Date: 11/19/2007
Author(s): Colin Thomas-Jensen and John Prendergast
If not revamped, the Darfur peace process will almost certainly fail. Though hopes were high for talks that convened in early November, the United Nations/African Union joint mediation team made a critical mistake by trying to unify the rebels and assemble them all in one place without a clearly defined vision for an end state that resonates with Darfur’s civilian population. Most of the myriad rebel groups—and all of the significant ones—declined to attend the November talks in Sirte, Libya because they feared a repeat of the Abuja peace process that produced the failed 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, or DPA.
But it is not too late. The Sirte talks can be rescued when they reconvene in December[1] if the mediation team and its international partners, including the United States, take immediate action to reorient the content, to restructure the process, and to build the requisite leverage needed to compel the negotiating parties to reach a final agreement.
Over the last decade, political negotiations in Sudan have achieved one major success—the increasingly fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA—and resulted in one major failure—the DPA.[2] The international community can draw clear lessons from each process:
Comprehensive Peace Agreement: The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African regional organization, mediated between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM. The IGAD mediators articulated a clear vision around an end state that the southern Sudanese population strongly supports: self-determination. Senior diplomats from a “troika” of countries—the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway [3] —supported and coordinated closely with the IGAD mediation team to pressure both parties to make the difficult compromises that ultimately yielded an agreement.[4]
Darfur Peace Agreement: The talks in Abuja, Nigeria that led to the failed 2006 DPA between the government and one rebel faction were also mediated by a regional organization—the AU—but the roles and responsibilities of other international actors were muddled at best. Chad, a country directly involved in the conflict through its support for various rebel factions, was a “co-mediator,” while Libya and Nigeria served as “facilitators.” The United States, U.K., United Nations, European Union, and Arab League were five of the 16 “observers.” The overabundance of actors lacked a cohesive coordinating mechanism and preferred infrequent visits from senior diplomats to consistent high-level diplomacy.
These lessons—clear end state, tight structure, and focused leverage—have not yet been applied to the Sirte talks. A clear strategy for success should reflect the lessons learned from the success of the CPA and failure of the DPA and include new arrangements and approaches on the content, process, and leverage that guide the talks.
A. Content
Recommendation: The joint mediation team should unveil an envisioned end state in the form of a draft agreement that reflects the widely shared concerns of the principal victims of this conflict—Darfurian civilians who have been displaced from their homes.
The issues on the table in Libya are complex, with deep disparities between the positions of the government and the rebel groups. Rather than wait for the parties to come up with their own proposals, the joint mediation team needs to author a draft agreement that begins to bridge this gap by adopting the perspective of a much broader array of stakeholders, particularly the civilian victims of the conflict. A draft agreement that clearly addresses the interests of the people of Darfur and rebel groups will also serve as an incentive for the rebel leaders absent from Sirte to attend the talks when they reconvene in December.
The following four issues must be part of a solution, and the proposals shared widely to build support throughout Darfur.
1) Compensation: Compensation, or diya, is a central part of traditional conflict resolution in Darfur. The primary purposes of compensation are to recognize the harm done to a community and (partially [5] ) satisfy the victims’ demand for justice. In Darfur, this can only occur when the government of Sudan, as the party most responsible for systematic killing, rape, torture, and looting in Darfur, adequately compensates victims for stolen livestock, land, goods, etc. Moreover, compensation for Darfur must be separate and distinct from any reconstruction and development funds that may be offered once peace is achieved. The DPA authorized a compensation fund of $30 million for Darfur. Using a very crude calculation, equal distribution among the 2.5 million displaced people would amount to a $12 payout for each victim. Given the scale of the economic losses in Darfur and the complexity of determining and distributing compensation, the government of Sudan must allocate substantially more funds and agree to an international monitoring mechanism to ensure that those funds are dispersed fairly.
2) Dismantling the militias: The people of Darfur will simply not accept any agreement that fails to establish a clear, internationally monitored process to disarm the Janjaweed militias. By contrast, the DPA holds the government of Sudan responsible for disarming its own proxies, a responsibility that the government has pledged to honor and then ignored on at least six occasions. Meanwhile, a disarmament program must be devised with the goal of formally dismantling the structures of violence in Darfur: the Janjaweed militias and the various rebel factions. The mediation should seek agreement on an internationally monitored process to assemble these groups, collect their heavy weapons, and implement an aggressive program to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate—a process known as DDR—combatants back into their communities. Moreover, the process must take into account the realities on the ground. Although weapons have flooded the region since the crisis began in 2003, many farmers and herders in Darfur have carried rifles for years to defend their land and livestock. DDR programs should seek to take apart the militias without disrupting the traditional livelihoods of civilians.
3) Darfur autonomy: The question of how Darfur should be administered—and whether it should remain as three states or establish a regional government, as was the case until 1989—is at the center of political negotiations over Darfur’s future. The DPA establishes a transition period before a regional vote on Darfur’s status, to be held no later than mid-2010. However, some rebel factions continue to demand an immediate return to a regional government, while others have openly called for self-determination and even independence. The mediation team must work with the parties to establish consensus on the question of autonomy before moving on to the specifics of power sharing.
