purposely disseminated by the government-controlled media to show the government’s extreme rejection of the approved international peace-keeping force, despite the GOS formal consent and assurances in the peace negotiations.

The Military and Police Laws

The most authoritative instrument of the GOS hegemony over the citizens of Darfur is nothing but the ultra-bureaucratic laws of the Armed Forces, the Security Department, and the Police. The military law of the country, a legacy of succeeding colonial and repressive regimes, must provide for separate powers between civil and military jurisdictions and procedures. It should adopt international humanitarian principles for the protection of captives of war and all civilian victims of war.

The Sudan military law must be liberalized with respect to the centralized powers of the army and security executives (led by the Presidency without any supervisory powers by the state’s legislative or judicial powers), which inhibits all attempts to bring about reconciliatory relations between the warring populations.

The Sudan Police Law was frequently amended for political reasons. The 1984 Act, for example, transformed Sudan Police from a civil force to a para-military institution by inflicting the death penalty on certain offenses akin to the Armed Forces military law. With the overthrow of the May dictatorial regime, a 1985’s Act repealed the 1984 law.

New police legislations enacted by military governments, and then firmly tightened up by the NIF rulers to favor their authoritative mode of governance, reinstated unchecked powers for the minister of interior and the police commissioner over the force. These powers undermined the previously enacted Police Councils that had been established by the conscious struggles of the Sudanese police officers supported by the Bar Association, trades unions and professional associations to democratize the force in the service of the community and to oversee with the Press, NGOs, and other transparent groups the legal, financial, technical, and administrative affairs of the force.

To cooperate efficiently with the UN/AU peace troops, the Sudanese security/criminal justice systems (most particularly, the Military Law, Security organs, the Attorney General Chamber, and the Police Law) must be largely reformed in the light of the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law-Enforcement Officials (1979).

This Code obligates the police and all officers of the law to respect and protect the human dignity; use force only when strictly necessary to the extent required for the performance of their duty; abstain from any act of torture, maintain confidentiality of law enforcement and personnel affairs; protect the health of persons in their custody; respect the law; and rigorously oppose and combat any act of corruption.

The Police Law must be made into a workable tool to reform the working conditions and professional performance of police for the assurance of public tranquility, according to international human rights norms. Therefore, the most recently enacted security law, as well as the Public Order Act, and the other notorious laws of the NIF GOS must be abrogated to meet the constitutional provisions of the Interim Constitution on human rights and civil freedoms.

Ki-Moon Concerns for the Civil Society

The Sudanese civil society groups, opposition political parties, and the armed wings, especially the main group(s) of the Sudan Liberation Movement and Army, have expressed full support to the AU/UN peace-keeping force in Darfur even when the GOS bureaucrats were chewing hostile statements to frustrate the UN/AU appreciative efforts to end the crisis.

This sharp contrast between the position of the GOS one-party hegemony on one side, and the pro-UN/AU isolated or ignored position of the People of Sudan (including the SPLM/A major partner of the NIF-led GOS) suggests clearly the need of the AU, the UN, and the International Community to consider seriously another viable approach (hereinafter, the Other Way) to resolve the crisis, rather than the GOS-Rebels-External Mediators formula, which fell short of accommodating the vital energies of the Sudanese parties and civil society groups – hence leading the negotiations to no avail.

The willingness of the UN Secretary General Ki-Moon to bring to the table of negotiations the GOS and the rebel groups in a climate of mutual confidence and good faith crystallized earlier touches on the same issue by the former Secretary General Anan, the Umma Mahdi, the DUP Merghani, NDA Farouq Ab Eissa, the Sudanese Bar Association Amin Mekki Medani, to mention a few key non-governmental leaderships, as well as serious efforts by the Sudanese First Vice President Salva Kiir to unify the rebels of Darfur, and the various endeavors exerted by the distinguished Peace Envoys of the United States, the EU, and the AL.

The most recently stated intentions by UN Secretary General Ki-Moon to involve civil society groups in the scheduled conference between GOS and the Darfur groups provides a golden opportunity to convene an All-Sudanese National Constitutional Conference under the auspices of the United Nations, the African Union, the Arab League, the US Government, the European Union, and the International Community in toto. The proposed conference should prepare the grounds to strike a lasting just peace and development agreement for the country as a whole.

Towards this end, the subsequent approach (originally dated September 2006) is presented with slight amendments to the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon for possible consideration. The Sudanese Civil Society Groups and political parties and the Darfur rebels, as well as many other concerned parties, had been timely informed about this approach.

NATIONAL COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES FOR THE UN IN DARFUR
I. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions are basically addressed to two major groups in the Darfur’s Crisis: the Government of Sudan (GOS) and the rebel groups that include the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), regardless of the fact that rebel groups have been branching out into different groups that maintain different political affiliations.

The UNSC has not specifically addressed its resolutions to the other “Key National Constituencies and Leaderships” (KNCL) of Sudan: although the resolutions thus far issued by the UNSC mentioned the necessity to ensure active participation by “all tribes and movements of Darfur,” still, the KNCL have not been clearly invited by the UN to help end the Crisis by their effective statuses and roles.

The KNCL is identified in terms of the Sudanese national political parties that have been enjoying the political support of large electoral constituencies throughout the modern history of Sudan, or even before the independence times. These parties include the historical groups of al-Mahdi-led Umma Party and the al-Merghani-led Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Also included is the newly established Popular Congress Party (PCP), which is an NIF-opposition faction led by al-Turabi, the former mentor of the al-Bashir military coup (the June 1989 revolution of national salvation).

Equally importantly, the KNCL encompasses the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which embraced the country’s influential workers’ and farmers’ trades unions; the non-governmental associations of engineers, university professors, doctors, teachers, and the other professionals; besides a few other non-traditional parties, including communists and/or liberal groups that exert some influence in the expatriate as well as modern working groups of Darfur through party membership, professional ties, and/or ideological connections.

The KNCL constituted active participants in the Sudanese political, economic, and social arenas since colonial times up to the present time. Although they exercised power relations in varying degrees, they have repeatedly collaborated with one another in times of national crisis to topple dictatorial regimes. This KNCL national collaboration occurred vis-à-vis the Central Government of Sudan (now ruling as the Omer al-Bashir-led ruling regime) in October 1964 versus the military government of Major-General Ibrahim Aboud (1958-1964) and in April 1985 versus the authoritative rule of Marshal Nimeiri.

