[wvns] Blue-Hatting Darfur
Mahmood Mamdani writes about the dangers of the UN's new role in
Darfur. The balance between the military and political dimensions is
crucial, and the UN tends to privilege the military dimension.
Blue-Hatting Darfur
by Mahmood Mamdani
Significant changes are currently taking place on the ground in
Darfur. The peacekeeping forces of the African Union (AU) are being
replaced by a hybrid AU-UN force under overall UN control. The
assumption is that the change will be for the better, but this is
questionable. The balance between the military and political
dimensions of peacekeeping is crucial. Once it had overcome its
teething problems – and before it ran into major funding difficulties
– the AU got this relationship right: it privileged the politics,
where the UN has tended to privilege the military dimension, which is
why the UN-controlled hybrid force runs the risk of becoming an
occupation force.
The AU's involvement in Darfur began a year after the start of the
insurgency, when in April 2004 it brokered the N'djamena Humanitarian
Ceasefire Agreement between the Sudanese government and the rebel
movements. The result was the setting up of the African Union Mission
in Sudan (AMIS), which started with a group of 60 observers in June
2004, and expanded to 3605 by the end of the year: 450 observers, 2341
soldiers and 814 police officers. The troops came from six countries –
Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Gambia and Kenya – and the
police from Ghana. There were also military observers from Egypt and
Libya, among others. A Joint Assessment Mission, led by the AU with
participants from the UN, the EU and Canada, followed in March 2005.
It called for an increase in the numbers of soldiers and police to a
total of roughly eight thousand, and for civilians to be brought in as
humanitarian officers.
One member of the assessment team was Major General Henry Anyidoho
from Ghana, who was UN deputy force commander in Rwanda at the time of
the genocide. I met him in Khartoum in May this year, and asked what
he thought of AMIS. `I got to Darfur in January 2005,' he said. `I
found out they were doing an incredibly good job. First, the rebel
movements were still intact, so it was easy to deal with the
government and the two rebel movements. Second, the Janjawiid were
pretty well under control. Third, the ceasefire agreement was being
observed.' This positive view was shared by Refugees International,
which reported in November 2005 that earlier in the year, AMIS had
been able to provide some security and deterrence. Displaced persons
were congregating near AMIS bases, the UN World Food Programme started
parking its vehicles at AMIS sites, AMIS escorted humanitarian
convoys, and helped victims of attacks get to hospitals. The
round-the-clock presence of civilian police in some IDP [Internally
Displaced Person] camps has provided a greater sense of security to a
population that is distrustful of the Sudanese police. AMIS forces
have helped to restore order and provide security during the very
difficult IDP re-registration process.[1]
By the time the Refugees International report appeared, however, it
was clear that the rebel movements were beginning to split. AMIS had
succeeded – and this was a major political achievement – in
negotiating a Declaration of Principles and getting all the insurgent
factions and the government of Sudan to sign it on 5 July 2005 in
Abuja. That declaration remains the only political basis for peace in
Darfur. But only three months later, when the Sudan Liberation
Movement (SLM) held its conference in Darfur, Abdel Wahid, its leader,
anticipated problems and did not attend. His suspicions proved
justified when Minni Minawi, the commander of the movement's field
forces, was elected to replace him. The AU decided to invite both men
to peace talks in Abuja, where Minawi signed the Darfur Peace
Agreement in May 2006. But the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM),
the other original rebel movement, refused to sign, as did 19
representatives of the SLM, who defected to follow Abdel Wahid.[2] The
so-called Group of 19 wielded a lot of influence among the fighters,
who soon began to degenerate into tribal groupings. The difficulty for
the AU now was how to get all these groups together, but it remained
committed to a political solution, knowing that only a renegotiated
ceasefire would provide protection for civilians in Darfur.
Another unfortunate development was that support for AMIS from Western
donor countries began to weaken just as the going got rough. The
N'djamena Ceasefire Agreement had involved a formal collaboration
between the AU, the UN and leading Western powers. According to
Anyidoho, `Canada was to provide aircraft and maintenance, the UK
vehicles, the US camps, and the EU soldiers and police.' Donors eager
to be seen to pledge money early in 2005 were reluctant to release it
once the mission ran into difficulties. The US had promised $50
million to support AMIS at the donors' conference in May 2005, but
didn't deliver. By November the following year, Congress had removed
the funds from the 2006 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. Around
the same time, the EU announced that salary payments would be made
only on a quarterly basis and demanded proper financial accountability
before releasing funds for the next quarter. When the paperwork didn't
arrive, the EU suspended the provision of funds.
`Donors call the shots,' Anyidoho told me. `When donor fatigue set in,
the world began calling for UN forces. The AU force has not been paid
since January 2007. It is short of aviation fuel from time to time.