4) Political representation for Darfur: The mediation team in Libya must tackle the thorny question of how to broaden the power-sharing arrangements beyond the DPA signatories to include the rebel factions that did not sign, and, most importantly, a broader set of stakeholders and civil society groups from Darfur. The power-sharing provisions in the DPA failed to address a major root cause of the rebellion in 2003: a collective demand by the people of Darfur for greater control over their affairs. Only one of three rebel factions at the talks—the SLA group led by Minni Minnawi, or SLA/MM—signed the DPA under pressure from the mediators and international actors. Encouraged by the international community, the government of Sudan has implemented the agreement’s political provisions and awarded the SLA/MM with positions in the government. Further, in Abuja the Sudanese government’s National Congress Party, or NCP, used the power sharing talks to drive a contentious wedge between the southern Sudanese and the SPLM, on the one hand, and Darfurians, on the other, exploiting the fact that the SPLM opposes a power sharing deal for Darfur because it would reduce the Southerners’ hard-fought political gains under the CPA. The mediation team must preserve the CPA as the national framework for a national political solution, and they must consult directly with the SPLM on the draft agreement to address those concerns.
B. Process
Process Recommendation #1: The joint mediation team must immediately broaden the process to ensure that all stakeholders in Darfur have ownership over the envisioned end state and, eventually, the final agreement.
The Abuja peace talks that produced the DPA were between an unrepresentative government in Khartoum and the three rebel groups recognized by the AU mediators (at least two significant rebel factions were not at the table). The one rebel group that ultimately signed the DPA—Minni Minawi’s SLA faction—lacked and still lacks popular support in Darfur. After the agreement, many of Minawi’s forces became paramilitaries for the government of Sudan, committed atrocities, and engaged in widespread banditry and attacks on humanitarians and peacekeepers.
The AU mediators failed to give the people of Darfur and the victims of the conflict—particularly women, internally displaced persons, and non-aligned Arab groups—an adequate voice at the talks, opting to secure buy in from Darfurians after the agreement was signed through a process called the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation. However, the DPA was dead on arrival, rendering moot the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue before it could begin.
Unless of the various stakeholders in Darfur can participate formally in the peace process, any agreement reached will almost certainly lack broad support from the people of Darfur and collapse as spectacularly as did the DPA. The talks must include the following groups:
1) Sudan’s Government of National Unity: The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the civil war between the government and rebels based in the South, established a Government of National Unity between Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party and the Southern People’s Liberation Movement. The SPLM’s decision in October to recall its ministers from the unity government has cast a spotlight on the ruling party’s failure to implement key provisions of the CPA and sparked a deepening political crisis in Khartoum. Urgent action is needed on the part of the international community to re-engage in the North-South peace process and prevent a return to war in the South, but also to ensure that the Government’s delegation in Libya is genuinely representative of both parties in the Government of National Unity. If the NCP and the SPLM do not share ownership over an eventual agreement for Darfur, the agreement will most likely die during implementation.
2) The rebel signatory to the DPA, Minni Minawi’s SLA faction: As a result of the DPA, Minni Minawi and some members of his SLA faction were formally incorporated into the unity government. The government-led attack in October on forces loyal to Minawi at Muhajaria in North Darfur demonstrates the total breakdown of the DPA and bolsters the argument of some non-signatory factions that the DPA should not serve as a platform for negotiations. Minawi and other members of his faction within the Sudanese government, including the recently appointed governor of West Darfur, could turn out to be the spoilers in Libya. It is conceivable that they will fight even harder than the NCP not to reopen the power-sharing provisions of the DPA in order to protect their jobs. These groups have the “legitimacy” of being signatories to the DPA and can and likely will be used by the NCP to act as front men to provide resistance, from a legal perspective, to substantially reworking the agreement. To achieve new power-sharing arrangements, the mediators will likely need to broker a side deal in which Minawi stands down from his position as Special Assistant to the President and head of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, the regional governing body established under the DPA.
3) Non-signatories and other rebel alliances: Most of the rebel groups that did not sign the DPA met in Arusha, Tanzania in August and “presented a common platform on power sharing, wealth sharing, security arrangements, land, and humanitarian issues, for the final negotiations.” [6] While at the time the meeting was hailed as a breakthrough, the divisions within the rebel groups have continued to deepen and some rebel leaders intend to hold the process hostage by their absence. Abdul Wahid of the SLA refuses to join the negotiations until the U.N./AU hybrid force deploys, disarms the Janjaweed, and removes Arab populations that have settled on non-Arab land. Other rebel leaders have rejected Libya as a venue and demanded the replacement of the head of the AU delegation, Tanzanian diplomat Salim Ahmed Salim. Coordinated shuttle diplomacy, whereby envoys travel throughout the region to engage the holdouts, can overcome these obstacles to peace.
4) Civil Society: The U.N./AU mediation team can accomplish three critical tasks by establishing a formal mechanism for other stakeholders in Darfur to have a voice at the Sirte talks. First, greater civil society participation increases the likelihood that a broader section of Darfur will feel ownership of an agreement and help garner support from inside Darfur for both the process and the outcomes. The process of selecting civil society representation must be carefully guarded from outside influence, particularly by the NCP. Many “civil society” participants at the Abuja talks supported NCP positions, suggesting that the ruling party had a guiding hand in deciding who would attend. Second, an assertive mediation can leverage the presence of Darfurian women, displaced persons’ groups, tribal leaders (including Arab groups), and other civil society actors to blunt the impact of rebel divisions. The rebels are fighting with each other for the right to control Darfur’s political destiny, but faced with the active participation of the people they purport to represent, they will face pressure to set aside the personality squabbles on which most of the divisions are based and deal with the core issues on the table. Non-armed Darfurian groups could be represented formally at the talks by distinguished members of civil society, identified by the AU and U.N. as part of their initiative. Third, it raises the helpful prospect that a future administration or local governments in Darfur will not be made up exclusively of rebels and the ruling party, but will include significant representatives of other key sectors in Darfur.[7]
Process Recommendation #2: The countries with the most leverage—the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom—should deploy full-time and fully staffed special envoys to the region to support the joint mediation.
