Though it is welcome, the unilateral cease-fire in Darfur announced yesterday by the Sudanese administration of President Omar Hassan Bashir is understandably being treated with caution, since the war-torn region has found itself here before and past cease-fires have collapsed.
None of the various rebel groups has offered to match Bashir’s move; nor indeed have any of the rebel factions said that they will attend peace talks that it is hoped will be convened in Qatar before the year is out. Yet in the difficult world of conflict resolution, the path to peace is laid piece by piece and the journey made step by step. Khartoum’s move can be seen as a necessary precondition for a more nuanced and considered reaction by the rebels, now split into some 12 different militias. They will all now be coming under pressure from outside players, not least the government of Chad. Indeed it may be no coincidence that only three days ago the Chadian and Sudanese governments ended a six-month rift and normalized relations by once again exchanging ambassadors.
There are, however, some parts of Bashir’s cease-fire declaration that should give pause for thought, because they smack of his administration’s past reluctance to confront tough realities. Khartoum, for instance, still insists that the death total in this bitter conflict is around 10,000 when independent observers attest that up to 300,000 people have perished and 2.5 million have been made homeless. In particular his demand that the militias now be disarmed seems particularly ingenuous. If the Sudanese armed forces have found themselves unable to disarm the rebels by military means, the insurgents are hardly likely to give up their weapons voluntarily at this juncture. Disarmament must indeed come but Bashir’s call at this time is premature. The road to peace with the rebel South — his administration’s outstanding achievement — did not begin with the SPLA rebels laying down their arms before negotiations commenced. There is also the important question of the war crimes accusations leveled against Bashir by International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in July. No warrant has been issued for the president’s arrest and both the Arab League and the African Union have now asked the United Nations to delay the move. It must be hoped that the UN will see how disruptive such a legal process would be to this latest nascent peace effort.
The two main rebel groups at least, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) must now be persuaded to build on Bashir’s cease-fire. It would not do for them to launch attacks designed to provoke the Sudanese Army into retaliation. Perhaps the president could make one significant confidence-building measure. He has spoken of disarming the rebels but the loyalist Janjweed militias, who have been responsible for much of the violence remain under arms. Now if Khartoum disarmed the Janjaweed, that would be a powerful signal.
