Time overdue for a new international strategy in Darfur
By Marianne Nolte*
July 15, 2008 — The window of opportunity for solving the conflict in Darfur is growing ever smaller. There are credible reports that following the May 10 attack on Khartoum, JEM rebels have reorganized and recruited thousands of new fighters and are planning a second attack on Khartoum. Therefore the newly appointed UN/AU chief mediator for Darfur, Djibril Bassole, should use the fact that he comes to the Darfur issue with no previous baggage to act swiftly and decisively. He should ensure that the international community is not distracted either by the likely upcoming indictments of the ICC on the regime’s leadership or the predicted hostile reaction to the international community by the Khartoum regime following any indictments. There is no time to loose.
To date, the international community’s response to the Darfur conflict has been both high- profile and resource-intensive. The question is why this response has been so demonstrably ineffective in stopping or reducing the conflict. The answer is that we have been trying to construct and impose a peace agreement from outside. Having recognised the failure of this policy, it is high time that the international community tried a radically different approach. This would require us to work much more directly with the parties to the conflict to enable them to lead the peace process forward and find a sustainable solution.
Apart from working much more closely with the warring parties, it is also of crucial importance that the newly AU/UN chief mediator should take a more aggressive approach than his predecessors did in coordinating and streamlining international efforts to bring about peace. There are still currently at least three different, partly conflicting, international initiatives to bring peace to Darfur, besides that of the AU/UN Mediation Team. This is a recipe for chaos and confusion. The other initiatives include one organised by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, another effort to kick start peace talks by the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, as well as planned meetings in Uganda to bring together different rebel factions. The indications are clear that these different initiatives serve to exacerbate rather than decrease tensions between the different rebel groups.
Until the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) on 5 May 2006 was signed, the rebel movement in Darfur consisted largely of two main factions, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Instead of bringing peace to the region, however, the DPA splintered the rebel movement and generated an escalation of the conflict. One faction of SLM/A, led by Minni Minawi (SLA-MM) signed the agreement with the Government of Sudan while JEM and a second SLM/A group led by Abdul Wahid (SLA-AW) refused. As a result, the JEM and the SLA-AW split into more than 15 factions.
Tribal rivalries over positions of power underpin these divisions in the rebel movement. Most of the operational rebel movements in Darfur represent a specific tribe for example the Fur (SLA-AW, SLA-AS), the Zaghawa (JEM, JEM-CL, NMRD, SLA-Unity), the Tunjur (SLA-WN), the Meidob (SLA-North Command) and the Massalit (SLA-Khamis Abdullah) etc. This fragmentation has encouraged Darfuris to form new movements, many of which have no support or forces in the field but which contribute to the uncertainty and mistrust and impact on the already fragile security situation.
Many of these groups arise out of genuine grievance but lack leadership, ideology, experience and well-thought-out strategies. Their demands are legitimate but their capacity to articulate these demands politically is lacking.
No quick-fix exists for the conflict in Darfur. Those who are the lead international actors, in the UN and in Western governments, should now acknowledge that our earlier calls for ‘peace by the end of the year’ or ‘peace in six months’ are both unhelpful and meaningless to those involved and also indicate our shallow grasp of the issues at stake for the protagonists.
The conflict in Darfur proceeds from complex historical, political, economic and social causes, the resolution of which will take time. Dates and timelines have often been tossed about with little care for accuracy. For instance, the received wisdom is that the Darfur conflict started in 2003. This was, however, only the date at which the Western media started to notice and report on it. The conflict in reality started much earlier, in the mid-1990s, when disaffected young leaders from different tribes united to form rebel groups to protect themselves and their people against the government in Khartoum. The fighting started in earnest in 2003 when some of these groups converged and formed a larger, more powerful force opposing the Khartoum regime.
The DPA which was the culmination of the international community’s collective intervention was signed in May 2006. Its main impact, as already noted, was to increase the conflict and draw new groups to joining in the fighting.
The conflict is also characterised by commentators rather inaccurately as ‘Arabs’ against ‘Africans’. In its early stages, rebel movements were composed mainly of men from African tribes but now increasing numbers from Arab tribes are also starting to resist the government. Young Arab students or graduates are mobilising their fellow tribesmen, often former Janjaweed fighters who are disgruntled and angry about the government’s ending of the salaries and other compensation. With the recent emergence of these Arab rebel groups the dynamics of the conflict in Darfur is changing and further escalation of violence by the government can be expected. One instance of this was on 30 November last year, when the government bombed Arab camps near Nyala, killing civilians.
The international community‘s response to the deteriorating security and political situation has been feeble and un-coordinated. Last July, the UN Security Council authorised the detachment of a 26,000 strong joint United Nations-African Union force to Darfur, but a year later the government of Sudan has successfully blocked and frustrated the force’s deployment. As one commentator has observed, ‘the international community talks loudly on Darfur but carries a small stick’. Here in Europe there has been much talk of sanctions but none have been imposed. Meanwhile UN/AU-led peace talks in Libya with those rebel groups who t did not sign the DPA have stalled.
There is still the possibility to intervene effectively and kick-start a peace process with a number of relatively simple and low-cost measures. Firstly, negotiations with the protagonists should be conducted in Darfur, not in the neighbouring states all of which, to varying degrees, are actors by proxy in the war in Darfur. Locating the talks in Darfur would yield the double advantage of fewer distractions by outside influences and making possible direct consultations with both grassroots members of the rebel movements and with the civilian population. This is not impossible, it has been done before. In 2005, the US moved all the main rebel leaders of the deeply divided SLA to the African Union compound in el Fashir for consultations.
Secondly, the whole process should be simplified and non-essential participants removed. Currently, the AU/UN are creating confusion by inviting large numbers of so-called ‘civil society actors’ to the negotiating table. This creates a distraction from the main issues and makes negotiations unwieldy. Efforts at mediation should focus on the real actors in the war, which means only those rebel movements which are known to deploy active forces in the field.
Thirdly, because the fighters, young men from Darfur have lost faith in their political and tribal leaders, it is important to identify the new generation of leaders and influencers and to develop their leadership capacities. These are prominent members of the young generation (academics, businessmen, etc) who are close to the rebels and from the same ethnic group. Excellent universities exist in the region out of Sudan which is willing and able to provide tailor-made short courses for these young leaders. This has been done on a small scale already but needs to be replicated and strengthened.
Fourthly, and most importantly, the AU, the UN and the wider international community needs to professionalise and structure more rationally its engagement with the rebels. Currently our engagement is amateurish and incoherent. Successive waves of special envoys, politicians, ambassadors, senior UN officials and other foreign VIPs drop into Darfur for brief visits to the field, usually to exhort the virtues of peace on the fighters. Hardly surprisingly, these visitors are not much regarded by the rebels who meet them. The rebels are mostly not well- educated or sophisticated but have developed a well-founded mistrust of international intervention in their affairs.
For international intervention to be effective what is required are political officers who have mastered the Darfur portfolio, who are prepared to work and stay in Darfur for an extended period, who are ready to win the trust of the fighters by listening rather than talking and who have the political skills to assist the rebels move from the expression of collective grievance to the articulation of a political platform. Because the rebels have become marginalised and mistrustful, the role of the neutral trusted foreigner is critical to help them in defining their demands.
Lastly, there is an important, and hard, lesson to be learned from the DPA: an agreement that is imposed upon the parties, no matter how much international good-will and resources are driving it, will not last. The international community cannot enforce an endurable peace, but it can work closely with the parties involved to help them to achieve it themselves.
*The author worked on the Darfur conflict since 2003. She was a consultant for the UN, the Dutch Goverment and USAID