Darfur remains adrift: A skeptical assessment of resolution 1769 (2)
More than 75 days after the culminating UN Security Council resolution
to provide security for civilians and humanitarians in Darfur, more
reasons than ever to doubt it will succeed (Part 2-2
By Eric Reeves
October 19, 2007 — The recent massacre of civilians in Muhajiriya (South Darfur)—by
Khartoum’s regular military forces and its Janjaweed militia
allies—represents, in its vicious human destruction, the most
conspicuous consequence of ongoing international acquiescence before the
genocidal ambitions of the National Islamic Front regime. Muhajiriya
also represents the kind of organized, regime-sponsored violence that
the UN/African Union (“Hybrid”) Mission deploying to Darfur, per UN
Security Council Resolution 1769 (July 31, 2007), must be prepared to
confront. While it has become fashionable, indeed de rigueur, in
reporting on Darfur to emphasize the complexity of the conflict, the
fracturing of the rebel movements, and to make ever more insistent
comparisons with violence in Somalia, Muhajiriya serves as a sharp
reminder that the current chaos isn’t accidental. It is, as a recent
Human Rights Watch report emphasizes, “Chaos by Design” (“Darfur
2007: Chaos by Design,” September 2007 at
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/sudan0907/). As it has for many
years, stretching back to the second north/south conflict (1983-2005),
Khartoum has sown division, engaged in divide-and-rule tactics, and
exploited ethnic tensions at every moment of opportunity. The regime’s
successes are nothing less than stunning.
To be sure, the tactics in Darfur have been accommodated to the
particular nature of the counter-insurgency war currently being fought
(see especially Human Rights Watch, “Chaos by Design,” pages 6, 22,
34, 38, 41-43, 45, 51, 53-54). But news reporting on the
“complexity” of the Darfur crisis would be much more
insightful if given an appropriate context, particularly in attending to
the largest conclusion reached by Human Rights Watch:
“The government [of Sudan] continues to stoke the chaos [in Darfur]
and, in some areas, exploit intercommunal tensions that escalate into
open hostilities, apparently in an effort to ‘divide and rule’ and
maintain military and political dominance over the region.” (HRW, page
6)
Certainly the current character of conflict, and Khartoum’s successes
in creating a chaos that threatens both civilians and humanitarians,
should not obscure the savage brutality and bluntness of purpose on the
part of this regime, exemplified in the attack on Muhajiriya. A host of
accounts from civilian witnesses in this small, ethnically African town
make all too clear what began around noon on October 8, 2007. The New
York Times, with a Nairobi dateline, but also notice that a reporter in
Darfur contributed to the story, offers the following grim details
(October 16, 2007):
“[W]itnesses described government [of Sudan] troops and their allied
militias killing more than 30 civilians, slitting the throats of several
men praying at a mosque and shooting a 5-year-old boy in the back as he
tried to run away. According to several residents of Muhagiriya, a small
town in southern Darfur, two columns of uniformed government troops,
along with dozens of militiamen not in uniform, surrounded the town
around noon on October 8 [2007] and stormed the market. Muhagiriya was a
stronghold of one of Darfur’s many rebel factions, but witnesses said
there were few rebels there at the time and that government forces
turned their guns—and knives—on civilians.”
“Ayoub Jalal, a mechanic, said his father was praying at a mosque
when soldiers burst in. ‘They dragged my father and the others out of
the mosque and slashed their throats,’ said Mr. Jalal, who was
interviewed by telephone.” [ ]
“‘The youngest child, a 5-year-old boy, I knew well,’ said Sultan
Marko Niaw, a tribal elder, who also spoke by phone. He said the boy’s
name was Guran Avium: ‘A soldier had shot him in the back.’”
“The viciousness of the attack, as described by the witnesses and
corroborated by humanitarian organizations working in the area, seemed
reminiscent of the early days of the conflict in Darfur, when government
troops and allied militias slaughtered thousands of civilians, according
to human rights groups.” [ ]
“Thousands of people have fled Muhagiriya and are now camped around a
small African Union peacekeeping base for protection. Humanitarian
officials fear they could be attacked again. ‘We are deeply concerned
for their safety,’ said James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis
Trust, a British anti-genocide group working in the region. He said that
villagers in Muhagiriya ‘confirmed to us that government and janjaweed
forces deliberately attacked unarmed civilians,’ referring to the Arab
militias that are aligned with the government.”
“Solidarités, a French aid organization that distributes food in the
area, said three Sudanese aid workers were killed in the attack. In a
report, it also said that ‘many people are wounded and need medical
assistance. Many houses and shops have been looted. Many families lost
everything.’ In separate interviews, several residents said they
watched soldiers cart away their property in government trucks. The
United Nations sent an assessment team to Muhagiriya last week to take
photographs of the destruction and interview villagers about the attack.
‘All the IDPs,’ internally displaced persons, ‘believe it was a
joint government-militia operation,’ said Radhia Achouri, a United
Nations spokesperson.” (New York Times [dateline: Nairobi], October
16, 2007; additional reporting by an anonymous journalist on the ground
in Darfur)
Additional reporting comes from Agence France-Presse ([dateline:
Khartoum], October 11, 2007):
“[The UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said that ‘residents [of
Muhajiriya] reportedly fled to neighboring villages and the surrounding
areas, leaving the town, which had a population estimated at 20,000
inhabitants, completely deserted.’” [ ]
“In New York, the medical humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans
Frontieres [Doctors Without Borders] said it had evacuated a team of 16
aid workers from Muhajiriya. [ ] MSF said it runs the only hospital in
the town, and that the ‘evacuation of its team means people are
urgently in need of medical care.’ It said that, prior to the attack,
43 people were in-patients, including pregnant women about to deliver,
15 children with severe pneumonia and an unspecified number of
malnournished children at a feeding centre. It added that another some
39 wounded people on the outskirts of Muhajariya were seeking
refuge.”
The UN’s office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has
estimated that approximately 45,000 internally displaced people were
being assisted in and around Muhajiriya; they, too, are now without
protection or humanitarian services.