II. KNCL, DARFUR REBELS, and THE UN

The Darfur Crisis is rooted in deep political conflicts and power struggles between the Central Government of Sudan and the opposition national and/or regional forces of the country on one hand, besides the impact of external conflicts between Libya and Chad on the Government of Sudan, at large, and on the regions of Kordofan and Darfur in Western Sudan, in particular.

In the post-independence decades, long before the June 1989’s seizure of power by the Muslim Brotherhood military and civilian groups (i.e., the National Islamic Front National Congress Party (NCP), which spilt lately into the NIF opposition group, the Popular Congress Party, besides the NCP ruling party), Darfur was tightly controlled by the Ansar of the al-Mahdi who supported strongly the Umma Party. Forming and leading the Sudan’s previously elected governments, the Umma continues to pursue moderate Islamic orientations to bring about a liberal system of rule within a constitutional framework of electoral democracy.

Maintaining substantial political and spiritual relations in the region of Darfur, the al-Merghani-led DUP has been the Umma most important competing partner in the elected governments of Sudan. Since the early years of national independence, the two groups of the Umma and the DUP provided the country with short-lived coalition governments. Although repeatedly overthrown by the military, the same parties were able to restore democratic rule in the years 1964-69 and 1985-94 in close collaboration with civil society associations as well as liberal elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudan Police Force.

The exclusion of the KNCL from Sudanese national decision making by the NIF rulers contributed massively to the deterioration of the political situation in Darfur, which has been both regionally and internationally handled as a Central Government-Rebel dispute similar to the Naivasha peace talks between the Government of Sudan and the SPLM/A that excluded the KNCL from the Comprehensive Peace Agreement; thus rendering implementation of the agreements increasingly inefficient in the aftermath.

Most recently, the Naivasha-based South Sudan Government, which is led by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A), adopted a strong opposition to the negative stand of the NIF-led Government of Sudan against the UN FPU and the other provisions of the UN Security Council resolutions. As such, the SPLM became part of the broad coalition of the KNCL, despite the fact that the SPLM is the major partner of the government. The SPLM has not yet demonstrated electoral competencies; but is rather ruling in accordance with the political and administrative arrangements of the Naivasha Agreement by the Interim Constitution of Sudan.

The UN Secretary General and Security Council’s resolutions recognized only the Government of Sudan and the SPLM. The international organization has not incorporated the KNCL of Sudan into the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreements in clear terms, nor did it include the KNCL as a complementary, integral, and vital player in the Sudanese political arena. Because of this national and international exclusion, the KNCL was not able to share in the ongoing efforts to stabilize Darfur, as it might have accomplished had it been recognized and strongly encouraged to do so.

III. THE KNCL POLITICAL COMPETENCIES IN DARFUR

Composed of the Umma, DUP, PCP, and the other opposition parties and civil society groups, the KNCL enjoy lucrative potentialities in varying degrees that should be fully recognized and utilized by the concerned national and international entities to restore the rule of law, economic development, and social tranquility effectively in the region of Darfur.

The KNCL potentialities and actual competencies, which cross-across the region of Darfur as well as the other regions of Sudan and the neighboring countries, have been exhibited on a daily basis, irrespective of the repressive exclusionary policies and practices of the NIF military rule. These competencies contain:

1. Spiritual and ideological bondages;
2. Economic and business relations;
3. Political and administrative ties.

1. Spiritual and Ideological Bondages: The Sadiq al-Mahdi-led Umma Party exchanges deep spiritual and ideological bondages with the Darfur ethnic groups based on the historical support of the Darfurians to the Mahdist Revolution (1885-1899). A sizeable population of Darfur maintains close allegiance to the al-Mergahani-led Khatmiya religious sect, the spiritual guidance of the DUP that Mergahni leads as well. The newly established Turabi-led PCP, which continues to follow the Muslim Brotherhood International Movement, influences the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The SLA and some of its splitting groups, besides a small number of civil society groups and professionals maintain close ties with the NDA, which is also led by al-Merghani.

2. Economic and Business Relations: The Darfur businesses have been integrated in the national economy of Sudan, centuries before the modern times of independence. A great many Darfurians are members of the Umma or DUP parties who have been actively engaged in trade and commerce, animal exportation, and agricultural crops inside the country as well as the neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf as well as Chad and the other West African nations. A considerable number of businesses are members of the Muslim Brotherhood groups that have been promoting such ties by the ruling or opposition NIF factions. Interestingly, the al-Mahdi Umma and al-Turabi PCP came in agreement as opposition groups since 2005, despite former hostilities.

4. Political and administrative ties: The Umma/DUP/PCP enjoys considerable political influence amongst the political and administrative units of Darfur. The Umma, in particular, is remarkably influential in the native administration of Darfur that has been largely harassed by the Brotherhood parties under the al-Bashir governance. The top chiefs of major ethnic groups, especially the Arab descent cattle owners in South Darfur as well as the Fur, Masaleit, other African agriculturalists, and the camel herders of North Darfur, have been loyal Ansar [militant supporters] of the al-Mahdi-led Umma. Many large ethnic groups, including the Messariya nd the Rezaygat Baqara of the neighboring region of Kordofan, are strongly related by blood ties or marriage alliances with their counterparts in Darfur, in addition to deeply-rooted commitment to the Mahdist Ansar.

IV. OBJECTIVES

On September 17, 2006, the UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan reiterated his message to Khartoum that the planned force of blue helmets in Darfur “is not coming in as an invading force, but basically to help them protect the people.” The SG emphasized that the conditions inside Darfur have become so desperate that if there is no AU or UN presence and the numbers of people suffering or being killed continued to grow, then the Sudanese “are placing themselves in a situation where the leadership may be held collectively and individually responsible for what happens to the population in Darfur.”

Earlier, Dr. Francis Deng, Representative of the UN SC Internally Displaced Persons, stated that the country may plunge into yet another catastrophe unless swift, immediate, consistent measures would be enforced by the government being squarely responsible for the Darfur’s Crisis. These assessments of the Darfur Crisis are largely shared by the Sudanese Umma, DUP, PCP, the NDA, and the civil society and human rights groups in and outside Sudan.

