FIVE YEARS ON in Darfur and still...STUCK IN THE SAND

Five years on, Darfur’s war has become intractable. Neither side can win on the battlefield. It has become a war of all against all. The rebels are fragmented and effectively leaderless. Some Arab leaders have switched sides; others have mutinied, demanding ever-higher payments for doing Khartoum’s bidding. Increasingly Darfur resembles the political landscape of warlordism, with utterly cynical deals cut for personal gain or profit.

Peace is a fading dream. Neither side believes in it. The Sudan government has no interest in talking to the fractious rebels. It will sign a peace agreement only if it thinks it will gain international respect and the Americans will lift sanctions. But President Bashir believes that, whatever he does, the US will still punish him and push for regime change. The rebels cannot agree on a negotiating platform. And if they could, why make concessions when the prospect of foreign salvation is within sight?

The neighbours meddle and conspire. Libya and Eritrea oppose Khartoum but agree with Bashir on one thing — they want to keep America out. Better for the conflict to bubble on until the international community is exhausted and a solution can be patched up within the region.

With current approaches to peace leading nowhere, only a high-level peace initiative that encompasses the war in Chad and the precarious North-South peace in Sudan itself has any chance of success. This requires multilateral leadership — France, Britain, China and the US all have roles to play alongside the African Union and United Nations.

Darfur’s war is completely entangled in Chad’s war. On 1 February, Chadian backing for Darfur’s rebels prompted a tit-for-tat attempt by Sudan-backed Chadian rebels to try to overthrow President Idriss Deby — they came within an ace of succeeding before Deby rallied and, with French support, drove the insurgents back. Both governments see the two wars as seamless, and rebels and militias cross the border and fight on the other side without hesitation. Darfurian rebels fought in the defence of N’djamena, and Chadian soldiers and rebels fight inside Darfur.

Meanwhile, the north-south Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which brought to an end more than twenty years of war in south Sudan in January 2005, is crumbling. The Government of National Unity, which brings together the ruling National Congress Party and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) barely survived a crisis last year. Few Sudanese expect that the two partners in government will successfully navigate the tricky path of democracy and unity by agreement. In these circumstances, Darfurian rebel leaders ask themselves, ‘why join a doomed government?’

Darfur is a graveyard of failed peace initiatives. Tribally-based approaches to peacemaking were tried and failed repeatedly in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2003, the two rebel groups — the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) — repudiated this approach. By declaring themselves in rebellion against the central government, they insisted that Darfur’s conflict was no local fight over camels and water holes.

For a year, Darfur burned — combined attacks by army, airforce and Janjaweed militia killed tens of thousands and burned more than a million people out of their homes. Hunger and disease brought the death toll to an estimated 200,000.

By the time the intense hostilities were over in January 2005, the bitterness and rage across Darfur were now so fierce that the early rebel manifesto — for better political representation and a fairer share of national wealth — had escalated with demands for compensation, prosecution of war criminals, and an international protection force.

The first negotiations for a ceasefire were held in the Chadian town of Abeche in September 2003. The ceasefire provided only the briefest respite while the government regrouped for a second vast counter-offensive. Another round of talks in the Chadian capital N’djamena in April 2004 produced a ‘humanitarian ceasefire.’ While routinely violated by both sides, this ceasefire did see an expansion in humanitarian access and a sharp decline in major episodes of killing.

The major effort to seek peace was in the Nigerian capital Abuja, where the African Union mediated seven rounds of talks culminating in May 2006. A text was drawn up covering power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security arrangements, but the SLA of Abdel Wahid al Nur and JEM rejected it as too weak. The international partners then made the error of insisting that the agreement — signed by Khartoum and the SLA of Minni Minawi — was sacrosanct, and those who refused to sign would be regarded as outlaws.

This fatally compromised the credibility of the mediation and contributed to a new round of hostilities. The Abuja Darfur Peace Agreement could never be implemented under those circumstances, and when the international community reluctantly agreed to revisit the negotiations a year later, the dynamics had changed.

The current peace process, headed by UN Special Envoy Jan Eliasson and AU Special Envoy Salim Salim, has made no progress in bridging the gaps between the parties. Its achievements are limited to maintaining contact with the rebels and providing opportunities for them to talk about unifying their positions. The biggest rebel groups distrust the mediators. Khartoum, for its part, has made it clear that it will not rewrite the DPA.

Into the middle of these ongoing wars, the international community is dispatching troops — the hybrid UN-African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and the European protection force in Chad (EUFOR). It’s a bold experiment in sending peacekeepers where there is no peace to keep. Privately, professional soldiers anticipate a best-case scenario where both missions keep out of trouble and don’t become an international liability. The worst-case — international troops become belligerents themselves or victims.

What might bring Darfur’s war to an end? Certainly not blue helmets. In fact, all the attention paid to UN troops and the pressure mounted on Khartoum to accept them meant that the peace process was shortchanged.

Today, international leverage is much diminished. After its military role in Chad, France has influence with all the parties but does not seem ready to use it. China’s influence in Khartoum is real but modest — and Beijing isn’t ready to humiliate President Bashir. The US cannot act credibly until a new administration has settled in.

What could bring an end to Darfur’s war? Only an approach that recognizes that the conflict itself — and solutions to it — are deeply entangled in the neighbouring war in Chad, the crisis in Central African Republic, and the precarious North-South peace agreement in Sudan itself.

Today’s piecemeal strategy has only compounded the problems, because each partial solution is destined to fail, and each failed agreement closes off viable options and undermines the credibility of the mediators. Peace in Darfur needs an approach that brings every regional and international stakeholder around the same table — Libya and Eritrea must be involved alongside Sudan, Chad, CAR and all the rebels in each country.

This can only be achieved with the highest level of international leadership acting in concert. That may be a tall order, but nothing less can make progress today. Given the handicaps that prevent the US or China taking an effective lead, a joint French-British initiative that brings in Washington and Beijing, as well as the UN and AU and regional players, is the best hope. And one of the hard-learned lessons of the Abuja peace process must be applied: alongside high-level political pressure, it’s necessary to consult and involve the people of Darfur, the rest of Sudan, Chad and CAR. Without popular support, even the strongest political initiative cannot succeed.

Alex de Waal is author, with Julie Flint, of Darfur: A New History of a Long War, new edition to be published by Zed Books, May 2008.