The past month has seen some of the most disturbing developments in the long and tragic story of the Sudanese government's unimpeded genocidal rampage in Darfur. These events have only confirmed the foreshadowing of many experts that the 5 May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement was more likely exacerbate the plight of the Darfurian people, to fracture the Darfur rebel movements (which, while their commitment to the civilian victims of Darfur, demonstrated the overriding importance placed on individual rivalries and power struggles at negotiations as well as by the occasional wanton disregard for humanitarian concerns, can be questioned, at least, to be cynical, these groups can use guns against Janjaweed marauders - something protects innocents far more effectively than the pen and paper of the African Union), and to weaken whatever international attention and resolve existed beforehand, than to craft a genuine, sustainable, or even implementable peace. The disproportionate weight of trust heaped on this grossly flawed treaty should have been an indication that negotiators in Abuja - Salid Ahmed Salim, Sam Ibok, Great Britain's Hillary Benn, and the United States' Robert Zoellick - were more concerned with expediency than substance; nevertheless, the international continues to let this disingenous trust rot on the shambles of a peace agreement that, despite our best hopes and contrary to the bold-faced self-deception of voices like Jan Pronk (who, in a belated and disingenuous understatement [by the time of his writing, numerous deadlines toward disarmament of the Janjaweed that the GoS had committed itself to had already passed without consequence], warned, in his blog in late June, that "[t]here is a significant risk that the Darfur peace agreement will collapse," (see http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060709/east_sudan_060709/20060714?hub=CTVNewsAt11), who has recently backtracked on his previously blind support of the DPA, but who still fatally believes that the "text" of the agreement need not be tampered with), cannot possibly consitute even a framework for the de-escalation of violence and is on the contrary only deepening Darfur's misery. The DPA, it is time to admit, does not contain any prospects for achieving peace, has no enforcement mechanisms or legitimacy sufficient to temper Khartoum's genocidal ambitions, and thus leaves the people of Darfur in only a more precarious position. The past two months have proven that right now, the DPA means three things to three different groups, none of which it was intended to mean, and all of which have disastrous consequences for the safety and livelihoods of Darfurains: for Minni Minnawi, it is a Faustian bargain whereby he attains greater status at the expense of those he once claimed to represent and protect; for John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, and to most of the international community, the DPA represents merely a receptacle for the guilty consciences of those who know they could, with a little political bravado, actually make a difference in affecting change in Darfur but would rather, as is easier, politically safer, and a perfectly acceptable, unimpassioned status quo, point to two signatures on a piece of paper and say we have done all we could do; and for Omar Hassan al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front dictatorship, the DPA was a wholly effective gamble that both gave them more room and legitimacy to conduct their genocide and made this task easier by exploiting the fault lines in rebel leadership, consistent with its prevalent divide-and-rule strategy.
Around the same time of early July that reports started leaking about attacks on villages conducted, in most Janjaweed-like fashion, by not only the notorious "devils on horseback" and their government sponsors, but also with the horrifyingly disturbing additional accomplice of Minni's SLA faction (see Julie Flint's excellent commentary, "Where is the African Union in Darfur?," The Daily Star (Lebanon), 12 July 2006), a seemingly innocuous news item emerged, citing Minni Arco Minnawi's statement that he would accept the position of Special Advisor to the President (the fourth highest position in the goverment) allocated to a Darfurian by the DPA. The link connecting the two events, the participation of Minni's forces with those of the Sudanese army and Minni's likely entry into the government in Khartoum, is not difficult to decipher. As Minni was conveniently the only high-level commander of the three major rebel movements to sign the DPA (he was joined by other commanders, largely Zaghawa military leaders loyal to him), after intense pressure and cajoling from the likes of, among others, US President Bush, it seems logical to assume that he held the attainment of this position in mind when he put his signature on the document that ensured the complete rupture between himself and the faction of Abdel-wahid Mohammed el-Nur. This conclusion is strengthened when we recall Minni's personal history, and his meteoric rise in SLA leadership, from a total outsider, to the movement's self-styled Secretary General, to its leader, "elected" at a meeting from which his opponenet, el-Nur, was absent. The promise of newly acquired power, which indeed seems to be the only motivation of the increasingly ruthless Minni, did, however, come with its perils, namely from the majority of Darfur's population, up in arms about what they perceived as Minni's treachery and, most vocally at the chaotic Kalma camp, even calling for his head. It is thus only logical that Minni walked (and likely was drove, both by the calculating NIF leadership and unwittingly by the international community, eager to see a peace deal but ignorant of its possible repercussions) right into the arms of the GoS, more than willing to throw a bone to one unpopular individual and neatly render him dependent on Khartoum for protection and legitimacy, especially when doing so largely absolved them of having to make any real concessions to the rebel groups. NIF leaders easily, and successfully, turned Minni's ambitions for power into the recruitment of another prong of their genocidal force.