Contrary to government statements about security improvement and voluntary return of the displaced, there was a situation of persistent insecurity and human rights violations, unwillingness to return home from the camps, fear of all local and national police as well as fear by the women in particular of venturing outside the camps, continued militia attacks and by other groups, persistent rape of women outside the camps despite policy against impunity, besides evidence is difficult to get, and the failure of resettlement despite official pressure

Besides the urgent need to honor cease fire and cessation of hostilities, Rebel groups and the Sudanese Opposition (the NDA) have a role to play that should be fully recognized and realized. A new common and inclusive framework of genuine national dialogue is strongly emphasized towards the achievement of a comprehensive peace, security, and stability.

The Joint implementation Mechanisms to monitor the joint communiqué of the UN and the Sudan Government are stressed to enhance AU work through the UN Guiding Principles. The UN 1706 resolution clearly requires the GOS and the Rebels to collaborate closely with UN forces that will replace the AU work with GOS approval.

The KNCL is capable of providing political and social support to accomplish these objectives in close collaboration with the UN, GOS, and the Darfur Rebels, according to clear UN-based mandates of cooperation in decision-making.

A bunch of professional meetings closely focusing on field work and leading to UN-sponsored All-Sudanese national conference is necessarily required for the KNCL, GOS, and the UN to:

1) Consolidate KNCL/GOS/UN FPU shared obligations by UNSC resolutions;
2) Facilitate UN FPU mission;
3) Enhance GOS Police Force collaboration with the UN FPU;
4) Strengthen professional relations between Native Administration and the UN FPU;
5) Increase possibilities of the region’s legal and political development; and
6) Improve the national-building and democratization processes of the country, as a whole.

V. PROPOSED COORDINATING COMMITTEE

The complexities of the Darfur Region warrant consistent, inter-related, and complex methodologies, apparatuses, and agenda to make true the UN SC resolutions.

A most important step is to acknowledge the potentialities and competencies of the KNCL that have been thus far ignored or ambiguously mentioned by the concerned parties.

To initiate a promising start towards this end, it is proposed that an Autonomous Coordinating Committee be established under the auspices of the UN to bring to task the KNCL side-by-side with the GOS and the Rebels, with clear adherence to the UNSC resolutions.

The All-Sudanese Agenda-Implementation Conference accommodates – in addition to the KNCL, GOS, Rebels, and the UN FPU – the Darfurian Native administrators, Sudan Police and other security units, and the Civil Society groups to ensure maximum success of the Consensual Agenda.

VI. NATIONAL CONSTITUIONAL CONFERENCE

granting equal representation to the KNCL, Sudanese political parties and civil society groups, side-by-side with GOS and the Darfur Rebel groups, indiscriminately, under the auspices of the UN, AU, the US Government, the EU, and the AR.

APPENDIX I

ON SUDAN CENTRAL GOVERNMENANCE
AND THE DARFUR ADMINISTRATION

Since colonial times (1899–1955), the Darfur region has been strongly influenced by Khartoum-centered groups, especially the Umma Party led by the al-Mahdi family and, to some extent, its political rival, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) led by the al-Merghani family of the Khatmiya sect. The Umma and the DUP have both supported the traditional, ethnically organized native administration of Darfur. The military governments (1957–64, 1969–85, and 1989 to the present) that succeeded the short-lived Umma/DUP coalition governments ruled Darfur, the south, and the other marginal regions directly from Khartoum.

The post-independence governments retained the general structure of native administration to curtail oppositional activities by modernizing groups that struggled for state reform. These modernist parties included the Communist Party of Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (which waged an armed struggle to force Khartoum to realize equal sharing of power and wealth and grant the south the right of self-determination), and the professional groups and trade unions through which low-wage workers, progressive army personnel, and many public service employees have expressed their concern for the political and economic crisis of Sudan. While these groups exerted some influence in Darfur, the central government, native administration, and Umma Party remained the main players.

The country’s political organization was dramatically affected by the growth of the National Islamic Front (NIF), a fundamentalist Islamist Brotherhood party with a strong Arab-centric ideology that, allied with the military government of General Ja’far Nimeiri in the mid-1980s, transformed state law into a strict version of the shari’a, and ultimately usurped political power from the Umma-DUP elected government by military coup on 30 June 1989, under Brigadier Omer al-Bashir.

In the early 2000s, the NIF split into two groups: the Bashir ruling party, al-Mutamar al-Wattani (the National Congress), and the NIF opposition party, al-Mutamar al-Sha’bi (the Popular Congress), led by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, a former law professor, mentor of the NIF coup leaders, and lifelong leader of the politically active wing of the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood. For purposes of clarity, I will refer to the Nimeiri military rule (1969–85) as the May government, the elected government of Sadiq al-Mahdi (1986–9) as the democratic government, and the Bashir military rule (1989 to the present) as the NIF government.

Throughout its time in power, the May government pursued policies aimed at undermining the political influence of the Umma, the DUP, and their alliances with conservative groups. As Adam puts it, “Claiming that [native administration] was a primitive system that had to be overhauled, [the May government] introduced a system of local government run by administrative officers who knew very little about the tribes and communities they were supposed to govern.”

One result was an increasing mistrust between the Khartoum rulers and the native administration. The government’s plan to undermine the powers of the local chiefs was rendered even more offensive by a number of presidential decrees during the 1980s, one that declared Darfur to be part of Kordofan (the neighboring region) with El-Obeid as the regional capital, and another that appointed a former governor of Kordofan as governor in Darfur. Both of these decrees were strongly challenged and finally overturned by massive demonstrations.

The Sudanese-Libyan dispute
Mua’mar Qadafi motivated the Libyan government to support the opposition led by Sadiq al-Mahdi, which infiltrated weapons into the country through Darfur. “It is those weapons,” according to Adam, “that were used in the attempted take-over of the government in Khartoum on the 2nd of July 1976. But a lot of weapons were subsequently used in ethnic strife that continues to bedevil the region.”

Following active operations by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Kordofan and southern Darfur (mostly in collaboration with non-Arab ethnic groups), the May government “used this [conflict] as a plausible pretext to arm specific tribes, claiming that such arms would help such tribes defend themselves against the southern insurgents. This has led to the worst state of insecurity in Darfur since independence in 1956. The situation continued to deteriorate even after the fall of Nimeiri.”

