What the Islamic Conference got wrong on Darfur

Members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) pledged $850 million dollars for future development in Darfur on Sunday in Cairo. Egypt and Turkey co-chaired the donor’s conference–which aimed to jumpstart international commitment to long-term reconstruction and development in Darfur after seven years of conflict, mass displacement, and humanitarian crisis. Some countries making generous pledges willfully ignored the ongoing security challenges and unresolved conflict between the Darfuri rebels and the Sudanese government. In this way, the OIC–like the League of Arab States in its response to the Darfur crisis–sought to help the people of Darfur without addressing those most responsible for their deplorable conditions.

Read the rest at Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel

And here is a piece on the Darfur peace process that I posted at Huffington Post.

Darfuri Civil Society: Still Missing from the Table

“This step constitutes a strong and vital addition to efforts to bring peace in Darfur,” declared Sudan’s Second Vice President Ali Osman Taha in Doha yesterday, after signing a framework agreement with the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM). That may be true, but as I wrote last week, peace in Darfur remains a long way off.

Read the rest at Huffington Post

Peace in Darfur: still a long way off

It is too early to tell – but the “framework agreement” recently signed between the Government of Sudan and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the most effective armed rebel movement in Darfur, offers some hope for peace in Darfur. The commitment to an immediate ceasefire and reaching a final accord by March 15 advances the dialogue further than at any point since May 2006 – when President Omar al-Bashir’s government signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) with what was then considered the strongest of the movements. The problems with that agreement are the same as those threatening the current talks: the fragmentation of the movements and questions about the sincerity of the Sudanese government.

Read the rest here.

“Bashir’s Pre-Election Victory Lap at the Scene of the Crime”

Can you imagine Slobodan Milosevic running for president in Srebrenica? The world would have been justifiably outraged. Yesterday, however, indicted war criminal Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir visited El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. While not an official campaign appearance, the trip comes three days after Bashir received the formal presidential nomination of his party in the upcoming elections in April. It is long past due for the world – and particularly the United States – to express its grave concern about the sham electoral process that in a few months could effectively legitimize Bashir’s repressive government. Read the rest here.

The New York Times on Saturday ran “Fragile Calm Holds in Darfur After Years of Death,” an article that discusses in detail the profound changes in daily life in Darfur since the early days of the genocide that began in 2003. This depiction of a Darfur that perilously hangs between war and peace may be front page news for the Times, but certainly not for those in the advocacy movement calling for a peaceful resolution to the seven-year old conflict, as well as immediate protection and justice for all Darfuris.

Jeffrey Gettleman writes:

The rebel groups that started the war in Darfur in 2003, catalyzing a conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, almost seem to have gone into hibernation. So, too, have the infamous janjaweed, the marauding bandits who raped, killed and terrorized countless civilians.

And this planting season, for the first time since 2003,United Nations officials say that tens of thousands of farmers who had been seeking refuge in squalid displaced persons camps returned to their villages to plant crops, a journey many Darfurians would have considered suicide until recently.

Gettleman quotes Lieutenant General Patrick Nyamvumba, the Rwanda commander of the African Union/United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID): “Frozen. That is a good word for the situation. It is calm, very calm at the moment, but it remains unpredictable.” While this does appear to be the case, as I wrote in August 2009, with or without active warfare though, Darfur remains a human rights crisis of the first order.

The article also fails to probe deeply into the ongoing obstructions by primarily the Sudanese government – but also the rebel movements – of the peacekeeping force. Nyamvumba states casually, “Yes, we have obstructions from time to time. But it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” However, as my colleague C.R. pointed out last month, such a claim from the new commander belies the U.N. Secretary General’s findings in his most recent report to the U.N. Security Council and the conclusions of the most recent U.N. Panel of Experts Report. It also contradicts recent statements from Rwandan officials following the death of their members in the force.

On another topic, it’s nice to see the efforts of Darfuri civil society leaders finally gaining some attention. Gettleman writes:

But one glimmer of hope is that camp elders, religious figures and women’s leaders are being given prominent roles in peace talks for the first time.

“Will it be the big breakthrough?” Mr. Augstburger [the director of UNAMID’s humanitarian liaison office in Darfur] said. “I don’t know. But the movements are starting to get concerned. It’s a brand-new dynamic.”

So overall Gettleman provides a pretty good snapshoot of the challenges ahead for Darfuri civilians as they strive for peace, protection, and accountability in the new year. The Darfuri rebels and janjaweed have gone into hibernation, but the primary agent for the mass killings – the Government of Sudan – remains a foreboding threat to Darfuris with still the capability of re-igniting the war at anytime.

