GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: The Failed Darfur Peace Agreement

by Eric Reeves

For the past seven years, Eric Reeves has worked full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst. He publishes regularly on the topic and has testified several times before Congress. He is a professor at Smith College and runs the endlessly informative sudanreeves.org.

The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) has collapsed with shocking rapidity. No facile comments from the UN’s Pronk, US officials, or other international actors who pushed through this deeply flawed agreement can change the brutal realities on the ground, and the rapid deterioration in security. The African Union may have been funded through October 1, 2006---perhaps even beyond---but it has lost all credibility with the people of Darfur. It simply cannot function meaningfully in providing security for civilians or humanitarians.

The Darfur Peace Agreement was from the beginning without meaningful international guarantors of the security arrangements; the current escalation of fighting could have been, and was, predicted. The implementation of the various provisions of the DPA is failing because Khartoum feels no meaningful international pressure, indeed is content to abuse publicly the very notion of a UN peace support operation. The International Criminal Court is held in similar contempt. The large-scale military offensives in Jebel Moon and North Darfur are not aberrations but deeply symptomatic of the National Islamic Front’s contempt for all agreements it makes with all Sudanese parties. Indeed, the DPA has perversely come to serve as “justification” for Khartoum’s assaults on those who are not signatories.

Here it is instructive to look at comments made today by the leadership of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement regarding implementation of the north/south “Comprehensive Peace Agreement” (January 9, 2006). Besides the failure to respect the key findings of the Abyei Boundary Commission, or to move to establish north-south boundaries in the oil regions, or to draw down its regular military forces in Juba and surrounding garrisons, Khartoum continues to support various militia forces in the south, particularly in the oil regions of Upper Nile Province:

“Sudanese armed forces are still arming and supporting militias in southern Sudan in violation of a peace deal which ended two decades of a bloody civil war, a southern official said on Saturday. Under the north-south peace deal signed in January 2005 all southern militias were told to join the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army, or lay down their arms. But hundreds of people have been killed in continued clashes between militias in the southeast Upper Nile region and the areas around Sudan's main oil fields which are in the south.”

The existence of these militias, and Khartoum’s continuing support for them, is well known to all who will look honestly, though this evidently does not include the UN’s Pronk, who absurdly speaks of “former South Sudan Defense Force commanders . . . getting support from what I have called . . . on other occasions ‘forces in the dark’ in Khartoum.”

What does Pronk mean by his apparently reiterated phrase “forces in the dark in Khartoum”? Does he mean to suggest that there are consequential members of the National Islamic Front who are “in the dark” (i.e., don’t know what’s occurring) with respect to payment and support to the militias? Or does he mean to suggest that those supporting the militias are on the “dark side” of a regime that somehow has, elsewhere, enlightened members?

Both readings are absurd---contemptibly absurd. So, too, is Pronk’s suggestion the militia umbrella known as the South Sudan Defense Force (SSDF) is a thing of the past: a number of senior SSDF commanders---most notoriously Gordon Kong---still consider themselves SSDF commanders, and are amply encouraged in so believing by various forms support and payment from Khartoum.

The point here is not so much Pronk’s dismaying and destructive incompetence as it is about the failure of Khartoum to honor the terms of the CPA. Thus it matters little what may have been written into the Darfur Peace Agreement: without credible international guarantees and guarantors, the document is worthless and proves itself more so every day.

That the international community has no intention of providing such guarantees and guarantors is also clearer by the day. The current disintegration in Darfur that has left humanitarian assistance “hanging by a thread” is accelerating, and the thread will soon break entirely.

(Photo from matthewgood.org's flickr stream.)

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Americans have a particularly important role to play in supporting peace in Darfur. The US government has been proactive in speaking out in support of the people of Darfur, but there is still much work that needs to be done. The United States and international governments have yet to take the actions needed to end this genocide.

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The Americans are trying to lead peace in Darfur but is very difficult, Darfur is a very problematic zone in the middle east, they live in war and do not have a good economy.

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The Darfur peace process has thus far failed to bring a lasting peace to the violence-plagued region of Darfur.

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The first questions to be raised with regard to the Darfur crisis are: indeed is it possible to bring peace to Darfur without active participation of the Darfurians? Anyways, who owns the Darfur issue: only the rebel groups, the government of Khartoum or the international community? Why did the DPA failed? And what are the lessons to be learned from the DPA?

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Os americanos têm um papel particularmente importante a desempenhar no apoio à paz em Darfur. O governo dos EUA tem sido proativo em falar em apoio do povo de Darfur, mas ainda há muito trabalho que precisa ser feito. Os Estados Unidos e governos internacionais ainda têm de tomar as ações necessárias para acabar com este genocídio.

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Darfur Peace Agreement, 2006. Published May 6, 2006. This agreement between the government of Sudan and the Sudan Liberation Army was signed on May 5, 2006

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I still have my Darfur shirt when this exploded publicly.I still experience that sickening feeling down at the pit of my stomach every time I am reminded of inhuman propagandas not just in this place but anywhere in the world.