In conflicts where atrocities are committed on the scale of Darfur, warring parties rarely reach durable peace agreements without sustained external pressure. And pressure does not come via phone calls from Washington, Paris, London, Beijing, and elsewhere. High-level diplomatic presence at the talks is essential, and nations participating at the talks should base senior diplomats with appropriate staff in Libya.
To avoid a repeat of the Abuja talks, where a cacophony of mid-level international voices failed to compel compromise between the parties, the United States, U.K., France, and China should convene an informal “quartet” to support the joint mediation team. All four countries are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and have senior diplomats focusing exclusively on Sudan. This quartet should agree on carrots and sticks to cajole and nudge the parties toward an agreement and insistently monitor its implementation. [8]
The United States specifically should designate a full-time senior envoy as the point person for a comprehensive strategy for peace in Sudan, including the Sirte talks and implementation of the CPA. At present, there is no clear leader on Sudan within the U.S. government and the policy is incoherent. The lines of policymaking authority for Sudan at the State Department are muddled and competing U.S. policy agendas—Darfur, the CPA, and Sudan’s cooperation on counterterrorism—will only be resolved with strong White House leadership. [9] President Bush should make clear that his special envoy is in charge and ensure that s/he has an experienced field-based staff to implement a carefully calibrated strategy for comprehensive peace.
Process Recommendation #3: The mediation team—accompanied whenever possible by special envoys from the United States, China, France, and the U.K.—need to take the draft agreement on the road and conduct shuttle diplomacy.
Aggressive shuttle diplomacy can address the decisions of key rebel leaders not to attend and counter the negative influence of regional states.
1) If rebel leaders refuse to come to the peace talks, then the mediation team and its international partners have to take the process to them. The most high profile rebel hold-out is Abdul Wahid, a Fur and the founder of the Sudan Liberation Army, or SLA. Despite a minor military presence on the ground (in western Jebel Marra), Abdul Wahid is a folk hero among many internally displaced persons, or IDPs, especially among his Fur people. His decision not to attend peace talks until the hybrid peacekeeping force arrives is popular in the IDP camps, and Abdul Wahid risks political suicide if he buckles to international pressure and travels to Libya. However, he must not be allowed to hold the process hostage by his absence. The mediators and special envoys must work with the French to pressure Abdul Wahid to appoint a representative to attend the talks in Sirte, enabling him to save face publicly but engage politically. If he refuses, the talks should go ahead regardless. Abdul Wahid lacks the military capacity to play spoiler, and if the negotiations gather momentum without him he will likely be compelled to join. Diplomats supporting the Sirte talks must work equally hard to bring other rebel holdouts—including Khalil Ibrahim (JEM), Ahmed Abdel Shafie (SLA), Bahar Idriss Abu Garda (JEM), and Khamis Abdullah Abakar (SLA)—into the process. Though many rebel leaders object to Libya as a venue for the talks, stronger international engagement through senior diplomats and strong draft agreement would serve as an effective carrot.
2) Since the start of the conflict, Chad, Eritrea, and Libya have jockeyed for influence with the rebels and maintain considerable sway over Darfur’s rebel factions. These neighboring states have strong interests in the political future of Sudan and the potential to undermine progress at the negotiating table if they feel their interests are not being met. Eritrea has hosted most of the rebel leadership at one time or another and the Eritrean government has supported multiple initiatives to unify various rebel factions. [10] The Chadian government has openly supported various Darfur rebel factions since early 2006 and developed a symbiotic relationship with rebel commanders who have operated in tandem with the Chadian army in exchange for logistical and materiel support from N’Djamena. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has supported nearly all sides of the conflict at one time or another, and retains considerable influence through his ability to infuse the conflict with money and weapons.
The mediation team and its international partners should designate lead nations to use their leverage with the rebels to respect a ceasefire agreement and adopt realistic positions at the negotiating table.
a) Eritrea: The international community should seek to engage Eritrea through an intermediary that President Issayas Afeworki trusts—Norway. Eritrea has long involvement with Sudan’s civil wars, and recently brokered a deal that ended a simmering conflict between the NCP and rebels based in Eastern Sudan. [11] Although Issayas is increasingly isolated internationally and refuses to meet with the United States, the Norwegian government retains good relations with Eritrea; Norwegian diplomats can be the international community’s liaison with Issayas.
b) Chad: Despite the recent accusations of child trafficking against French citizens, the French government retains considerable leverage with Chadian President Idriss Deby. Chad hosts 1,100 French military forces, most of whom will serve as the backbone of a European Union protection force deploying to eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic in the coming months. [12] As a front-line state, Chad has a strong interest in the outcome of the talks and how the rebel factions it supports will be represented in the final agreement on political arrangements.
c) Libya: Because of gradually improving relations between Tripoli and Washington, particularly on counterterrorism issues, the United States is best suited to blunt Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s bizarre public statements and his predilection for quick fixes at the negotiating table. Gaddafi has hosted several “peace summits” in Tripoli to mediate between Khartoum and N’Djamena and to resolve the conflicts in Darfur and eastern Chad, and agreements he hails as breakthroughs have universally failed to achieve anything on the ground. Many rebel groups are justifiably critical of Libya as a venue for the talks after Gaddafi’s recent comment that the crisis in Darfur is a “quarrel over a camel.”