Amnesty International and the African Union have both reported on
Khartoum’s use of aerial military assets in the attack on Muhajiriya:
“Amnesty International said the attack [on Muhajiriya] was supported
by an Antonov, which had been painted in white UN colours. Since 2005,
Sudan has been prohibited from offensive flights over Darfur and has
been criticised for painting aircraft white, [Amnesty] said.” (UN
Integrated Regional Information Networks [IRIN] [dateline: Nairobi],
October 10, 2007)
“Sudanese government planes bombed the town of Muhajiriya in Darfur
on Monday [October 8, 2007], according to the commander of the
7,000-strong African Union force. General Martin Luther Agwai told the
BBC in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, that at least 24 people were
injured in the attack on Muhajiriya. ‘The town was bombed,’ he said,
‘and only the Sudanese government forces have aircraft.’” (BBC,
October 9, 2007)
Nor was Khartoum’s brutally destructive attack on Muhajiriya the only
savagery of its kind. Haskanita in North Darfur was completely burned to
the ground by the regime and its Janjaweed militia. Haskanita is the
town close to the AU outpost attacked and overrun by rebel elements in
late September; Khartoum chose to make this completely unjustified rebel
attack the pretext for the mass killing of civilians and for burning to
the ground all buildings in Haskanita itself—after the town came fully
under Khartoum’s military control in the wake of the rebel attack on
the AU:
“A joint UN/AU inspection team, which visited Haskanita on Saturday
[October 7, 2007], said: ‘The town, which is under the control of the
government [of Sudan], was completely burned down, except for a few
buildings.’ It added Haskanita’s market had been looted and most of
the town’s civilian population had fled. Just a handful of townspeople
had returned to scavenge for food and water.”
“Suleiman Jamous of the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)
Unity faction, told Reuters a large number of people had been killed in
the town. Rebels leaders said on Friday at least 100 people had been
killed. Jamous, who blamed the government for the destruction of the
settlement, added: ‘All the villages near Haskanita have evacuated
either to the bush or nearby towns. They evacuated their villages after
they heard what happened to Haskanita.’” (Reuters [dateline:
Khartoum], October 7, 2007)
Suleiman Jamous is without question the most trustworthy of rebel
leaders.
Although the UN would not officially assign responsibility for the
destruction of Haskanita town, a UN official speaking on condition of
anonymity was explicit:
“A UN official who had just inspected the North Darfur town [of
Haskanita] said Sunday [October 7, 2007] more than 15,000 civilians were
fleeing the area. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the town was destroyed by
the Sudanese army and its allied janjaweed militias of nomad Arabs. An
Associated Press reporter saw Haskanita intact last weekend just as the
army was taking control following the suspected rebel attack [on the AU
base near Haskanita].” (Associated Press [dateline: Khartoum], October
7, 2007)
These are examples of very recent violence; much more violence goes
unreported by an African Union mission that too often defers to
Khartoum’s wishes or simply doesn’t make public its findings. The
AU-overseen Ceasefire Commission is completely dysfunctional.
But elsewhere in Darfur, Khartoum’s regular and military forces have
been active, and we catch glimpses from human rights groups, courageous
humanitarian sources, and news dispatches from the very few journalists
the regime allows into Darfur. Amnesty International has recently
reported that Khartoum is massing its forces near at least six towns in
North Darfur, including Tine, Kornoy, Baru and Kutum, and warned that
“the northern areas of Darfur are currently in the cross-hairs of
the Sudanese armed forces and that further deadly attacks are
imminent” (Amnesty International press release, October 9, 2007, at
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR540612007). A great
percentage of the weapons used in this military build-up have entered
Darfur in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1591 (March 2005),
as reported yet again by the UN Panel of Experts on Darfur (October 3,
2007 Report to the UN Security Council):
“The Panel of Experts has established that violations of the arms
embargo continued, both by the Government of Sudan and non-State armed
groups.” (page 3)
Just as notable was Khartoum’s open contempt for Resolution 1591, as
reported by the UN Panel of Experts:
“As stated in previous reports of the Panel, in spite of the clear
understanding of its obligations under Security Council resolution 1591
(2005), at the time of writing the present report, the Government of
Sudan had not submitted any requests for approval to the Security
Council Committee established pursuant to that resolution to enable the
movement of weapons, ammunition or other military equipment into Darfur,
thereby knowingly violating the provisions of the resolution.” (page
3)
…“thereby knowingly violating the provisions of the [UN Security
Council] resolution”…this is a defining intransigence.
The UN Panel of Experts on Darfur also found that,
“From September 2006 to June 2007, the Government of the Sudan
conducted offensive military overflights in Darfur, which included
aerial bombardments by Antonov aircraft, aerial attacks by Mi-24 attack
helicopters and the use of air assets for military surveillance.
Sixty-six aerial attacks were reported during that period.”
UN Security Council Resolution 1591 explicitly demanded that Khartoum
“immediately cease conducting offensive military flights in and
over the Darfur region” (paragraph 6).
Bombing attacks have occurred frequently since June 2007, including in
the very recent attack on Muhajiriya.
In assessing Khartoum’s commitment to a possible cease-fire in
Darfur, or the terms of a possible peace agreement, these contemptuous,
flagrant, and unconcealed violations of the terms of a UN Security
Council resolution should figure prominently. And yet international
expediency will almost certainly triumph over any willingness to
confront this obdurate regime over its bad faith, which has been
continuously in evidence for the past 18 years. Such expediency
certainly does most to explain why after almost five years of genocidal
destruction in Darfur, the world continues to watch, and to move
politically, diplomatically, and militarily—if at all—within an
obscenely accommodating time-frame.
RESPONDING TO GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF A GRIMLY
EXPANDING FAILURE
Those who have for years opposed military deployment to protect Darfuri
civilians, as well as the humanitarian operations upon which some 4.2
million Darfuris now depend for survival, are especially given to
emphasizing the “complexity” of the Darfur catastrophe. They
typically fail to acknowledge that resistance to military deployment,
over the course of more than three and a half years, has meant accepting
ongoing campaigns of ethnically-targeted violence, as well as highly
compromised living conditions, that have destroyed hundreds of thousands
of human beings (see my April 2006 mortality assessment at
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article102.html). UN figures indicate
that more than 2.5 million civilians have been displaced internally or
into Chad, most losing everything. Leslie Lefkow, a highly regarded
Darfur researcher for Human Rights Watch, recently noted that, “there
was definitely a lost opportunity for a robust intervention in 2004,
when the situation was clearer in terms of the number and nature of the
armed groups” (New York Times [dateline: Nairobi], October 14, 2007).