The transitional military government of General Swar al-Dahab that succeeded the Nimeiri regime in 1985 adopted the same policy of arming the contact-area tribes. Again, these tribes did not use their guns only to fight the SPLA; they frequently used them to rob and terrorize their neighbors in Darfur and Kordofan whom they suspected to be sympathetic with the SPLA.
In the years of the subsequent democratic government, the ruling Umma planned to combine the Baggara militias into a Popular Defense Force (PDF) under the army command. But political conflicts over a peace agreement, the spread of arms from Libya into Darfur, poor relations with Egypt, and other issues prevented the initiative to establish government-controlled PDFs from implementation and, under the democratic government the security situation only worsened.

The Islamists’ Escalation of the Crisis

Escalating Ethno-Administrative Cleansing

The current NIF government is directly responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab people of Darfur. According to O’Fahey, “The ethnicization of the conflict has grown more rapidly since the military coup in 1989 that brought to power the regime of al-Bashir, which is not only Islamist but also Arab-centric. This has injected an ideological and racist dimension into the conflict, with the sides defining themselves as ‘Arab’ or ‘Zurq’ (black).”

Despite this racist attitude, which is the major reason Sudanese regions have revolted one after another against the central government, several writers have wrongfully reduced the crisis to a matter of tribal feuds or scarcity of natural resources. But as opposition activist Suliman Hamid al-Haj emphasizes, “Darfur’s crisis is a full-fledged state conspiracy plotted by Hassan al-Turabi [secretary-general of the NIF party, the National Congress; speaker of the state parliament, the National Council; and thus top guide of the NIF political bodies] nd subsequently pursued by Arab militias in full collaboration with the Sudan government and its ruling party, the National Islamic Front.”

It is thus the government, to a much greater degree than the militias it established and systemically manipulated, that is squarely responsible for the crisis in Darfur and the heinous atrocities resulting from it.

According to Hamid’s documentary, Wad’ al-Nuqat fi al-Hurof, Hassan al-Turabi, at the height of his power with the NIF regime, issued a decree clearly stating the following:
The Islamists of Negro tribes became hostile to the Islamic Movement. The Islamic Front aims to support the Arab tribes by these steps: forced displacement of the Fur from Jebel Merra to Wadi Salih, followed by complete disarming of the Fur people, for good; they are to be replaced with the Mehairiya, Itaifat, and Irayqat (Arab tribes). Arms must never return to the Zaghawa, who must be moved from Kutum to Um Rwaba (North Kordofan State); the Arab tribes should be armed and financed to act as the nucleus of the Islamic Arab Alliance.

This official fatwa is the basis of the state plot in Darfur. It has been literally executed, as revealed by current events in the region, even after al-Turabi was purged from the party. “This plot represents the class interests of Islamized capitalists, which include strata of the Arab tribes as well as some of the Zurqa [tribes of non-Arab descent]. The majority of Arab tribes have not participated in this scheme; they have not only rejected it; but actively resisted it since it was first implemented,” claims Hamid. Only the few Zurqa who share class interests with the ruling party have taken part in the government’s plot.

A great many Sudanese consider the NIF military government disqualified to rule the country. “They have no heritage of political leadership and their ideology is alien to the Sudanese people, particularly in the rural areas,” writes Ahmed. But the NIF government “started from day one to find a niche in the Sudanese society through which to impose ‘the civilization Project’???the Islamization and the Arabization of the Sudanese state and society. It requires that the total Sudanese cultural, political and religious heritage that had cumulatively taken shape since time immemorial be abandoned and a new political culture based on NIF ideology be adopted.”

Demanding allegiance to the NIF and its ruling junta, the new administrative system of the regime in Darfur and Kordofan is known as the Emirates. Ahmed continues, “Such old traditional tribal titles as King, Demangai, Nazer, Omda and Sheikh have been cancelled and replaced by ‘Amir.’ But the local tribes are used to their old system of native tribes which automatically convey a lot about the tribe rank and status of the holder.”

The Massalit exemplify the resentment among Darfurian Africans toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab emirate system. The Massalit administrative system, Ahmed writes has been divided into 13 emirates, five of them belonging to migrant Arab tribes in accordance with a decree proclaimed by the NIF Wali [governor] in March 1995.

The Massalit feel that they are the ones targeted by this policy, which aims at Balkanizing their territory and giving away large portions of land to migrant Arab tribes. This is the real cause of the violent conflict, which recently erupted between the Massalit and the Arab tribes in their area … The regime-organized peace conferences have been ineffectual because the regime really never addressed the basic causes of the conflict. Instead, it turned them into its sloganeering and sweet talking without really solving the disputes in issue.

In May 1991, members of the Zaghawa tribe presented a political memorandum to the president of the Republic. The memorandum referred to the recent events which took place in the areas of Chazzan Jaded, Sheridan, Argo, Await and Um Kato, all of which were tribally motivated and were aimed at undermining the security situation in the region. We hold the Governor of Darfur Region responsible for these incidents, together with the security committee, the commanders of the military convoys and leaders of native administration in the area. There were indications that these incidents were planned.

The document ended with “urgent demands” for immediate government attention “to 1) bringing to justice the culprits who perpetrated the above-mentioned crimes, involving massacres, burning of homes and property, robbery, looting and torture targeting our tribe; and 2) ending the state of siege imposed around the water points.”

The Darfur Rebellion

Early in 2003, with the Nib’s escalation of the Darfur crisis, the Sudanese political arena witnessed the emergence of two Darfurian non-Arab parties: the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) led by lawyer ‘Abd al-Wahid Mohamed Nor, and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by the Turabi’s disciple Cahill Ibrahim, a former minister in the Bashir administration. Seeking to establish immediate autonomous rule independent from Khartoum, both the SLA and JEM advocated armed struggle to force the NIF government to allow a politics of self-determination as well as fair wealth sharing.

While the SPLM/SPLA is strongly antagonistic to the NIF’s Islamist ideology, many members of the SLA and JEM, by contrast, were once part of the NIF ruling systems. In addition to the hegemony of Khartoum over the Darfurian native system, according to Lobbing, “there are many long standing economic grievances that precipitated the SLA and JEM to initiate this round of fighting.”

