Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Prospects for Peace in Darfur Today
April 19, 2007
A Statement by Alex de Waal, Program Director
Social Science Research Council
810 Seventh Ave, New York NY 10019
Congressman Lantos, members of this Committee,
It is a pleasure to be invited here to testify at this hearing and to present some of my views and analysis on the situation in Darfur, a part of the world that I knew intimately in the 1980s, and whose travails I have followed closely since then.
I will focus my remarks on two major points. One is that Darfur today is different to the Darfur of 2003-04, when, on the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, the conscience of the world-and notably this House-was awoken to condemn the massacres, dispossession and rape as "genocide." Many realities in Darfur have changed and we need an accurate appraisal and analysis of the situation if we are to take the right decisions. The crisis in Darfur has been characterized as "genocide," as "war" and as "anarchy." None of these descriptions does justice to the complexity of the situation and the changes in the political and military landscape, especially in the last year. I submit that in order for us to respond appropriately, it is important to recognize the realities-notably that Darfur today cannot be described as a conflict between Arabs and Africans.
My second point is that the essential test of any policy for Darfur-or indeed Sudan-is that it should work. "Ought" implies "can": in framing our actions we should be aware of what can succeed.
In that regard, I draw upon my experience as a member of the AU mediation team in Abuja, when I was tasked with mediating a comprehensive ceasefire for Darfur and convening a task force to draw up an implementation plan for AU or UN forces. We must be aware of the considerable limitations on what international forces, such as are proposed under UN Security Council Resolution 1706, can achieve in Darfur. What they can do is to monitor and selectively enforce a ceasefire including demilitarization of displaced camps and humanitarian access routes. What they cannot do is to police Darfur, disarm the Janjaweed or provide protection to the majority of Darfurian civilians in the event of an eruption of major violence. The proposed UN troop deployment could not fulfill these latter tasks, even with a workable ceasefire, and certainly cannot undertake them in the middle of ongoing hostilities.
The current political alignment is not favorable for a rapid peace settlement for Darfur. Nonetheless, without the warring parties having confidence that there is progress towards such a settlement, the task of any international peacekeeping or protection force in Darfur will be infinitely harder. Our immediate aim should be a robust and monitorable ceasefire. In turn, a credible political peace process for Darfur requires putting Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement back on track, and restoring Sudanese confidence in that peace agreement. I urge the U.S. government to keep this primary aim clearly in focus.
My Personal Involvement in Darfur
I lived and worked in Darfur from 1985-87, when I conducted research for my PhD thesis. Of the villages and nomadic camps where I lived, three are completely destroyed-one of them occupied by Janjaweed-two are partly destroyed, one is a government garrison, and one a stronghold of the SLA, which was attacked and bombed by the government. Another-where I stayed as a guest of Sheikh Hilal Abdalla, father of Musa Hilal-is a camp for the Janjaweed. One day I hope to return to these places and document what has happened to the people I knew who lived in each of them.
During the 1990s, and during the period of the peace talks between the Sudan government and the SPLM during 2001-04, I focused much of my energy on the question of the marginalized peoples of northern Sudan-including the Nuba, the Beja and the peoples of Blue Nile. International attention to the plight of the South tended to overlook these people, who on occasions were suffering from massacre, systematic rape and forced displacement every bit as horrendous as that inflicted on the people of Darfur during the peak of the counter-insurgency campaigns by government army and Janjaweed in 2003-04. I was concerned that the North-South focus of the Naivasha peace talks would leave the marginalized peoples of northern Sudan politically short-changed and vulnerable. I also followed Darfur and brought Darfurians into the various fora I helped organize, though their effective participation was always hampered by their internal divisions.
When Darfur erupted into large-scale violent conflict in 2003 I was saddened and angered, but not entirely surprised. The pattern of the violence in Darfur replicates in most respects the experience of other Sudanese peripheries. In an article I wrote in 2004, entitled "Counterinsurgency on the cheap," I described the atrocities as "genocide by force of habit." We can learn much about the conflict in Darfur by placing it in the context of the previous wars in Sudan and the sadly consistent methods used by the government of Sudan to pursue its war aims.
I spent much of 2005 and 2006 as an advisor to Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, the African Union's chief mediator for the Darfur conflict, dealing with many of the places and some of the people I knew from my years in Darfur. My principal role in the peace talks was facilitating the negotiations on security issues. The main focus of this was working on a text of a comprehensive ceasefire and final status security arrangements-a text that was subsequently enhanced in certain details by the efforts of Deputy Secretary Robert B. Zoellick and his team on May 2-4, 2006. I am happy to say that all the three leaders of the Darfur armed movements judged the security arrangements section of the Darfur Peace Agreement acceptable at that time, with the sole objection coming from Dr. Khalil Ibrahim, President of the Justice and Equality Movement, who demanded that his troops be paid salaries from the government budget during the interim period.
My role also included overseeing an implementation task force, consisting of military officers from the UN and AU, who designed the ceasefire implementation modalities, a plan that in turn was the basis for the troop strengths and tasks envisioned in UN Security Council Resolution 1706, which calls for the dispatch of UN forces to Darfur.