This writer argued in December 2003 and again in the conclusion to a
Washington Post opinion essay (February 25, 2004),
“Khartoum has so far refused to rein in its Arab militias; has
refused to enter into meaningful peace talks with the insurgency groups;
and most disturbingly, refuses to grant unfettered humanitarian access.
The international community has been slow to react to Darfur’s
catastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment.
A credible peace forum must rapidly be created. Immediate plans for
humanitarian intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens
of thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what
will be continuing genocidal destruction.”
These words are tragically as true today as they were more than three
and a half years ago. The failure of my analysis was in anticipating
“weeks and months” of continuing unanswered genocidal destruction
rather than the years that have actually intervened—and thus
anticipating “tens of thousands” rather than the hundreds of
thousands of deaths that have actually occurred.
But current discussions of humanitarian intervention to protect
civilians are too often dominated by those whose earlier opposition to
intervention must now be justified in the context of the ghastly
consequences of international failure to halt genocide during these
horrific years. Alex de Waal and Julie Flint are among the most
prominent of those who have put their considerable knowledge of Darfur
in service of arguments against deployment of a force with a mandate to
protect civilians and humanitarians. Indeed, in the case of de Waal this
has led to a perverse refusal to accept even that the purpose of such
intervention is civilian protection. Rather, in notorious words, de Waal
caricatures the push for urgent deployment of such force as a
“salvation delusion,” and argues elsewhere that “there is no
such thing as humanitarian intervention”
(http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/humanint/2007/0321nosuchthing.htm):
“Military intervention won’t stop the killing. Those who are
clamouring for troops to fight their way into Darfur are suffering from
a salvation delusion. It’s a simple reality that UN troops can’t
stop an ongoing war, and their record at protecting civilians is far
from perfect.” (“I will not sign,” London Review of Books, Nov 30,
2006)
These sentences offer only disingenuous half-truths, and a deeply
distorting conflation. “Stopping an ongoing war” and “protecting
civilians” are two different tasks, two very different ambitions; if
the former is clearly beyond the capacity of the deploying UN/AU
“hybrid” force, that doesn’t mean that civilian
protection—and the protection of humanitarian workers—is impossible.
Of course protecting civilians is a great deal easier after a war has
been stopped; but to declare such protection in Darfur impossible
because fighting continues is to say that a genocidal regime can always
insulate itself from the consequences of its actions by ensuring enough
violence. By this logic, the international community was right to
abandon Lt. General Romeo Dallaire in Rwanda, to ignore his desperate
plea for the 5,000 troops he thought could halt the violent carnage that
would ultimately claim some 800,000 lives.
Security in Darfur will be inadequate no matter what force deploys,
given the lack of urgency and moral commitment defining current
international responses. But there are certainly better and worse
security environments for humanitarian efforts that alone sustain
millions of lives. Here we should recall the explicit warnings from
humanitarians over the past 15 months and more. In his August 2006
briefing of the UN Security Council, former UN humanitarian chief Jan
Egeland declared:
“Our entire humanitarian operation in Darfur—the only lifeline for
more than three million people—is presently at risk. We need immediate
action on the political front to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe with
massive loss of life. If the humanitarian operation were to collapse, we
could see hundreds of thousands of deaths. In short, we may end up with
a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale in Darfur.”
Several months later, all fourteen UN humanitarian organizations
operating in Darfur signed an unprecedented open letter (January 18,
2007), declaring that insecurity had reached intolerable levels:
“In the face of growing insecurity and danger to communities and aid
workers, the UN and its humanitarian partners have effectively been
holding the line for the survival and protection of millions. That line
cannot be held much longer.” [ ]
“Nor can we accept the violence increasingly directed against
humanitarian workers. Twelve relief workers have been killed in the past
six months—more than in the previous two years combined. Their loss
has had direct consequences on the Darfur humanitarian operations.” [
]
“If this situation continues, the humanitarian operation and welfare
of the population it aims to support will be irreversibly jeopardised. [
]
“The humanitarian community cannot indefinitely assure the survival
of the population in Darfur if insecurity continues. [ ] Solid
guarantees for the safety of civilians and humanitarian workers [are]
urgently needed.”
The next week, this letter from UN humanitarian organizations was
followed by a very similar one from six distinguished nongovernmental
humanitarian organizations.
[The present: A survey of very recent developments clearly suggests
that despite these desperate pleas, the security situation in Darfur
continues to deteriorate. Last week (October 8, 2007) the UN made a
decision to withdraw its non-essential personnel from Nyala, capital of
South Darfur and the humanitarian hub for all of Darfur. This was done
under cover of the Eid holiday. In an October 17, 2007 press release,
the UN World Food Program reported that three of its drivers had been
shot to death in South Darfur. In late September 2007, the relief agency
World Vision scaled back its operations in South Darfur after its staff
suffered three attacks within a week, putting all non-essential staff on
leave, with only approximately 85 of its staff of 325 (international and
national) remaining; the organization feeds 500,000 people and runs
clinics and nutrition centers. Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans
Frontieres, the only medical relief organization in Muhajiriya, has
withdrawn. So too has Solidarités, which provided water, sanitation, and
food to the town’s residents; a Solidarités worker was killed in
Khartoum’s assault of last week. On October 10, 2007 ACT-Caritas
announced that it has relocated a number of international staff from
South Darfur to Khartoum.
Associated Press provided in late September a grim overview ([dateline:
Nyala, South Darfur], September 27, 2007):
“Attacks on humanitarian workers in Darfur rose 150 percent from June
2006 to June 2007, the UN says. This calendar year alone, more than 100
aid workers were kidnapped and 66 assaulted or raped, while over 60 aid
convoys were ambushed and 100 vehicles hijacked, the UN says. The pace
of attacks appears to be picking up throughout Darfur. Since last week,
a dozen cars carrying aid workers have been ambushed and their
passengers robbed, three aid workers were kidnapped, and a half-ton of
food was looted in a refugee camp, the United Nations says.”
A Sudan program director for an international aid organization active
in Darfur reports very recently that, “more than one major humanitarian
international nongovernmental organization in Darfur has faced losses of
key staff because of Khartoum’s [punitive bureaucratic] actions.”