C. Leverage
Leverage Recommendation #1: The U.N. Security Council must establish clear costs for parties that obstruct the peace process.
As ENOUGH has consistently argued, the international community must build leverage on all parties to the conflict by imposing and enforcing multilateral penalties on individuals that commit crimes against humanity, obstruct deployment of UNAMID, the U.N./AU hybrid force, and/or obstruct the peace process. Some key actors, including the United States, have argued that punitive actions such as sanctions and divestment could hurt the peace process. Nothing is further from the truth, as successful negotiations require both incentives and pressures. The U.N. Security Council must provide the stick needed to concentrate minds on negotiations and exact concessions from negotiating parties with a demonstrated knack for digging in their heels. The international community’s failure to respond to the recent dramatic upsurge in violence in Darfur and the government of Sudan’s clear strategy to slow deployment of UNAMID is fuelling a sense of impunity on all sides that will ultimately torpedo the peace process.
Leverage Recommendation #2: The United States should provide declassified intelligence to help the International Criminal Court build cases and execute additional indictments against those most responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Responding to pressure from U.S. citizens, the Bush administration disregarded its strong ideological objections to the International Criminal Court and abstained from the Security Council vote to refer the Darfur case in March 2005. But the United States has not provided information to assist Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s investigation. U.S. intelligence services are closely monitoring communications within Sudan, listening to conversations between Sudanese officials and others that could implicate them in crimes committed in Darfur. Earlier this year, a senior U.S. official told ENOUGH that the Bush administration has files that outline the involvement of many senior regime officials in pursuing a policy of scorched earth ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The administration has opted not to hand these documents over to the Court, arguing that the prospect of indictment and arrest could force the regime into “survival mode” and cause it to attack the camps for displaced persons in Darfur. That this argument does not follow is demonstrated most clearly by recent government attacks on camps, the forced relocation of displaced persons, and the expulsion of a senior U.N. humanitarian official in South Darfur. The regime is already in “survival mode.” Deeply unpopular in Sudan, the NCP cannot win national elections scheduled for 2009 without rigging the vote, nor has it backed away from a military solution in Darfur. The United States and others must support the ICC’s investigation. In turn, the Security Council must be prepared to suspend the investigation if a peace agreement for Darfur is signed and implemented.
Conclusion
As noted in ENOUGH’s most recent strategy paper, “An All-Sudan Solution: Linking Darfur and the South,” a strategy for success in Sirte is merely one component of a comprehensive approach to lasting peace in Sudan. The NCP has consistently taken advantage of the international community’s inconsistent focus and failure to articulate a clear path toward peace in Darfur and the democratic transformation of Sudan, as promised by the CPA. While the international focus was ending the war in the South, Khartoum bought itself time to pursue its scorched-earth campaign in Darfur. Facing international condemnation over Darfur and haphazard diplomatic efforts to end the Darfur crisis, Khartoum worked assiduously to undermine the implementation of the CPA. Thus, although the regime is constantly on the defensive, it maintains the initiative, runs circles around the international community’s efforts to resolve both crises, and continues to grind the people of Sudan under its heel.
The only way for the international community to break out of this deadly rut and take the initiative is by devoting significant resources, setting clear objectives, and building the coordinated leverage necessary to achieve a peace agreement for Darfur and the full implementation of the CPA. Another failed peace process for Darfur and an unraveling of the CPA could plunge the Sudan into unprecedented misery. This, at all costs, must be avoided.
enoughproject.org
Saturday, January 5, 2008
FEATURE: Darfur rebel Arabs under Sudan assault Wednesday 2 January 2008.
By Julie Flint
January 1, 2008 (LONDON) — Towards the end of the Abuja talks, an Arab intellectual sympathetic to the Darfur rebels remarked: ‘Ninety percent of the Arabs of Darfur are neutral so far. We cannot continue like this if there is no agreement. We may take a role.’ Eighteen months later they are, slowly but surely, in many ways. In recent weeks the Sudan government has begun responding with predictable force—aerial bombardment, ground attack, arrests of family members. Alex has drawn attention to how the Arabs of Darfur feel abandoned by the international community, collectively demonized for the sins of the government and the Janjawiid. (Re-Visiting North Darfur’s Arabs, 29 November 2007). But there is a new problem today, and one that needs addressing urgently: how are the growing number of Arabs who have chosen to stand against the government to be protected as the government turns its guns on them, in their turn?
The Arab challenge is absolutely critical. Without Arab support, Khartoum could not prosecute its war in Darfur as it is. The regular army is poorly motivated, poorly trained and demoralized by a series of crushing defeats. Much of its officer class dislikes the enforced partnership with the Janjawiid and the abuses that have characterized it, for which the International Criminal Court is now pressing charges.
At the centre of the latest storm is a 31-year-old Arab called Anwar Ahmad Khater, the founder of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) that took up arms against the government last year and a member of the Mahamid tribe (Awlad Zeid section) from which most of Musa Hilal’s forces are drawn. At least 26 of his men were killed last week when government forces attacked one of his camps in the Jebel Kengo area north-east of Zalingei. Some escaped on donkeys after their cars were destroyed and were given refuge by local farmers who offered them water, not caring that they were Arabs. As an SRF militant said in reporting the attack: ‘You see how wonderful Darfur is, but for this mess of government policy and individuals spreading hatred.’
