[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Sudan: Peacekeeping without Peace?

[Al Kagan]

FYI

Begin forwarded message:

> From: africafocus at igc.org
> Date: October 24, 2004 5:57:58 PM CDT
> To: akagan at uiuc.edu
> Subject: Sudan: Peacekeeping without Peace?
>
>
> Sudan: Peacekeeping without Peace?
>
> AfricaFocus Bulletin
> Oct 24, 2004 (041024)
> (Reposted from sources cited below)
>
> Editor's Note
>
> Last week's decision to expand the contingent of Africa Union
> peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region to more than 3,000 is the
> most substantial step yet towards an international presence that
> could deter continuing violence against civilians by government-
> sponsored militia. This measure is seen by almost all commentators
> as a necessary if not sufficient response to the crisis. Like the
> increased international humanitarian aid that has arrived in Darfur
> in recent months, however, it is unlikely to have more than a
> modest impact without simultaneous new advances on stalled peace
> negotiations.
>
> Talks on Darfur under the auspices of the African Union resumed in
> Abuja, Nigeria this weekend. Negotiators from the Sudanese
> government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)
> met earlier this month in Naivasha, Kenya, but no new progress was
> reported on finalizing the agreement between the two. Most
> observers believe that the Sudanese government is stalling on both
> sets of talks, calculating that the international community will
> tire of the issue instead of escalating pressure. Meanwhile, a UN
> spokesperson noted that cease-fire violations in Darfur increased
> in September and early October.
>
> This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains several recent short updates and
> commentaries on current developments in the conflicts in Sudan.
> Also of related interest is a commentary by Mahmood Mamdani in the
> Oct 7 issue of Pambazuka News (see
>  http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=24982), which includes  a
> strong denunciation of simplistic accounts of the Darfur conflict
> as "Arab vs. African."
>
> Additional commentaries and updates can be found at the Sudan
> Tribune website at http://www.sudantribune.com.
> For earlier issues of AfricaFocus Bulletin on Sudan, see
> http://www.africafocus.org/country/sudan.php
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> African Union to send more peacekeepers to Darfur
>
> Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
> http://www.irinnews.org
>
> [This material comes from IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit,
> but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or
> its agencies.]
>
> Addis Ababa, 21 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - The African Union (AU) agreed on
> Wednesday to boost the number of peacekeepers in Sudan's troubled
> Darfur region and to send in a civilian police force, Said Djinnit,
> head of the AU's Peace and Security Council, told reporters in the
> Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
>
> The deployment of the armed force, which would number 3,320, was
> expected in a matter of weeks, he said. The one-year mission, he
> added, would be made up of 2,241 troops, of whom 450 would be
> military observers and 815 civilian police. There would also be 164
> support staff.
>
> "Both the size and mandate of the mission have been strengthened to
> be able to better assist the parties honour their commitment and
> work together with renewed commitment and determination to achieve
> lasting peace in Darfur," Djinnit said. "We are talking about weeks
> to have the enhancement of people on the ground."
>
> The AU appealed to its member states to provide "financial and
> logistical" support as well as troops and police for deployment in
> Darfur.
>
> "The size of the mission is appropriate, given the level of where
> we are in the peace process, given the conditions in which we are
> operating, and given the mandate and task of the mission," Djinnit
> added.
>
> The announcement by the AU came on the eve of the planned
> resumption of peace talks on Darfur in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
> Djinnit added that the Peace and Security Council had urged the
> warring factions at the peace talks to show "commitment and spirit
> of compromise" to end suffering.
>
> The expanded force would be funded to the tune of US $220 million,
> mainly by the European Union peace fund and the United States.
> Currently some 300 Rwandan and Nigerian troops are in Darfur to
> protect 80 observers already on the ground.
>
> Djinnit said the force would have three main functions - monitoring
> and observing, confidence building and contributing to a secure
> environment, ensuring aid can get through.
>
> The 53-member African Union describes the new mission as a
> "peacekeeping operation". It is mandated to "protect civilians
> under imminent threat," although the protection of civilians is the
> primary responsibility of the government of Sudan.
>
> Djinnit told reporters that the exact rules of engagement for the
> AU force had yet to be drawn up. The force would also investigate
> violations of the humanitarian ceasefire and provide a visible
> military presence to stop armed groups like the government-allied
> Janjawid militias from attacking civilians.
