13 Apr 2007: ISS Today: Sudan Urges UN to Adopt Resolution on Financing Darfur Force

13 April 2007: Sudan Urges UN to Adopt Resolution on Financing Darfur Force

 

Sudan on Tuesday urged the United Nations to adopt a resolution on financing the peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s restive western region of Darfur. Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol made the demand following a meeting here between Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir and South African President Thabo Mbeki who arrived in Khartoum earlier in the day on a two-day official visit. Lam Akol underlined the importance of adoption a resolution on providing funds for the second phase, also known as "the heavy support phase," after the "light support package" had been delivered in the past four months. He said the resolution would facilitate the deployment of more African troops in Darfur. Meanwhile, he reiterated his government’s position that the peacekeeping force to be reinforced by the UN in Darfur must be commanded by the AU.

 

Commentary

 

In recent months most media coverage on the Sudan has focused on the diplomatic exchanges about a possible United Nations takeover of the African Union Mission in Darfur. And although the questions regarding civilian insecurity and continuing human rights abuses in Darfur are correctly framed within the ambit of the international responsibility to protect, it can also be argued that a large part of the debate on the Darfur Peace Process has been obscured by the over-emphasis on peacekeeping. This media focus, however, has been sharpened by recent developments in Addis Ababa this week that suggest some level of agreement between the international community and the Sudanese authorities on the deployment of the heavy support package for the AU force in line with last November’s High Level Consultation on Darfur.

 

It was the November consultative meeting between the AU , UN and Sudan that set the agenda for what would be an unprecedented joint regional and international peacekeeping mission in the region in conformity with UNSC Resolution 1706, which expanded the mandate of the UN mission in the South to support the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement signed on 5 May 2006. Since that time understanding of progress on Darfur has been tied to the concerns about the expanded peacekeeping force. Taking a closer look at the hybrid force proposal, however, it is clear that peacekeeping represents what is in fact the third pillar of a larger process of engagement. The other two areas identified as key include a re-energised political process and a strengthening of the ceasefire mechanisms.  Both of these areas remain unresolved for various reasons.

 

First, the divisions among the rebel groups in Darfur have seriously compromised any forceful bargaining position they might have achieved by remaining non-signatories to the process. The plethora of splits from the original Sudanese Liberation Movement under Abdul Wahid Nur now threatens the essential fabric of the collective Darfurian resistance to Khartoum’s hegemony. At present there are no less than five broad rebel groups that split from the Nur faction and now command their own groups of armed men and show little interest in joining the DPA process. The splinter groups are further divided on whether they support what is now called the second chamber of signatories to the DPA – the Declaration of Commitment, an added component to the DPA that seeks to broaden the agreement without compromising on the gains to be made by the larger rebel forces.  For example the SLM Free Will  headed by Abdul Rahman Musa, once the chief negotiator for Wahid Nur, has signed the Declaration of Principles (DOP)  whereas SLM Unity comprising a group of Marsalit commanders previously loyal to Wahid Nur but who later disagreed with the shape of the Haskanita conference in 2005, maintains an ambiguous stance towards the DOP. The increasing ethnic dimension to the fragmentation of the rebel groups has made questions of genuine representation all the more difficult to answer.

 

These factions stand quite apart from the other non-signatories not necessarily affiliated to the SLM, such as the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) which maintains strong ideological links with the opposition party of Hassan Al Turabi, the Popular Congress Party (PCP) in Khartoum. The youngest of the rebel umbrellas, The National Redemption Front, is yet another coalition of disaffected armed groups opposed to the DPA. It operates under the JEM leader Ibrahim Khaleel and includes a large number of former commanders from the Minni Minnawi camp of the SLM. It is believed that the NRF has received significant support from Eritrea and Chad, and has occasionally engaged the  Sudanese Armed Forces with some effect.