A number of Anwar’s relatives have been arrested, including several of his brothers, and children in the family have been interrogated about his whereabouts. A security officer told one of them: ‘We should have killed him when we had the chance. He is more dangerous to us than Abdel Wahid [Mohamed al Nur, the leader of the original Sudan Liberation Army] because he is working in our zone’. In other words, he is active among Arabs—seeking above all to neutralize them, to prevent the government using them for its own nefarious purposes.
Many Darfurians—including Abdel Wahid, who puts great emphasis on good relations with Arab tribes—believe that Anwar Khater is the person best-equipped to unite the Arabs of Darfur. He is educated (a computer engineer) and free of any suspicion of Janjawiidism (unlike the other Arab ‘rebel’ making news at the moment, Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo ‘Hemeti’). The few foreigners who have met him say he has enormous charisma. Most importantly, perhaps, Anwar Khater has cachet among the Mahamid: his father, Ahmad Khater, was an advisor to Hilal Abdalla, the late sheikh of the Mahamid who is as much revered among the Arabs of Darfur as his son, Musa Hilal, is controversial.
Offered a scholarship to the U.S. on completing his studies, but not permitted by the government to take it up, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur from Khartoum in 2004 and immediately began rallying Arabs against the government. He was detained by Security twice in 2004, once after distributing pamphlets in Zalingei denouncing the political and economic marginalization of Darfur. In 2005, he was detained for a month after a similar protest in Geneina. In 2006, as his influence grew, especially among young Arabs, he was detained by Musa Hilal and flown to Khartoum, where he was imprisoned for more than three months. Security chief Salah Gosh told him: ‘The UN [peacekeepers] will fight you as Arabs. If you do not join us you will never survive in Darfur. The international community’s war will be imposed on Darfur.’
Upon his release, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur once more and began to make contacts with internationals to explain the program of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front—a name recently hijacked by Hemeti, with whom Anwar Khater has refused to cooperate, saying ‘I can never put my hand in the hand of anyone accused of killing innocent people’. His main concern, he said at the time, was to combat the government’s efforts to isolate Darfur’s Arabs and make them voiceless. Since then, he has been working, quietly, to bring Arab dissidents from different tribes together in a single, united body. He has forged good relations with several SLA factions including that of Abdel Wahid.
The SRF’s rebellion is just one example of a new mood among the Arabs of Darfur. Another is the mutiny of Hemeti, whom U.S. officials consider one of the most abusive government-supported militia leaders of Darfur, responsible for much burning, killing and rape. When Hemeti mutinied in October, he cited the double betrayal of Darfur’s Arabs: broken promises to provide their nomadic communities with health and veterinary services, and schools and water, and unfulfilled commitments to pay militia salaries and give compensation for war dead. He said he took up arms to defend his tribe after thousands of camels were stolen and scores of his relatives were abducted by SLA Zaghawa rebels. That was then. Today the Zaghawa SLA leader, Minni Minawi, is Senior Assistant to President Omar Bashir—with power, on paper, over reforming Arab militias after becoming the only rebel leader to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006.
The significance of Hemeti’s revolt is very different to that of Anwar Khater’s. His record makes him a problematic figure, both for the international community and the rebel movements. But while Anwar Khatar has credibility as a young and educated Arab leader with clean hands, Hemeti has guns. The government gave Hemeti brand-new vehicles, Thuraya telephones, heavy weapons and, reportedly, millions of dollars as the price of participation in an offensive against the rebels after they tried to take the war to Kordofan three months ago. But Hemeti double-crossed them, withdrew with his forces to Jebel Marra, and announced his opposition to Khartoum. In response, the government unleashed its air force and ground forces against him.
Both Abdel Wahid’s SLA and Khalil Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement have signed non-aggression pacts with Hemeti and his militia. Abdel Wahid told me in Paris a month ago, ‘There is no UN force to stop the Janjawiid killing my people and I have no force to stop them, so I have to bring them on my side or neutralize them.’ Neutralization may be as far as he is wiling to go with Hemeti, but he wants Anwar Khater on his side. Anwar, for his part, does not rule out eventual unity, but not until political programmes are clarified and the SLA has put its chaotic house in order.
With only a few hundred armed men, the strategy of the SRF thus far has been to target those responsible for recruiting Arabs into the Janjawiid. ‘Arabs,’ Anwar Khater said last year, ‘do not access humanitarian aid because the international community considers that the Arabs are the perpetrators of all the crimes committed in Darfur. This is not true.’
The SRC believes that Khartoum plans a ‘comprehensive attack’ on its men in the coming days, ‘to finish Anwar during the holidays when UN staff will be on holiday’—and before the UNAMID force becomes operational. Anwar, they say, ‘can be the bridge between Arabs and the international community’ – if he survives.
* Julie Flint is independent journalist who led a Human Rights Watch trip to Sudan. Her report for Human Rights Watch, "Darfur Destroyed". She is the co-author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War."
(Sudan Tribune)
January 1, 2008 (LONDON) — Towards the end of the Abuja talks, an Arab intellectual sympathetic to the Darfur rebels remarked: ‘Ninety percent of the Arabs of Darfur are neutral so far. We cannot continue like this if there is no agreement. We may take a role.’ Eighteen months later they are, slowly but surely, in many ways. In recent weeks the Sudan government has begun responding with predictable force—aerial bombardment, ground attack, arrests of family members. Alex has drawn attention to how the Arabs of Darfur feel abandoned by the international community, collectively demonized for the sins of the government and the Janjawiid. (Re-Visiting North Darfur’s Arabs, 29 November 2007). But there is a new problem today, and one that needs addressing urgently: how are the growing number of Arabs who have chosen to stand against the government to be protected as the government turns its guns on them, in their turn?
