Darfur Peace Process
Mediators at the Darfur peace talks in Doha, now entering their final weeks, have lowered their sights. In place of the comprehensive peace agreement they have been seeking for the last 20 months, they are now speaking of an 'outcome document' that would be approved by the Sudanese government and the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM). There is little expectation that the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) will lend its support to this-despite having sent a delegation to Doha to hold talks on the sidelines of the negotiations for the first time in more than six months.
Chief mediator Djibril Bassolé considers it unwise to attempt to finalize an agreement that would be signed only by the government and LJM, an umbrella group with very little military weight in Darfur, and that would be unlikely to survive the turbulent period that is expected to follow Southern Sudan's January referendum on self-determination. With the government determined to end the Doha process this year, Bassolé is seeking a formula that will acknowledge the common ground found in Doha without risking a repeat of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) of 2006. That agreement was signed by only one rebel faction and, in large part because of that, failed.
On 6 November, Bassolé presented to the Sudan consultative forum meeting in Addis Ababa a plan to conclude Doha by 19 December, predicting that 'the fighting will continue'. A few days later, he requested an extension into January, reportedly believing it might be possible to win the support of JEM.
Others doubt this. Many believe JEM returned to Doha for reasons unrelated to a peace agreement: namely, to seize the spotlight from the LJM; to attempt to portray Khartoum as the spoiler when it insists on ending Doha without a comprehensive agreement; and to seek a way of getting its chairman, Khalil Ibrahim, back to Darfur. Khalil has been marooned in Libya since May, when the Chadian government seized his passport in the wake of a rapprochement with Khartoum and refused to allow him to transit through Chad to Darfur.
A ten-point programme presented by JEM in Doha added to earlier demands of freedom of movement for Khalil, whose forces have been under land and air attack in Darfur for the past several months. Deprived of its longtime base in Jebel Mun and subsequently targeted in South Darfur, JEM has increased its recruitment activities in areas bordering Darfur-primarily, in the Kordofan region to the east. For the first time this month, a non-Darfurian, Mohamed Bahr Hamadein, headed (at least on paper) JEM's delegation to Doha. Hamadein is a member of the Missiriya tribe from Kordofan. The ten-point programme presented to the mediation reasserted JEM's long-standing demand that Kordofan and Darfur be considered together in any peace talks.
It is not clear what exactly will follow Doha, or when talks might restart. Khartoum is insisting on a 'radical re-direction' of the peace process, with a shift from negotiation with the armed movements to a push for reconstruction and a wider 'political process' that involves unarmed stakeholders inside Darfur. There is a growing feeling among international observers that the ruling party wants to call time on any international involvement in Darfur in early 2011, preferring the new 'domestication' process to be organized by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, with the joint AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) simply providing organizational and logistical support.
Many senior UNAMID officials, however, feel insufficiently consulted by Mbeki, and do not have a clear idea what shape he wants 'domestication' to take. Members of the AUHIP team say there is also confusion within UNAMID. They say some departments want a full-blown all-Darfur conference while others favour starting with 'social peace'-including addressing intra-Arab fighting and the concerns of the displaced.
Mbeki has said privately he believes it is vital that there is no political vacuum after Doha ends, and that there must be a 'credible' process that convinces Darfurians they have a stake in the future of Darfur and of Sudan. He has told the government that domestication must deliver 'real debate, real concessions'. A 'security and stabilization' plan drafted by US envoy Scott Gration urges the lifting of the state of emergency imposed in Darfur in 2001 to promote 'confidence-building' between the government and the people of Darfur. The state of emergency established Special Courts to try people convicted of illegal possession or smuggling of weapons, murder, and armed robbery. It also gave the security forces sweeping powers of indefinite and arbitrary detention.
The three main opposition movements in Darfur-JEM, the LJM, and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)-have all rejected 'domestication'. They claim it is a cover for a return to military offensives to crush the movements while the international community is focussed on the referendum in the south. An unpublished government 'Security Plan for Darfur' lends credibility to this claim. It includes unspecified 'unilateral action to improve security' and 'pressure on rebel groups to accept cessation of hostilities'.
The shift to 'domestication' is premised on the assertion that 'the war is over'. The reality of Darfur suggests otherwise. While violent deaths are much-reduced from 2002-04, intra-Arab fighting has taken many hundreds of lives already this year. An attack on Tabarat in North Darfur that killed almost 80 people in September dramatically illustrated the ease with which major militia attacks can be resumed with impunity.
For information on Darfur Armed Groups and Coalitions, click here.
For a chronology of the Darfur Peace Process, click here.
Updated November 2010