Authoritative security analyses by humanitarian organizations point to
increasingly brutal forms of torture directed again aid workers, and
emphasize that there is a high likelihood of attacks against any
organization, including destruction of assets and serious injury to
international and especially national staff. The Sudan country director
for the humanitarian organization CARE International was expelled by
Khartoum for communicating, internally, precisely such a security
assessment. A spokesman for Oxfam International declared (Voice of
America [dateline: Washington, DC], October 9, 2007) that, “the
fighting between the [rebel] factions ‘are having a negative effect on
aid workers’ morale and confidence…staffs are very frustrated. They
are very demoralized. [ ] They’re not able to do the work the came to
do because of security problems.’”
And in an extremely ominous development, that may portend the extension
of war into the camps for displaced persons, Reuters reports today
([dateline: Khartoum], October 19, 2007):
“Government-backed militias have attacked a refugee camp over the
past three days, killing six people and injuring 14 during their search
for rebels from Sudan’s Darfur region, witnesses said on Friday. The
United Nations confirmed there had been shooting in the Kalma camp
[housing some 90,000 displaced persons] outside Nyala town, capital of
South Darfur, over the past two days, but could not say who was
involved. ‘The government sent militias into the camp and they were
looking for six people they wanted to arrest,’ said camp resident, Abu
Sherati, who added that around 50 shacks had been burned down.”]
IS THE DEMAND FOR PROTECTION A “DELUSION”?
Can it be so difficult to discern what humanitarian organizations were
seeking last January with their urgent plea for “solid guarantees for
the safety of civilians and humanitarian workers”? Although unable for
political reasons to be fully explicit, there can be no doubt that that
theirs was a desperate request for precisely the sort of force ridiculed
by de Waal as a “salvation delusion.”
Moreover, it is important to be honest about the larger political
context for any force deploying to Darfur to protect civilians and
humanitarians. Certainly by the time de Waal published his piece in The
London Review of Books (November 30, 2006), the issue of non-consensual
deployment of force to Darfur was a dead letter, as de Waal well knew.
His introduction of the issue served only to obscure the basic
conflation that defines his argument: a claim about “troops fighting
their way into Darfur” has, and had, nothing to do with the options
that were seriously entertained by the only nations militarily capable
of mounting non-consensual intervention, for whatever purposes. It was
certainly not what humanitarian organizations, desperate for improved
security, were calling for—or could ever call for, given their
mandates and terms of operation.
To be sure, some had argued that our moral, legal, and institutional
obligations to prevent genocide and other atrocity crimes obliged
non-consensual deployment. (This obligation, this “responsibility to
protect,” was unanimously accepted by the UN World Summit of September
2005 [paragraph 139]—and was framed specifically so as to supersede
claims of national sovereignty in the event of genocide, “ethnic
cleansing,” and crimes against humanity.) A joint letter of September
13, 2006, from “eighteen international human rights, humanitarian, and
conflict-prevention organizations,” “condemn[ed] the recent violence
launched by the Government of Sudan in North Darfur and call[ed] for
stepped up diplomatic pressure and for the rapid deployment of a robust
UN peacekeeping force.”
The letter also called on the international community,
“to significantly intensify diplomatic efforts with the Government of
Sudan while concurrently planning for the rapid deployment of an
adequately funded and well-equipped UN force to protect the people of
Darfur regardless of the acquiescence of the Sudanese Government.”
Signatories included Amnesty International/USA, Physicians for Human
Rights, Refugees International, Aegis Trust (UK), Africa Action,
Sudanese Organization Against Torture (SOAT), Human Rights First,
Urgence Darfour (France), Genocide Watch, and the Montreal Institute for
Genocide and Human Rights Studies, among others. (See full text of
statement at Physicians for Human Rights website,
http://www.phrusa.org/research/sudan/news_2006-09-13.html)
This writer had earlier argued in the Washington Post (September 3,
2006) that in the context of hundreds of thousands of lives clearly at
risk,
“If the world fails to intervene in Darfur, with or without the
consent of Sudan’s government, the fleeting ideal of an international
‘responsibility to protect’ civilians at the most acute risk will
have collapsed—another consequential casualty of Darfur’s genocide.”
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101453.html?sub=new)
But discussion of such intervention had no traction within the various
international political arenas of consequence, and the only real issue
was moral clarity about obligations in the face of genocide proceeding
before our very eyes. For “there were no secrets [in Darfur],” as
Mukesh Kapila, former UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, had
declared in March 2004:
“The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers
involved. [The slaughter in Darfur] is more than just a conflict, it is
an organised attempt to do away with a group of people. [ ] I was
present in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, and I’ve seen many other
situations around the world and I am totally shocked at what is going on
in Darfur.”
And despite claims by Khartoum in early February 2004 to have brought
the situation in Darfur under “total military control,” Kapila insisted
that:
“The pattern of organised attacks on civilians and villages,
abductions, killings and organised rapes by militias is getting worse by
the day and could deteriorate even further. One can see how the
situation might develop without prompt [action]…all the warning signs
are there.”
Of course there has been no “prompt action,” and Kapila’s ominous
premonition about what “might develop” has come fully to pass.
It has not been for lack of full knowledge that the international
community has failed to act; an excessively fractious rebel movement
could serve as no excuse for inaction when the international community
first became fully aware of the scale of Darfur’s genocide. The
failure to act—then and now—has derived directly from a refusal to
expend Western lives, or more than a very modest amount of Western
treasure, in halting massive, violent, unambiguously ethnically-targeted
human destruction. To say otherwise now is to engage in self-exculpatory
history-writing: the world failed Darfur in 2004, and has subsequently
failed in a wide range of ways, just as it failed Rwanda in 1993-94.
By deliberately misrepresenting the ambitions of those arguing for
intervention, even for non-consensual intervention, Flint, de Waal and
others have enjoyed a perverse success, helping to convince
international actors with the power to intervene that they are right to
remain inert, except for strenuous exercises in unctuous hand-wringing.
And of course now, surveying the environment into which the force
finally, belatedly authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1769
must deploy, it is indeed difficult not to see the myriad difficulties
and obstacles to civilian and humanitarian protection.
