An Old-Fashioned Darfur Rumble
Continuing today's Darfur-theme - a fascinating Darfur rumble between Bec Hamilton over at the Promise of Engagement and Rob Crilly writing at African Safari. Fascinating because both parties know of whence they speak. Both Hamilton and Crilly are writing books on Darfur and the Darfur advocacy movement, and clearly see no need to pull their punches.
The rumble in question stems from comments made last week by General Martin Agwai, who until recently was the UN's military commander in Darfur. According to Agwai: "Banditry, localised issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that."
"Two points on this. Firstly, it’s hard to distinguish ‘the war is over’ from ‘the war is in temporary respite because of rains/fractured rebels/focus on the elections’. Secondly, even to the extent this is a permanent change, it’s still somewhat irrelevant from the perspective of the IDPs. The real issue is how insecurity (as a result of the war) has squeezed the humanitarian space.
Humanitarian ops have been progressively moved from “deep field” to “field” and are now almost entirely confined to the major towns because of insecurity. There are many humanitarians interested in moving to the kind of ‘early recovery’ programs that this stagnation in the conflict might otherwise warrant, but it’s impossible to do so under the current conditions. So everyone remains in a limbo state of emergency provisions. Bottom line: I wouldn’t say Gen. Agwai’s comments are “wrong” but rather very much beside the point."
"The whole problem with the international effort to save Darfur has been this sort of misguided analysis."
"How you understand the conflict in Darfur is central to devising the right solutions. To continue to believe that this is a genocide or a war means we will continue to focus on no-fly zones, peacekeepers and arresting President Bashir. This continues to be the mainstream view of the campaigners - as shown in the support offered to these options by Biden, Clinton and Obama in last year's US presidential campaign.
The reality of course is very different. The crisis in Sudan's western region is humanitarian, needing humanitarian not military solutions. As General Agwai's analysis makes clear, banditry, water and local issues need to be tackled if Darfur is to find security. He has not missed the point. This is the point Bec...
To dismiss General Agwai's comments out of hand is clear evidence that they [Darfur campaigners] are not interested in understanding what is happening on the ground."
"If Rob is actually arguing that the crisis is solely humanitarian (which is what his post reads like, but I’m not sure it’s what he really meant) then that would be a clear point of disagreement between us, because I think the crisis is also very much political.
In addition to humanitarian solutions, what Darfur needs more than anything else is a truly inclusive peace agreement (that includes the Arab groups as independent actors, rather than assuming - incorrectly - that their interests will be taken into account by the government). Humanitarian solutions are a very important stop-gap measure, but a sustainable peace in Darfur will not be achieved just by addressing the humanitarian ’symptoms’ - underlying causes must be addressed as well.
When I said the General Agwai’s comments on ‘the war is over’ were beside the point, I was not saying that Darfur needs a military solution - in fact I was saying the exact opposite. War or not war (I maintain my point about the difficulty in distinguishing a respite in hostilities from the end of them) there are very real issues on the ground to be resolved, and focusing on the “war” dimension (which has not been “the” issue in Darfur for quite some time now) shifts necessary focus from these key issues."
Makes me long for the days of our own change.org Darfur rumbles. Tho I like Mr. Crilly, on this one I side with Hamilton.
[Image of Darfur from www.textually.org]
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