Sudan in the dock

Fresh violence breaks out in Darfur as Africa seeks to end the continent's most serious political crisis, writes Gamal Nkrumah

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Twelve-month-old Abdel-Rahman Abu Ghazan suffering from diarrhoea, lies in a Medicins Sans Frontieres feeding centre in Morni refugee camp (above) and Rwandan soldiers board a transpot plane in Kigali that flew them to Sudan's war-torn Darfur region on Sunday

The conflict in Darfur, one of Sudan's poorest and least developed regions, has a military dimension. But the primary struggle is political, ideological and economic. Oil reserves have been discovered in commercial quantities in Darfur, and the protracted oil-fuelled war in Darfur is far from over. There is a lot of money at stake.

Fighting has recently escalated in several parts of Darfur, a sprawling area the size of France. The Sudanese government and the armed opposition groups have accused each other of instigating the new bout of fighting.

The two main armed groups in Darfur -- the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) -- point an accusing finger at the local Arab militias, better known as the Janjaweed, claiming that the militiamen are masquerading in Sudanese government troop outfits, and that many of the 6,000 government policemen ostensibly keeping the peace in the province are actually Janjaweed.

Widespread protests by the indigenous non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur have in the past been put down with brutal military force. And contrary to popular misconception, the conflict had simmered for a long time before breaking into the open in February 2003. According to United Nations figures the conflict has cost the lives of 50,000 people and rendered one million homeless.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- the umbrella opposition organisation grouping the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Amy (SPLA), led by John Garang, and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties -- has adopted the cause of Darfur. The SLA is a fully-fledged NDA member and representatives of the SLA are meeting next week in Cairo with other NDA groups to discuss Darfur and political reform in the country. JEM which has so far stayed away from the NDA is closely aligned to Hassan Al-Turabi's Islamist opposition Popular Congress Party.

Moreover, the Sudanese regime itself appears now to be split between doves and hawks. The doves, allegedly led by President Omar Hassan Al-Beshir himself, want to see the Darfur crisis resolved quickly -- which in practical terms implies stabbing the government's Janjaweed allies in the back. Al-Beshir has not hesitated to do so in the past whenever he deemed it politically expedient. For example, in 2001, Al-Beshir jailed his mentor Hassan Al-Turabi, Sudan's former speaker of parliament and chief Islamist ideologue. The hawks, on the other hand, are claiming that it would be impossible to meet the UN deadline and are more reluctant to bring the Janjaweed to book.

The problem is not simply that the Janjaweed are being sheltered from justice. It is that the Sudanese government appears to be trying to protect itself from the consequences of chastising the Janjaweed.

The Sudanese government has staked its political future on disarming the Janjaweed accused of war crimes in Darfur. Observers, however, note that it would be very difficult for either doves or hawks to castigate the Janjaweed. Such a move could be tantamount to political suicide, for the Janjaweed are an important component of the Sudanese regime's constituency.

"The Sudanese authorities have a moral obligation to protect the Janjaweed. They know the type of weapons they armed the Janjaweed with. They find it difficult to turn against the Janjaweed, when the latter have so faithfully served the Sudanese government interests in Darfur," Farouk Abu Issa, former head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA told Al- Ahram Weekly. "The Sudanese regime turned to the Janjaweed for help only after the army failed to quell the Darfur uprising. The Janjaweed came to the government's rescue," he added.

As often happens within such contexts, infighting among former allies could get out of hand. Already there are signs of tension. The hawks are even persuading the Janjaweed militias, who are accused by the UN and human rights groups of war crimes, to dissolve quietly into the Sudanese army.

But will the international community condone such flagrant disregard of international law?

The African Union (AU) fact-finding mission to Darfur has already noted continuing gross violations of human rights and atrocities committed by the Janjaweed against the civilian population. The AU observers sent to monitor a cease-fire agreement in April between the Sudanese government and the SLA and JEM are now considering concentrating instead on disarming the Janjaweed.

Khartoum, however, is resisting any move to upgrade the AU peace-keeping force in Darfur. Indeed the Sudanese regime insists that the force's main task is not to keep the peace in the war-torn region. "The Nigerian and Rwandan forces of 300 troops, which are now arriving in Darfur, were assigned only to maintain protection for the 80 AU observers deployed in Darfur," Sudanese army spokesman General Mohamed Said Soleiman told reporters in Khartoum. The AU protests that security in Darfur must not be sought by returning to repression.

In a flurry of diplomatic activity, Libya hosted talks in Sirte last week to try and resolve the crisis. And next week peace talks in Nigeria are scheduled to take place.

On 30 July, the UN Security Council passed a resolution urging Sudan to disarm the Janjaweed militia or face sanctions. The UN has so far ruled out military intervention even though both the United States and the European Union have signalled that if a peaceful diplomatic settlement to the Darfur crisis is not reached and the humanitarian situation does not improve then international military intervention would have to be considered an option.

The Security Council is to decide on 29 August whether to indict the Sudanese authorities for failing to contain the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and for arming the Janjaweed.

Khartoum now appears to be sending conflicting signals. President Al-Beshir sounded optimistic about Sudan's chances of meeting the deadline set by the UN.

Sudanese Vice-President Ali Othman Mohamed Taha, on the other hand, seems to think that it is impossible to meet the deadline. "We are doing our best to meet that deadline but definitely due to the logistical problems and limitations we have at the moment, I don't think the time frame is practical," warned the Sudanese vice-president.