But in the end, the delayed international commitment to deploy the
force originally authorized by Resolution 1706 (August 2006) has only
given such arguments as de Waal’s the features of a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The disastrous Darfur Peace Agreement (May 2006), far from
bringing peace or security to Darfur, only ensured that violence would
escalate and that the fragmentation of the rebel movement would
dramatically accelerate. Indeed, the perverse irony of accommodation is
that those such as de Waal and others in the international community who
have acquiesced in Khartoum’s cynical insistence on the badly flawed
DPA are the ones engaging in the real “salvation delusion.” And the
chaotic violence that we see today, which accelerated most dramatically
in the immediate wake of the DPA, is the legacy of their expediency and
their credulity in accepting Khartoum’s commitment to any set of
security arrangements.
For of course the DPA left security issues, preeminently the disarming
of the Janjaweed, in the hands of the very men in Khartoum who had used
these brutal militias for years to attack non-Arab or African tribal
populations. Despite their nominal commitments in the DPA, these very
same men have continued to arm the Janjaweed ever more heavily (see, for
example, reports by the UN Panel of Experts on Darfur—especially the
August 2006 report and the very recent October 2007 report, at
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/smallarms/2007/1010panelsudan.htm).
And these are the very same men, the same génocidaires who ordered the
massacre in Muhajiriya, and the destruction of Haskanita, and who are
responsible for the destruction of thousands of other African villages,
hamlets, and towns.
Was it wisdom or expediency, in fashioning the security protocols for
the DPA, that led to such a consequential decision concerning the
neutralizing of the Janjaweed? Here we should recall that Khartoum first
promised, as it has many times since, to disarm the Janjaweed on July 3,
2004 in a Joint Communiqué signed in Khartoum by the regime and then-UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan. Why did de Waal and others believe that
the DPA would produce in the regime a different, more compliant
attitude? The Janjaweed remained, and continue even now, to be the most
potent instrument of genocidal destruction (if often re-cycled into
other paramilitary forces). Indeed, as de Waal notes in his book with
Flint, the ambitions of the Janjaweed were articulated all too clearly
in a directive from the most notorious of the militia leaders, Musa
Hilal: “Change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes.”
As de Waal and Flint also note, Hilal’s particularly telling
instructions were sent not only to his own forces but to no fewer than
three of Khartoum’s ruthlessly efficient “intelligence services”
(“Darfur: A Short History of a Long War,” 2005, page 39).
We should also recall that the UN Security Council “demanded” that
the Janjaweed be disarmed and its leaders brought to justice in
Resolution 1556 (July 30, 2004). Instead, the only Janjaweed leader to
be indicted by the International Criminal Court (per the authority of UN
Security Council Resolution 1593, March 2005), the notorious Ali Kushyb,
was recently released by Khartoum’s Ministry of Justice for “lack of
evidence,” despite ICC lead prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s
insistence that he has an extraordinary volume of evidence.
Ahmed Haroun, Khartoum’s current humanitarian affairs minister, was
also indicted by the ICC for atrocity crimes in Darfur. For his
behavior, Haroun was recently appointed by Khartoum to investigate
precisely such atrocity crimes, including in Darfur. Moreno-Ocampo has
been reduced to strenuous public pleading for justice and
accountability, particularly in the case of Haroun. But this is finally
desperation on Moreno-Ocampo’s part. He is of course right to condemn
the silence over justice issues in recent reports by current Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon. But this silence is simply more of an entirely
predictable expediency from the UN and an international community that
has no stomach to confront Khartoum’s génocidaires. The price of
admission for the UN/AU “hybrid” force authorized by UN Security
Council Resolution 1769 is accommodating Khartoum’s claims of national
sovereignty, and its continued contempt for the ICC, and its clear
determination to control the terms of deployment of the “hybrid”
force. Shamefully, this price has been willingly accepted (see below for
an assessment of the specifics of current 1769 deployment).
The National Islamic Front security cabal has exacted similar
expediency from the international community in responding to the
long-festering crisis in Southern Sudan. For despite considerable
diplomatic investment in the north/south peace effort, the world has for
more than two and a half years turned a largely blind eye to
developments in the South. This is so even as Khartoum has made ever
clearer its determination not to be bound by the terms of the January
2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement. This relentless bad faith, by a regime that
maintains a stranglehold on Sudanese national wealth and power despite
the existence of a nominal “Government of National Unity (GNU),”
recently provoked the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement
(SPLM) to withdraw from this tyrannical relationship and insist on a
number of concrete commitments before returning.
The SPLM demanded no more than what is explicitly stipulated in the
CPA. But with the international community evidently unable to attend
simultaneously to two intertwining Sudanese crises, Khartoum has rightly
calculated that for all the diplomatic investment in securing the CPA,
there would be no international will to see through its implementation.
This portends a catastrophic return to war. For ultimately the goal of
the regime is to collapse the CPA at an auspicious moment, and deny the
people of Southern Sudan the self-determination referendum that is the
cornerstone of the CPA. This canniness in reneging on agreements has
been replicated in Khartoum’s response to the nominal requirements of
the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), as well as to the various demands made
of the regime, including explicit demands by the United Nations Security
Council.
JUDGING THE NATIONAL ISLAMIC FRONT BY CPA COMPLIANCE
What happens if we assume that the same regime slated to negotiate with
Darfur’s rebels in Libya later this month is the same regime that
agreed to the various protocols in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA)? What happens if we look at the explicit language of the CPA, the
terms of agreement specifically ratified by signatories for the National
Islamic Front regime and the SPLM on January 9, 2005, in Nairobi, Kenya?
What reason is there for believing that any agreement for Darfur will
mean more to Khartoum than the agreement with the southern SPLM?
Key issues in the CPA can be grouped as power-sharing, wealth-sharing,
security arrangements, and border demarcation. Other issues, such as the
badly lagging census—undermined by Khartoum’s refusal to fund or
properly organize this critical electoral effort—usually relate
directly to one of these four categories. Thus if there is to be
equitable power-sharing in Sudan, by means of the 2009 national
elections explicitly contemplated in the CPA, then there must be a
well-funded census, conforming to the specific needs of demographic
assessment in a country as racially, ethnically, religiously, and
geographically diverse as Sudan.
But in its October 11, 2007 Communiqué concerning Khartoum’s failure
to implement the CPA, the SPLM speaks all too fully and eloquently for
itself in pointing out the multiple instances of reneging and refusal to
move forward with the explicit terms of the CPA. It is a devastating and
comprehensive indictment of Khartoum’s bad faith, all supported fully,
at every point, by the language of the CPA, thus providing the necessary
context for understanding what the regime intends when it signs
agreements:
“The SPLM Interim Political Bureau noted with abundant evidence that
some elements within the National Congress Party (NCP) [the National
Islamic Front] behave as if they want to absolve themselves from their
commitments under the CPA. The main objective of the CPA and the Interim
National Constitution is to create a middle ground in which all parties
compete freely within the bounds of that Constitution. Attempts to
retain pre-CPA laws and institutions undermine that objective. This
attitude is neither conducive to the effective implementation of the CPA
nor to genuine partnership.”
