allAfrica.com: Sudan: Guarantees for the DPA (Page 1 of 2)

This is the sixth in a series of articles concerning the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), explaining how the Agreement was negotiated in Abuja and how it can be implemented. This article deals with the question: how do we know it can work? What are the mechanisms and guarantees?

In the Abuja talks, there was little trust between the negotiating teams from the GoS and the Movements. This was no surprise, given the horrific violence that has occurred in Darfur over the last few years, and the breakdown of previous agreements such as the N'djamena Humanitarian Ceasefire. The experience of negotiating an end to African civil wars is that the process usually takes at least four years--and in the case of Southern Sudan, it took more than ten years from the adoption of the IGAD Declaration of Principles to the signing of the CPA. It takes many years to build trust, and even then the implementation of agreements faces formidable problems. Everyone concerned with Darfur was not ready to be that patient, and so every effort was made to accelerate the process by providing extra layers of guarantees.

On both sides, there were people who opposed reaching any negotiated settlement. Some members of the Government believed that the Movements were too weak, too fragmented and too unrepresentative of the Darfurian population to be a viable partner in peace. Some argued that the Movements were representing a foreign agenda and were not truly Sudanese. Better, they felt, to allow the war to continue and the Sudan Armed Forces to finish the job. On the side of the Movements, there were some who so distrusted and hated the Government that they believed that peace was impossible without a complete change in the regime, and that any peace agreement would simply postpone the inevitable showdown. Most of the criticism of the DPA from western activists is a variation on the argument, "what use is a peace agreement if the National Congress Party stays in power?"

The rapid conclusion to the DPA negotiations in April-May this year means that, uniquely for an African peace agreement, confidence-building between the parties has to take place after the agreement is signed, not beforehand. The technical experts on the security arrangements talks had recommended that the GoS and the Movements first sign a ceasefire, and then use the implementation period of the ceasefire for confidence-building, assuming that as the two sides worked together on monitoring the ceasefire, they would build confidence. In principle, everyone agreed that this was the way to proceed. But the sheer scale of the violence in Darfur, the depths of the humanitarian crisis, and the way in which the Darfur conflict was holding up the implementation of the CPA and thereby poisoning the very chances of democracy throughout Sudan, meant that the AU and its international partners decided they had to move more quickly. So, unlike in the South and the Nuba Mountains, where a ceasefire was agreed first, and implemented and monitored while the talks continued, in the Abuja talks the comprehensive ceasefire is part of the overall agreement itself.

Therefore no-one should be surprised that the main criticism of the DPA is "how can this be implemented given that the two sides don't trust each other?" It is a fair point. The answer lies in looking at the mechanisms for monitoring and verification in the text of the DPA, and the international engagement and international guarantees provided, outside the DPA, by the United States, the UN and other international partners.

One of the first issues raised by the SLM/A and JEM negotiators in Abuja was the weakness of the existing mechanisms for monitoring and verification of the ceasefire. One stumbling block was the continued presence of Chad as a leading member of both the Ceasefire Commission (CFC) and the Joint Commission (JC). At first the Movements objected to this (especially JEM) because of their poor relations with the Chadian Government. Later, Khartoum objected. By the middle of the seventh round of the talks, the Chadians resolved the problem by quietly taking a back seat.

A more difficult problem was enhancing the powers of the CFC and JC themselves, and making sure they operated effectively. Paragraph 250 of the DPA was the outcome of this: it allows the two institutions to take tougher measures against groups that violate the ceasefire, including recommending sanctions against them. The CFC, JC and AMIS are also given much stronger powers for monitoring and verifying all aspects of the comprehensive ceasefire, including the movement of forces, the disengagement and redeployment of troops, and the use of heavy weapons.

Another demand of the SLM/A and JEM was for a much tougher international protection force. At first, the negotiators insisted that they wanted the UN to come in as part of the Agreement itself. But the AU Mediation had no power to deliver this, even if the sides had agreed. Instead, it was agreed that the discussions could include measures for strengthening the AU force--both the military and the police--and that if the GoS agreed to change the AU force into a UN peacekeeping operation, then "UN" would simply replace "AU" at the relevant places in the text of the DPA.

The DPA may not mention a UN force, but the signed Agreement is in fact a prerequisite for any UN force. In 2004 the AU dispatched troops to Darfur on the basis of a very shaky ceasefire--something the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations would never have done. The UN, with its long experience of peacekeeping, insists that there must first be a peace to keep before it sends troops. The UN only sent troops to Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains after the signing of the CPA. Similarly, with the DPA now signed, the UN will consider sending a force to Darfur. But it needs Khartoum's consent. The main focus of the international politics of Darfur has now shifted from pressing the sides to sign the DPA, to pressing Khartoum to accept a UN force.

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