The NIF government responded by unleashing the Jonahed on the rebels, side by side with the PDF and army troops. Since then, the Jonahed, formerly known as the mural, or Beggar horse riders, have been accused of widespread killings, rape, abduction, torching of villages and crops, and cattle looting aimed at black Muslims in Darfur. Aid agencies say up to 50,000 people have died from the conflict, while more than 1.4 million have been displaced. About 170,000 of these have fled into neighboring Chad for fear of being attacked by the Jonahed. The indigenous people’s resistance to the NIF assaults on native administration and land ownership was sporadic before the emergence of the SLA, which opened a massive offensive

By twice seizing a major town in Northern Darfur in February 2003. Unable to cope with the rebellion, the Government opened negotiations but quickly breached the cease-fire. In retaliation, the SLA now joined by the JEM, attacked El-Fisher, Melee, and Kutum. The capture of large numbers of troops from El-Fisher and north of Kutum forced the Government to sign a cease-fire and agree to negotiations in Apache, Chad on 3 September 2003.

The Government and the SLA agreed to curbs on the Arab militias, the release of war prisoners, and the delivery of aid. However, with continuous violations, the cease-fire did not last long and the conflict quickly escalated to full-scale war against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. Cease-fires in 2004 have followed the same fate.

The Government’s new tactics included heavy aerial bombardment, the burning of villages, bombing of water sources, the killing of livestock, looting of homes, the destruction of farms, and ethnic cleansing. Arbitrary arrests, the widespread use of torture, abductions and extra-judicial executions of those suspected of supporting the rebels, as well as the systematic raping of women and girls are regularly reported.

In spite of the increasing drive for peace in Sudan, the NIF government’s escalation of the Darfur crisis, its theological impositions, ethnocentric ideology, and Islamized war propaganda have created a climate inconsistent with peace in the country. Moreover, the regime’s crimes against humanity in Darfur were not secretively planned: just a few days before renewal of the Emergency Law, President Bashir publicly pledged “to shed the blood of political opponents” in a famous rally of the Popular Defense Forces (PDF). This public outrage was immediately followed by a massive state-organized war to subdue the “renegades, traitors, and highwaymen of Darfur.”

The harsh threats of the president were taken seriously by human rights organizations and democracy groups. They promptly called on the international community to put the strongest pressure possible upon the Sudan presidency to adopt peaceful measures instead of military action, and to convene an all-Sudanese democratic conference to save the nation the danger of further subjection to the Security Council’s punitive intervention (as occurred in the mid-1990s with anti-terrorism measures against Sudan).

Ignoring both these pleas and the vital role of the Sudanese democratic opposition and civil society groups in potentially ending the crisis, the government hurried to: 1) escalate security operations inside Darfur, arresting and detaining those engaged in opposition activities; 2) air exaggerated media programs on the government’s judicial, security, and administrative measures to control the Janjaweed; 3) escalate ideological attacks on the West as an interest group aggressively planning to attack the Islamic Republic of Sudan and possess the country’s wealth; 4) strongly appeal to the Arab League for political support; and 5) display technical compliance with Security Council demands by cooperating with the United Nations and the African Union.

The political complexities of the Sudan’s crisis are not militarily winnable, whether by the warmongering NIF government or the other warring groups. Makau Mutua, director of the Human Rights Center at the State University of New York, calls for a “reality check. Khartoum has been unable to vanquish Africans militarily in the south. That’s why Khartoum now appears ready to conclude its peace agreement with the south.”

The Sudan’s largest democratic opposition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA),?established in October 1990 by the DUP, Umma, SPLM/A, Union of the Sudanese African Parties (USAP), the Communist Party, trade unions, and the other opposition received the Darfur rebels as “patriots victimized by the injustices of the Sudan central governments” and finally included them as full members of the NDA Leadership Council.

A few Sudanese critics, however, rejected the Darfur rebellion as an NIF-led movement that hijacked Darfur’s genuine striving for principled social change. A Sudanese writer asserts, “There is a substantial presence among them of disgruntled Islamic Brothers who fell out with the Khartoum regime during the infamous power struggle between president Bashir and the godfather of the Sudanese Islamic movement, Hassan Al-Turabi.”

NIF Government–Opposition Relations

As we have seen, Adam, Ahmed, O’ Fahey, and Lobban all consider the Umma to be closely involved in the Darfur crisis. From the early 1970s up to this day, the Umma Party consistently claimed a strategic alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood Movement. The NIF Turabi/Bashir coup of 30 June 1989, however, de-normalized the alliance of the Umma party and the NIF.

In the wake of the al-Merghani-led Democratic Unionist Party’s bitter failure to ensure full leadership of the NDA democratic opposition in exile, the Umma Party annulled its partnership with the NDA leadership and opted for separate deals with the DUP, the SPLM, and the NIF government. As expected, on 22 May 2003, the Umma Party signed an agreement with the ruling NIF National Congress Party “based on a common vision and the willingness to share with all other groups the responsibility of redressing the crisis.”

The Umma Party might have been hoping to assume a leadership role with the NIF government to control the Darfur crisis, as well to influence the entire country’s state of affairs. The Umma plan, however, was subject to the ruling junta’s determination to maintain the upper hand over all opposition parties and civil society groups.

The Umma-NIF agreement speaks of the conversion of the Darfur crisis from a traditional conflict over resources and a tribal dispute to an open rebellion due to the occurrence of other factors that were not known before the present crisis, such as the growth of tribal and regional orientations; the growth of school drop-outs and a graduates’ high rate of unemployment; the culture of violence and abundance of arms; a general belief that the government negotiates only with armed groups; the presence of armed militias; political maneuvering; and the engagement of neighbors and international bodies in the crisis.

The agreement then mentions the efforts made to resolve the crisis, the most important being the Nirteti conference; the Abeshi talks sponsored by the Chadian government (which led to the government-SLA cease-fire agreement on 3 December 2003); and mediation by individuals and tribal Shura councils. The agreement considers “the military action to crush the rebellion following the attack on Tina in March 2003 and the military operations occurring after violation of the Abeshi Agreement as part of the effort to solve the crisis.”

