11 April 2005
(Page 2 of 3)
Unfortunately, they're having a lot of teething pains and we in the international community are supporting them as best we can. The problem really is there are not enough of them. The real test will come when there's enough of them on the ground .
One of the fears I've got, is that the Janjaweed and whoever else is doing this - and it's more than just them - still have plenty of free space to roam, and they may just be moving away from where the AU is. The violence and the rapes are still going on, but they're just not in the zone where the AU is. If we put more AU on the ground, we may finally find out if the Janjaweed are going to be more than a bandit problem, if they will push back. I don't think so. The history of this kind of operation is that it disappears when confronted with a superior force. But we're not there yet. And we haven't got a lot more time to wait.
People have been saying for a long time that more AU troops are needed. Why isn't that happening?
The AU is going through these teething pains and the support and logistics capability in a place that's the size of the United States east of the Mississippi with no infrastructure, no air fields, no roads to speak of - even the waterways are not particularly conducive to the rapid movement of anything, never mind a sophisticated military force - has slowed this down. The truth of the matter is, the AU has met the standard they set for themselves in terms of the protection force and by and large the observers.
What hasn't shown up is the police force. The AU has been unable to generate a sufficient number of policemen to get out there. The South Africans sent a police chief and better than 50 men. The Nigerians have done the same thing, so the number of police is over 100. But the police operation is much more complicated and potentially much more effective than the military one. We are now in the process of constructing things to facilitate police deployment so they'll be closer to the actual major refugee camps. And the South Africans and others have come up with renewed pledges for more police. So we're optimistic that between now and, let's say, the beginning of June, we'll finally see this police number close.
The South African police chief who is out there has impressed everybody. He may not have gotten out there as fast as we wanted him to get out there, but he's there and he's making a difference. And so I think we have reason to hope, but I think the hope has to be informed with a renewed sense of time.
If we get this police number closed, we may start to have a real impact on the criminal activity that we're seeing now. They'll be the ones in the camps, trying to reinforce and enhance the order in the camps. The police obviously can't stand up to well-armed groups like the Janjaweed, but they can stand up to the camp bullies and opportunistic banditry that's going on. And I think, based on the statistics I'm seeing on rapes and things like that, some of this around the major camps has become this more opportunistic thing, as opposed to more organized [activity] by a heavily armed group.
So there's reason to believe that police on the ground will make a difference. This needs to happen within the next few months. I don't think that we can afford to let this increase drag out over a year-and-a-half, which is what this has taken.
It is my impression that there been troops from a few African countries ready to go to Darfur but there hasn't been lift capacity to get them there?
There have been these persistent reports that the logistics was not ready for the troops, but that hasn't been the case for several months. Nobody that wants to be on the ground is not on the ground.
Overall, what is your assessment of the humanitarian situation in Darfur?
If you look back at where we were in August, it's much better. If you look at where we were in November, December, it's a little worse.
Why have conditions worsened since late last year?
Because the situation in the camps changed. As you keep people off their land longer, they become more dependent on aid streams. They're living in conditions that allow disease vectors to begin to catch up with them. You're getting the odd outbreak here and there of the usual diseases like cholera. The solutions are obvious - better water supplies and things, and that's being taken on. Vaccinations for measles are going on. We're in a race between the declining situation of the population and the humanitarian effort to turn that around, complicated by the continued violence and attacks. We had one of our own aid workers shot. We've had attacks on the occasional aid convoys, and we had the UN pull out of a sector for a period of a week because of the instability.
The April ceasefire, April a year ago, has never really taken practical effect. It's been very sporadic. The African Union has tried several times to breath life into this, but the parties need to do better, and that includes the rebels, as well as the Janjaweed and the government.
So we're back to the question of what the government in Khartoum needs to do about Darfur.
Khartoum needs to do more than it's doing. The arrival of the SPLM finally in Khartoum finally over the weekend may make the beginnings of some changes there. Their presence in the government, their presence in some of the ministries, may begin to turn some of these things around. Maybe John Garang will be taken up on offers of men to help in Darfur. It could be the presence on the ground as a new element in the new Sudanese government may begin to turn things around.
The rebels, Lord knows, have legitimate grievances and legitimate aspirations, but their lack of discipline on the ground is making it too easy for the other side - whether they're Janjaweed or government-supported Janjaweed - to do things and stop the international community from crying out as clearly as we would if we could be absolutely of the point of view that the rebels are not at fault in any of this. We're not there yet.
When the mediation meeting took place a month ago in Njamina [Chad], there was some hope that the Sudanese government would put some new items on the table, and they did. Bashir put a serious offer on the table, and he pulled the Antonov bombers out [of Darfur]. He restricted the use of helicopters, restricted reconnaissance. And we've not had any reliable reports they've done anything but that since then. They've been flying around, but it's been reconnaissance here and there or movement of supplies.
He offered to pull back to the December 8 lines. The rebels accepted that. He offered a Nuba mountain style ceasefire. The Nuba mountain ceasefire allows them to be in zones. He put that on the table. The rebels were not represented at a high enough level to take any of those things off the table, and so it deteriorated to another offer that failed.
We've pocketed it. We know what he said, and we keep saying to the rebels: `This is on the table. You need to find a way to take it, because what we need from you is to make this ceasefire work. If we can make the ceasefire work, you can have a year or two years or whatever it takes to talk politically, but the ceasefire has to work because your people are being disadvantaged and frankly, we don't see any military advantage to persisting in this. Not when you could have a reasonable ceasefire.'
So in the coming weeks the SPLM will become real participants in the Sudanese government?
What they're there to do is, one, to prove there's reality to this comprehensive peace agreement. From a practical point of view, it's to begin interim constitution commission meetings. We've been hopeful that, once it started, it might only take six or eight weeks. They've been over this ground in the negotiation; they're not starting from scratch with this interim constitution process.
They are starting from scratch in terms of making it public and in reaching out to the other parties both in the south and in the north, to make this more acceptable to a broader Sudanese audience. So this will take some time to sell that, and maybe to change the last few words and rearrange the last few paragraphs.
The idea was to make this more than strictly an agreement between the National Congress Party [in Khartoum] and the Sudanese People Liberation Movement [in the spouth]. This is an agreement between a marginalized area and a center. That's really the problem in Sudan. Whether in Darfur or in the Beja, the problem has always been that power and wealth have been centered in Khartum and maybe 200 miles around it. The rest of the areas have been disadvantaged. The features that Garang negotiated - the power sharing, the wealth sharing, the federalism - are all answers to a marginalized periphery versus center problem.
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