“During the last two years, there were repeated declarations by the
NCP to the media and foreign visitors that 90% of the CPA has been
implemented. This cannot be dismissed as a statistical error. Indeed, it
becomes a question of good faith when the contested issues are ones on
whose resolution peace may either stand or fall. Those issues include
non-implementation of critical aspects of the Agreement, or acts that
either offend the Agreement or violate the Interim National
Constitution. Some of those actions also make a mockery of partnership
or of the democratic transformation envisaged in the CPA.”
“At the top of the issues relating to the implementation of the
Agreement stand the following:
[1] Abyei Protocol, especially non-acceptance of Abyei Boundary
Commission (ABC) Report [July 2005] by the NCP and its continued
frustration of all the efforts to implement the Protocol. [Abyei was the
last contentious issue supposedly resolved by the CPA; Khartoum’s
refusal to accept the findings of the ABC ensures that the region
remains extremely volatile, and the most likely flashpoint for renewed
north/south conflict—ER]
[2] Security Arrangements, especially as they relate to:
*Failure to redeploy Sudan Armed Forces [Khartoum’s regular military
forces] out of Southern Sudan and Abyei;
*New deployments of Sudan Armed Forces south of 1956 borders, e.g.
Khafia Kenji, Hufrat Al Nihas;
*Continuation of support for militia groups;
*Failure to reduce troops to peace time levels in Southern Kordofan and
Blue Nile States by 9th July 2007;
*Failure to integrate, train and equip the Joint Integrated Units [the
JIU’s were to have been the primary source of security in regions
where both SAF and SPLA troops are present—ER];
*Continuation of presence of the so-called oil protection forces in the
oil fields in Southern Sudan;
[3] Lack of transparency in oil sector management and marketing.
*Lack of implementation of National Reconciliation and Healing as part
of peace building process as per provisions of the CPA and Interim
National Constitution;
*Lack of implementation of CPA provisions relating to harmonizing the
Pre-CPA parties administrations, resulting in existing tension in
Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States;
*Inadequate funding of North/South Border Committee resulting in delay
of border demarcation;
*Failure to effect the reshuffle in the Government of National Unity as
presented by Chairman of the SPLM. [Khartoum has for months refused to
accept the right of the SPLM, fully explicit in the CPA, to determine
its own representation in the government, including the ministerial
positions. The effort to remove the despicable Lam Akol from the
position of Foreign Minister was pointedly rejected by NIF President
Omar al-Bashir until faced with the suspension of SPLM participation in
the GONU—ER];
[4] As regards to persistent actions offensive to the CPA and Interim
National Constitution by the NCP component of the Government of National
Unity, we register the following:
*Unlawful detention by Khartoum law enforcement agencies of citizens,
including SPLM cadres and members without regard to the rights of those
citizens inherent in the Constitution. Of note, are the recent raids on
the premises in Khartoum of the SPLM and SPLA/JDB contingent drawn from
SPLA coupled with the unacceptable desecration of the photograph of our
National Hero, John Garang de Mabior. In addition, the banning of
peaceful demonstrations by political forces, detention without trial of
opposition leaders, censorship of the press, public statements by senior
police officers on highly politicized issues which is tantamount to
indiscipline and open defiance by the Minister of Interior to the CPA
and the INC regarding the lines of demarcation between national and
state Police powers; [ ]
*Frustration of legal procedures by the Minister of Justice, and his
partisan and high-handed handling of cases related to non-NCP members,
including the SPLM.
*Political influence on the Judiciary in handling cases against the
non-NCP members, contrary to Article 123 (2) of the Interim National
Constitution that calls for the independence of the Judiciary;
*Harassment and expulsion of diplomats including the Special
Representative of UN Secretary-General without consulting the SPLM, the
major partner, and the uncalled for statements by NCP ministers against
International Organizations and foreign leaders in a way that negatively
impacts on Sudan’s foreign policy; [ ]
*Persistent attempts to frustrate the Assessment and Evaluation
Commission and render it ineffectual, despite its crucial role in
overseeing the implementation of the CPA as an INDEPENDENT body as per
the provisions of the Machakos Protocol. These include intimidation and
curtailment of free movement of its members; particularly its Chairman,
Ambassador Tom Vraalsen.” [ ]
This massive and fully justified indictment of Khartoum’s bad faith
provides the inevitable context for assessing Khartoum’s nominal
commitment to permit deployment of the UN/AU “hybrid” force.
DEPLOYMENT OF THE UN/AU “HYBRID” FORCE: CURRENT STATUS
Even modest attention to the current status of the force authorized by
UN Security Council Resolution 1769 (July 31, 2007) should be the
occasion for considerable alarm. Seventy-nine days after authorization,
the UN/African Union Mission in Sudan (UNAMID) is troublingly belated,
has already encountered serious resistance from Khartoum, and faces a
potentially crippling failure by militarily capable Western nations to
provide key force elements, in particular tactical and transport
helicopters, as well as significant ground transport resources.
Moreover, the issue of which troop-contributing nations will be accepted
by Khartoum continues to exacerbate planning problems.
Khartoum’s present efforts at obstruction are partly reflected in UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s bland noting that “the United
Nations is continuing its efforts with the Government of the Sudan to
resolve the outstanding issues pertaining to land agreements, use of
heavy aircraft, and permission to conduct night flying throughout all
three Darfur States” (October 8, 2007 Report of the Secretary General
to the Security Council on deployment of the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in
Darfur).
The Report continues:
“The implementation timeline for UNAMID is being delayed owing to the
challenges encountered in efforts to obtain land for the construction of
UNAMID offices and accommodation in Darfur, as well as delays in
obtaining feedback regarding the list of troop-contributing countries
submitted to the Government of Sudan. It is of critical importance that
the Government extend the support and cooperation necessary to resolve
the issues pertaining to land, landing rights for UN aircraft and the
finalization of the list of troop-contributing countries.