This is surely an oblique evaluation of the massive military brutalities carried out by the NIF government that have made the humanitarian crisis “one of the worst catastrophes of the day,” in the words of the UN official report. The Umma-NIF coalition ignores the role of central government in initiating and escalating the Darfur crisis through its poor political decisions and wrongful administrative practices; it further ignores the urgent need to ensure, in affirmative terms, full participation of the Darfurian intellectuals inside the country or abroad, including women activists.

The real question, nonetheless, is the extent to which the NIF ruling party would be willing to participate with groups that openly criticize the regime’s atrocious record, given the public’s increasing insistence on prosecution of the regime’s top officials and demands for real change of government leadership and structures. The state’s peace assurances and media programs are not substantiated by the realities of the Muslim Brotherhood rule.

Ali Ali-Dinar, director of the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, asserts that a large percentage of Sudanese soldiers are from the western Sudan, so that it’s in the government’s interest to create division among them; as well as to manipulate the Janjaweed to spread fear and animosity between the Arab and African peoples of Darfur, weaken the Umma Party’s support among non-Arab Darfurians, and counteract the presence of the NIF’s rival Islamist faction, the Popular Congress (headed by NIF ideologue Hassan al-Turabi):

If successful, the current peace talks in Naivasha [a suburb in Nairobi, Kenya, where the NIF/SPLM peace protocols were signed on 26 May 2004] will lose the NIF Government the use of war to rally the country behind it. Darfur could serve as a substitute for its war in the south. The National Islamic Front Government of Sudan’s war in Darfur is influenced by the following: 1) The only internal threat to the NIF is the army and the war in Darfur keeps it pre-occupied; 2) The Darfur war provides a pretext for the extension of emergency laws and other repressive polices; 3) This war can serve as an excuse for delaying the elections required by the [Kenya peace] protocols.

The NIF government has been trying to pit all opposition parties against one another. The NIF flatly rejected NDA participation in the north-south peace talks sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The 2003 Jeddah Agreement between the NDA and the NIF government was later unilaterally frozen by the NIF political leadership in protest at the NDA’s acceptance of the Darfur rebels (SLA) into membership, which indicates the government’s lack of interest in carrying out the peace process within a democratic national framework.

The government’s hostile stance against the NDA, whose forces embrace the SPLM/A, Darfur SLA, JEM, and the Eastern Sudan Fatah, Beja Congress, and Free Lions armed groups is one major factor inhibiting the IGAD-sponsored peace protocols in Naivasha, Kenya, and threatening renewed civil war all over the country.

The NIF-incited hostilities in Darfur further overshadowed the peace process in southern Sudan, according to Joyce Mulama: “Talks to end the 21-year conflict, between the black Christian south and the Arab Muslim north, were kicked off in neighboring Kenya in 2002, under the auspices of the seven-nation IGAD.” Six protocols on subjects including wealth sharing, power sharing, and security arrangements were signed by the two sides.

What remained was discussing details of the implementation of the agreement and compiling the six protocols into a single document. But the talks adjourned on 28 July 2004 without an agreement on a permanent cease-fire, despite the great effort of the Kenyan mediator Lazaro Sumbeiywo, IGAD’s special envoy to the talks.

Although the NIF government and the SPLM/A held optimistic meetings in Nairobi the following October, the government remained reluctant to expedite the peace process consistently. For example, as Mulama has documented, “The SPLA leader Dr. John Garang … offered to deploy 10,000 SPLA troops in Darfur as part of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force,” but the NIF government hastened to reject the offer. This situation reveals the NIF’s elusiveness, lack of trust, and partisan dealings, which come at the expense of a timely and comprehensive settlement of the country’s crisis.

The NIF government–SPLM/A Naivasha Peace Agreement guarantees the south effective participation in the central government’s agencies and authoritative bodies. This strategic executive partnership, however, is organically based on the legislative branch of an interim government that would rule the country as soon as the peace agreements are finalized. Apart from the SPLM/NIF negotiators, the Umma Party and other opposition groups believe that the power-sharing percentages in the peace protocols need to be adjusted, as they undeservedly reserve a majority of parliamentary representation in the interim government for the NIF alone.

Equally importantly, critics of the agreement express discontent with its handling of the national army, which would be fully controlled by the NIF-SPLA peace partners in the interim government. According to the agreement, by the end of the interim government’s six-year term, the south and other regions would decide by referendum whether to unify with the north. In accordance with the Naivasha Peace Framework, an NDA Program of Action requires the Sudanese government to create a climate conducive to peacemaking and to insure popular participation in all matters leading to the country’s national unity.

The government is strongly urged to immediately abandon all laws inhibiting the popular enjoyment of public freedoms to favor the upcoming democratic transition. All political prisoners, especially those from Darfur, must be immediately released to join the peace efforts in their region.

The NDA, the SPLM/A, Darfur rebels, and many other Sudanese groups believe that the Darfur crisis is part of the center-region crisis of Sudan. “The situation in Darfur is no different from that of southern Sudan,” concludes Ali-Dinar. “Peace in Darfur is necessary for stabilising the surrounding regions which include southern Sudan, Chad, and Central African Republic and to prevent the conflict spreading. The future of the region is at stake.” And, as Lobban contends,

Equally to the east, Eritrea has its reasons to destabilize Khartoum simply because Khartoum threatens to do the same in Asmara. The case of Chad is not less complicated since several of the ethnic groups of Darfur range into Chad either as war refugees or habitual nomads. Amidst all of this, the only slightly patched together Naivasha agreement between the government of Sudan and the SPLA is at risk of collapse if the conflict in Darfur cannot be better managed … few of the neighboring regimes have positive, working ties with Khartoum.

The government, moreover, is hampered by lack of financial and material resources. For these reasons, it is in urgent need of effective assistance from the international community.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Ethical and Doctrinal Crisis

The failures of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule in Sudan have been augmented by the International Muslim Brotherhood’s failure to address the Darfur crisis. It must have been a painful experience for Dr. Mohamed Saleem al-’Awa and his colleagues, including Sheikh Dr. Yousif al-Qaradawi, to suppress their consciences to the point of denying the Darfur holocaust. But this is what they have done through the Muslim ‘Ulama International Union, an organization newly launched by al-Qaradawi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders to promote Muslim life in the diaspora and exert influence on the Arab media, especially on al-Jazeera.