The Bashir regime’s decision to freeze the conflict relates directly to the most glaring omission of the article: a failure to discuss the possible impact of the government’s hell-bent efforts to hold elections in Darfur in April 2010. As we have repeatedly warned, the heavy military and intelligence presence in Darfur – as well as the lack of even the most basic freedoms – make it impossible for the people of Darfur to participate in a credible elections process. The government’s insistence, therefore, over the next four months on rushed elections will not help the peace process and could prove to be a dangerous flashpoint for renewed mass violence.

So even though the security situation is relatively calm, no one should declare the conflict and human rights tragedy over until a just and durable peace agreement is signed and  millions of Darfuris are able to return safely home.

Heavily armed men in Somalia

The United States Institute of Peace held a talk yesterday focusing on “International Engagement with Somalia.” Bronwyn E. Bruton of the Council on Foreign Relations and Abukar Arman, an independent policy analyst originally from Somalia, addressed the immensely complicated topic of how the United States and its international partners should approach the interlocking and enduring political, security, and humanitarian crises in Somalia.

In his remarks, Arman emphasized the need for a “paradigm shift” in policymaking by highlighting the colossal mistakes of recent American policies toward Somalia. While he gave general recommendations for a new blueprint, he failed to outline in a systematic way any real contours for this new approach.

Given the shortage of viable national leaders, bottom-up governance strategies might appear to be a solution to Somalia’s messy, perpetually shifting decentralized politics. For instance, the experience of the ICU, which brought unparalleled stability to an unruly Mogadishu almost overnight in 2006, is instructive…Such arrangements,although admittedly fragile, have emerged in the northern regions of Somaliland and Puntland. The best of them depend on local, rather than international, resources to deliver economic growth and other concrete benefits to the public and respect relations among clan and religious leaders, business groups, and civil society

First posted at Save Darfur…

The Darfuri civil society consultations in Doha concluded Saturday with representatives finalizing the “Doha Declaration” and delivering it to African Union/United Nations chief mediator Djibril Bassolé and their Qatari host, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs H.E. Ahmed Bin Abdullah Al Mahmoud.  The declaration reportedly urged the Sudanese government and the Darfuri rebels to commit to a ceasefire and begin negotiations as soon as possible.  It also called upon all sides and the mediators to include civil society as part of the negotiations and to task it with assisting in the implementation of any agreement.

The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is not at all enthusiastic about a coherent civil society voice.  But unlike in May with Mandate Darfur, a civil society initiative sponsored by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, we have not heard of any reported incidents of Darfuri representatives being prevented by the Sudanese government from attending.  This outcome is likely due to the combined and coordinated pressure of Bassolé, the Qataris, U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration and other envoys.  As for the overall representation of the 170 delegates, we are hearing good things as well. Rebel representatives in Doha, who themselves are leery of a strong civil society voice, had to concede that the NCP had not stacked the conference.  While there are no hard numbers, many of the representatives and others at the consultations stated that overall they were satisfied with the attendance.  Of course, there were some pro-NCP attendees, but these were nowhere near the majority.

And it seems apparent from the “Doha Declaration” itself that NCP representatives had limited influence on the outcome.  In addition to a call for a ceasefire and negotiations, the civil society representatives also made strong demands about carrying out justice, ending impunity, and resolving land issues in Darfur.  In fact, the document specifically calls for the return of all land of displaced persons and refugees to their original owners and the evacuation of those who have lived on the land during their absence.  It also calls for the disarmament of all armed forces in Darfur, except for the constitutionally authorized regular forces, and the establishment of the necessary security mechanisms by UNAMID to allow displaced persons and refugees to return to their villages. As we have just received the text in Arabic, we will try to provide a summary translation later in the week.

Overall, it seems like the chief mediator Bassolé accomplished his goal: sending a strong message from civil society representatives to the Sudanese government and rebels that the conflict should be settled as soon as possible.According to The Sudan Tribune, he said that the peace process “concerns all the sons of Darfur” and that this meeting would be followed by others in Darfur.  Henry Anyidoho, the acting Joint AU-UN Special Representative for Darfur, added:

The growing consensus that would emerge in the civil society consultations here in Doha will certainly have a positive impact on the next round of talks between the Government and the armed movements, and I am hopeful that this will reinvigorate the entire peace process.

He issued a challenge to the gathered representatives:

You have been persistently asking for this opportunity and you now have it. Please make full use of it and do not let it slip away.