I, and others, have described elsewhere the GoS's strategic use of the DPA to instigate divisiveness and discord among their opponents and to ease pressure from the satiated international community. It is important also to note that the DPA is increasingly being twisted into delegitimizing proposed UN intervention in Darfur, something that many world actors assumed was the logical next step after the agreement. Presidential advisor, and longtime crony of the NIF elite, Majzoub al-Khalifa, recently reiterated this manipulative revision of past GoS committments and brazen challenge to the hitherto lacking will of the international community, declaring bluntly that "[w]e are not going to accept any U.N. force," based on the tortured reasoning that "[a]ccording to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) there is no room for the U.N. forces to come...The parties accepted ... only to stick to an AU force...and anything else (other) than that is a violation to the DPA." ("UN Darfur mission violates peace deal - Sudanese official," Reuters, 3 August 2006).
Sadly, the Sudanese government's use of the DPA to deflect the possibility of any meaningful intervention has been echoed by those with the most power to make intervention a reality and finally stop the bloodshed. I have already cited the obstinate support fatally accorded to the DPA by UN Special Envoy Jan Pronk, and as long as Pronk still begins and ends every discussion on the prospects of peace in Darfur with concerns about "implementing" the DPA, or fails to stand up and challenge statements like those of GoS Foreign Minister Lam Akol that "We will never accept an amendment because Pronk says ... we will amend the peace deal when the reality on the ground dictates (and) it does not" ("Few signs of peace or agreement in Darfur," CTV.ca, 14 July 2006), he is demonstrating that he is little more than, at worst, a pawn of the Sudanese government, or, at best, utterly useless. Similarly, the response of the United States to the Darfur genocide, turned up at the height of the Abuja negotiations from nearly nonexistent to tepid, has been limited entirely to talking around a defunct peace agreement that the US, like Pronk, is perfectly content to naïvely pretend will bring peace to Darfur if it is merely implemented more effectively. President Bush seems to harbor the illusion that merely exhorting Minni, the rebel leader he champions by bringing to Washington, to convince the other faction of the SLA (which detests him) and the people of Darfur (who want to kill him) to accept the DPA, and to cease torturing and attacking his opponents, consitutes an adequately severe response to the increasingly chaotic and worsening situation in Darfur. At the UN, Bush's bull-headed, unconfirmed, and impossible to work with appointee, John Bolton, continues to display the stubborn closed-mindedness so ineffective at the UN and so detrimental to the chances of the US taking the lead in international action on Darfur. With a track record that includes preventing Juan Mendez, the Special Advisor on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, from even giving his report on Darfur, failing to pass a Security Council resolution during the US' February leadership of the Council, despite much talk of doing so, and striking names from the eventual list of individuals for targeted sanctions (such as Salah Abdallah Gosh and other supposed "anti-terror" allies), Bolton has now bypassed a trip to Darfur with the Security Council because of a "personal committment" to speak at a right-wing think tank in the UK (questioning by Senator Russ Feingold at Bolton's confirmation hearings, see http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/27/bolton-sudan/). What most epitomizes Bolton's effective complicity with the GoS in using the DPA as an excuse for inaction, though, is his 27 July opening statement before the Senate Foreigh Relations committee. Though he does eventually discuss the prospects of putting 15-17 thousand UN peacekeeprs on the ground in Darfur by January 2007, it is the first paragraph that is most revealing. Bolton begins his discussion here - the emphasis on the importance of where one begins cannot be understated - by praising the DPA, blandly reciting the platitudes that "[t]he DPA, if fully enacted, establishes critical security, wealth sharing, and power-sharing arrangements that address the long-standing marginalization of Darfur. We believe that the DPA, along with the deployment of a strong UN force, provides real hope and a way ahead for the people in Darfur." If by "power-sharing," Bolton means the continued ascendance of the despotic Minni Minnawi, he was correct. If by "real hope" and "a way ahead," he envisioned the murder, rape, and torture of Darfurian civilians at the hands of one of "their" rebel groups, he was correct. But as long as he maintains that peace can be achieved simply by "fully enact[ing]" the DPA and that it is only "along with" a UN force that the Darfur genocide can be stopped, and not that this alone (or, even more so, a strong NATO force) can possibly deter Janjaweed and GoS genocidaires, Bolton will go down in history as the one who actively turned away as genocide was committed, yet again, "on our watch."
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