The Arab challenge is absolutely critical. Without Arab support, Khartoum could not prosecute its war in Darfur as it is. The regular army is poorly motivated, poorly trained and demoralized by a series of crushing defeats. Much of its officer class dislikes the enforced partnership with the Janjawiid and the abuses that have characterized it, for which the International Criminal Court is now pressing charges.
At the centre of the latest storm is a 31-year-old Arab called Anwar Ahmad Khater, the founder of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) that took up arms against the government last year and a member of the Mahamid tribe (Awlad Zeid section) from which most of Musa Hilal’s forces are drawn. At least 26 of his men were killed last week when government forces attacked one of his camps in the Jebel Kengo area north-east of Zalingei. Some escaped on donkeys after their cars were destroyed and were given refuge by local farmers who offered them water, not caring that they were Arabs. As an SRF militant said in reporting the attack: ‘You see how wonderful Darfur is, but for this mess of government policy and individuals spreading hatred.’
A number of Anwar’s relatives have been arrested, including several of his brothers, and children in the family have been interrogated about his whereabouts. A security officer told one of them: ‘We should have killed him when we had the chance. He is more dangerous to us than Abdel Wahid [Mohamed al Nur, the leader of the original Sudan Liberation Army] because he is working in our zone’. In other words, he is active among Arabs—seeking above all to neutralize them, to prevent the government using them for its own nefarious purposes.
Many Darfurians—including Abdel Wahid, who puts great emphasis on good relations with Arab tribes—believe that Anwar Khater is the person best-equipped to unite the Arabs of Darfur. He is educated (a computer engineer) and free of any suspicion of Janjawiidism (unlike the other Arab ‘rebel’ making news at the moment, Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo ‘Hemeti’). The few foreigners who have met him say he has enormous charisma. Most importantly, perhaps, Anwar Khater has cachet among the Mahamid: his father, Ahmad Khater, was an advisor to Hilal Abdalla, the late sheikh of the Mahamid who is as much revered among the Arabs of Darfur as his son, Musa Hilal, is controversial.
Offered a scholarship to the U.S. on completing his studies, but not permitted by the government to take it up, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur from Khartoum in 2004 and immediately began rallying Arabs against the government. He was detained by Security twice in 2004, once after distributing pamphlets in Zalingei denouncing the political and economic marginalization of Darfur. In 2005, he was detained for a month after a similar protest in Geneina. In 2006, as his influence grew, especially among young Arabs, he was detained by Musa Hilal and flown to Khartoum, where he was imprisoned for more than three months. Security chief Salah Gosh told him: ‘The UN [peacekeepers] will fight you as Arabs. If you do not join us you will never survive in Darfur. The international community’s war will be imposed on Darfur.’
Upon his release, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur once more and began to make contacts with internationals to explain the program of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front—a name recently hijacked by Hemeti, with whom Anwar Khater has refused to cooperate, saying ‘I can never put my hand in the hand of anyone accused of killing innocent people’. His main concern, he said at the time, was to combat the government’s efforts to isolate Darfur’s Arabs and make them voiceless. Since then, he has been working, quietly, to bring Arab dissidents from different tribes together in a single, united body. He has forged good relations with several SLA factions including that of Abdel Wahid.
The SRF’s rebellion is just one example of a new mood among the Arabs of Darfur. Another is the mutiny of Hemeti, whom U.S. officials consider one of the most abusive government-supported militia leaders of Darfur, responsible for much burning, killing and rape. When Hemeti mutinied in October, he cited the double betrayal of Darfur’s Arabs: broken promises to provide their nomadic communities with health and veterinary services, and schools and water, and unfulfilled commitments to pay militia salaries and give compensation for war dead. He said he took up arms to defend his tribe after thousands of camels were stolen and scores of his relatives were abducted by SLA Zaghawa rebels. That was then. Today the Zaghawa SLA leader, Minni Minawi, is Senior Assistant to President Omar Bashir—with power, on paper, over reforming Arab militias after becoming the only rebel leader to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006.
The significance of Hemeti’s revolt is very different to that of Anwar Khater’s. His record makes him a problematic figure, both for the international community and the rebel movements. But while Anwar Khatar has credibility as a young and educated Arab leader with clean hands, Hemeti has guns. The government gave Hemeti brand-new vehicles, Thuraya telephones, heavy weapons and, reportedly, millions of dollars as the price of participation in an offensive against the rebels after they tried to take the war to Kordofan three months ago. But Hemeti double-crossed them, withdrew with his forces to Jebel Marra, and announced his opposition to Khartoum. In response, the government unleashed its air force and ground forces against him.
Both Abdel Wahid’s SLA and Khalil Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement have signed non-aggression pacts with Hemeti and his militia. Abdel Wahid told me in Paris a month ago, ‘There is no UN force to stop the Janjawiid killing my people and I have no force to stop them, so I have to bring them on my side or neutralize them.’ Neutralization may be as far as he is wiling to go with Hemeti, but he wants Anwar Khater on his side. Anwar, for his part, does not rule out eventual unity, but not until political programmes are clarified and the SLA has put its chaotic house in order.
With only a few hundred armed men, the strategy of the SRF thus far has been to target those responsible for recruiting Arabs into the Janjawiid. ‘Arabs,’ Anwar Khater said last year, ‘do not access humanitarian aid because the international community considers that the Arabs are the perpetrators of all the crimes committed in Darfur. This is not true.’