>
> Jean Hilaire Mbeambea, whose country, Cameroon, currently holds the
> rotating chair of the 16-strong AU Peace and Security Council, said
> "mass suffering" was still taking place in the region. However,
> speaking after a daylong meeting at the AU headquarters in Addis
> Ababa, he stressed it was not genocide.
>
> "Abuses are still taking place," Mbeambea said. "There is mass
> suffering, but it is not genocide."
>
> The conflict in Darfur between the Sudanese military supported by
> Janjawid militias, and rebels fighting to end alleged
> marginalisation and discrimination of the region, has displaced
> about 1.45 million people and sent another 200,000 fleeing across
> the border into Chad. The UN has called the situation one of the
> world's worst humanitarian crises.
>
> In London on Tuesday, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged
> support for AU efforts to bolster its monitoring and protection
> presence there. He called on all sides to respect the ceasefire and
> take measures to protect civilians, even before the arrival of AU
> troops.
>
> ************************************************************
>
> Excerpt from Justice Africa Briefing, 11 October 2004
> http://www.justiceafrica.org/bulletin.htm
>
> Next Steps
>
> 37. Sudan needs a comprehensive political solution. The foundation
> for this should be Naivasha, which has the substance and political
> clout needed. The mechanism for this should be that the talks
> include moving to implementation without delay. Implementation
> should include detailed steps for a Constitutional Convention and
> the formal declaration of regional autonomy and power sharing for
> Darfur and Eastern Sudan, using as a model the agreements made for
> Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. However, any political framework
> announced for Darfur should be the starting point for negotiations
> at Abuja, not regarded as a fait accompli.
>
> 38. As soon as the final protocol is signed, President Bashir
> should issue a Republican Decree that affirms the Naivasha
> agreements as part of Sudanese law, brings the power-sharing,
> wealth-sharing and security arrangements into immediate effect, and
> appoints John Garang as First Vice President.
>
> 39. Meanwhile, extensive preparation is needed for the next round
> in Abuja. The mediators need to do their own research and thinking
> to define what they mean by Janjawiid (or abandon any usage of the
> term) and what a credible process of providing security and
> ensuring disarmament would look like. The key issues needing
> immediate progress need to be fixed in advance by intensive shuttle
> diplomacy between the parties, leaving the Abuja meeting itself for
> the formalities of finalizing the humanitarian and security
> protocols, and beginning work on the social and political issues.
>
> 40. International calls for regime change are frankly
> irresponsible. If the government of Sudan is to change, it should
> do so through the democratic or peaceful efforts of the people of
> Sudan, not through external intervention. A foreign-led effort to
> remove the current GoS is far more likely to lead to chaos and
> intensified civil war, than to peace and democracy.
>
> *************************************************************
>
> Sudan's Dual Crises: Refocusing on IGAD
>
> International Crisis Group
> http://www.crisisweb.org
>
> Africa Briefing 05 October 2004
>
> OVERVIEW
>
> As the Darfur crisis understandably preoccupies the international
> community, inadequate attention is being paid to ending Sudan's
> 21-year old civil war between the Khartoum government and the
> mainly southern insurgency led by the SPLA (Sudan People's
> Liberation Movement/Army). The peace process mediated by the
> regional organisation IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on
> Development), looked close to finality in June 2004 but is now at
> risk. The draft agreement negotiated at Naivasha contains
> provisions that can assist a political solution in Darfur. The two
> sets of issues are closely related and need to be dealt with
> equally and urgently. However, unless current dynamics change, and
> the UN Security Council puts more pressure upon Khartoum to
> conclude the IGAD agreement, war could soon resume across the
> country.
>
> If the government chooses to delay conclusion of the peace
> agreement when the IGAD negotiations resume on 7 October, the six
> protocols already signed but not yet in force may well begin to
> unravel -- under pressure from regime hardliners and intellectuals
> in the North who argue that too many concessions were made to the
> SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army), and from elements
> within the SPLA who never trusted the regime to keep its word and
> believe it has been weakened by Darfur. If this happens, new fronts
> in a war that has already cost two million lives are likely to
> emerge in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and the east.
>
> If the government chooses cooperation, peace in Sudan could be
> secured before the end of the year. Wrapping up the IGAD (Naivasha)
> agreement would lay the groundwork for further understandings with
> the umbrella opposition group, the National Democratic Alliance
> (NDA), and, more importantly, provide models for a Darfur
> resolution and begin the process towards democratisation and
> national elections.
