New peace effort for Darfur

The United Nations and African Union envoys for Sudan agreed to work “hand-in-hand” to try to bring all the warring parties to the peace table and convince them there is no military solution to the Darfur conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people.

A May peace agreement signed by Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir’s government and one of the major rebel groups was supposed to help end the fighting in the vast western region. Instead, it has sparked months of fighting between rival rebel factions that refused to sign and the result has been more deaths and 2.5 million people displaced from their homes.

UN special envoy Jan Eliasson and his AU counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim announced yesterday they were launching a new effort to “re-energise the political process” in Darfur after meeting Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who promised to focus his “highest attention” on finding a peaceful solution in Darfur when he took the reins of the UN on January 1.

“The objective on our part,” Salim said, “will be … to do whatever we can to re-energise the political process, because at the end of the day really there can be no military solution to the crisis in Darfur.”

As a first step, Eliasson said, “we should try to now instil a sense of importance of reducing the level of violence so that … we can create conditions for a political process, which is so necessary” to end the nearly four-year conflict.

Eliasson said he was leaving for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last night to meet African Union officials and would then head to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday and stay there and in Darfur until the end of next week.

“We … want to work hand-in-hand in diplomacy and in trying to find a road to a political process,” the former Swedish foreign minister and General Assembly president said. “We are both fully aware that this is an enormously complicated issue.”

How the violence can be reduced is a pressing problem, Eliasson and Salim said, but it is not the focus of their new mission.

Fighting in Darfur began in February 2003 when rebels from black African tribes took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by Sudan’s Arab-dominated government. The government is accused of unleashing Arab tribal militia known as the Janjaweed against civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson – a charge the government denies.

The 7,000-strong, poorly equipped and financed African Union force now in Darfur has been unable to bring security to region, and the conflict has spilled over into neighbouring Chad.

Al-Bashir rejected a UN Security Council resolution in August that called for more than 20,000 UN peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed AU force, claiming a UN force would compromise Sudan’s sovereignty and try to recolonise the country.

Annan then proposed a three-step UN package to beef up the African Union force, culminating with the deployment of a 22,000-strong “hybrid” AU-UN force.

Last month, al-Bashir sent a letter to Annan appearing to endorse the package. But on December 27, Sudan’s UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem told reporters that the hybrid force must be smaller and have no UN peacekeepers in traditional blue helmets, only African troops supported by UN technical and logistical experts.

As a result, the size and deployment of the hybrid force remain in question.

The UN is going ahead with the first phase of the package that will provide the AU with about 140 military officers and UN police, 36 armoured personnel carriers, night-vision goggles, and Global Positioning equipment.

A second, larger support package that could include several hundred UN military, police and civilian personnel and aircraft is being discussed.

Ideally, Salim said, a ceasefire is needed to facilitate peace talks, but short of that a de-escalation of the violence is essential – and to achieve that a strengthening of the African Union force is important so that there is “a credible security force on the ground".

At the same time, he said, the UN and the AU cannot wait for that to happen to try to bring all the parties together, especially the groups that did not sign the May Darfur Peace Agreement.

“I really believe that the situation in Darfur requires all of us to do our utmost to see a de-escalation of violence and the beginning of the political process,” Salim said.

Eliasson said he thinks all Security Council members agree “that now is the moment to intensify the attempts to find a political way forward".

“We have to go this road,” he said “We feel the same frustration as the whole world community about this conflict going on, for four years.”