Three months ago, the outgoing force commander of UNAMID said there is no war in Darfur. To be fair, that controversial declaration of General Martin Luther Agwai was accompanied by a host of caveats and claims that were largely ignored by the reactive outcry that followed. After a few weeks, people calmed down and now Agwai’s best known accomplishment is in managing to stir up a semantics debate and pat himself on the back, all while trivializing the rampant insecurity that continues to afflict the region.
But yesterday, in response to a UN report that portrays Darfur as a still troubled place, Sudan’s Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem echoed the former UNAMID commander’s remarks. Criticizing the report for leaving out the essential detail “that the war is over”, he recommended the UN start planning for its departure.
Before UNAMID begins packing up its things—many of which, ironically, have yet to arrive—perhaps it’s time to look again. Abdalhaleem suggests that by omitting the claim that war is over in Darfur, UN officials are using the report to preserve the relevance its mission no longer has. However, what the report actually reveals is that representatives of the beleaguered force were never in a position to make that claim to begin with…..for one very disturbing reason: access to any sustaining evidence has been consistently denied.
Agwai’s initial declaration was based on the absence of large-scale military activities, the weakness of rebel movements, and his own perception that the only immediate threat is banditry. Around the same time, outgoing Joint Special Representative Rodolphe Adada proclaimed his own accomplishments resulted in the end of civilian massacres in Darfur.
Less than a month after Agwai and Adada uttered their ambitiously optimistic remarks, no fewer than 13 civilian lives were lost as fighting broke out in Korma. Although Agwai posited that the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) was the only viable rebel faction in Darfur, it was the Sudan Liberation Army/Abdel Wahid (SLA/AW) involved in those lethal clashes that displaced 31,000 Darfuri civilians and reportedly resulted in serious human rights abuses, including sexual violence. Despite having local companies stationed in nearby Mellit and Kutum, the mission was unable to respond to the military build-up, prevent the clashes, and intervene when civilian lives were at stake. In fact, the peacekeeping force was nowhere to be seen. Even after the violence subsided, UNAMID was notably missing. While insufficient aerial reconnaissance and quick reaction capacity are among the operation’s critical shortcomings, UNAMID’s absence was not due to equipment shortages or even mandate issues, but primarily because the belligerents denied it access to the area. For 11 days, UNAMID was unable to patrol or investigate the incident.
That incident—which the UNSG’s latest report reveals to be far from isolated—was a resonant reminder that Agwai and Adada cannot declare over a war to which UNAMID has been deliberately made blind.
Despite signing a Status-of-Forces Agreement (SOFA) in early 2008, the Government of Sudan has been repeatedly implicated in obstructing UNAMID’s freedom of movement. Although UNAMID now boasts deployment of roughly 75% of its authorized military personnel, Sudanese government officials astonishingly still claim ignorance of its mandate to conduct patrols and monitoring activities to protect civilians and humanitarian activities. The report even reveals outright threats against UNAMID issued by various authorities in response to IDP camp access, patrols, and aircraft movement.
Another recent report by the UN Panel of Experts on the Sudan recounts identical obstructionist measures taken by the Government of Sudan—and others—that have prevented the Panel from effectively carrying out its mandate to monitor the UN Arms Embargo. The data it was able to gather implicate all parties in violating the embargo, procuring illicit weaponry, and contributing to no less than “four distinct conflicts” in which “the Darfurian population continues to be victimized by the effects of attacks and counter-attacks involving most of the armed movements that frequently lead to the disproportionate use of force by the Sudnaese Armed Forces (SAF) and their auxiliary forces, and result in killings, injuries and displacements.”
The truth is that the events that took place in Korma in North Darfur during September not only dispute every claim made by Agwai, reinforced by Adada, and echoed by Abdalhaleem; they also illustrate the complex reality of a place far from peace. Over the past three months, similar events throughout Darfur—including those in which the peacekeeping mission and humanitarian agencies have been directly targeted—reveal that the job of the UN mission to protect civilians in Darfur isn’t done; it’s barely even started.
Both war and peace are at arms length for UNAMID. What is clear that they are placed there, at a distance, carefully, purposefully, and systematically by Darfur’s belligerent parties, most notably by the Government of Sudan. So, is it time to quit? Not at all. UNAMID isn’t in the clear; it’s in the dark.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Tags: African Union, Darfur, Peacekeeping, UNAMID, United Nations