>
> However, indications are the regime is leaning toward further
> intransigence. The signals it is sending on IGAD are mixed at best,
> suggesting it is stalling in an effort to persuade the
> international community to relax its Darfur demands. Khartoum also
> has obstructed the deployment of a sizeable African Union (AU)
> force with a specific mandate to protect civilians in Darfur, while
> its effort to link disarmament of Janjaweed militia to the
> cantonment of the Darfur rebels helped stymie recent AU-mediated
> talks. While Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail, adopted a
> conciliatory approach before the Security Council on 29 September
> 2004, pledging cooperation with an AU force, there remains much
> ambiguity about what that will mean in practice.
>
> Khartoum appears to calculate that commercial and sovereignty
> considerations will ensure that most countries and international
> institutions will apply no more than rhetorical pressure. It
> encourages the perception that if serious pressure is applied, it
> would be counter-productive, giving advantages to putative
> "hardliners" or even causing the regime to crack, leaving a failed
> state in its wake. These tactics have served the regime well since
> it seized power in 1989.
>
> The lesson of those fifteen years, however, is that when the
> government has been the target of serious pressure with a specific
> objective, it has modified its behaviour. It is a pragmatic regime
> that will do what it has to in order to survive, including choosing
> cooperation rather than attempting to impose unilateral solutions.
>
> The international community should act on a number of fronts to
> achieve a comprehensive solution to Sudan's multiple and
> interconnected problems, one that deals equally with the IGAD peace
> process and Darfur. The Security Council should give itself further
> leverage on Darfur by moving quickly to deploy the first elements
> of the International Commission of Inquiry it established by its
> resolution of 18 September 2004. If there is not concrete progress
> on its Darfur demands by the end of October, especially the AU
> protection force, the Council should impose an arms embargo on the
> Sudanese government, an assets freeze on companies owned by the
> ruling party that do business abroad, and a travel ban on senior
> Sudanese officials.
>
> Diplomatic pressure must simultaneously be escalated to produce a
> swift conclusion on the IGAD (Naivasha) process. The Security
> Council needs to state clearly that if the parties do not make
> progress when they resume the IGAD negotiations on 7 October and
> fail to conclude a final agreement by the end of the year, it will
> assess responsibility and take appropriate decisions. Other issues
> must also be addressed, particularly the complications presented by
> the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the brutal Ugandan insurgency
> whose depredations have often been supported by Khartoum in pursuit
> of its war aims in the South.
>
> Ultimately, the regime must understand that meaningful penalties
> can only be avoided or removed if it acts quickly and
> constructively on both the IGAD agreement and Darfur. It should not
> be allowed to pick and choose which issues, or parts of issues, it
> wishes to move on, playing these off against others. This is the
> moment for it to decide its path -- and firmness in New York and
> key capitals is necessary to inform its choice.
>
> *************************************************************
>
> Darfur: Mandate and Size of AU Ceasefire Commission Must Be
> Expanded
>
> Refugees International
> http://www.refintl.org
>
> October 19, 2004
>
> Contacts:
> Sarah Martin and Mamie Mutchler,  ri at refugeesinternational.org or
> 202.828.0110
>
> The African Union (AU), with the encouragement of the member states
> of the United Nations Security Council, has placed monitors and a
> small force to protect them in Darfur, Sudan to monitor the April
> 8 Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the two
> Darfur-based rebel movements, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and
> the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). At present AU monitors are
> responding daily to allegations of breaches of the ceasefire, many
> of which comprise attacks on innocent civilians. During the week of
> October 2, a Ceasefire Commission (CFC) team was patrolling in
> South Darfur when it saw Government of Sudan helicopters flying in
> formation. The team members turned off the road and followed the
> direction from which the planes were coming. Within minutes they
> came across a village which had just experienced an attack. The
> monitors witnessed 50 armed militia, known popularly as the
> Janjaweed, retreating on camels and horses. In their wake the
> village was burning and civilians had been shot.
>
> Observers agreed to talk to Refugees International on the grounds
> of complete anonymity. "You could see the strafing on the ground
> where bombs had been thrown from the helicopters. One farmer had
> been shot in the back while he was tending his crop. If these
> civilians had been carrying guns that might have justified an
> attack. But they weren't. At this point we're tired of responding
> to calls to just count dead bodies. It makes you very angry."
