As both signatories to peace and devotees to conflict, the Sudanese government has mastered the art of juggling the pen and the sword. The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was ratified in May of this year. It set out an agreement in principle for the deployment of a UN-mandated peacekeeping force. Since then, the Sudanese government, led by the inscrutable President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, has variously courted, confused and harangued the international community in an apparent effort to create discord in the peace process. To this end, Bashir and his cronies have been largely successful.
In January 2005, Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party inked the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the southern Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), ending what had been Africa’s most protracted civil conflict. Since the signing, progress towards implementation of the CPA has been laboured, though agreement on an interim constitution—looking towards a referendum on autonomy for the south in 2011—and the establishment of a Government of National Unity has given some cause for optimism.
Issues of border demarcation and more precisely, the division of oil reserves continue to dominate negotiations though, and threaten to undermine what was proposed as an equitable wealth sharing agreement. With the DPA now ratified, albeit without unanimous support, the Government of National Unity stands poised over two tenuous agreements; one which has taken stuttering first steps, the other remaining in delicate infancy.
The Darfur conflict is difficult to abridge or situate in a potted history. Many an editorial has been devoted to the subjugated rebel militias, the tensions between Arabs against black Africans, the predatory janjaweed proxy army, and attendant government forces. Less reported but equally compelling are historical tensions over land and natural resource entitlements, essential to the security of livelihood. Nomadic pastoralists and sedentary farmers, often divided along ethnic lines, have clashed frequently, particularly over livestock routes and access to water resources.
Devastating periods of drought have exacerbated these tensions, as have inter-tribal skirmishes and perceptions of neglect between the Darfur periphery and the Khartoum centre. The publication of ‘The Black Book’ in 2002, a statistics-based diatribe on the dominance of Arab tribes in all facets of Sudanese rule since independence fueled these ethnic fires further. All of these issues are conflated and relevant, making the notions of ‘livelihoods’ and ‘security’ equally current and connected to the current crisis in Darfur.
The ambitions of the Darfur rebel movements,