But as the UN News Center reports (October 8, 2007):
“the mission does not yet have agreement for the land needed to
facilitate the deployment of the heavy support package, a transition
phase between the current AU mission and UNAMID.”
Without adequate allocation of land and water resources, deployment
will be impossible. Significant delays are already creeping into a
deployment schedule that is marked by only nebulous benchmarks:
“Known as UNAMID, the UN/African Mission in Darfur is scheduled to
have its management, command and control structures in place by this
month. And by the end of December, it was expected to take over
operations from AMIS, which has been in Darfur since 2004.” (Inter
Press Service [dateline: United Nations/New York], October 2, 2007)
It is also too easy to imagine these benchmarks being fulfilled by
symbolic gestures rather than meaningful changes in the force on the
ground. Indeed, General Martin Agwai of Nigeria, the designated UNAMID
force commander, recently declared that “there would be at most 8,000
troops in Darfur by January [2008]—only 1,000 more than the current
force: ‘Facing the reality, how many African countries can provide
troops that can fully sustain themselves here [in Darfur]?’”
(Associated Press [dateline: el-Fasher, North Darfur], October 2, 2007)
Agwai asks the right question here—and the obvious answer is,
“exceedingly few.” This is the price being paid for a
“hybrid” force that is “predominantly African” in make-up.
The ability to fly at night is also critical and yet Khartoum is
evidently balking, even as it has imposed gratuitous and restrictive
curfews on the presently deployed African Union mission in Darfur.
Khartoum has also consistently denied fuel for AU aircraft: last year
the Washington Post ([dateline: Gereida, South Darfur], September 14,
2006) reported:
“This week, the government [of Sudan] seized a tanker full of African
Union jet fuel in El Fasher and used it to fill its own military
aircraft, African Union sources said, speaking on condition their names
not be published.”
At the same time, the New York Times reported:
“At the airstrip next to the headquarters of the African Union
peacekeeping force in Darfur in El Fasher [North Darfur], the first job
of the day for the workers who keep the mission’s helicopters running
is to check how much jet fuel is missing. Some days it is just dozens of
gallons. Sometimes it is hundreds. At sundown, African Union soldiers
must turn over control of the airstrip to the Sudanese government, whose
troops guard the airfield all night. In the morning, the fuel is gone,
according to senior African Union officials and airfield workers.”
(New York Times [dateline: Tawilla, North Darfur], September 8, 2006)
There is no change of character within the Khartoum regime, no greater
willingness to accommodate the critically needed security force in
Darfur. Negotiations over night flights (critical for 24-hour medical
evacuations required by a number of countries), land use, aviation
landing rights, fuel supplies, troop composition—all will be ongoing
issues, and will provide the means for continual delays and attrition.
But just as significant as these problems is the refusal of militarily
capable nations to provide key aviation and ground-haul resources. Head
of UN Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno has repeatedly
declared that,
“the peacekeeping mission needs at least 24 helicopters: 18 transport
helicopters and eight tactical helicopters. Darfur is a big place with a
scattered population. ‘If we want to ensure the protection of
civilians, we need mobility and firepower,’ [Guehenno] said. Asked
about a timeline for deployment, in what is considered a militarily
volatile environment, Guehenno said it will take several months into
2008 ‘to reach full capacity.’ ‘If we do not have force enablers
by early 2008,’ including well-equipped infantry battalions, ‘I will
be concerned.’” (Inter Press Service [dateline UN/New York], October
8, 2007)
The US and European countries—including the UK, France, Germany,
Italy, and the Benelux countries—have all failed to commit these
resources, including the two companies of heavy ground transport:
“[UN DPKO] said the force, which will replace the existing,
overwhelmed AU force of 7,000 troops, still lacked 24 transport and
attack helicopters and two transportation companies that UN officials
say would best be supplied by developed states. Western diplomats say
NATO and other militarily advanced countries are already heavily
committed elsewhere, such as in Afghanistan, but also have concerns
about the command-and-control of the Darfur force, known as UNAMID.”
(Reuters [dateline: UN/New York], October 11, 2007)
Of such delays and shirking, a hopelessly compromised force will be
fashioned.
Yet the dilatory schedule seemed of no concern to US Deputy Secretary
of State John Negroponte in a press conference at the UN (September 21,
2007):
“[The US is] hopeful that [UNAMID] can be deployed sometime by the
spring of next year because it’s an absolutely crucial ingredient of
establishing the kind of stability that is going to permit the
implementation of the other aspects of the Darfur peace agreement.”
Of course there is no “Darfur peace agreement” other than the
disaster negotiated in Abuja, and only the dimmest prospect that a
better agreement will be negotiated in Libya later this month. But
dismayingly the US State Department seems untroubled by the glaring
shortcomings of the Abuja agreement. Indeed, Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer—an embarrassment to diplomacy
and the personification of Bush administration incompetence in dealing
with Sudan—declared in recent Congressional testimony (October 3,
2007) that “the Darfur Peace Agreement is a fair agreement which
addresses the core grievances of the people of Darfur.” This is
extreme disingenuousness—on issues of compensation, reconstruction,
power-sharing, and above all on security (there are no credible
guarantors of security provisions in the DPA; see my assessment in The
New Republic, “Why Abuja Won’t Save Darfur,” May 10, 2006 at
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Sections-article565-p1.html).
But disingenuousness is a lot cheaper than honestly confronting the
military demands of a force to protect civilians endangered by what
President Bush just last month described at the UN as continuing
genocide in Darfur. The Washington Post reports:
“UN officials said Guehenno and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will
begin contacting heads of states and senior officials in Africa, Europe
and elsewhere that possess advanced helicopters. The United States has
made clear it will not provide the helicopters.” (Washington Post
[dateline: UN/New York], October 10, 2007)
If the US will not help to provide the required helicopters—either
directly or through grants or loans to countries with trained
pilots—it is simply impossible to credit public comments such as those
of Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte: “[the UNAMIS force] is an
absolutely crucial ingredient of establishing the kind of stability that
is going to permit the implementation of the other aspects of the Darfur
peace agreement.”
THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE AND THE LIBYAN NEGOTIATIONS
There is an entirely unjustified claim by commentators such as de Waal
and Flint to have recognized, uniquely, that a political settlement is
indispensable to any meaningful peace or any truly adequate level of
security in Darfur. But no one who follows Darfur closely imagines it to
be otherwise. The excesses of some American and international advocacy
efforts to simplify Darfur finally do little to obscure this basic
truth, even for those feckless Western nations that speak so
passionately about the agony of Darfur while investing so little in
efforts to halt it.