The interview conducted by Ustaz Ahmed Mansour of al- Jazeera on 15 September 2004 with the Muslim ‘Ulama secretary general, Mohamed al-’Awa, who had reportedly just returned from a trip to Darfur, affirmed the most unreasonable strands of the ‘Ulama’s political agenda towards the Sudan and its rulers, to a degree that raises doubts about the intentions of the hosting program.

The interview revealed the blindness of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideological dogmatism, which, irrespective of the ‘Ulama’s academic, juristic, or professional credentials, is contrary to the most fundamental demand of spirituality that supposedly values human life and claims this principle as the very essence of natural law. For example, al-’Awa was oversimplistic and disingenuous to state that the inhabitants of Darfur “were all relatives, the same people, unless they identified themselves in tribal terms,” when these “tribal terms” have, for centuries, accommodated the whole social structure and all interrelationships of the region.

One purpose of the al-Jazeera program was obviously to emphasize the ‘Ulama’s partnership with the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan. Indeed, in a mission aimed at reconciling the two warring factions of the NIF, al-’Awa, al-Qaradawi, and other ‘Ulama representatives met as privileged diplomats with the top officials of the NIF government; the international secretary general met with President al-Bashir for many hours.

In addition to persistently negating the NIF government’s responsibility in the Darfur crisis, the Muslim ‘Ulama secretary general has also misrepresented the government’s role through understatement. While rightly criticizing the “mischievous behavior on the part of the Darfur rebels” as well as “the government’s reaction,” in the September interview he acknowledged only one case in which the government had failed to enforce due reparations to a Zaghawa African Sudanese injured party.

“The government’s reaction” to which he referred, moreover, was nothing other than the governmentally organized war that killed thousands, displaced over a million, and allowed an unchecked campaign of savage rapes and other crimes against humanity. However, the ‘Ulama secretary general was never able completely to release the Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood from the guilt of escalating the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Al-’Awa had to affirm that “Darfur is a humanitarian tragedy since people were forced to leave their homes. The government is blamed for this humanitarian tragedy, as well as the Muslim nations and the international community.”

Insisting on “material evidence” such as cemeteries of the murdered citizens from Human Rights Watch to “prove the acts of genocide,” al-’Awa nonetheless contradictorily averred that “the Sudan Government did not do any wrong. All allegations are false! There wasn’t a Pagan-Christian alliance warring against a Muslim Arab alliance.”

Mohamed al-’Awa’s juristic expertise subsequently led him to realize that the women of Darfur would not talk about rape to the Presidential Committee, whose members did not hear of a single reported rape from the interviewed women. The bare fact is that raped humans, as all law trainees understand, naturally need the highest level of privacy to help redress their broken dignity, and would certainly not participate in a publicized sham by a government-selected committee in an orthodox Muslim society.

The Presidential Committee’s inattention to the urgent need to include women from Darfur, as well as international human rights specialists, in its deliberations has certainly contributed to the poor performance of the committee. Negligence of the facts, as well as denial of the ethnic dimension of the crisis, are at the root of al-’Awa’s allegation that “these cases [of rape and human rights abuses] were basically alleged to defame the government and the people of Sudan to allow foreign intervention in the country. Only the sources influenced by Americans repeated the accusation of genocide.”

The ‘Ulama’s secretary general further stressed that, “what is going on in Palestine and Darfur is a part of the conspiracy. The Zionist enemies are working against Darfur.” While this allegation has also been raised by Muslim Brotherhood groups with respect to Iraq, what was new in al-’Awa’s speech was his generalized alarm: “All the Arab region will be destroyed if the Darfur crisis remains without resolve.” But unlike these cases, Darfur is strictly a Sudanese affair that has to be handled in the first place by and for the Sudanese themselves.

The Muslim ‘Ulama’s incorporation of the Darfur crisis into the Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts is another politicized formula intended to mystify the state-constructed Arab-African cleavages in Darfur and, with an overused doctrine ill-suited to Sudanese society, incite a jihad that justifies and prolongs state violence in the whole region. Exploiting the cliché of a Zionist-Western conspiracy against the Arabs (which acts as a ready-made explanation for all state-incited violence or governmental failures), the Muslim ‘Ulama leader averred that “Darfur is the gate of Islam to Africa. The unified Muslims of Darfur are a threat to the West. That is why Darfur is a target.”

Al-’Awa did not hesitate, however, to appeal to the “Zionist West” for more funds for humanitarian assistance???despite the Muslim Brotherhood’s flourishing businesses and monopoly of the Sudanese national economy???claiming, incredibly, that “the Sudanese government is not responsible for the crisis” and that “the Islamic organizations working in Darfur are doing so with limited resources.”

APPENDIX II

On Effectiveness of National Collaboration with the International Concerns

The strong opposition of the Sudanese Government to the transfer of the AU Mission to the UN, as well as ongoing numerous demonstrations against the UN and AMIS, should be duly taken into account. On one such occasion (July 2006) at the AMIS Headquarters in El Fasher, the demonstrators threatened the current AU forces in Darfur with major consequences, should the AU decide on a hand-over.

The Government’s failure to enforce prompt measures in DarFur is a reality. Another reality is that the Sudanese democratic opposition maintains the clearest understanding of the DarFur’s Crisis. Hundreds of local conferences, Umma-Government agreement, SLA meetings with the NDA’s Leadership Council, and the strong consensus among Sudan democratic forces and civil society groups on the agenda of making the just and permanent peace in DarFur are all factual and available. Naturally these are “internal institutional and organizational politics” for there is not any national problem that won’t entail the largest institutional and organizational politics to handle it if any realistic solutions are seriously sought.

Apart from the Bashir’s negativity, the other problem is related to the External’s non-recognition or insufficient support to the Sudanese institutional and organizational “peace politics,” which constitutes the most important element in the efforts to solve the Crisis.

A “large and robust military force” even if accompanying “humanitarian intervention” would likely than not fail to control the tense warring situation of DarFur besides expected serious casualties to the foreign armies that would, in turn, fuel the armed conflict with uncontrolled conflicts. The Sudanese democratic national consensus proposed for immediate collaboration in this Proposal would possibly accomplish this complex job in close collaboration with the other players (the UN FPU, GOS, and the Rebels) with a national agreement that would be possibly finalized by the proposed All-Sudanese National Conference to avoid further military action and to strengthen implementation of the South-North Nivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreements.

