Four years after the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region started, the search for peace continues. As government planes bombed two more villages, envoys from the United Nations and the African Union arrived in the capital Khartoum. Their task is a difficult one — to try and reduce the level of violence and start a new dialogue between Khartoum and Darfur’s rebel movements.
In theory, there is a peace agreement in place. In Nigeria last year, one faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) signed the Darfur Peace Agreement with the government. According to the Abuja deal, the pro-government Janjaweed militia was supposed to disarm, and the rebels given government positions. But the agreement hasn’t been implemented and was rejected by most of Darfur’s two million displaced. Minni Minnawi, the rebel who signed, now sits forgotten and forlorn in a side wing of Khartoum’s Republican Palace.
For the Sudanese government, the refusal of the rebels to sign the Abuja agreement has provided continued justification for their war. “The Front [National Redemption Front rebels] is fighting. We are forced to deal with it militarily,” President Omar al-Bashir said in a recent interview. As a result, villages continue to be bombed, displacing hundreds of thousands more people from their homes. Bashir said the bombing would continue “until this front comes to peace and accepts peace”.
Even jump-starting talks about peace is complicated by the chaotic state of Darfur’s rebel movements, which are proliferating by the day: there are now at least 10 factions and splinter movements. Though some of these groups appear to be operating from a living room in London, each faction leader claims to be the true voice of Darfur’s dispossessed. Western diplomats have pushed for meetings at which the rebel groups might form a united position — but such efforts have been undermined by power struggles and government bombing.
It is into this unpromising environment that the United Nations and the African Union have this week sent their two envoys, the Swede Jan Eliasson and his Tanzanian counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim.
Their first priority is to find a way to reduce the violence amid warnings from aid agencies working in Darfur that their operations are on the verge of total collapse. The world’s largest and most expensive humanitarian response provides food and water to the more than four million displaced Darfuris, but as security has deteriorated, aid workers have found themselves increasingly caught up in the violence. Twelve have been killed in the past six months — and three women raped or sexually assaulted.
Large parts of Darfur are now too dangerous to operate in. After attacks from rebels and militia last year, no aid agency is based in the town Tawilla in north Darfur. After the town was targeted, its 20 000 inhabitants fled their homes to huddle along the barbed perimeter fence of the nearby camp of African Union peacekeeping troops. With no sanitation or healthcare, preventable diseases are common. A recent report said that 75 people and 10 pregnant women had died in Tawilla as a direct consequence of the lack of medicine.
Elsewhere, an attack in December forced aid agencies to leave Gereida, Darfur’s biggest camp, meaning that 130 000 people are now without humanitarian assistance.
For the past year, the international community’s focus has been to get Sudan’s approval for the deployment of UN peacekeepers. But, more than a year after it was first mooted, discussions are still taking place about the exact nature of the force. A three-phase plan has been drawn up, the first of which has already been completed. Discussions about the more contentious second and third phases still continue. Phase two would see about 2 500 more UN troops being deployed, followed by an additional 10 000 in phase three.
But it is not going to be easy to get Khartoum’s approval. Sudan’s president has repeatedly made it clear that he will accept only logistical and financial support from the UN and that the troops must remain African.
Now, with the visit of envoys Eliasson and Salim, the emphasis has switched once again to negotiating a ceasefire among the various parties. When they travel to Darfur to meet the various rebel groups, their message will be: the government that bombed you last week says it is committed to a negotiated settlement.