In addition to Bassolé and Anyidoho, the Darfuri representatives were welcomed to the meetings by Qatari prime minister, the African Union’s Chairperson Jean Ping and representatives from the Arab League, United States, United Kingdom, France, Chad, Libya, Egypt, China, Russia, Senegal, Syria, Organization of Islamic Conferences, and European Union.  Their attendance showed the interest of the world in the meetings, but Anyidoho had a strong message to the international community as well:

Only when all stakeholders, including the international community, speak with one voice on how best to resolve the conflict in Darfur, will the improvements that we can already see on the ground in Darfur become sustainable and encompassing…Let us redouble our efforts towards this one objective: peace and stability in Darfur.

To that end, we know that only consistent, coordinated pressure on the Sudanese government and Darfuri rebels will compel them to engage seriously in future talks.  So let us hope these consultations really represent a “breakthrough” in the negotiations and that this declaration from so many unheard voices will help push all sides to the table to address the critical issues of protection, peace and justice for millions of Darfuris.

This week, the African Union/United Nations Chief Mediator Djibril Bassolé will begin consultations with 150 Darfuri civil society representatives in Doha, Qatar.  Rather than focusing on this important gathering though, the media over the weekend strangely focused on the postponement of negotiations between the Sudanese government and the Darfuri rebels.

Those following the process closely knew for weeks that Bassolé and the Qataris were intending to use the remaining weeks of November to consult with Darfuri civil society and the rebel movements – and were not planning to launch direct talks between the rebels and Sudanese government until December.  So this was not really news.  A government-leaning Sudanese newspaper, Al Rai Al Aam, on November 9 even ran a story entitled, “Resumption of the Doha negotiations in December.”

What the media has fundamentally missed is that the gathering of Darfuri civil society is critical to a successful peace process.  The voices and concerns of these local leaders who have not taken up arms merit attention from the press and support from the international community. The most important question that journalists should be asking is whether the Sudanese government this time will allow all Darfuri leaders to leave Sudan and travel to the meetings. Despite all of its recent rhetoric about being ready for peace talks, in May of this year, the government obstructed “the safe passage of Darfurian delegates from Sudan” to the Mandate Darfur conference organized by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  At the time the organizers wrote:

“Despite numerous attempts at engagement with the Sudanese government, including sending a delegation to Khartoum and inviting senior figures to address the conference, we were greatly disappointed that Sudanese security services harassed our delegates, confiscated passports and threatened the conference coordinators in Sudan.  Ultimately, the government has refused to grant exit visas to the delegates making it impossible for the conference to proceed.”

A second important question to ask is whether the 150 delegates will be representative of the diverse nature of Darfuri society.  That is, will there be the necessary ethnic, geographic, and gender balance and will IDPs and traditional leaders be represented?  Many Darfuris remember the hand-picked civil society “representatives” that the government sent to the Abuja peace talks in Nigeria in 2006.  The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) has already complainedabout the current list of invitees and delivered to the mediators their own list (article in Arabic).

Drawing lessons from Abuja, the Save Darfur Coalition has consistently called for the broadening of the peace process in order to create a sense of ownership among Darfuris.  In our submission to the African Union Panel on Darfur, we wrote:

Limited formal means have existed to date for civil society to contribute to the peace process. The previous practice of giving seats at the table to almost any combatant has had the perverse effect of encouraging the factionalization of armed groups and giving armed groups a greater say in determining the future of Darfur than their unarmed counterparts. To date, the concerns of disaffected Arab tribes in Darfur have also been excluded from the formal peace process because of the focus on only bringing officially recognized rebel movements to the talks.  A vigorous process of consultation with Darfurian civil society, including tribal leaders (including Arab tribes), will ensure the talks are truly representative and limit the ability of individual rebel leaders to put their personal ambitions ahead of a broadly acceptable agreement. With such a process in place, individual leaders will abstain from the process at their political peril.

We then recommended a strong mechanism, like Mandate Darfur, to enhance civil society representation and engagement.  We also highlighted the important work conducted by the Institute for Inclusive Security and Femmes Africa Solidarité to promote the role of women at the negotiating table.  These channels must now be set up to gain the necessary support within Darfur for any final agreement.  Otherwise, a deal reached in Doha – like the one reached in Abuja – could be dead on arrival.  The active involvement of civil society leaders could also help isolate any Darfuri rebel leaders who may try to spoil the peace process because of personal or political ambitions.

In sum, it is good news that the chief mediator has made holding these civil society sessions a priority in advance of the formal negotiations.  With that said, we must look out for reports that the government has blocked participants.  The mediators should also ensure that the gathered group is sufficiently representative – or, if not, that the leaders have concrete plans to fill any significant ethnic, geographic or gender gaps.  Hopefully, these consultations will help build a Darfuri consensus on the substantive issues on the table and, equally important, result in a formal channel for civil society to contribute to the negotiations when they may resume in December.