But this fundamental truth about the need for a peace agreement must
still accommodate the realities of the NIF regime, and here de Waal and
Flint have precious little of value to offer in suggesting how Khartoum
can be pressured to participate with the good faith that was so clearly
lacking in both negotiating and implementing the Abuja agreement. On
present diplomatic terms, the Libyan talks seem headed for an immediate
stalemate, with Khartoum cleaving insistently to the Abuja agreement,
even as the rebel movements, particularly the less representative
Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), have in mind something much closer
to the north/south CPA. But there is considerable support for this
negotiating starting point from factions within the SLA/M as well.
Moreover, there is some indication that Suleiman Jamous is enjoying at
least partial success in moving SLA rebels under a common banner:
“Suleiman Jamous, a leading figure in SLA-Unity, told Reuters: ‘We
are trying to get the Sudan Liberation Army back under one banner if
possible. We are contacting field commanders across the region.’ He
said fighting units previously loyal to other SLA faction leaders
including [Abdel Wahid] el-Nur and Ahmed Abdel Shafie had joined the new
unified group. Jamous also claimed a number of defections from the SLA
faction run by Minni Arcua Minnawi—the only rebel leader to sign up to
a failed peace agreement with Sudan in 2006.” (Reuters [dateline:
Juba, South Sudan], October 15, 2007)
For the talks to succeed, however, the voices of those in the camps for
displaced persons, those suffering on the ground, must be afforded a
much more significant role in the negotiations. Here Laurie Nathan is
precisely right to insist that there has been far too little effort by
the AU and the UN to represent the conflict-affected civilian
populations of Darfur:
“[Currently, it appears that the AU/UN mediators will draw from their
consultations with Darfur’s non-rebel groups to bring their positions
into the talks in Libya. Some experts say this will not produce a
process that is inclusive enough.] ‘It is completely disingenuous to
imagine that you can satisfy people who want their voices heard by
acting as a proxy on their behalf when the stakes are survival,’ says
Laurie Nathan, a research fellow at the University of Cape Town who was
a member of the AU mediation team during the Abuja peace talks.”
(Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder on Darfur, October 11, 2007)
The venue for the talks—Muamar Ghadaffi’s hometown of Sirte,
Libya—is hardly auspicious for such civilian participation,
particularly when we consider the destructive role Libya under Ghadaffi
has played for decades in both eastern Chad and Darfur, with complete
contempt for Darfuri civilian lives reflected in Libya’s arming of
various militia and insurgency groups on both sides of the border, with
murderous consequences. Many of the current Janjaweed forces in Darfur
were in fact first armed by Ghadaffi years prior to the outbreak of
major hostilities in Darfur. But despite explicit advice, from extremely
well-informed human rights and humanitarian experts, against accepting
an anticipated recommendation of Libya as a negotiating venue, Ban
Ki-moon accepted with unthinking alacrity precisely this recommendation
from NIF President Omar al-Bashir in September.
Such ignorant stubbornness on Ban’s part comports all too well with
the painfully familiar declaration from his special envoy for Darfur,
Jan Eliasson, that this is the “moment of truth” for the rebels in
Darfur (Reuters [dateline: Khartoum], October 11, 2007). For of course
the phrase “moment of truth” has been dutifully hauled out on any
number of occasions in the past four years. But it will be a “moment
of truth” for Darfur only if the international community commits
meaningfully to pressuring Khartoum, which has an unerring nose for
expediency and sanctimonious declarations that are hollow at the core.
Khartoum will be persuaded that the international community is serious
only if deployment of the force authorized by Resolution 1769 is clearly
under UN command, and that obstructionism by the regime will be met with
harshly punishing sanctions. The Chapter 7 authority of the resolution
should be used to maximum effect, with the clear threat of a willingness
to use military force against any armed elements that impede deployment
or operations of the authorized force. Selection of the components of
the deploying force must rest squarely with the UN Department of
Peacekeeping Operations; Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of UN DPKO, should
insist that the AU have only an advisory role in the final selection of
troops and civilian police. Critically, the militarily capable Western
nations that have been scandalously laggard in providing key transport,
logistical, and aviation resources must be urgently forthcoming.
Civilian police and military observers should be deployed on a highly
expedited basis to the most insecure and volatile areas, with adequate
military protection.
On the political front, China must be convinced to cease protecting its
client state from real diplomatic pressure; here advocacy efforts
focusing on Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics have been
much more effective than Western governments. European nations must be
prepared to suspend diplomatic relations in the event that Khartoum
cleaves to its obstructionist ways, and should also be prepared to
impose economic sanctions as robust as those of the US.
There are certainly no shortcuts to peace, and a meaningful agreement
will take considerable time. The basic truth is offered by David
Mozersky of the International Crisis Group:
“[Calls for patience and reduced expectations are nearly universal.]
‘This is not going to be a quick and easy peace process,’ says
Mozersky. ‘The peacemaking strategy must reflect the reality on the
ground.’” (Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder on Darfur,
October 11, 2007)
But this is no reason not to push for much more rapid deployment of
UNAMID, particularly civilian police (where the AU is weakest) and
military observers. For of course the “reality on the ground” has
only deteriorated for the past three and a half years, and particularly
since the signing of the DPA in May 2006—certainly in the challenges
presented to deployment of military forces to protect civilians and
humanitarians. And the situation gives every sign of deteriorating
further in the absence of much more rapid deployment of a protection
force.
Here again we should bear in mind the essential point made by Human
Rights Watch’s Darfur researcher Leslie Lefkow: “there was
definitely a lost opportunity for a robust intervention in 2004, when
the situation was clearer in terms of the number and nature of the armed
groups” (New York Times [dateline: Nairobi], October 14, 2007).
In the shameful interim, Khartoum has ensured that the conditions on
the ground in Darfur are as poorly conducive to peacemaking in Libya as
to deployment of the UNAMID force in Darfur itself. For of course the
status quo ensures that this barbaric regime triumphs by means of a
terrible genocide by attrition. And unless there is an immediate effort
to accelerate protection for Darfur, we will look back three years hence
in the same way Lefkow now reflects on conditions obtaining in 2004.
* 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