How Darfur could help heal a global divide
By Quentin Peel, The Financial Times
August 12, 2004 — For most of the population of Sudan, civil war has been a way of life – and death – for as long as they can remember. Apart from one brief respite in the late 1970s, there has been fighting in the country for 50 years.
The main dividing line has been between the predominantly Arab and Muslim north and the mainly African south of the country, where the people are Christian or animist. Local wars have fractured the picture further, with fighting over water rights and cattle-grazing causing almost permanent unrest.
The bitter conflict of the past 18 months in the remote western region of Darfur is just the latest manifestation of a disease that has debilitated the largest state in Africa since it won independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956. It started as a relatively minor insurrection against the distant government in Khartoum. It is unusual because the people of Darfur have traditionally provided many of the soldiers in the Sudanese army. Both sides in the conflict are devoutly Muslim, and ethnic distinction between black Arabs and Africans has become blurred over centuries of mixing. Yet it is familiar, too, because a battle for scarce resources between Arab nomads and settled farmers is a factor.
Whatever the proximate cause, the war in Darfur has become one of the most vicious yet in a country that is a failing state, even if it has not yet entirely failed. A reign of terror unleashed on the civilian population by roaming bands of freelance militia, armed and encouraged by the government, has caused more than 1m people to flee their homes in fear of murder, rape and robbery, quite apart from the bombing raids of the Sudanese air force.
That there is a terrible humanitarian crisis is beyond debate. Yet the world is divided on how to help, how to stop it and how on earth to bring some sanity back to a region that used to live in harmony. On the one hand, the US Congress and many aid agencies are calling the catastrophe “genocide” and demanding instant intervention to stop it. On the other, the Muslim world is suspicious that Washington is using humanitarian arguments to justify another military intervention and the eventual overthrow of a hostile regime. The poison of the Iraqi intervention runs deep.
Yet the disaster in Darfur has further ramifications. It has blown up just as the principal protagonists in the north-south conflict in Sudan – the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army – were about to finalise a peace deal after years of diplomatic pressure. It is now touch and go whether the rebellion in Darfur and its brutal repression will derail the process or whether it can be transformed into a wider settlement to stabilise the west, as well as the north and south. This was the best chance for peace in five decades.
Part of the problem is who can intervene without alienating half the protagonists. The US and the UK have been sponsors of the peace process. Yet the merest hint that British soldiers might become peacekeepers in Darfur has brought demonstrators on to the streets and infuriated much of the Arab press. The US is accused of wanting to grab Sudan’s oil, although there is none in Darfur and the rest of the country’s production of 300,000 barrels a day is scarcely a big deal in global terms.
The other part of the problem is how anyone can deal with a government in Khartoum that is directly responsible for the crisis and seems incapable itself of providing a solution.
The Sudanese regime is both weak and authoritarian at the same time. It represents a tiny elite from three Arab tribes in the Nile valley, which dominate the ubiquitous security services. It is part military dictatorship and part Islamic fundamentalist. Outside the central region and the oilfields, its power is erratic. It has long fought its wars by proxy, arming local militia to terrorise villagers and prevent them giving shelter to rebels. That is exactly what it has done with the Janjaweed militia. Yet now it may well be unable to disarm them, as it has promised the United Nations Security Council and the African Union.
One question is whether the government really wants peace. Now it has up to $1bn a year in oil revenues thanks to the assistance of Chinese and Malaysian companies, it could keep fighting a long-range civil war indefinitely. The peace deal requires sharing power – and oil income – with the southerners. John Garang, the rebel leader, would be vice-president. Yet if the process can be kept alive, Mr Garang could be instrumental in bringing the Darfur rebels to the table.
First, however, relief is needed in Darfur. The only organisation that seems capable of providing security is the fledgling African Union. So far it has done very well, persuading Khartoum to allow ceasefire monitors with a protection force into the region.
The AU has soldiers but no cash and very little equipment. That is where Europe, the US and – perhaps most important of all – the Arab world can help. A joint AU-Arab League peacekeeping exercise would help heal the very divide that has caused so much misery in Sudan. The US and members of the European Union could help with aircraft, helicopters and armoured vehicles. Instead of being an exercise that reinforces the divisions between the Muslim world and the west, peacekeeping in Darfur could become an exercise in reconciliation.