Khartoum has little choice but to respect Darfur ceasefire: analysts
CAIRO, April 12 (AFP) — It is in the Sudanese government’s best interests to respect the newly arranged ceasefire in the bloodied western region of Darfur, if it wants to avoid foreign intervention, analysts said.
But the government’s respect of the ceasefire which entered into effect at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on Sunday hinges much on its ability to control Arab militia allies accused of war crimes, they said.
The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said the ceasefire had been respected “so far,” about 18 hours after it went into effect. There was no comment from Sudanese media or officials.
Egyptian expert on Sudan affairs Iglal Raafat said: “It is in the interest of the government to respect the ceasefire.
“The position of the Sudanese government is weak both on the home and foreign fronts. It is in its interest to calm things down in Darfur if it wants to avoid increased foreign intervention,” she said.
Raafat, a lecturer at Cairo University’s faculty of economics and political science, was referring to international pressure led by US President George W. Bush and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The Darfur war is described by the United Nations as the world’s worst current humanitarian disaster. It has claimed more than 10,000 lives and forced nearly 800,000 people to flee their homes.
Annan last week called on the international community to consider military intervention in Darfur if the government continued to deny access to the region to humanitarian and human rights workers.
Bush has urged Khartoum to take immediate action to end “atrocities” in Darfur.
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir vowed Sunday his government would respect the ceasefire agreed Thursday in the Chadian capital Ndjamena with the rebels of the JEM and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
“We have come to confirm to President Deby that we are committed to respecting the Ndjamena agreements,” Beshir said in the Chadian capital after talks with President Idriss Deby.
The renewable 45-day truce, which was struck on Thursday, is the third since the outbreak of the rebellion in Darfur 14 months ago.
The rebels, who are mainly drawn from the indigenous Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa minorities, complain of marginalisation by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
JEM spokesman Abdullah Abdul Kereem said the “ceasefire is so far respected,” but charged that the government was incorporating the pro-government militias in its army, instead of disarming them.
“That’s contrary to the Ndjamena accord,” Abdul Kereem told AFP in Libreville in a telephone interview he said he was giving from a rebel-held district of Darfur.
But in Khartoum, a government official denied the militias were being incorporated into the army. “That’s not true,” he said.
Raafat said the fate of the ceasefire “depends on the government’s ability to control the Janjaweed,” the Arab militias accused by the United Nations of ethnic cleansing in poverty-stricken Darfur.
She said calming down the situation in the largely desert region would make it easier for the government to strike a comprehensive peace deal with the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) after months of talks in Kenya.
“The government can negotiate from a better position if the situation in Darfur is calm,” she said.
The government and the SPLA are holding talks in Naivasha, Kenya to end the 21-year southern rebellion, Africa’s longest armed conflict, which claimed at least 1.5 million people and diplaced four millions.
They said Saturday a peace agreement needed a few extra days of negotiations.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the two sides remained at odds over the government’s calls for the capital Khartoum to remain subject to Islamic sharia law under any deal, despite the presence of large numbers of Christian or animist migrants from the south.
The two sides have already struck a deal to grant the mainly Christian and animist south the right to a referendum after a six-year transition period, and an agreement on a 50-50 split of the country’s wealth — particularly revenues from oil.
Waheed Abdul Megeed, from the Al-Ahram Centre of Strategic Studies, said Khartoum and the SPLA “have no choice but to reach an agreement”.
“The party that causes the negotiations to fail will pay dearly,” he said, referring to the enormous US pressure or a deal to end the war