Donors have provided the AU with commercial, not military,
helicopters, so the pilots must decide whether or not to go to an
area.' In July, when I made my second visit this year to Sudan, the AU
force still hadn't been paid. AMIS has faced a series of problems of
this sort. As early as 2005, when Refugees International sent a
mission to assist AMIS in North Darfur, it noted that `all of AMIS's
local interpreters were on strike because their salaries had been cut
in half following a restructuring of salaries . . . for all AMIS
personnel.'
The AU had assumed that the ceasefire would be observed by all
parties, and expected that its mission would be needed for only a
short time. As the rebels began to split, and the political agreement
underlying the ceasefire to unravel, fighting resumed and the
inadequacy of AMIS's mandate became apparent. There were demands that
it be expanded so that the armed peacekeepers could protect not only
the unarmed observers, who were supposed to monitor the ceasefire, but
also the civilian victims of the conflict.
The AU itself had quickly become a target both for the belligerents
and for anybody agitated by the conflict – including the media, the
international NGOs (INGOs) and the IDPs they had come to `save'.
Throughout the second half of 2005, there were attempts by all sides
to murder or kidnap AU soldiers. According to Refugees International,
Janjawiid attacks on villages in North Darfur, which killed ten people
and displaced nearly seven thousand more, also wounded three members
of an AMIS patrol; a rebel splinter group kidnapped nearly forty AMIS
troops in West Darfur; four Nigerian AMIS troops and two of its
civilian contractors were killed when they intervened in an attack,
reportedly by the SLA, on another contractor; the next day, a JEM
splinter group kidnapped an entire AMIS patrol of 18, including its
American monitor, in Nana, near Tine in West Darfur.
There were other problems too. In September 2005, two AMIS soldiers
died of Aids-related illnesses, sparking public anxieties. In March
2006, Channel 4 reported that women and girls as young as 11 at the
Gereida IDP camp in South Darfur were claiming that AU soldiers had
offered them money in exchange for sex. The AU set up a committee to
inquire into alleged `sexual misconduct including rape and child
abuse' carried out by its forces.
AMIS has responded ineptly to such problems. It has almost no
appreciation of the critical role of spin in shaping public opinion in
modern Western democracies and has neither a public relations office
nor a legal department. Instead of releasing its version of events in
a convincing way, it always communicates in the form of a short press
release. Refugees International reported incredulously that when they
asked for `a brochure describing their mission, officers handed RI a
printed copy in English and Arabic of the Declaration of Principles .
. . with photos of the signatories'.
The powerful, usually well-intentioned INGO community in Darfur has
added its voice to those who see the presence of the UN, and of the
Western powers in particular, as the only viable solution to the
crisis. Refugees International wants the UN to take charge of African
peacekeepers, on the grounds that `"blue-hatting" a mission . . . has
worked in the past in such places as Burundi and Liberia, where the AU
or Economic Community of West African States, after providing initial
stability, handed over a mission to the UN.' They argue, above all,
that the UN has the resources to support more troops on the ground,
and to furnish them with superior weaponry. RI has even called on the
UN Security Council to establish a no-fly zone over Darfur and on Nato
and other forces to assist AMIS in enforcing it. There are concerns,
naturally, that such measures would ratchet up the military element of
the `humanitarian intervention', but there has been hardly any
discussion of their potential political consequences. It is this
tension between the military and political aspects of intervention
that explains the contradictions in Security Council Resolution 1769
of 31 July on the United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID).
Resolution 1769 begins by affirming that this `hybrid operation should
have a predominantly African character and the troops should, as far
as possible, be sourced from African countries'. It calls on the
secretary-general to `immediately begin deployment of the command and
control structures and systems necessary to ensure a seamless transfer
of authority from AMIS to UNAMID', and leaves no doubt about the
meaning of `immediately': `as soon as possible and no later than 31
December 2007'. At the same time, the resolution `emphasises there can
be no military solution to the conflict in Darfur' and stresses the
importance of the Darfur Peace Agreement as the basis for a `lasting
political solution and sustained security in Darfur'. It deplores the
fact that `the Agreement has not been fully implemented by the
signatories and not signed by all parties to the conflict,' and calls
for an immediate ceasefire, including a stop to the government's
aerial bombings. Here, then, is the contradiction at the heart of
Resolution 1769: it aims to enforce a ceasefire that does not exist.
It sets a firm deadline for the transfer of authority to UNAMID, but
suggests no deadline for either a ceasefire or a political agreement
to be reached by the warring parties. An external force can monitor a
ceasefire agreed by belligerents, but only if such an agreement
exists. The collapse of a ceasefire is evidence that there is no
agreement. It was, after all, the breakdown of the N'djamena ceasefire
that reversed the fortunes of AMIS.
