Uneasy peace

A peace deal for Darfur is in the offing, but real peace on the ground is a long way off, writes Gamal Nkrumah

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Freshly displaced Darfuris await the arrival of the UN relief coordinator Jan Egeland in Gereida, southern Darfur

The Sudanese government and leader of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Minni Arko Minnawi tentatively agreed to sign a Darfur peace agreement brokered by the African Union (AU) in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, Friday. Abdul-Wahid Mohamed Al-Nur, leader of a splinter SLA faction, refused to sign. Nur was backed by SLA forces (Minnawi's faction) Commander Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim and the rank and file of the SLA.

The Abuja deal risks to be stillborn by opposition among Darfur's armed opposition groups. Minnawi is most certainly not the only voice that counts. Indeed, he appears to be isolated, a lone champion for agreement with the Sudanese government. His fellow Darfur freedom fighters see him as a "sell-out" and "government stooge". "He has succumbed to the tremendous international pressure on him to hastily sign the deal," Nur told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Allegations are that Minnawi was threatened with the prospect of being shipped off to The Hague on charges of war crimes if he did not sign the Abuja accord.

Nur explained that he himself came under intense pressure from no less than 18 Western and African leaders, including personal communication by international heavyweights as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I don't want to end up being a Sudanese government employee. I am fighting for a just cause, and not a cabinet post," he explained.

US President George W Bush, perhaps somewhat prematurely, said the Abuja deal was "the beginning of hope." He phoned his Sudanese counterpart, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, to press him to sign a peace agreement with the SLA leader.

"Darfur has a chance to begin anew," Bush said. Such misplaced optimism stands in sharp contrast to the growing despondency of armed opposition groups of Darfur. The world needs a joint response to the Darfur crisis, and a decisive one at that. There is a clear need to reshape international policy towards the crisis, described widely as the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe.

US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick was more realistic. "Does Darfur remain a dangerous place? Yes, it does," Zoellick, chief US negotiator at the Abuja talks, told reporters in Washington. "It is time to turn away from guns and bullets to making decisions through political debate and the ballot box under the Comprehensive Peace Accord," Zoellick explained.

The US has poured millions of dollars into dispatching food aid to Darfur. The US currently accounts for more than 85 per cent of food aid donated to the war-torn westernmost Sudanese province. Meanwhile, Rice rushed to the UN headquarters in New York Tuesday to press the UN to authorise an increase in the number of peacekeeping troops in Darfur.

Those with long memories will recall what happened after the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement that first brought peace after more than a decade of bitter conflict between northern and southern Sudan. The short-lived agreement turned out to be a precursor for an even deeper and embittered civil war that claimed the lives of two million, mainly civilian, Sudanese.

The Abuja agreement could still achieve results, but key protagonists must prove to be more pragmatic. They must agree to be civilised about what divides them. All indications, however, augur ill.

So what are the terms of the agreement? First, the pro-government Janjaweed are obliged to disarm within 37 days of the 5 May deal. The official signing ceremony is scheduled for 15 May. Second, 4,000 combatants of Darfur's armed opposition groups are to be incorporated into the Sudanese armed forces. Another 1,000 are to be integrated into the Sudanese police and 3,000 deployed in civilian reconstruction programmes. Buffer zones are to be created around the camps of displaced Darfuris.

Another stipulation of the Abuja agreement is that a one-off $300 million transfer to Darfur is to be followed by a $200 million annual transfer thereafter. Moreover, compensation must be paid to those forced to flee their homes. The issue, however, that has caused most consternation among the Darfuris is the stipulation that a regional government for the entire province of Darfur will only be put into effect after a referendum. The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the splinter faction of the SLA that refused to sign the agreement want the immediate abrogation of the current division of Darfur into three separate administrative areas -- north, south and east.

The armed opposition groups of Darfur argue that Khartoum insists on the carving up of Darfur in order to foment ethnic strife -- a divide and rule policy that would underline the pre- eminence of government-appointed local officials, many of whom have military backgrounds.

Leaders of the AU have been patiently supportive of the Darfur peace process. Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Nigeria and Congo respectively were in Abuja to render direct support. They prevailed over both the Sudanese government and Minnawi's faction of the SLA.

"The Abuja accord is biased in favour of the Sudanese government," Mohamed Rabei Omar, spokesman to Egypt of the Nur SLA faction, told the Weekly. "It does not address vital logistical questions. By what mechanism, for instance, will the Janjaweed militias be disarmed? There are no details whatsoever." Rabei Omar added: "Compensation is also vague, and in any case compensation should be handed out to individual victims of the war and not arbitrarily or to municipalities and local governments. Unscrupulous officials might simply pocket the money."

Complaint over the vagueness of the text is the main reason why Darfur's armed opposition groups are against signing the agreement. They want more specific guarantees. The main guidelines of the agreement are indeed rather weak. Complicating matters further, the two groups that refused to sign the Abuja peace deal have slightly different positions and key demands.

The SLA's main focus is on individual, as opposed to collective, compensation to victims of the Darfur conflict. The SLA also wants to see an immediate elimination of the three administrative units of Darfur and their incorporation into a single province. Last but not least, the SLA wants the borders of Darfur to be redrawn. "We insist on the 1956 border of Darfur, which extended to the Egyptian and Libyan frontier," Adam Mohamed Adam, a representative of Nur's SLA faction, told the Weekly.

Adam explained that it is of critical importance for Darfur to revert to its original border because the area is rich in minerals and there are considerable oil reserves. Moreover, direct land routes between Darfur and both Egypt and Libya are important means of communication with the outside world and vital for humanitarian relief corridors.

The JEM, on the other hand, is more insistent on reserving the post of Sudanese vice-president for a Darfuri. JEM also agrees with the demands of Nur's SLA faction. JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim stressed that there would be no comprehensive deal until Sudanese authorities accept JEM demands. He added that his movement would not abide by the terms of the Abuja accord.

More importantly, armed opposition groups of Darfur suspect that there has been a lot of hocus- pocus going on behind the scenes. The AU- brokered peace deal is nebulous and unspecific. They argue that there is no point to the Abuja accord until the Popular Defence Forces and the Janjaweed are disarmed.

Humanitarian relief workers who complain of resource limitations, a rapidly deteriorating security situation, and a general state of lawlessness and human rights abuses also echoed these points. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland had to flee Darfur recently after one of his Sudanese translators was beaten and killed. Egeland was horrified at the conditions in the Kalma camp were the translator was killed.

"At the moment Darfur is slowly being strangled; it's dying in front of us," Egeland explained. "Half of the population has now become war victims."