My final task in Abuja was to stay on when all the other members of the mediation team had left, in a last-ditch effort to persuade Abdel Wahid al Nur to join the peace agreement. I came close but did not succeed.
How to Describe Darfur Today?
Darfur's nightmare continues. It is taking new forms. The violence today is different in both scale and nature to that of three years ago. Many fewer people are being killed than during the peak of atrocity in 2003-04, and many fewer are dying from hunger and disease. The humanitarian agencies have done a remarkably good job.
The number of deaths should not be the sole or the overriding measure of the crime and tragedy in Darfur. Millions of people live in displaced camps, unable to return home. They live in fear. The legacy of the immense military campaigns of 2003-04 is that significant areas of Darfur have been ethnically cleansed of their former population. This crime cannot be allowed to stand: one basic measure of peace is that it entitles and empowers displaced people to return to their places of origin, to resume their lives under a local administrative system of their choice that provides them with physical and legal security, including tenure over their land.
Moreover, the capacity for renewed violence on a comparable scale has not diminished. Darfur is awash with weaponry. The army, paramilitaries, rebel groups and local self-defense groups are all heavily armed. Decades of experience in Sudan tells us that war consists of occasional sweeping campaigns in which the army, air-force and paramilitaries destroy everything in their path, followed by longer periods in which the violence subsides somewhat, but the underlying causes of conflict remain unaddressed. Any new explosion of violence rarely follows the same pattern as the previous peak in killing-the location may be different (for example in urban areas or displaced camps, or across an international frontier), and the belligerents may be configured differently (some militia may switch sides to join the rebels, some rebel factions may cut deals with the government). New armed groups may emerge, perhaps among the angry and politicized groups of displaced people, or in neighboring regions of Sudan. These patterns are familiar from Sudan's long-running wars and it would be unwise to assume that Darfur's violence will not surge again and take on new forms.
I submit that we can no longer describe the conflict as "Arab" versus "African." That was always an inadequate description, even during the height of the killing in 2003-04, when racial labels were particularly salient. The ethnic politics of Darfur are much more complicated now. Having armed numerous Arab militia, including the Janjaweed, the government no longer commands the loyalties of its erstwhile proxies. Army generals are fearful of the might of the Janjaweed, who in some locations are more numerous and better armed than the regular army. The generals know it is impossible to disarm the militia by force. Their greatest fear is that some of the Arab militia will desert the government for the rebels. This fear is not without foundation: many Darfurian Arabs are talking to the insurgents and making local pacts. In the other direction, one of the most unfortunate consequences of the Darfur Peace Agreement was the way in which some commanders of the SLA-Minawi, most of them ethnic Zaghawa, became government proxies, to the extent that local people called them "Janjaweed-2."
There is no doubt that individual atrocities in Darfur continue to bear the hallmarks of ethnically-targeted genocidal massacre. But these atrocities do not follow any straightforward "Arab"-"African" dichotomy. One of my concerns about the use of the word "genocide" to describe these crimes is that it seems to imply that Darfur's crisis consist of Arabs killing Africans. Such a depiction is inaccurate.
Many Darfurians characterize the situation as "anarchy." That is correct insofar as the institutions and mechanisms that maintained law and order have broken down or been dismantled, and the government is failing in its basic obligation of providing security. It is accurate insofar as much of the violence witnessed in the last year is localized conflict (including clashes between Arab tribes), fighting among rebel groups, and banditry. Describing the situation as "war" does not do justice to the complexity of the conflict and the extent of multiplication of armed groups. But "anarchy" is also an incomplete description: it fails to capture the way in which the situation is manipulated by the strongest actor, the government of Sudan, which has co-opted many institutions for civil administration into its paramilitary structure.
What is clear is that Darfur's crisis is complicated and has changed. Last year's solutions can no longer work. Last year's labels may no longer fit.
Prospects for Peace and Security
The prospects for peace in Darfur are not encouraging. The political alignment for peace was most favorable in the first half of 2005, when there was enthusiasm for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (just signed by Khartoum and the SPLM) and its promise of national democratic transformation. At that time, pro-peace figures in Khartoum such as vice president Ali Osman Taha were in the ascendant, the Darfur rebels had a semblance of political coordination, and Chad was still part of the solution, not part of the problem.
That favorable alignment slipped during late 2005 and early 2006, and by the time the Abuja peace talks reached their denouement, the political context was becoming less favorable week-by-week. Peace in Abuja was missed by a hair's breadth, but that slender miss was disastrous. The adverse trend has continued over the subsequent eleven months.
I recall some tribal elders arriving at Abuja to encourage the rebels to sign the agreement, making the argument that if the chance for peace is not taken, Darfur faces the prospect of a war of all against all. That Hobbesian scenario may yet materialize. Local disputes are multiplying and the mechanisms to resolve them are too weak.
Today, the Darfur armed groups are more fractured than at any time in their short history. The prospects for unifying them are remote. Arabs groups have emerged as independent actors and should be represented in any new peace process.