>
> "These attacks were clearly orchestrated between government forces
> and the armed militias. It wouldn't be possible to synchronize
> movements without close coordination. We have the ability to check
> the air traffic times for planes departing and landing from the
> local airport, and can provide double confirmation that these
> flights took place."
>
> In the light of such incidents, members of the CFC admitted to RI
> that the April 8 agreement has been breached so often that in
> reality there is no ceasefire in a war that has claimed over 50,000
> lives and left 1.5 million internally displaced persons without
> permanent homes, completely dependent upon international
> humanitarian assistance.
>
> With or without a real ceasefire, expanding the mandate and size of
> the AU mission appears to be the only politically feasible means of
> providing protection to civilians in war-torn Darfur. While
> monitors are currently able to investigate attacks after the fact,
> and at times come across an attack which is underway, they have no
> power to intervene and no mandate to stop the fighting or even to
> keep a fragile peace between the warring parties and innocent
> civilians.
>
> In his second report to the UN Security Council on October 4, 2004,
> the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sudan, Jan
> Pronk, recommended the speedy deployment of a "sizeable" AU force
> with an expanded mandate to include ensuring protection of the
> rights of internally displaced persons in their areas of origin;
> ensuring the safety of displaced persons in the camps and the safe
> and voluntary return of displaced persons and refugees to their
> areas of origin; monitoring the behavior and actions of the
> Sudanese government police; and disarming fighters, including the
> Popular Defense Forces and the Janjaweed militia. SRSG Pronk
> concluded his paragraph on the AU mandate by stating, "If one or
> more of these tasks remain unfulfilled, an unstable situation,
> unsustainable peace, or even no peace at all will result."
>
> The lack of women on the AU CFC teams has made investigating
> gender-based violence difficult. "Without a woman on the team, the
> women of Darfur are often reluctant to talk to us so we have to
> read between the lines," a source in the AU confirmed. While rapes
> are not considered a violation of the ceasefire, nonetheless AU CFC
> teams have been collaborating with the Office of the UN High
> Commissioner for Human Rights monitors to document human rights
> cases.
>
> Logistics are handicapping the AU. AU missions need more vehicles,
> more accommodations, and more communication equipment for the staff
> they currently have. This problem will only intensify if more
> troops are deployed. There are also reports that the Government of
> Sudan has been delaying AU equipment in customs in Khartoum.
>
> Yet, despite logistical difficulties, the Ceasefire Commission
> itself is holding together. Under the April 8 Agreement,
> representatives from all three fighting forces and foreign
> ceasefire monitors are part of a panel which decides ultimately
> whether a breach of the agreement has occurred. Although final
> determinations can take several weeks, and are often disputed by
> the party that received the allegation against it, reports are
> made, and the monitors are able to carry out their work without
> active obstruction.
>
> Many non-governmental organizations feel that the presence of AU
> monitors, and their accompanying protection force, is also useful
> in deterring attacks against civilians in some areas, and helps
> maintain humanitarian access.  However, both the AU and the
> international humanitarian agencies admit that this presence alone
> is not sufficient to stop the ongoing attacks against civilians, or
> to stem the waves of civilians forcibly displaced from villages and
> homes that arrive daily in IDP camps throughout Darfur.
>
> Therefore Refugees International recommends that:
>
> * The Government of Sudan, SLA and JEM forces maintain the April 8
> Ceasefire Agreement. All parties to the agreement must live up to
> the provisions of common Art. 3 of the Geneva Conventions and
> refrain from attacking innocent civilians.
>
> * At the meeting of its Peace and Security Council on October 20,
> the AU agree to broaden the mandate of its force in Darfur to
> include the protection of civilians and the disarmament of both
> pro-government militia and rebel forces, as recommended by SRSG
> Pronk, and that the number of personnel be increased to enable the
> force to carry out this expanded mandate.
>
> * The Government of Sudan make a credible effort to disarm the
> armed militias, known as the Janjaweed.
>
> * The United States and the European Union increase their logistics
> support to the AU monitors. In addition, they should put pressure
> on the government of Sudan to ensure that equipment is expedited
> through customs.
>
> * The African Union, with support from the United States and the
> European Union, send female military observers to increase their
> capacity to document violence against women.
>
> *************************************************************
> AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
> providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
> a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
> Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
>
> AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus at igc.org. Please
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>
> ************************************************************
>
>

Al Kagan
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61820
USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax 217-333-2214
akagan at uiuc.edu
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