WHY ABUJA WON'T SAVE DARFUR

From The New Republic (on-line)
"WHY ABUJA WON'T SAVE DARFUR"

by Eric Reeves

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w060508&s=reeves051006

Speaking from the Roosevelt Room Monday, President Bush heralded the
Abuja "peace agreement" between Khartoum's génocidaires and one of the
Darfuri rebel factions as the beginning of "hope for the people of
Darfur." Bush claimed diplomatic victory, explaining that Darfur now
has "a chance to begin anew." The Bush administration certainly has
the right to be a bit hopeful; there were worse outcomes that could
have followed the peace talks last week. But the administration should
not let its optimism obscure the reality on the ground in Darfur: The
Abuja agreement is little more than another request to trust a regime
that has never abided by any agreement with any Sudanese party--not
one, not ever. And it asks the survivors of genocide to accept the
promises of génocidaires rather than providing the meaningful security
they so desperately need.

It is the security provisions of the agreement that are the greatest
cause for concern: There are simply no credible guarantees or
guarantors. The first phase of the agreement calls for a month-long
assessment of the combatants. Only at the end of this does a 45-day
disengagement period begin, wherein Khartoum is supposed to redeploy
and begin the process of disarming the Janjaweed. The success of this
"disengagement" won't be evident until well into July and the height
of the rainy season, which coincides with the traditional hunger gap
between spring planting and fall harvest. If Khartoum reneges on the
security agreement, it will be too late to save those confronting
either violence, lack of food, or the absence of humanitarian
assistance that continues to contract because of insecurity.

The only insurance that Khartoum will not renege is the African Union,
which is charged with numerous monitoring and verification tasks under
the agreement. But the African Union has no mandate to protect
civilians and humanitarians, nor does it have the capabilities to take
on such a mandate, even if the organization's political leadership
could work up the nerve to demand it of Khartoum. Given the dismal
record of the AU force in controlling violence in Darfur, which has
escalated steadily since late last summer, trusting it to enforce the
accord seems dangerous in the extreme. Indeed, accepting the security
terms of the Abuja agreement at face value amounts to an extraordinary
gamble with the lives of more than 3.8 million human beings now
described by the United Nations as "conflict-affected" in the greater
humanitarian theater of Darfur and eastern Chad (whose vast and
growing crisis receives barely a nod from the Abuja agreement). In
essence, the victims of genocide are being asked to trust that the
perpetrators of genocide will disarm and restrain themselves.

No wonder that the State Department and Human Rights Watch oddly find
themselves on the same page in recognizing the urgent need for a
robust U.N. peacekeeping operation. But such an operation is nowhere
in sight, and Khartoum has yet to agree to its deployment (which might
not be completed until 2007). To date, Khartoum's response to the idea
of a U.N. force has been to deny visas to an assessment mission from
the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations--and to threaten that
any force deploying without permission from the regime's chief
génocidaires will find Darfur to be its "graveyard." Moreover, the
United Nations is clearly spooked by the blunt threat Khartoum has
issued, reported in TNR last week by Samantha Power (citing a "senior
U.N. official"): "If you like Iraq, you'll love Darfur!" No matter
that African Darfuris are desperate for meaningful international
military intervention; Khartoum has wielded the specter of Iraq, in a
ghastly irony, as an efficient instrument of terror.

For their part, NATO officials have declared that in Darfur their
"footprint should be as limited as possible." This signals to Khartoum
that there will be no one willing to challenge its arrogant and
self-serving assertions of national sovereignty--no one willing to
ensure that there will be consequences if the Janjaweed are not in
fact disarmed months from now, as Khartoum has again promised.
Moreover, we're asked by the Abuja agreement to forget how many of
these militia murderers have already been incorporated into the
various military and security services in Darfur.

WHY, if it is so flimsy, did Darfuris agree to the Abuja agreement?
Because they had no choice. Sudanese rebel groups do not believe in
the accord, or that it represents justice; they believe mainly in the
consequences of not signing. The rebel group that did sign on to the
agreement, Minni Minnawi's faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement
(SLM), did so under genocidal duress. If the other SLM faction
eventually signs on as well, it will be under similar circumstances.
There was a grim truth in the prediction of Alex de Waal, the most
informed advisor to the AU mediators: In the absence of an agreement,
de Waal declared, "few doubt that Khartoum's Plan B is anything other
than a large-scale military offensive." In other words, the agreement
was secured by means of an implicit threat that genocidal violence
would dramatically accelerate if there were no agreement. It is
difficult to imagine a less secure foundation for a permanent and just
peace.

In fact, a military offensive had already begun in the Gereida area of
South Darfur the week before the eventual agreement was signed. Human
Rights Watch reported on the attack shortly after it began; there was
a terrible familiarity in the account: "The Sudanese government has
launched a new military offensive in South Darfur that is placing
civilians at grave risk. An April 24 attack on a village in
rebel-controlled territory used Antonov aircraft and helicopter
gunships indiscriminately in violation of the laws of war, and
displaced thousands of civilians who had sought safety there." The
implications of the attack were clear: If the rebels did not sign,
"Plan B" would take effect and the military's attacks on civilians
would intensify.

Traveling in Gereida this past weekend, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan
Egeland declared that 2006 has been the worst year yet in the Darfur
catastrophe; he highlighted the immense distance between what is
required in the way of humanitarian access and what Khartoum permits:
"In the peace agreement in Abuja, there is unlimited access granted in
all Darfur for all humanitarian organizations, but this is not the
practice." Indeed, in a recent report to the U.N. Security Council,
Egeland detailed 14 categories of humanitarian obstructionism on the
part of the National Islamic Front--a strategy working with ruthless
efficiency to deny food and medical assistance to desperate civilians.
As it did again in Abuja, Khartoum has in the past repeatedly promised
to provide unfettered access to humanitarian aid workers. But why
should we assume it will be different this time?

And why should we believe that Khartoum will disarm the Janjaweed,
despite the elaborate machinery of the Abuja agreement? What
consequences have followed from Khartoum's previous refusal to abide
by various promises to disarm the Janjaweed, the first made to Kofi
Annan in July 2004? Has the Security Council's July 2004 demand, that
the regime disarm the Janajweed and bring its leaders to justice, had
any discernible effect? By accepting this new promise in the Abuja
agreement at face value we put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

The riot yesterday that greeted Egeland when he visited the vast Kalma
camp near Nyala (South Darfur), forcing his evacuation and that of
other aid workers, was apparently sparked by the desperate demand of
displaced persons that a meaningful international military force be
deployed to protect them. They know all too well that the Abuja
agreement will not do so. The alternative to signing last week's
"peace" agreement may indeed have been Khartoum's following the
ghastly "Plan B" described by de Waal. But "Plan A" may ultimately
prove no less destructive. It will be different primarily because the
international community, at the appropriate moment of
self-exculpation, will attempt to point to a meaningless piece of
paper signed under genocidal duress in Abuja. But this will not be
self-exculpation; it will be self-indictment. Bush was right Monday
when he said Darfur now has "a chance to begin anew." Left undefined,
however, is what that new beginning will bring.

Eric Reeves is a professor of English Language and Literature at Smith
College and has written extensively on Sudan.

Eric Reeves
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063

413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
www.sudanreeves.org