External interference-by Chad, Eritrea and Libya-has intensified. The leaders of these countries see turmoil in Darfur as a means of furthering their own political interests.
Implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement is farcical. Minni Minawi possesses no power, the key institutions do not exist or have no resources, and the National Congress Party is choosing the candidates to fill the ministerial and gubernatorial posts provided for the SLM. Contrary to the provisions of the DPA, the Security Arrangements Implementation Commission is headed by an army general, not a nominee of the SLM. The most important institution of all-the Ceasefire Commission-has become completely dysfunctional. The government is practicing "retail politics"-purchasing the allegiance or cooperation of individuals on a case-by-case basis, and describing this as fulfilling the requirements of the DPA.
Credible mediation is needed, but the most important interlocutors face conflicts of interest. The African Union has the mandate to implement the DPA as it stands, and is also tasked with negotiating a new agreement with the non-signatory rebels. It is hard for it to do both. In due course the UN will find itself in a similar position-the UN Mission in Sudan is mandated to implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and Special Representative Jan Eliasson is also tasked to mediate with Darfurian groups which demand that the CPA be revised to accommodate their demands.
This points us to perhaps the most significant single challenge to peace in Darfur: any peace agreement for Darfur must be a buttress to the CPA. But most Darfurians see the CPA, not as a charter for national democratization, but rather as (at best) a ceiling for their aspirations and (at worst) a sinking ship. While such beliefs continue, there is little chance that they will be ready to make peace. Peace in Darfur is possible only if there is widespread confidence in the CPA among ordinary Sudanese, and at present this does not exist.
In these circumstances, many advocate that the priority should be to send a strong international force to Darfur to protect civilians there, so that the Darfurian people who have already suffered enough do not continue to die while the politicians argue interminably about peace over the coming months and years. There is no doubt that a larger, better equipped and better mandated international force could improve conditions in Darfur. But we must also be frank and realistic about what such a force can achieve, both under the current circumstances of ongoing hostilities, and under any future conditions of a fully-signed up peace agreement.
In facilitating the discussions on the security arrangements for the DPA, the African Union security team took advice from a number of senior and experienced military officers and security advisers from Africa, the UN and the U.S. The team concluded that a force of about 20,000 peacekeepers could police a ceasefire agreement between government and rebels, monitor airfields to ensure that the ban on offensive military flights is respected, ensure the demilitarization of displaced camps and humanitarian supply routes, train a community police force to provide security for displaced people, and monitor government efforts to neutralize and selectively disarm the militia. It could fulfill these tasks in the context of a fully-signed up peace agreement with the active cooperation of the parties.
Even with a Chapter VII mandate and the consent of the Sudan government, what such a force could not do is to provide security for all, or even most, Darfurian civilians in their home villages. It could not disarm the Janjaweed. It could not remove the government army and police from Darfur and take over their functions.
In the context of ongoing hostilities, the capability of a peacekeeping force would be even more limited, as it would need to devote much of its capacity to force protection. As we have learned from many other conflicts, international forces do not, as a general rule, protect civilians at risk during an explosion of violence.
The main security discussion that is needed concerns the strategic plan and concept of operations for an international force in Darfur. This was a discussion that we began but did not conclude in Abuja. But in our truncated discussions, some basic principles became clear.
A first consideration is time. Any international force dispatched to Darfur should expect to be there for a minimum of five years. It is not realistic to expect the region to be stabilized in a shorter period of time.
Second, disarmament can only be undertaken by consent, in a staged and reciprocal manner across all armed groups. Arms control is primarily a political process, not a technical one. The government's cooperation in this is also necessary. While Khartoum is most of Darfur's problem, Darfur's solutions must also come through Khartoum.
Third, for an international force to be effective, it must devote the majority of its energy to political work and community liaison, with the threat and use of force comprising only a small part of its activities.
And finally, the force levels envisaged for the implementation of the DPA security arrangements would be woefully insufficient to provide physical protection to all civilians at risk during any possible future eruption of violence. Other measures would be required to prevent such violence or protect civilians at risk.
It is important to be soberly realistic about what the UN-or indeed any international force-can achieve in Darfur. Many Darfurians have exaggerated expectations that the UN will solve all their problems, and these false hopes deter them from engaging realistically with the political challenges they face. It is important for the U.S. and UN to give the right message: peace is the goal, peacekeeping is a tool.
A comprehensive, robust and monitorable ceasefire in Darfur, and a political process leading to a peace agreement for Darfur, and a properly-implemented CPA must be the priority. Let us have no illusions that these goals will be easy to achieve. But a credible political process in this direction is essential and can create sufficient confidence that an international force can function effectively.
The lesson of Sudan's wars over the last quarter century is that peace is possible, if it is pursued relentlessly and with an international consensus. The lesson of Sudan's peace deals is that what ever is on paper is never good enough: the challenge lies in the implementation. Sudan and its problems will be with us for some time to come: we must take a long view.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts.
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