During a two-hour meeting with the CNI delegation in Damascus yesterday, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, told us:

It is not just to ask Palestinians to amend their charters without real change on the ground. Let us get our rights. Then we could discuss many issues, such as changing the Hamas and PLO charters or relations with Israel.

This came in response to a question posed by CNI Executive Director Helena Cobban, who asked him whether, in the context of Hamas winning the kind of peace agreement it seeks, the organization might consider amending its 1988 founding charter.

In the same round of questioning, Cobban had also asked whether Hamas would consider that the agreement it seeks, which is one based on Israel’s return to within its borders of June 4, 1967, would be understood by Hamas as one that ends the Palestinians’ decades-long conflict with Israel.

In other words, what is written in the Hamas charter seems under some circumstances to be negotiable. Meshaal’s answer was significant because it reflects a possible shift in Hamas strategy. The Hamas charter calls for a Palestinian state that replaces Israel and includes all of British Mandate-era Palestine.

Most Israelis equate this position with the destruction by force of Israel and, by extension, Jews. They argue that the Hamas position amounts to a call for a second Jewish Holocaust.

Meshaal’s statement demonstrated a willingness to accept Israel in the context of a comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas, and the Palestine Liberation Organization before it, had previously emphasized the goal of replacing Israel by refusing to use the word “Israel” and instead using the term “Zionist entity,” implying that the state is illegitimate and temporary. Throughout our meeting, however, Meshaal chose to use the word “Israel” and almost never used the word “Zionism” or “Zionist.”

The last part of the statement quoted above demonstrates an implicit recognition of Israel, one of the three conditions that Israel and the Quartet have imposed on Hamas before agreeing to recognize it.

It is important to note that the PLO also held the same position of non-recognition of Israel for many years and only agreed to amend its charter under significant American and Israeli pressure. Meshaal noted that despite revising its position in 1996, the PLO still has not achieved a Palestinian state and, in fact, lost  popularity among Palestinians because of it.

A recurring theme of Meshaal’s answers was the difference between words and action. He downplayed the significance of the Hamas charter by pointing out that it was written in the “early days” of Hamas. Over time, Hamas has developed its political agenda, by agreeing to join the 2006 Palestinian Legsilative Council elections and accepting a solution to the conflict based on the 1967 borders. Hamas actions, he argued, should be more important than what is written in its charter.

He likewise argued that U.S. President Barack Obama should be judged by his actions and not his words. He expressed support for Obama’s speech in Cairo and said that Hamas was “ready to cooperate with Obama,” but that Obama’s Cairo speech was a “mirage” that had yet to become real. In his assessment, Meshaal felt that pressure from Israel and the “Israeli lobby” in the United States had caused Obama to back down far faster than Hamas had expected.

Colonel Qaddafi

Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will trek to New York City this week to participate in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) – his first appearance at UNGA in his forty year rule of Libya. Columnists have been speculating for weeks, especially after the return of the Lockerbie bomber, on what the ever-enigmatic Qaddafi will say during his address and whose hands he will (be allowed to) shake.  Despite causing a controversy almost every time he speaks about African or Middle East politics, his about-face in 2003 on weapons of mass destruction restored his good graces in Washington and the allure of Libyan oil contracts assures his amenability to most European leaders.

Libya’s involvement in Sudanese affairs, and the Darfur crisis particularly, rarely make much news in the American press.  There is a possibility of course that Qaddafi will say something truly outrageous about Sudan during his UN address that will make headlines.  Speaking on the same day as President Obama and Iranian President Ahmadinejad, the threshold though for significant news coverage will be high.  Then again, claiming as he did last month that Israel is behind all of Africa’s conflicts – including Darfur – may grab him some serious ink.

While many see such a ludicrous statement as Qaddafi just being his regular abhorrent anti-Semite self, other previous comments by the Libyan leader on Darfur begin to reveal a much more sinister role for the Libyan leader.  Two years ago, for instance, speaking at the opening of a short-lived round of negotiations in Tripoli between the Sudanese government and the Darfuri rebels, Qaddafi said:

“You might laugh if I say that the main reason of this issue [Darfur] is a camel…Africa has thousands of issues – they are about water, about grass – and Africa is divided into 50 countries, and the tribes are divided amongst so many countries, although they belong to each other.  The problem we are having now is that we politicize such problems between tribes.”

His seemingly innocent remarks actually affirm President Omar al-Bashir’s standard excuse that the Darfur crisis is merely a tribal conflict that escalated because of foreign intervention.  Perhaps we should expect this message-consistency from two authoritarian leaders (and neighbors) who collectively have tightly held their grips on power for sixty years as of this summer.   But there is more that Qaddafi hides from these remarks and his other comments on Darfur and the politics of Sudan.

