Is the Doha "Peace Process" really about peace in Darfur?

 By Gerard Prunier

Darfur represented the largest untapped lode of manageable votes

Since the signing of a pre-agreement on February 23rd between the Khartoum government and the JEM rebel group the international press has made much of this as “a major breakthrough towards peace in Darfur”. Given the past history of  “peace agreements” in the Sudan one is entitled to a certain amount of skepticism . And in that particular case the skepticism is amply justified . Why ? Let us go back a little bit to try to understand .

  The problem basically started when the Sudanese government began to “prepare” the April 2010 election last January. Pre-rigging proved to be inordinately difficult for a variety of reasons :
• There were quarrels within the NCP and the names of the candidates the central party authorities wanted to push were often rejected by their men on the ground at the local level
• Pro-Turabi militants had not always joined the PCP after 1999 . Many had stayed with the NCP and they made sure to complicate matters .
• Local “ethnic” candidacies became more frequent and tended to challenge the central “Arab” candidacies of the NCP .
• The old sectarian-based parties , particularly the Umma , enjoyed a limited but distinct revival caused by widespread public exasperation towards NCP corruption and misadministration .

As a result NCP central party authorities began to panic and to look for easy-to-control constituencies . Their conclusion was that Darfur represented the largest untapped lode of manageable votes . But the government needed some kind of an insurance that JEM would not re-stage another military attack on Khartoum during the polling (it had plans to do so) which would have rendered the election completely unmanageable in the West . At the same time Beshir thought he could kill several birds with one stone :
• Pacify the Chadian border where his hopes of winning a military victory were now very thin (the Chadian rebels are divided and inefficient while Idris Deby has considerably strengthened his army with French help)
• Trade an agreement with JEM for his peace offensive towards Chad
• “Incorporate” JEM into the government in a way which would yield much greater dividends than the “peace agreement” signed with Minni Minnawi at Abuja in 2006 which never really worked .
• Roll back the arguments for the Darfur ICC indictment and get at least a postponement of the court action and perhaps its being dropped off .

So the “framework agreement” was signed on February 23rd . But Khalil Ibrahim immediately made demands which Beshir found unacceptable : fuse all the rebel groups into the JEM and postpone the elections . Why these demands and why could not the NCP accept them ? The reason was that Khalil wanted to be made Vice-President right away , move to Khartoum and prepare a coup . He was in touch with Turabi who was ready to provide a civilian and “moderate Islamist” guarantee for the coup . Overthrowing an unelected war-criminal , coming to the rescue of the country and organizing “true” elections later would have been good PR . But overthrowing a recently-elected government would not have looked too good . JEM also knew that it could not stand in the elections with any chance of even moderate success (the Zaghawa make up 7% of Darfur’s population and nobody else than the Zaghawa would have voted for JEM candidates) and that it would need to incorporate the Fur into its electoral strategy (even a crooked one) if it wanted to look like it had even a shadow of representativity  . Now the NCP wanted a subservient partner helping it “win” the polls , not a coup-planning one bent upon a real takeover of the Darfur electorate . And it also wanted the polls to be carried out , as quickly as possible , in order to re-legitimize itself before holding the southern referendum.

 So the frustrated NCP accepted to see all the non-Fur groups create a ten-member alliance of non-JEM movements , called the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) . This “movement” was headed by a Fur , al-Tijjani Sissi , who had no political credentials apart from being a former UN employee . But he was pliable enough . On March 18th he signed another “framework agreement” in Doha to help the NCP put pressure on JEM . Since several members of LJM were Gration-nurtered “rebels” (the so-called Addis Ababa group) , Khartoum thus made sure to get some US sympathy for the new approach and put pressure on Khalil.

   Meanwhile Khartoum had more or less seriously dismantled its support system for the Chadian rebels it had kept in Darfur and had asked Deby to put pressure on Khalil so that he would sign . Deby carried out his part of the bargain . But if Khartoum had full control over the Chadian rebels , the same was not true of the relationship between Deby and Khalil . Khalil is much more powerful and he has his own cash and channels of supply for weapons and equipment . So Deby can ask him , not order him.

  Khalil said yes , he would keep talking in Doha . But this is only so that Gration does not brand him as a “spoiler” . He wants to keep Beshir in that role and retain that of the noble rebel fighting for democracy , a dubious claim if one knows his past record.

   So where is peace in all that ? Nowhere it seems . While this horse trading was going on in Doha , the Sudanese Army attacked the forces of ultra-rejectionist Abd-el-Wahid an-Nur in Jebel Mara . There were at least 400 victims , mostly civilians , over 1,000 wounded and almost 100,000 new IDPs . Abd-el-Wahid lost half of the terrain he previously controlled . But the government forces are finding it difficult to hang on to the land they have occupied . Peace you said ? Well , perhaps . But later.