The SRC believes that Khartoum plans a ‘comprehensive attack’ on its men in the coming days, ‘to finish Anwar during the holidays when UN staff will be on holiday’—and before the UNAMID force becomes operational. Anwar, they say, ‘can be the bridge between Arabs and the international community’ – if he survives.
* Julie Flint is independent journalist who led a Human Rights Watch trip to Sudan. Her report for Human Rights Watch, "Darfur Destroyed". She is the co-author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War."
(Sudan Tribune)
Bush says “frustrated” with UN, AU over Darfur force deployment
Saturday 5 January 2008.
By Wasil Ali
January 4, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — US President George Bush expressed frustration over the slow pace of deploying the UN-AU hybrid force to the war ravaged region of Darfur.
Bush speaks about the injustices present in the Darfur region of Sudan at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington April 18, 2007 (Reuters)
“I have been frustrated, frankly, with the pace of the United Nations and the AU to get troops in there” Bush told a group of Arab reporters at the White House today.
A joint African-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur on Monday and existing AU forces switched their green berets to the UN blue ones. The transfer of authority has been largely symbolic.
Sudan not signed off on the Status of Force (SAF) agreement that governs the work of the new force. It has refused to allow night flights — except for medical evacuation — or large U.N. cargo planes.
Additionally, the government has attempted to require the force to give it advance notice of all movements and to ensure that its military can scramble U.N. radio communications when it is conducting operations.
Sudan has also refused to allow non-African units in Darfur including Swedish, Thai and Nepalese troops.
Bush stressed that the deployment of the hybrid force is crucial for enforcing security in Darfur.
“My concern is about the individual that’s out in the remote regions of Darfur, maybe going hungry, definitely worried about violence” he said.
He added that the peacekeeping force’s main task is to “help the folks who are living in these dispersed camps have a normal life”.
The US president also signaled impatience with the splintering of Darfur rebel groups saying that it is impeding the peace process.
“There has to be cohesion amongst the rebels and a genuine, real peace process where people sit down seriously — to seriously discuss a better way forward” Bush said.
Major Darfur rebel groups have boycotted the latest round of peace talks in Libya for different reasons including the demand of peacekeeping force deployment.
“The rebel groups cannot take advantage of — continue to take advantage of this notion that they can do what they want without being serious about the peace” he added.
Bush said that the sanctions imposed by the US were not directed at Khartoum only but also to the Darfur rebel leaders.
Last May Bush ordered stiffened sanctions on Sudan that will bar 31 companies controlled by the government from doing business in the U.S. financial system as well as sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in the Darfur violence.
“We have participated by sanctioning, to send the signal that we expect the government to participate seriously. And we’re also, by the way, as I told you, we sanctioned a rebel leader, trying to send the same message” he said.
The US president voiced support to the mission of Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, in trying to unite the rebel groups.
However Bush made no mention of Salim Ahmed Salim, AU envoy for Darfur who is working with Eliasson on the political track. The US president also did not praise the role of the AU as he normally does when speaking about Darfur in the media.
The omission may signal the US administration’s dissatisfaction with the African Union’s leadership.
Last September the US criticized the African Union and accused it of slowing the deployment of the hybrid force in response to statements by AU chairman.
African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare has issued a warning at the time to Western nations saying that “financing is important, but it does not authorize’ intervention”.
But U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad responding to Konare’s statements said that UN members are picking the tab on the hybrid force which means that non-African troops must be included.
“The African Union secretariat needs to move” Khalilzad said.
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which Washington calls genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use. The Sudan government says 9,000 people have been killed.
(Sudan Tribune)
By Wasil Ali
January 4, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — US President George Bush expressed frustration over the slow pace of deploying the UN-AU hybrid force to the war ravaged region of Darfur.
Bush speaks about the injustices present in the Darfur region of Sudan at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington April 18, 2007 (Reuters)
“I have been frustrated, frankly, with the pace of the United Nations and the AU to get troops in there” Bush told a group of Arab reporters at the White House today.
A joint African-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur on Monday and existing AU forces switched their green berets to the UN blue ones. The transfer of authority has been largely symbolic.
Sudan not signed off on the Status of Force (SAF) agreement that governs the work of the new force. It has refused to allow night flights — except for medical evacuation — or large U.N. cargo planes.
Additionally, the government has attempted to require the force to give it advance notice of all movements and to ensure that its military can scramble U.N. radio communications when it is conducting operations.
Sudan has also refused to allow non-African units in Darfur including Swedish, Thai and Nepalese troops.
Bush stressed that the deployment of the hybrid force is crucial for enforcing security in Darfur.
“My concern is about the individual that’s out in the remote regions of Darfur, maybe going hungry, definitely worried about violence” he said.
He added that the peacekeeping force’s main task is to “help the folks who are living in these dispersed camps have a normal life”.
The US president also signaled impatience with the splintering of Darfur rebel groups saying that it is impeding the peace process.
“There has to be cohesion amongst the rebels and a genuine, real peace process where people sit down seriously — to seriously discuss a better way forward” Bush said.
Major Darfur rebel groups have boycotted the latest round of peace talks in Libya for different reasons including the demand of peacekeeping force deployment.
“The rebel groups cannot take advantage of — continue to take advantage of this notion that they can do what they want without being serious about the peace” he added.
Bush said that the sanctions imposed by the US were not directed at Khartoum only but also to the Darfur rebel leaders.
Last May Bush ordered stiffened sanctions on Sudan that will bar 31 companies controlled by the government from doing business in the U.S. financial system as well as sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in the Darfur violence.
