Sudan collapses Darfuri civil society peace efforts

By Eric Reeves

May 29, 2009 — Is there a road to peace in Darfur? The question
has broad geopolitical implications. Sudan is the biggest country in
Africa, it borders nine states, and is located at the crossroads of
Africa and the Arab world. Its fate is tied not only to the region, but
to the continent of Africa and the rest of the world.

Though earlier this year Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir became
the first national leader to be indicted by the International Criminal
Court (ICC), he remains defiant and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur
only deepens. Several hundred thousand people have died and 3 million
have been displaced by fighting since 2003.

Is there a way to overcome the bloody tribal and ethnic rivalries that
have become endemic in the vast western province over the past six years
and are an essential part of the Khartoum regime’s divide-and-rule
strategy in the region? There may well have been a particularly
promising opportunity, until Khartoum ended a bold and innovative effort
by Darfurian civil society to forge unified positions on a broad range
of key issues. If we want to seize such an opportunity again, the
international community must push hard.

The initiative of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, a conference called Mandate
Darfur, was to bring together some 300 representatives of Darfur from
across geographic, ethnic, and political backgrounds, including
traditional and young leaders and a strong contingent of Darfurian
women.

Instead, discussions slated for this month have been aborted. Mandate
Darfur announced that after months of working with Darfurian civil
society to build a mandate for peace, the Sudanese government was
obstructing the safe passage of Darfurian delegates from Sudan to the
conference in Ethiopia and thus it had to be canceled.

Khartoum’s obstruction of the Darfurian civil society initiative was
greeted with appalling indifference by the world community. There have
been none but the mildest condemnations from the United Nations, the US,
the European Union, and the African Union. It hardly helps that Western
news reporting on this significant development has been virtually
nonexistent. Sadly, it is as though the international community has
accepted Khartoum’s premise that peace talks need involve only
combatants.

But if past negotiations between Darfur’s rebel groups and the regime
have taught us anything, it is that nothing will be achieved if the only
ones at the peace table are men with guns.

Without true representation of Darfurian civil society, meaningful
discussions of fundamental issues are impossible. Land tenure, migratory
rights, compensation for losses, wealth-sharing and development
assistance, true power-sharing – all are fundamental to reaching beyond
an uneasy cease-fire to attain a just peace.

This is of course well known to the brutal and calculating men in
Khartoum, and precisely the reason why they obstructed the conference.
The regime is interested in peace only on its own military and political
terms. Its negotiating partners are the men with guns who threaten their
stranglehold on national wealth and power. When speaking of the failed
“Darfur peace process,” international observers are talking about this
version of negotiations.

Current discussions in Qatar between the regime and the increasingly
powerful Justice and Equality Movement offer more of the same. Even a
meaningful, well- monitored cease-fire seems beyond reach, especially
given the gross inadequacies of the current UN/African Union peace
support operation in Darfur.

All this comes almost three months after the international community
acquiesced before Khartoum’s expulsion of 13 international aid
organizations that represented over half the total humanitarian capacity
for Darfur. These expulsions, which have affected many
distressed regions in northern Sudan besides Darfur, were in
response to the ICC warrant that charged Mr. Bashir with crimes against
humanity and war crimes.

But in conceding to Khartoum’s actions and threats, the world simply
encourages further defiance by the regime. And with the collapse of
Mandate Darfur, we see yet again the consequences of an accommodationist
policy toward Khartoum. Unfortunately it’s a policy that seems
increasingly attractive to President Obama’s administration and his
special envoy to Sudan.

Darfur needs serious and concerted international pressure on Khartoum to
negotiate with both Darfuri rebel groups and civil society. There must
be clear and robust support for a single mediator and a single process
in order to prevent Khartoum from picking and choosing among various
diplomatic forums. The West also needs to apply concerted pressure on
the rebel groups to negotiate now, without waiting for potential
improvement in the diplomatic climate.

And the international community must offer guarantees – including
security guarantees – for any signed agreement. A cease-fire must be
monitored with all necessary military resources, time frames and
benchmarks for compensation and power-sharing must be clearly
established, the brutal janjaweed militia must be demobilized, and
humanitarian and development assistance must be allowed to proceed
unfettered. These are the essential elements of a just peace.

Khartoum can’t be accommodated but must be confronted – vigorously,
multilaterally, unrelentingly. The regime must be convinced that there
are serious consequences – diplomatic, economic, and political – for
reneging on agreements, and for actions that threaten the prospects for
peace and security in Darfur.

The regime’s collapsing of Mandate Darfur works directly against
positive efforts in the region. In turn, failure to respond by the
international community undermines the chances for a just peace.

Eric Reeves is author of “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the
Darfur Genocide”; he was invited by the organizers of the Mandate Darfur
conference to serve as an adviser.