Darfur’s bitter ironies

This week’s rebel attack on African Union peacekeepers is reprehensible.
But it shouldn’t alleviate the pressure on Khartoum.

By Eric Reeves, The Guardian online

October 3, 2007 — It is grimly ironic that a group of international eminences—the “Elders,” as they are called—arrived in Khartoum on Sunday, the
same day more than 10 African Union peacekeepers were killed during a
large-scale rebel attack near the village of Haskanita, in eastern North
Darfur. Chaired by South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, the
delegation, which also includes former US president Jimmy Carter and
Lakhdar Brahimi, a former UN envoy to Iraq, offered earnest, but now
familiar platitudes: “We, the Elders, are here because we care deeply
for the fate of our planet, and we feel intensely for the suffering of
millions of people in Darfur who yearn for nothing more than peace and
dignity.” The rebel force—apparently comprising a faction of the
Justice and Equality Movement and rogue commanders from the Sudan
Liberation Army/Unity faction—took a savagely more expedient view of
the situation, seizing a number of vehicles and other military equipment
from the AU outpost.

Nothing can justify this barbaric attack against peacekeepers
attempting, however feebly, to provide protection in Darfur. But the AU
forces have been badly betrayed by their political and military leaders,
particularly AU commissioner Alpha Oumar Konaré, who has become abject
in his deference to Khartoum, particularly on security issues. The AU
leadership has also refused to respond to the legitimate concerns of
rebel groups that did not sign last year’s ill-conceived and
disastrously consummated Darfur Peace Agreement, including the rebel
demand for more public and timely reports about atrocity crimes
committed by Khartoum’s forces. This is also the same AU leadership
that stubbornly refused to ask earlier for a UN takeover of the Darfur
mission, even as its inadequacies were apparent to all, including a
number of African leaders. These failings have all contributed to
growing distrust, even hatred of the AU by Darfuris.

This is sadly just as true of civilians in the camps, which fearful AU
civilian police no longer dare to enter. These camps, into which some
people have been displaced for over four years, have become cauldrons of
rage and despair, awash in weapons, and increasingly beyond the control
of traditional leaders—the sheikhs and omdas who might prevent
restless young men and boys from acquiring the guns that will make the
camps the next front line in Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war
in Darfur.

Rebel leaders complain with understandable anger that many AU reports on
village bombing attacks and atrocities committed by Khartoum and its
Janjaweed allies are never made public. In the Haskanita area, for
example, there are strong indications that Khartoum and its Janjaweed
allies had been actively engaged in attacks on civilian targets in
preceding weeks. These attacks included offensive military flights,
explicitly prohibited by UN Security Council Resolution 1591. Moreover,
after the signing of the Darfur peace agreement, the AU also bowed to
Khartoum’s demand that non-signatory rebel factions be excluded from the
ceasefire commission, essentially ending any chance for balanced
monitoring of the anemic ceasefire agreement. The lack of a mandate for
civilian protection has also constantly compromised the standing of AU
forces on the ground in Darfur.

For these and other reasons, securing the presence of rebel groups at
the peace talks scheduled for later this month in Libya will be
extremely difficult. Abdel Wahid el-Nur, founder of the Sudan Liberation
Movement/Army, continues to refuse to participate in the talks. He has
enormous, if diminishing, support within the camps, particularly among
his fellow Fur tribesmen. As Darfuri civiliannegotiations that leave them languishing in camps, Abdel Wahid’s
resistance to participating becomes all the more consequential. But the
attack on Haskanita also reveals how easily a rebel faction can become a
spoiler. Moreover, the rebel groups have also become much more fractious
and divided over the past year. Divisions along ethnic, political, and
personal lines have increasingly overcome the desperate need for
military and particularly political unity. They will need to join
together and engage in the talks with a real unity of purpose, if they
are to succeed.

But the peace talks are also destined to fail without a great deal more
pressure on Khartoum to negotiate in good faith. This means accepting
that the current peace agreement is a dead letter for both the rebels
and Darfuri civilians, and that arrangements for security, compensation
and power-sharing will need substantial modification. Of particular
importance are international guarantors for the security provisions in
any agreement, preeminently the disarming of the Janjaweed and the
various paramilitary forces into which they have been recycled. Only
with such disarmament will people dare to leave the camps and return to
their villages.

It is a perverse irony, then, that the rebel attack on Haskanita will
almost certainly strengthen the regime’s hand. By portraying itself as
the AU’s ally against the rebels, even as it continues to oppose the
deployment of a genuinely hybrid force, this cabal of génocidaires may
extract from the international community a more forgiving diplomatic
attitude. But there is an alternative response. While the outrageous
attack on AU peacekeepers in Haskanita can lead to more hand-wringing,
more unctuous talk from international figures like the Elders, more
excessively broad condemnation of all rebel leaders, it can also provide
the catalyst for a serious effort to confront Khartoum, the essential
first step in bringing real security to Darfur. The latter is
distinctly the more important effort.

* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org