"Don't Shatter the Darfur Peace Process." What Peace Process?

In a recent speech in front of the United Nation's General Assembly, Sudan's vice-president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, said that his government was fully committed to the Darfur peace process, stressing "complete commitment to achieving a peaceful and political settlement to the Darfur issue." 

Taha said that a possible arrest of the country's president, General Omar al Bashir, and a trial for the crimes committed against the civilians in Darfur at the International Criminal Court (ICC) would definitely "derail the peace process" in Darfur, Sudan's western province. 

General Bashir came to power in a military coup in 1989 and has ruled Sudan ever since.  

The ICC's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo recently filed ten charges against Sudan's president - three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC accuses Bashir of orchestrating a campaign in Darfur since 2003 that killed 35,000 people, while at least 100,000 died through starvation and disease and 2.5 million people were forced to flee their homes. 

The African Union (AU) has asked the UN Security Council to "freeze the ICC case against Bashir, which the UN can do so if it deems the prosecution as a threat to peace and security." 

This campaign by the African Union would make sense if there were any peace and security to protect in Darfur. Darfurians have had none for many years now. They are murdered, raped, starved, and forced to flee their homes by the government forces and their militias.  

Instead of helping the ordinary people who are suffering, the African Union is doing all it can to protect those who organized the persecution of Darfurians. The Arab League joined the African Union, urging the Security Council to block moves to indict Bashir in order to prevent "shattering the peace process." 

What peace process?  

After years of fighting between the mainly "African" rebels and the government forces and their proxy "Arab" militias, the government of Sudan and one faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in 2006, while the Justice and Equality Movement and another faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement refused to sign it. 

The Darfur Peace Agreement, instead of bringing peace, only intensified the fighting and deteriorated the humanitarian situation in the region. The International Crisis Group argues that the DPA, "too limited in scope and signatories" has in fact "hurt the peace process." 

The government failed to deliver any of the provisions it pledged to implement, such as disarmament of the Janjaweed militias, protection of civilians, ceasefire, and deployment of the UN/AU troops.  

When the international community realized that the DPA was a failure, new peace talks were organized in Libya in October 2007. Announcing the talks, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, said that "Tripoli could provide a good venue and could work as a good place to facilitate peace negotiations" to end the Darfur conflict.  

The UN Secretary General forgot to say, or didn't know, that Libya was the worst possible choice for the Darfur peace talks. For decades, the Libyan regime promoted the "Arab" supremacy in the region, organizing the "Arab" tribes in Darfur and Chad into an "Islamic Legion" and giving its members military training and weapons. The legacy of the "Islamic Legion" would remain in Darfur for a long time. Many current Janjaweed leaders were trained in Libya in the 1980s. 

The Libyan talks failed to bring the majority of the rebel groups to the table. One of the rebel leaders said that he refused to start any peace talks "unless security was established in Darfur first." Since the Libyan failure, many countries talked about possible talks to end the Darfur conflict. However, nothing happened.  

Currently, the Arab League is planning new Darfur peace talks to be held in Qatar. The Darfur rebels recently dismissed the initiative, saying "the move came five years too late." The rebels believe this is just another "desperate attempt to save the Sudanese president from international justice," happening around the same time as the ICC's move to charge Bashir. 

Jean-Marie Guehenno, the UN peacekeeping chief, thinks that "the situation in Darfur has grown infinitely more complex [over the years], and prospects for peace seem more remote." Guehenno says that none of the parties in the conflict is "demonstrating the political will to abandon the military option, engage in negotiations or fully cooperate with the UN mission in Darfur and the humanitarian community." 

No one should fear that a possible indictment of Sudan's president could shatter the current Darfur peace process. There is no peace process to shatter.

Without Bashir in power, peace in Darfur may get a chance at last.

Savo Heleta*
Port Elizabeth - South Africa

* Savo Heleta is a postgraduate student in conflict transformation and management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He is the author of “Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia" -> Visit his blog: http://www.savoheleta.com/. 

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