“We have participated by sanctioning, to send the signal that we expect the government to participate seriously. And we’re also, by the way, as I told you, we sanctioned a rebel leader, trying to send the same message” he said.
The US president voiced support to the mission of Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, in trying to unite the rebel groups.
However Bush made no mention of Salim Ahmed Salim, AU envoy for Darfur who is working with Eliasson on the political track. The US president also did not praise the role of the AU as he normally does when speaking about Darfur in the media.
The omission may signal the US administration’s dissatisfaction with the African Union’s leadership.
Last September the US criticized the African Union and accused it of slowing the deployment of the hybrid force in response to statements by AU chairman.
African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare has issued a warning at the time to Western nations saying that “financing is important, but it does not authorize’ intervention”.
But U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad responding to Konare’s statements said that UN members are picking the tab on the hybrid force which means that non-African troops must be included.
“The African Union secretariat needs to move” Khalilzad said.
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which Washington calls genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use. The Sudan government says 9,000 people have been killed.
(Sudan Tribune)
Jan. 9 set for northern troops to quit South Sudan
Saturday 5 January 2008.
January 4, 2008 (JUBA) — Sudanese officials have set a Jan. 9 deadline for northern armed forces to quit the semi-autonomous south after they missed a third redeployment deadline on Monday, southern official Elias Waya said.
A Sudanese soldier is seen in Juba, southern Sudan, August 6, 2005 (Reuters)
Sudan’s northern forces missed the Dec. 31 deadline following on-off fighting last month between former southern rebels and northern militia forces in the country’s north-south boundary area and months of political wrangling.
"Now, it is before January 9," Waya, both a major general in the former rebel southern army and a member of a joint north-south defence body, said on Friday.
"All the time they agree, but when the time comes they will give excuses."
The redeployment is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended over two decades of north-south Sudanese civil war in which 2 million people died and 4 million were displaced in a conflict fought over ideology and ethnicity, and fuelled by oil.
The former southern rebel movement that now controls the south Sudan government pulled its ministers out of a national coalition government in October, saying Khartoum was failing to implement measures of the 2005 deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war.
One major complaint was the failure of northern troops to quit the south by an initial July 9 redeployment date. Crisis talks between the two sides first set a new deadline for Dec. 15. Further talks moved the date to the end of 2007.
Southern officials accuse northern forces of remaining in southern oil areas to retain control of Sudan’s main export. Khartoum has said it has only 3,600 troops in the south, while south Sudan President Salva Kiir has put the figure at 17,000.
A Sudanese army spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Waya told Reuters on Thursday that northern army officials had earlier said transport problems caused the missed deadline but were now citing the lack of special integrated units of northern and southern soldiers in the oil areas.
Under the peace deal, the joint units are to patrol the area’s that produce Sudan’s vital 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
"(Their) transport and equipment are really very weak," Waya said, adding that was why the units had not reached the oil areas earlier.
He said the U.N. mission in Sudan has agreed to airlift three battalions from three parts of the south into oil areas, which would leave some 10,000 joint units concentrated in the south’s two main oil states.
"These are enough. There is no security threat in the area," Waya said, adding that the integrated soldiers are only responsible for "outer circle" security, with state police and security guarding actual machinery and wells.
Fighting between northern militias and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army on the border killed dozens of people in late December, although the situation has since calmed.
(Reuters)
January 4, 2008 (JUBA) — Sudanese officials have set a Jan. 9 deadline for northern armed forces to quit the semi-autonomous south after they missed a third redeployment deadline on Monday, southern official Elias Waya said.
A Sudanese soldier is seen in Juba, southern Sudan, August 6, 2005 (Reuters)
Sudan’s northern forces missed the Dec. 31 deadline following on-off fighting last month between former southern rebels and northern militia forces in the country’s north-south boundary area and months of political wrangling.
"Now, it is before January 9," Waya, both a major general in the former rebel southern army and a member of a joint north-south defence body, said on Friday.
"All the time they agree, but when the time comes they will give excuses."
The redeployment is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended over two decades of north-south Sudanese civil war in which 2 million people died and 4 million were displaced in a conflict fought over ideology and ethnicity, and fuelled by oil.
The former southern rebel movement that now controls the south Sudan government pulled its ministers out of a national coalition government in October, saying Khartoum was failing to implement measures of the 2005 deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war.
One major complaint was the failure of northern troops to quit the south by an initial July 9 redeployment date. Crisis talks between the two sides first set a new deadline for Dec. 15. Further talks moved the date to the end of 2007.
Southern officials accuse northern forces of remaining in southern oil areas to retain control of Sudan’s main export. Khartoum has said it has only 3,600 troops in the south, while south Sudan President Salva Kiir has put the figure at 17,000.
A Sudanese army spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Waya told Reuters on Thursday that northern army officials had earlier said transport problems caused the missed deadline but were now citing the lack of special integrated units of northern and southern soldiers in the oil areas.
Under the peace deal, the joint units are to patrol the area’s that produce Sudan’s vital 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
"(Their) transport and equipment are really very weak," Waya said, adding that was why the units had not reached the oil areas earlier.
He said the U.N. mission in Sudan has agreed to airlift three battalions from three parts of the south into oil areas, which would leave some 10,000 joint units concentrated in the south’s two main oil states.
"These are enough. There is no security threat in the area," Waya said, adding that the integrated soldiers are only responsible for "outer circle" security, with state police and security guarding actual machinery and wells.
Fighting between northern militias and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army on the border killed dozens of people in late December, although the situation has since calmed.
(Reuters)
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