`The AU has become part of the conflict,' Mohamed Saley, the leader of
the JEM splinter group that allegedly abducted the AMIS patrol in
October 2005, told Reuters at the time. `We want the AU to leave and
we have warned them not to travel to our areas.' Trying to keep the
peace in the absence of a peace agreement made the AU `part of the
conflict'. There is no reason to believe that the fate of the UN will
be any different. To strengthen the mandate in the absence of a
political agreement is more likely to deepen than to solve the
dilemma. To enforce the ceasefire will mean taking on the role of an
invading – and not a peacekeeping – force. Darfur, which is a bit
smaller than France – and larger than Iraq – will surely require a
force of more than the 26,000 currently planned by the UN.
Abdu Katuntu was chair of the African Union Parliament's Select
Committee on Darfur between 2004 and 2006, during which time he made
six lengthy visits to Darfur, including stays in IDP camps. I met him
in Kampala a few weeks ago and asked him why the UN could not have
given AMIS more resources and made its mandate more robust, instead of
`blue-hatting' it. `It would have rendered them irrelevant,' he
answered, `because the international community would have said the
Africans have sorted out their own problem.' I have also spoken to UN
personnel who are puzzled by the organisation's focus on only one set
of belligerents. `There is something wrong with the UN Mission,' an
Afghan security officer in the UN's Department of Safety and Security
reflected. `Everyone knows that for the UN the problem is only the
government and the Janjawiid. They are here to disarm them and not the
rebel forces. How then can you get a political solution between them?'
The AU's political vision is encapsulated in a provision in the Darfur
Peace Agreement that calls for a Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and
Consultation (DDDC). The AU distinguishes between the processes of
dialogue and consultation: although the formal dialogue can begin only
after a comprehensive peace agreement is in place, the AU is committed
to an informal consultation intended to pave the way to such an
agreement. The consultations began in July last year. The first
meetings were held in cities in each of the three states of Darfur:
Nyala in the south, Zalingei in the west and El Fasher in the north.
They brought together grassroots activists and leaders representing
many different groups: the Native Administration regime in the rural
areas that was displaced (into the towns and cities) by the 2003
insurgency, local voluntary organisations, political parties (both
government and opposition), intellectuals and academics (each of the
three states has a university), and the more than two million
displaced people living in camps in Darfur.
The first rounds of discussion in Nyala and Zalingei had produced a
consensus on one issue: the DDDC should not be a top-down affair but
should rather include all political and tribal affiliations (even
those implicated in providing recruits for the Janjawiid). It would
have to be independent of any political party or group (including the
government). But the consultations produced a double shock for the
African Union. A large majority at the El Fasher meeting in July this
year called for an intervention by forces who would not only be
`external' but non-African. Most participants identified the AU as the
root of their problems and the UN as the most likely source of an
effective solution. `The AU is like the Arab League,' the
representative from El Fasher Call, a voluntary organisation,
explained. `It responds to governments, not public pressure. All
African governments are dictatorships, which is why people look at the
AU with suspicion. The UN also represents governments, but most states
in the UN are democratic.' `We want the UN to come,' the sultan of El
Fasher added. `It has mercy.'
The naivety of these assumptions was typical of the discussions at El
Fasher. Just as they identified the UN with Western democracies, and
talked as if democracies cannot be empires, every speaker who called
for UN intervention seemed to assume that UN forces – unlike those of
AMIS – would be white. They did not appear to have grasped that what
will change in the transition from AMIS to UNAMID is the command much
more than the troops on the ground.
The discussion on UN intervention ended in a cul-de-sac. On the one
hand, the call for external intervention was backed up by a strong
feeling that all internal avenues (national and African) were
exhausted. On the other hand, those most vociferously calling for
external intervention seemed to see the UN as a benign agency without
any political agenda of its own – even though it is clear that a UN
intervention would be guided by the big powers of the Security
Council. Many supporters of external intervention saw it as an
extension of a local practice, `ajawiid', whereby a third party
intervenes in a conflict that cannot be resolved. But the lesson of
`ajawiid' is that the intervention can only be credible and effective
if the third party's interests are compatible with those of the
belligerents. In El Fasher no one questioned the politics of an
intervention driven by the major powers.
Local voluntary organisations were critical of the growing dependency
of IDPs on international NGOs. The representative from El Fasher Call
made the point with some bitterness: `IDPs are trying to endear
themselves to international NGOs but don't want to deal with national
NGOs.' `IDPs don't believe in anything Sudanese any more,' a
representative from a Fur charity added. One participant from a
construction NGO observed that the war had made people adopt a
`consumer mentality'. The disaffection with INGOs was shared by all
local voluntary organisations, regardless of their ethnic affiliation
or political inclination. `National NGOs lack the capacity to provide
necessary services,' a representative of Sudan Development
Organisation explained, not least because they are excluded by INGOs:
`They make no attempt to acknowledge that we know the ground better,
and also the demands of the people. No wonder most national NGOs have
been rejected by the IDPs. If international NGOs gave us a chance,
people might appreciate us more.' One participant, however, reminded
his colleagues that, without the INGOs, `you would not have found any
IDP alive in Darfur.' As he saw it, the problem was twofold. First,
the INGOs have a short-term perspective: they may leave after peace is
established, and national NGOs should be ready to fill the gap.