To start, Qaddafi serves as an originator of the guns and ideology of the janjaweed.  As Alex de Waal has written:

In the 1980s, Colonel Qaddafi dreamed of an ‘Arab belt’ across Sahelian Africa. The keystone was to gain control of Chad, starting with the Aouzou strip in the north of the country. He mounted a succession of military adventures in Chad, and from 1987 to 1989, Chadian factions backed by Libya used Darfur as a rear base, provisioning themselves freely from the crops and cattle of local villagers….Many of the guns in Darfur came from those factions. Qaddafi’s formula for war was expansive: he collected discontented Sahelian Arabs and Tuaregs, armed them, and formed them into an Islamic Legion that served as the spearhead of his offensives. Among the legionnaires were Arabs from western Sudan, many of them followers of the Mahdist Ansar sect, who had been forced into exile in 1970 by President Nimeiri. The Libyans were defeated by a nimble Chadian force at Ouadi Doum in 1988, and Qaddafi abandoned his irredentist dreams. He began dismantling the Islamic Legion, but its members, armed, trained and – most significant of all – possessed of a virulent Arab supremacism, did not vanish. The legacy of the Islamic Legion lives on in Darfur: Janjawiid leaders are among those said to have been trained in Libya.

…In 1987, returnees from Libya took the lead in forming a political bloc known as the Arab Alliance. At one level, the Alliance was simply a political coalition that aimed to protect the interests of a disadvantaged group in western Sudan, but it also became a vehicle for a new racist ideology. The politically insignificant racist epithets of earlier times began to take on an alarming tinge in Darfur. The Alliance also latched onto the dominant ideology of the Sudanese state, the very different Arabism of Nile Valley. The war in Darfur at the end of the 1980s was more than a conflict over land: it was the first step in constructing a new Arab ideology in Sudan.

While Qaddafi introduced weaponry and ideology to Darfur in the 1980s, President Bashir and his National Congress Party were the ones to seize upon these assets and set Darfur ablaze in 2003.  One might, given his history in Darfur, expect that Qaddafi subsequently supported the genocidal counterinsurgency coordinated by Khartoum.  But the motives and objectives behind Libya’s policies towards Sudan since 2003 have been much more difficult to interpret and understand.

On the face of it, Qaddafi has presented himself as a peacemaker.  As the International Crisis Group writes, “While consistently opposing an international force in Darfur, it has hosted at times Darfur rebel and tribal leaders as well as government delegations.”  Rumors also abound that Qaddafi has provided Darfuri rebels with critical supplies of arms and financing.  Another ICG report concludes:

Libya has played a highly significant, albeit inconsistent, role in Darfur since the conflict began, culminating in its function as host of the peace talks. At various times it has shown a significant ability to influence all rebel groups and push them toward participation in a broader political process. Simultaneously it has given the NCP diplomatic cover to resist international pressure and efforts to strengthen the peacekeeping operation. As elsewhere in Africa, Libyan actions have been motivated in part by Qaddafi’s desire to be a powerful regional player and mediator but the proximity of the conflicts in Chad and Darfur and their domestic impact have triggered a more sustained effort than elsewhere.

And with the reunification of six Darfuri rebel groups in Tripoloi last month, Qaddafi is once again deeply involved in the currently stalled peace process.  For these efforts, U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration even publicly praised Libya’s contributions to the peace process recently.

Given this history, if Qaddafi does mention Darfur or Sudan in his address to UNGA, be sure to consider the historical context.  The U.S. has no choice but to engage Libyan officials as it pushes for the resumption of peace talks in Doha.  As a neighbor to Sudan and with significant clout over certain rebel leaders, Libya will be involved one way or another.  At the same time, the international community should not count on the mercurial Qaddafi to support unwaveringly a push for peace.  The AU/UN Chief mediator Djibril Bassolé, supported by the U.S. and other key countries, should claim this responsibility.

And if Qaddafi – with his trademark, megalomaniacal righteousness – does choose again to place all the blame for Darfur on external forces, someone should ask him:

• • Who supported a coup attempt against the Sudanese government in 1976?
  • Who funded the Southern Sudanese rebels against Khartoum from 1983 to 1985?
  • Who switched sides and supported a new government brought to power via coup in 1985?
  • And then who began talks about unification plans (Sudan and Libya) with Bashir after the Sudanese leader seized power in his own coup in 1989?

The answer, of course, to these stories for another day is the one and only Colonel Qaddafi.