'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Darfur peace deadline Wednesday

May 31 is a deadline for the parties to the fighting in Darfur to sign onto the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), that was concluded in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 5. The augurs don't look particularly good. Reuters is reporting that the head of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Khalil Ibrahim, and representatives of the other holdouts-- a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)-- were heading to a last-minute meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia to try to find common ground with the AU negotiators. (Slovenia? Why Slovenia? Nice beaches?)

Ibrahim told Reuters:

"We are not going to sign this agreement unless there is a radical change including real regional government for Darfur, and reconstruction of Darfur, compensation for our people and a fair share of power."

For his part, the AU's Peace and Security Commissioner, Said Djinnit, told AFP today that, "Until the May 31 deadline expires, we are hopeful that the parties that have not signed will sign the Abuja peace agreement."

That report continues,

Djinnit said that if they fail to append their signatures on the Darfur Peace Agreement, the bloc's Peace and Security council would meet to discuss measures to take against them.

"We hope that they will exemplify a historic responsibility and to realise that the agreement is a good basis to achieve peace in Darfur," Djinnit said.

"If not, the Peace and Security Council will meet to see what measures to take ... measures will be taken."

The AU special representative in Sudan Baba Gana Kingibe said efforts were continuing to woo the holdouts to sign the agreement.

Reuters is meanwhile also reporting that in Khartoum the two ruling parties, "are divided over sending U.N. forces to its violent Darfur region." This, though last week veteran UN troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi apparently secured a guarantee from Khartoum that a joint AU-UN assessment team could begin working inside Sudan "within days."

It all sounds like a very tangled web indeed. The near-daily reports of the UN. Country Team in Sudan make clear that throughout Darfur a continuing level of anti-civilian violence, often lethal, still continues-- and that it is being committed by all sides. (You can access these reports and a lot of other great, up-to-date info through this excellent Reliefweb portal.)

Writing over at Headheeb May 26, Jonathan Edelstein noted the fragility of the DPA, and the possibility that the fighting in Darfur could spill over even more than it already has done into Chad and even perhaps the north of the Central African Republic. If you scroll down to the comments there, he makes this wise observation:

I've noticed the same pattern in connection with Middle East peacemaking: the international mediators move heaven and earth to get the Israelis and Palestinians to sign an agreement, but then don't invest the time in setting up monitoring and dispute resolution mechanisms. There's a distressing absence of recognition that peace accords require maintenance, especially during the early stages.

In other words, it's all very fine Robert Zoellick rushing over to Abuja at the beginning of the month to try to twist a few arms and win signatures onto the agreement, as he did. (He'd also made a similar arm-twisting visit to earlier rounds of the negotiations in Nairobi, as well.) But what the people of Darfur and the rest of Sudan really need to see is sustained, high-level commitment by Washington and all the world's big powers to back the DPA by investing in real peacebuilding there. And to Jonathan's list of what's needed (ceasfire monitoring and dispute-resolution mechanisms) I would add a strong and crediblepeacekeeping presence, and also major reconstruction aid and a commitment to help the war-shattered communities to rebuild the livelihoods (as well as the lives) of their people.

As it is, it's been a terrible struggle for the World Food Programme even to get, and once again to deliver, enough emergency rations to keep Darfur's many thousands of IDPs alive (as I noted here.) People need to be able to return to their home communities in security and dignity, and start rebuilding a future! And as we know very clearly from what we see every day in Iraq or Afghanistan, people cannot do that under conditions of prolonged warfare or rampant public insecurity... The fighting needs to end. And the Abuja DPA provides a reasonable basis on which to do this.