A report just published bears out concerns that the United Nations failed to recognize the danger signals for the murderous conflict in Darfur. In 2001 UN personnel in western Sudan reported a rising tide of inter-communal violence with civilian populations being punished for the activities of rebel groups. Their warnings, however, either did not reach or were ignored by the UN Commission on Human Rights which 18 months later closed down its watching brief on the Sudan. This effectively signaled there was no human rights problems at almost the very moment it was becoming apparent that there was.
After investigating the events leading up to the start of the tragedy, the widely respected organization, Minority Rights Group International, concludes that the UN failed to learn the terrible lessons of the Rwandan genocide a decade earlier. This report has been widely described in the media as damning. There certainly was a mistake, a breakdown in communications or a refusal to trust information coming from UN people actually in Darfur.
But what is forgotten is the high sense of optimism engendered by the start of talks between the government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). These negotiations brought an end to a conflict that had disfigured Sudan since it separated from Egypt in 1956 and led to the granting of autonomy to the south and the formation of the present coalition government in Khartoum. Sudanese President Omar Bashir was demonstrating a high level of statesmanship in his dealing with the south. Therefore either UN Human Rights officials simply did not believe the warnings from Darfur or if they did, hoped that the solution to the growing violence would flow naturally from the peace deal with the SPLA. It has always been hard to understand why the Bashir administration could demonstrate the consummate political skills necessary to settle the complex and bitter confrontation with the south yet allow the smoldering resentments in Darfur to become such a raging fire.
UN personnel who saw the tragedy developing as the Janjaweed militias confronted the rebels, or more accurately the communities from which the rebels sprang, assumed that since these people were armed and directed by the local police and military and acted in their support, the policy had been initiated in Khartoum. The extent to which this was true is still unclear. Some diplomats in the capital believe that this was a crisis that grew because of neglect or ignorance by the central authorities. It was hoped that the Darfur rebellion would be contained and that the problem would go away. There was no attempt to repeat the political approach of the successful peace process with the south.
It took outside intervention by the African Union, leading to the partially successful Abuja peace talks, before Khartoum addressed the tragedy. By this time the tide of international condemnation had put the Bashir administration on the defensive and produced only angry responses. This was thus an all-round failure and not simply an error by the UN.