As peace advocates, the Sudan Human Rights Organization activists, among many other counterparts, look forward to play an active role in the realization of peace and political stability of the region. The 50 year South-North War proved the unreliability of winning a cause by military action. There is no need to replicate the same costly failures of civil war in the war-torn region.

The International Community is called upon to put confidence on the Sudanese People, their democratic opposition and civil society with whom the Sudan Government must closely work in good faith as legitimate participants in the Sudanese peace process. It is this necessary recognition of the national democratic nature and dimensions of the Darfur Crisis that would make the difference, instead of incarcerating the complex conflict of Darfur in the narrowly-focused bilateral deals between the warring GOS and Rebels at expense of the whole Nation.

The necessity of Effective National Participation in International Obligations

“Calls have been made by a number of AU partners and other actors for the hand-over of the AU Mission to the United Nations… to ensure its financial sustainability … and provide the much needed protection to the civilian population in face of continued violence and insecurity,” emphasized the AU Chairperson Konare.

Unlike many non-Sudanese voices that have been unrelentingly asking for “military intervention” in Darfur to force the warring parties to end the conflict that continues to devastate the region, Sudanese opposition groups, including the Umma, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Communist Party, the People’s Congress Party and a long list of trade unions, human rights and democracy groups, and professional associations have been appropriately calling on the Government of Sudan to convene a national conference under the auspices of the United Nations.

Two problems, nonetheless, have been unfolding along this escalated confrontation: 1) the uncooperativeness of the government with the Sudanese Opposition; and 2) the negligence of the International Community to the potentialities of the Sudanese People to resolve the crisis by a national constitutional conference.

Several observers witnessed the poor performance of the Sudan’s National Unity Government (GOS), which was a direct product of the Niavasha internationally-thought, designed, and enforced peace agreements whose procession expectedly failed to realize the political diversity of the country having unnecessarily ignored the Sudanese national traditions and modes of political participation.

Many westerners cautioned about the NIF determination to run the nation unilaterally, as it has unilaterally done since it seized power in June 1989 by a military coup. Nonetheless, the outcries for immediate military action were one-sided: focusing correctly on the victim needs to humanitarian relief; still wrongfully keeping a blind eye to the victims’ foremost need to a nationally-approved permanent political solution. The International Community must, therefore, rethink the approach it has thus far adopted with little or no success to end the crisis.

In his latest address to the African Peace and Security Council, the African Union’s Commission Chairperson Alpha Konare acknowledged that “considerable progress has been achieved in the resolution of conflicts in some parts of the continent” including South Sudan, “the progress achieved has remained fragile with the likelihood of fresh crisis erupting at any time. Darfur (western Sudan) is an eloquent illustration of this state of affairs… Undoubtedly, some progress has been made as demonstrated by the improved security situation in areas where AMIS is deployed, the overall improvement of the humanitarian situation, as well as the launching of the inter-Sudanese Peace Talks in Abuja and the progress, albeit slow, made in the negotiations there. However, much remains to be done to fully achieve the AU’s objectives.”

Clearly, the Chairperson stressed “The persistent violence against civilians, in complete disregard of basic humanitarian and human rights norms, the fact that no significant return of IDPs and refugees has taken place, the continued attacks against humanitarian workers, the precarious situation at the Chad/ Sudan border, and the inability of the Sudanese parties (namely GOS and the Rebels) to conclude a peace agreement more than a year and half after the start of the negotiations bear testimony to the challenges ahead.” Unfortunately, however, the Chairperson, like many other critics and western think-tanks, ignored the Sudanese opposition and its role in the conflict’s resolution.

Mr. Konare complained about the limited capacity of the AU to manage the increasing costs of peace in the region. The lion’s share of his complaint, however, touched heavily upon the failures of international community and, above all, the Sudanese parties to the conflict, specifically, the Government of Sudan and the rebel groups. In the Chairperson’s words: “the achievements of the AU, through AMIS, cannot be ignored, especially given that the Mission has, from the very beginning, operated under difficult circumstances. On the one hand, the Sudanese parties have not been fully cooperated with AMIS, having failed to comply with the very commitments into which they solemnly entered under the N’djamena Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement and the Abuja Protocols. The increasing factionalization of the rebel movements and the continuing tribal tensions and conflicts, which have contributed to the perpetuation of the prevailing situation of violence and insecurity, have further compounded the problems confronting the Mission on the ground.”

In its forthcoming deliberations, the 45th meeting of the PSC may wish to consider the following elements: “a need for a sustained and effective peace support operation in Darfur to facilitate compliance with existing agreements, enhance the protection of the civilian population, and … create conditions conducive to the early conclusion of a peace agreement… [and] address the complex tasks of post-conflict reconstruction, including DDR and security sector reform. This would demand an increased integration of the different aspects of the peace process and the establishment of a multidimensional peacekeeping operation, requiring expertise and experience, as well as the mobilization of considerable and predictable financial and logistical resources, together with a management capacity, which AU does not yet possess.”

Playing down the Sudanese potentialities to solve the crisis, the Konare’s statement supported the increasing call to superimpose NATO forces over the AU “failed party”, still with no attention paid to the Sudanese vital constituencies that include parties well-known for historical, ideological, and political bondages with the region, especially the Umma and the DUP opposition groups.

The fact of the matter is that all of the national perquisites desperately needed to “create conditions conducive to the early conclusion of a peace agreement… [and] address the complex tasks of post-conflict reconstruction, including DDR and security sector reform” hinge on a broad, nationally-acceptable deal that, understandably, would only succeed on the basis of an All-Sudanese National Constitutional Conference.

The United Nations, the African Union, Arab League, and the concerned governments of the United States, European Union, and the International Community at large are urged to invite the Government of Sudan to participate actively in the conference in question with the rebels and the Sudanese Opposition under the auspices of the UN and the other regional and international entities, for that meaningful conference alone would avoid escalation of the crisis in a region already rampant with armed struggles, armed hostilities, and armed conflicts.

* The author is a sociologist at the Department of Social Work & Sociology in Tennessee State University, Nashville TN, USA. He can be reached at [email protected]