 

Although the factionalism of the rebel movements can be seen as a reflection of the success of the ruling party’s co-optation of the opposition, it nevertheless speaks to a lack of unified vision of what the conflict is essentially about. The ISS has consistently argued that the conflict in Darfur represents essentially the instability of politics at the centre of Khartoum: it reflects the crisis of cohesion of Northern Sudan itself and the struggle for power between factions of the National Congress Party. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly clear that the disjuncture between the existence of rebel leaders based outside of Darfur and the lack of improvement in the daily lives of Darfurians locally is further thwarting attempts at what is now seen as deadline-driven diplomacy.

 

In addition, the legitimacy of the only signatory faction to the DPA, the SLM under Minni Minnawi, is at it lowest point since the signing of the Agreement last May. Indeed, continuing violations of the ceasefire by Minnawi’s own men, particularly near the Chadian border are increasing resentment towards their leader, who now holds the position of Special Assistant to the President and is based in Khartoum. And the ‘centre’ has itself recently been the scene of violence between Minnawi’s forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Mohandiseen area of Omdurman, which claimed the lives of 8 people including senior police officers.  This incident was followed by the killing of 5 AU troops in Western Sudan in an incident also blamed on the Minni Minnawi faction.

 

It is necessary, therefore, that the new focus on unifiying the rebel movements receive as much attention as the question over the UN-AU hybrid force.  Any peacekeeping mission will have to hook itself on to a political process that reasonably can be sold to the majority of Darfurians, which is presently not the case.

 

Second, the Ceasefire Mechanisms now in place are far from adequate, as the African Union is currently unable to verify violations of the ceasefire and, more particularly, because of the continued confusion as to who is allowed to be a part of the Ceasefire Joint Commission (CJC). This stems from the expulsion by the AU of the non-signatory NRF because of their status as a ‘terrorist organisation’ as characterised by the Khartoum regime. This position was also supported by the Minnawi faction which believed that the rebel movements would use the CJC as a tool for intelligence gathering in order to map SAF troop movements.

 

The validity of this expulsion is yet to be clarified by the African Union or the Sudanese government but has already acted as another disincentive to other movements to join the DPA, as it is felt that the AU is far too partial to the authorities. Other practical issues relating to the problems of the ceasefire commission touch on the donors’ reluctance to continue to pay monitors from the other rebel movements when there is currently no monitoring being done.

 

Finally, the role of the international community has not been particularly clear in Darfur. While the details of the third phase of the agreement are being thrashed out there are still outstanding commitments due to the African Union from the United Nations for the first light support phase. This includes shortfalls of both military and civilian staff needed to supplement the AU mission.

 

Indeed, if we are to review the actual strategies and divergent interests of the main international actors in the Sudan it becomes clear that their use of megaphone diplomacy with the National Congress Party in particular has narrowed the margin of engagement rather than broadened it. Where it might have previously been possible to identify two principal factions within the National Congress Party roughly identified as ‘hardliners’ and ‘moderates’, the current international pressure has diminished the relevance of such a distinction, as moderate elements have far more to lose by seeming to align themselves with prevailing international sentiment. Indeed, the upper hand in Sudan is maintained by the marriage of securocrats to the dominant players in national economy, which has made the prospect of ‘regime change’ in Sudan less palatable even to the US administration public posturing notwithstanding. Indeed the US’s collaboration with the Sudanese intelligence services on the ‘war on terror’ shows that the international community might well be satisfied with a stable hegemonic NCP rather a Sudanese government answerable to an unreliable social force that might not be as amenable on questions relating to US domestic interests.

 

The public use of more sticks than carrots when dealing with the NCP has contributed to the frustration of the international effort. As one senior analyst argued: “The moderates have nothing to show, and will definitely go into hiding now. Even when the non-signatories to the DPA were at fault the international community clamped down on the government with more talk of sanctions… so, yes, they feel under siege and are exploiting this feeling.”

 

In such an environment it is more likely that the debate ultimately will come down to questions about how the UN’s assessed contributions can be channelled to the African Union without upsetting donors reluctant to relinquish the command and control powers that come with funding UN missions. These questions will also have to address the streamlining of reporting functions, as the current AMIS structure has a bifurcated reporting line between Khartoum and Addis. Taken together it is clear that the question of troop deployment cannot be considered outside of the broader political and financial implications of a hybrid force.

 

Mariam Bibi Jooma, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)