Second, each INGO has its own agenda that limits its perspective:
`Every organisation has its own programme for each place. There should
be a dialogue among organisations to co-ordinate a programme.'
Summing up the discussions at El Fasher, the AU mediator, Salim Ahmed
Salim, made the crucial point that for external intervention to work
it would have to reinforce an internal process, not be a substitute
for it. What matters, he argued, is `not how large a force it is but
what they have come to defend', since `without an agreement on peace,
even a force of fifty thousand can't change the situation here
radically.' He meant to caution Darfurians that to pin all hopes on
the hybrid force would be tantamount to abdicating their own
responsibility. But he was in a minority.
Salim reflected more widespread agreement when he remarked: `Even if
those who have taken up arms have a cause, it is important to consult
those who have not taken up arms, the civilian population.' The point
of the consultations should be `to show them an alternative to armed
struggle: dialogue, persuasion, organisation'. Earlier negotiations,
he argued, should have involved more civilians. But if civil society
is to be more than a mere appendage to the second round of
negotiations involving armed groups, the DDDC talks will need to be
the beginning of a far more ambitious process.
No internal force appears capable of effective leadership. Even the
SPLA, which is in political control of the South of Sudan and has been
guaranteed, under the terms of the separate Comprehensive Peace
Agreement of January 2005, 10 per cent representation in every
parliament in the northern states, doesn't have the human resources
necessary for effective leadership. Like the UN, the INGOs seem to
have no patience with an internal political process. For them, the
people of Darfur are not citizens in a sovereign political process so
much as wards in an international rescue operation with no end in
sight. They are there to `save' Darfur, not to `empower' it. This is
why many of the big INGOs and some of the American and British staff
at the UN offices in Khartoum are sceptical about the DDDC. They worry
that bringing together political figures and representatives of civil
society for an open discussion risks conveying a feeling that
normality is returning to Darfur, when it is actually the depth of the
crisis that should be emphasised. The `humanitarian' effort is itself
based on the conviction that both the crisis and its solution are
military, not political; accordingly, there is little appetite for an
internal political process designed to strengthen democratic citizenship.
`What is the solution?' I asked General Anyidoho, who has recently
been appointed joint deputy special representative for the hybrid
force. `Threefold,' he replied, military fashion. `First, a complete
ceasefire.' (This would require a political agreement among all the
fighting forces.) `Second, talks involving a cross-section of
Darfurians. They must agree. And third, the government has a big role
to play. This is not a failed state; there is a sitting government.'
What about the Janjawiid? `They are nomadic forces on horseback; they
have always been there. They are spread across Sahelian Africa: Niger,
Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic. The problem is that the
AK-47 has replaced the bow and arrow. The Janjawiid should be disarmed
before the rebels turn in their arms.'
What about the camps? `The camps are becoming militarised. Women go
out to collect firewood and they are raped. Rape has become a weapon
of war. It is meant to destroy a people's moral fabric: in an Islamic
society, rape is a big blemish. The AU police used to provide firewood
patrols and they were successful. But if there is security in future,
men will join their women in going to collect firewood. The objective
should be to close the IDP camps.'
What about the American threat to `take steps' – a no-fly zone,
sanctions? `It is not the way to go. Americans give deadlines all the
time. The threat of sanctions is also not enough. They have lived
under these for so long that they have become normal. They are used to
living in seclusion. Now, they have oil and a friend in the Security
Council . . . We can't solve these problems through weapons. We have
to sit and talk, which is why it is important to look at how Côte
d'Ivoire was solved after four years of fighting. Outsiders can never
solve the problem for us. It's a distant misery for them. We have to
do it for ourselves.'
Footnotes
1. No Power to Protect: The African Union Mission in Sudan by Sally
Chin and Jonathan Morgenstein (Refugees International, November 2005).
2. Alex de Waal wrote about this in the LRB of 30 November 2006.
* This article first appeared in the London Review of Books vol. 29,
no. 17, 6 September 2007 and reproduced here with the permission of
the author.
* Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the
Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia
University in the United States. He is also the Director of Columbia's
Institute of African Studies.[ He is also the current President of the
Council for Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) Dakar,
Senegal.
* Please send comments to editor @ pambazuka.org or comment online at
www.pambazuka.org
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